Gisèle Marie Baxter
Natalie watches the snow fall through the gray afternoon from the cafeteria in the Coroner's Building, where she has escaped from telephone messages and reports for a coffee and a croissant. She sits where she can see the whole room while keeping her back to the wall. At this hour the place is empty and in the cold colourless light, despite some large vaguely tropical green plants, it looks more institutional than ever, all stainless steel and white formica. And with her hair professionally knotted up and her white lab coat on, she feels institutional, and she scrubs her tired eyes with the backs of her hands, smudging her mascara. The croissant is demolished on her plate, its half-eaten remains scattered over a knife purple and sticky with jam scraped from a foil-lidded plastic container. Well, she ate that, and now can down lots of coffee with fewer pangs of guilt. An odd urge to go out in the snow strikes her. She almost laughs. Then she takes her cellular phone out of her bag, pops up the antenna, and reflexively punches out a number she is not sure she remembers being told.
After two rings, the answering machine kicks in, as she expected it to do at this hour, and his voice softly rasps, "Speak softly and you won't disturb me -- " and with the slightest hesitation for emphasis adds "you don't...want...to disturb me." There is a short beep, and she clears her throat and almost whispers, "Oh, hello, it's Natalie Lambert; I'm sorry, you must be asleep, but I just felt I needed to -- " and at this there is the click of a receiver and LaCroix says pleasantly enough, "Actually, I'm quite awake; why don't you come over? Wear something black: you'll understand." And he gives her the number of a suite in Queen's Quay at Harbourfront.
Tranquilized, Natalie replaces the phone in her big shoulder purse; dazedly she gets up and looks out again at the snow.
*****
Queen's Quay so far to Natalie has been a sort of temple, not one like the Eaton Centre that any sort of dusty pilgrim can enter, but one whose pale concrete and masses of seacoloured glass shelter the legendary rich. And now here she is, elegantly attired in a knitted dress with a softly flared skirt and opaque stockings and tall suede boots, all under a long flared riding coat she has never worn; she is cold in this inadequate costume on a blustery January day, but could care less: she rides the sleek almost silent elevator with the furtive anticipation of a child evading the truant officer; in one hand are two perfect crimson roses wrapped in black tissue. At the designated suite, she presses the buzzer, and the door is immediately opened for her, and LaCroix permits her to enter, and once he reaches over her shoulder to push the door shut and turns the lock, she realizes she has crossed another border.
"I'm delighted you're here," he says quietly.
She is not quite sure what to reply, so she holds out the flowers and says, "I brought you these; I felt I ought to bring you something."
"Thank you, Natalie; they are magnificent, and for such a cold day." His hand brushes hers as he takes the roses and she reflexively lets her fingers pressure his. He smiles, and continues, "Let's put them in water then I'll give you a tour."
Natalie follows him into the kitchen, all matte black tiles and stainless steel, with only the tube lighting over the sideboard activated. He locates a tall plain clear glass vase in one of the cupboards, and allows her to fill it with water and arrange the roses in it. She glances with some curiosity at the spacious refrigerator while doing so, but at his indication, proceeds after him to another room. The place is remarkably silent, and comfortably warm. It is also immense, with high ceilings and enormous windows, now blocked by heavy black blinds and draperies. Black is the predominant colour, matte black walls, black woolen carpeting throughout, except for the kitchen and bathroom, which are tiled and mirrored, and the dining room, which is a vivid deep scarlet. The furniture is black as well: lacquered rare woods, leather upholstery, dull metal shelves, everything austere in design yet masterful in execution. Lighting is minimal and dim, and now mostly confined to a few in a series of art deco halogen wall sconces. There is little in the way of ornament: a few large expressionist canvases in appropriately sombre hues, a few mirrors, a few antique musical instruments. It is a bizarre museum, not someone's home, and yet Natalie can imagine no one else here to give her this tour.
Their destination is the bedroom, where LaCroix sets the vase of roses down on a low table under the window, "so that I can see them when I wake up," he explains. But Natalie's attention is taken by the bed: she has seen few king-sized beds but this seems larger, and it is framed by a complex construction of matte black metal bars, with four very tall corner posts joined at the top by narrow tubes hung with black silk gauze. The bedding is exquisitely plain cotton and silk, still disturbed though not much by serene recent occupation. The frame is accented by a series of dull metal chains crossing headboard and footboard abstractedly, connected to metal rings bolted to the bars. Some other part of Natalie's mind realizes there are a few other pieces of furniture in the room, a Francis Bacon on one wall, a rebec mounted on another, and a massive walk-in closet, but the bed is sublimely, horribly regal. Again, Natalie is not quite certain what she should say, so she finds herself saying, "Well, I guess you don't sleep in a coffin."
LaCroix likes this response. "Of course not; I'm not dead."
"I can't say I've never been in a man's apartment," Natalie confesses, "but I've been in few vampire's apartments. This is amazing: did you bring it over from Europe?"
"No. I commissioned an artist in Toronto to make it, actually; I told her the sort of thing I wanted, and this is the result." He runs a hand along one of the bars and looks at her sardonically. "Try it out, if you like; I invited you here to have fun, you sounded so wretched."
"Show me the rest of the place first," she decides, wishing she felt more menaced by the situation. The unreflecting black and the absence of natural light make her feel enclosed, almost swallowed up, and the outside rules do not apply here. She follows LaCroix into the main room, which is operatic in scale; beyond the immense window must be an spectacular view of the harbour and Lake Ontario. Within is some cubical Italian leather furniture and on one wall shelves of cutting-edge sound reproduction equipment plus stacks of CD's. She finds she can see quite clearly by now.
"I bought this place two years ago," LaCroix explains. "And then I had it completely redecorated. When I viewed it, the walls were white, the floors were plain hard wood, there was nothing at the windows. But I like the structure, the high ceilings, the view."
"It's not like Nick's," Natalie observes.
"No; first, I dislike living in factories or barns or garages, and second, Nicholas's place is far too colourful and cluttered for my tastes."
"And has Nick ever been here?" Natalie asks, smiling.
"Actually, no, although he does have a standing invitation." LaCroix moves over to a long bar; on it are dozens of glasses of various shapes and sizes, all plain clear glass, also a tall unlabelled bottle, and an ice bucket with another bottle in it. "By the way, Natalie, I thought as well I should have something for you. So sit down wherever you'd like and close your eyes. You do trust me enough to do that?"
Actually, no, but Natalie shrugs and gracefully drops herself onto the middle of the carpet. Arranging her skirt, she straightens her shoulders, folds her hands in her lap and closes her eyes. So LaCroix sets the ice bucket beside her, and in a moment, Natalie is deftly ripping off the foil, undoing the wires and popping the cork on a 1978 Dom Perignon; equally deftly, LaCroix catches the cork in one hand. "Glass, please," she requests after her scream of delight at the tiny explosion and the spewing froth of creamy golden bubbles. "You don't need a glass," LaCroix rejoins, smiling benignly, and in response she takes a long drink from the bottle, letting the icy sparkling liquid run down her chin and neck. Laughing almost giddily, she takes another drink, props the bottle in the ice bucket and looks back over her shoulder at her host, who stands near the bar, his own drink (in a wineglass) in hand.
"This must have set you back two hundred dollars," she says.
"That's about right," he replies. "I hope it's acceptable."
"I think at this point I'm supposed to be shattered with guilt and oh you shouldn't have, but hey, you can afford it. Oh, and it's acceptable, though I'm afraid I'm going to get drunk."
"Then pace yourself," LaCroix suggests. "Let's have some music, hmm?" He collects a stack of CD's randomly, and drops them around her: some of the cases open and the iridescent silver disks roll away. Natalie examines them like a child on Christmas morning, breathless and thrilled at the variety; she sorts through Wagner operas and Roxy Music and songs of the Crusades and lots and lots of Depeche Mode and Velvet Underground as well as a surprising assortment of contemporary alternative stuff, and she wonders why he has this, but apparently CERK gets it as promotional material and he appropriates it from time to time. As the volume kicks in on the REM disk she slings him, Frisbee fashion, she closes her eyes again, remembering suddenly the blizzardy nights in the university station, beer illegally smuggled in, pizza almost all consumed: with Barbara and Dennis and Nathan and the others, crammed into the tiny studio, trying to do a group reading of The Raven over Public Image Limited. Noticing this lapse into nostalgia, LaCroix drains his glass, pours out another one and sets it aside, then crosses over to her, takes her wrists firmly in his hands and pulls her up. Despite the music, he compels her through the intricate steps of a tango, even to a dip that has her hanging on for dear life with one leg imperfectly draped over his waist. She shrieks and they both start to laugh, and when he swings her up she wrenches away and relaxes into the sort of energetic freeform dancing more appropriate to this music, and takes it all the way to the bedroom, where she parks her champagne on the table next to her roses and jumps on the bed. The mattress is hard but just springy enough that she can vault up and grasp a top bar.
"I did gymnastics in high school," she explains.
He is tall enough that by standing on the lowest rung of the footboard, he can hang his wrists loosely over the top bar and he does so, regarding her with interest as she begins to realize that her grasp can't bear her weight much longer. The music (now Siouxsie and the Banshees) is very loud. Flushed with alcohol and with exertion, she laughs, then glances away, then glances back at him with a suddenly shy seriousness.
"So," she says, "From your point of view and in my language, Nick has been in an eight hundred year process of withdrawal. Is that why you hate him so much, LaCroix?"
"But I don't hate Nicholas," LaCroix replies; she is almost shouting over the volume, though he keeps his voice to its regular pitch and realizes she can still hear him now that she is learning to listen properly. "I love him very much. And I think denial might be the term you want."
"Do you resent me?"
His very pale eyes widen slightly. "You don't need to shout, Natalie; I could hear you if you whispered. I don't resent you. You have been a worthy adversary in your tenacity and commitment and your power over Nicholas's capacity for hope. But your efforts have always been doomed. Let's not dwell on it now. And your arms are about to get too tired to sustain this so let yourself drop."
Which she does, and with a scream lands in a tousled heap of hair and skirt and silk-covered duvet, while LaCroix regards her from his vantage. Then she sits on the carpet with her head resting back against his chesterfield, while he plays his rebec, improvising to Nirvana's acoustic version of The Man Who Sold the World, and then he improvises his own tunes for a while, then she asks him to play Nine Inch Nails' Hurt, and she wants to cry again but controls the urge, asking, "How long will you stay in Toronto?"
"I can't predict that," he replies, and though he stares out at the twilit harbour now that drapes and blinds are open, one hand absently twists locks of her hair around its fingers then spreads them out on the chesterfield seat. "I shall stay until both Nicholas and Janette are ready to accept our mutual responsibilities to each other. And you know as well as I do that Nicholas will never be anything other than a vampire."
"But you've made other vampires."
"Yes, but there's a difference between doing something because you're able, and doing it because it can be done brilliantly," LaCroix says softly. "I knew Nicholas would be my masterpiece."
"What about Janette?" Natalie sets aside her glass.
"Janette is brilliant, but she's instrumental. She knows that."
Natalie closes her eyes to the serene beauty of the view, the violet blue snow on the terrace, the lights from the islands, somehow longing for the perfect enclosure of the afternoon. "Are you afraid of dying?" she murmurs.
"The question doesn't apply, Natalie."
"All right, then: if you hadn't been given the choice you were, would you have been afraid?"
LaCroix smiles, still contemplating the harbour. "No. Resentful, more likely."
Natalie nods. The song ends and the room is perfectly silent. He lets one hand rest in her masses of honey-and-wheat coloured hair, sunlit hair, rather like Nicholas's but more buoyant and golden. With the other he absently strokes the arm of the chesterfield as he thinks of the others, and of whether in this place another masterpiece might be his, one which would bring Nicholas back and in doing so threaten to surpass even Nicholas. Natalie, for her part, finds herself listening to her own heartbeat and thinking of nothing at all.
"Do you want to kill me," she wonders impulsively, opening her eyes to the cold blurred vista beyond the window, "and drink my blood. Right now."
LaCroix glances down at her with interest. "Is that a question or an offer?"
"A question," Natalie replies tonelessly, without looking up.
"On one level, yes," he says. "But it would be such a waste of potential."
"I wish you could have sex with me," she whispers bitterly. "Here, now, on the carpet, just like that. It's the human thing. And you don't love me, this is all just a combination of experiment and revenge to you, so nothing would have to matter, but maybe for a few minutes I could forget -- about Barbara; about everything." She reaches up one hand behind her head and places it on his hand.
"Oh, but you see, Natalie, I do love you," LaCroix says very softly, and his voice makes her suddenly see the roses dipped in acid. "And it's such a limited form of experience: some animal urge to procreate, or alleged cure for loneliness. Purge yourself of your conventions, and you'll see what I mean." He twines his fingers around hers and squeezes her hand almost too painfully, then abruptly releases it and says, "Your friends will be worried about you; you should go now. And no, Natalie, you haven't said the wrong thing and I am not rejecting you: the time is not yet perfect. On one level I suppose I also do desire you; were I to act on that, I would kill you, and I would do so willingly, instinctively, without remorse. So would Nicholas, I might add. But if I restrain myself, it's to keep much better things in store."
Natalie gets up slowly and deliberately, masking her rising inebriation. She smoothes down her skirt and stares out at the by now more heavily falling snow, and she realizes she is cold again. LaCroix collects her coat and gloves and bag, and walks out to the elevator with her; in the pastel brightness of the hall, he is shockingly pale in his black clothes, and his light blue eyes are faintly red-rimmed. As they wait, he takes her face in his hands and smiles down at her with the benign irony she has come to recognize, and her murmurs, "A bientot, ma chere petite Natalie."
"Thanks for the champagne and everything," she manages numbly.
"It was my pleasure," LaCroix replies.
*****
Nick has not bothered to go to bed; he lies on his chesterfield, fully clothed but sleeping. His eyes open and he sits up abruptly, and instantly finds Natalie in the darkened room. She is standing idly, as if uncertain what to do, in the middle of the floor, and is dressed unusually, for her, in a plain black flared dress under a long black Edwardian coat, face pale yet flushed, making her red lipstick garish. She looks at him with the weariness of prolonged sleeplessness, and profoundly sadly. He stands up.
"Nat," he says gently. "Turn the lights on; it's all right."
She makes no move, but says, "I'm sorry, Nick, I didn't want to wake you."
"Schanke's been out looking for you," Nick tells her. "And of course I would have been."
"But you knew, sooner or later, I'd come here."
He almost smiles. "I hoped so, at any rate," he tells her, and when she just persists in standing there looking at him with such sadness, he adds, "Hey, do you want some coffee or anything? I think there's some Doritos in the fridge."
She cannot help but laugh briefly at this, and in that moment faces him through an echo of her old self, which multiplies her sadness. She even goes to the refrigerator in Nick's pristine black-and-white kitchen, with its unused appliances on the sideboard and telltale glasses on the stove, and pulls open the door. She stands staring at the bottles ranged inside, while Nick watches her, then she closes the door and looks at him again.
"What's it like, Nick?" she asks so quietly no one else could have heard her.
"Natalie: we've been through that," he protests, but cautiously.
"Let's go through it again."
"It's perpetual gnawing hunger, rigidly focused, through all waking hours."
"Then where's the appeal?"
Nick shrugs. "You live forever."
"Really forever?" Natalie persists, wistfully.
"I guess that's impossible to say," Nick replies with a faint smile.
She hesitates, clenching her fists in her pockets, before summoning the courage to cross the line with the next question. Then she asks, almost in a whisper, "Nick, would you bring me across?"
For a moment he can say nothing, and then he says "No," almost angrily. "I thought that was the last thing you could want."
The despair on her face is palpable. "Nick, how can you want to be mortal? You have the opportunity to do so much; how could you trade that for the risk every day that you might die arbitrarily, get hit by a bus crossing the street, get shot in the line of duty -- "
" -- die before my time from some incurable illness?" Nick supplies.
Natalie closes her eyes and nods fervently.
"Natalie: my existence doesn't make Barbara's life and death worthless," Nick continues gently. "It does make revenge meaningless. And you can't know anything of what it's like. Don't tell me about arbitrary death; for years I owed my existence to arbitrary death. That's the power I have. All right, it's different now, even for LaCroix whatever he says, but the hunger is still there."
She approaches him slowly and deliberately, gradually easing her coat down from her shoulders, and she looks up at him with glistening eyes. "So you won't do it," she murmurs.
Nick pulls her coat back up, takes her face in his hands and kisses the top of her head, then her mouth. "No," he tells her emphatically. "Go home, Natalie. I have to go to work now. And I promise, if Barbara was killed, we'll find her murderer."
*****
That night, Natalie wears the black velvet dress she wore to the Raven again, and spends a long time staring in the mirror, trying first to decide about her hair and makeup, then whether she'll look markedly different afterwards. Finally, she feels she is ready, and one hand mechanically reaches up and under her collar to unclasp and draw out the silver chain with its tiny cross pendant. She closes her hand over it and the metal grows warm against her palm. Then she drops it, not into the jewelry box over which her hand briefly hovers, but into the tiny evening purse she carries on a long strap slung over her shoulder. She hesitates, glances at her wristwatch, then picks up the phone and punches out a number; after Nick's answering machine message, she hesitates again, then says in a low, quiet voice: "Nick: it's Natalie. I'm very, very sorry." And she hangs up.
She rides in a taxi to the radio station. Again, snow is falling, and concentrating on its gentle downward drift muffles for her the traffic and noise of a downtown Friday night. Over and over in her mind the final images of Barbara recur, yet she can't summon anything as simply definable as grief or even regret or nostalgia, because as always, as soon as she starts thinking about it, it becomes so unbearable the numb despairing horror just takes over. So she leans against the window, huddled in her corner of the back seat, and watches the snow fall.
In the lobby, the night watchman politely murmurs good evening, Dr. Lambert, and she nods as she boards the elevator. You have time, she tells herself: you can when you get to that floor hit the down button and leave, walk out past the guard, who is only there to keep trouble out, not to keep you in. And in the elevator she almost weeps again, but again, the impulse dies; when she reaches the floor she goes straight into the studio and gazes from her depths at LaCroix while he broadcasts, her hands braced on the glass. When she can enter, he smiles at her with a dignified acknowledgement of his victory, yet also with a welcoming tenderness she is certain only she could recognize. He rises, and formally kisses her hand.
"Natalie." His voice is so soft she wonders if she really heard it. "I wanted you to come here, but you must tell me why you've honoured me with your visit."
She is mesmerized, more in love than she has ever permitted herself to be, and she says without hesitation, "I want you to bring me across, LaCroix."
He permits her a slight bow. "Then I am doubly honoured."
Unsure what to do next, she asks, "Do you want me to take off my coat?"
He is too amused to be startled, and his fingertips stroke the side of her face. "Dearest Natalie, not here," he tells her.
"But I'm so tired of waiting!" she protests.
"You have a few hours against centuries," he counters.
"At the Raven, then," she says. "Not your place. Whatever happens after, I want to remember that afternoon well."
What is forever like, and is it even imaginable, Natalie asks herself as she sinks into the offered chair. He holds her hand as he cues up the next CD and leans closer to the microphone, and she closes her eyes to listen to his voice. And when the program is over and he logs off, she watches wordlessly as he puts on his coat and scarf; the pin she gave him is on a lapel of his suit jacket. Then he extends a hand, which she takes, and they leave. Both are calm, their faces serenely detached, despite the fact that they are holding hands, and as they cross the lobby they smile and nod politely to the guard, who looks up from his paperback novel and says affably, "Good night, Dr. Lambert, Mr. LaCroix." The night outside is cold, and snowflakes cling to Natalie's hair and to the broad cranberry velvet muffler she has wound several times around her throat.
With an ease that almost surprises her, he hails a cab and they settle in the back seat for the relatively short drive to the Raven. He tips the driver generously, despite having endured the ride only by sitting rigidly with his face averted and eyes closed, since the driver has a rosary of jet beads draped over the rearview mirror. Natalie strokes his hand reassuringly, in spite of herself, and wonders whether Nick grew to love her through such gestures and why her mortality has amounted to so little.
At the Raven, which is closing up and nearly deserted, Janette watches them arrive from her vantage near the bar. Her mouth opens to say something, her body arranges itself to move, but she is as if paralyzed and they don't even look in her direction. When she can move, she swallows several times, clenching her fists and gasping for air, then she seizes the bottle from the bar, strides into her office, slams the door shut and hurls the bottle against the wall in her frustrated rage. LaCroix and Natalie repair to the upstairs room they occupied before, and there he closes and locks the door, then gently takes her coat off, and unwinds her scarf with formal slowness. She cannot take her eyes from his, though she is otherwise numb, mesmerized; her hands rest uselessly against the back of the chesterfield. When he indicates she should sit down, she does so with an unconscious gracefulness, and he takes off his coat and scarf and crouches before her, at her eye level. He smoothes her hair back, behind her ears and away from her shoulders, and his fingertips lightly stroke her face, then her jawline, then her throat, and as he pressures the vein, his eyes grow perceptibly more luminous.
"Is there anything you want to know first?" he asks her.
Will it hurt much and how long will it take occur to her, but she only permits herself to say, "It wouldn't change my mind."
This answer pleases him, and he replies, "I don't want to change your mind. I only want you to be certain this is your choice, not mine."
"Then I've waited long enough," she whispers.
"Put your arms around me," he instructs, and she does so automatically, though her hands grip his shoulders with amazing strength. Tentatively and experimentally, he slides his mouth down her throat to rest on the vein, and the anticipation and desire are remarkably strong; his eyes are burning and the teeth extend more rapidly than recent experience has permitted. He gathers her hair in one hand and lowers her head onto one shoulder as his free hand braces against her back, then bites down hard. Her eyes only close at this point and she takes in a sharp breath at the severity of the pain, then gasps and wants to scream but cannot; she is too numb. She even begins to relax; the bruising grip on his shoulders loosens; she feels a sort of narcotic warmth spreading over her, and then a violent coldness and she begins to tremble, at which point he holds her more tightly and she is only aware of the awful sound of him drinking. Time has ceased to be relevant.
When he lifts his head, his eyes are clear and pale, only faintly gleaming, and his mouth is messily red; realizing this, he wipes it on his hand with an apologetic smile. She is so cold and weak she is convinced she is about to die and her wideopen eyes are filled with terror. She is aware that one side of her neck is bloody around two almost surgically precise punctures. He reaches into a pocket and withdraws what she immediately recognizes as a scalpel, then pushes up a cuff. He quickly and expertly slashes across the vein, without reaction, then brings her mouth to the incision. She closes her eyes again, lightly clasps her hands behind his neck, and begins to drink.
There is an explosion, or an implosion: the wall of glass overlooking the club shatters in thousands of fragments and a burst of blinding light and a blast of arctic wind; simultaneously an undefinable apparently winged figure collars LaCroix and the two fall back through the still exploding glass in a sound like a million windows breaking. Natalie flings up her arms to shield her face and screams, shrinking back onto the couch in a paralysis of terror beyond vision or thought. Nick crashlands on the dance floor amidst upended chairs, broken glass and a splintered table. The moment chosen had to be precise, and at least the vulnerability factor was there: LaCroix could not know what got him, and has in falling struck his head sharply on one of the metal pillars. Nick is up before LaCroix slowly stirs, rising carefully to let the pain and injury disappear more quickly. His eyes are bright and full of angry triumph, and his fangs have not completely receded, though Nick's have and his rage is of a concentrated, dark mortal sort. There is a magic circle of tension around them; from without, near the bar, Janette and Miklos watch in fascinated horror.
"It seems, dear Nicholas, you may have underestimated me," LaCroix says at last, slowly and just slightly rasping, "or her." He smiles, and dusts himself off, and rebuttons his shirt sleeve.
"If Natalie has come over," Nick returns quietly, "so help me, I will destroy you. I know; I've tried and failed before. But I'll find a way."
"Bear in mind that if she has come across, she is mine."
Frustrated, Nick has to concede the impasse, but can't help firing back, "Well, she'd soon discover what that part of the bargain is worth."
"It's worth whatever you want to let it be worth," LaCroix replies. He feels wonderfully strong; Natalie's blood has given him a tremendous resiliency. And so he feels he can humour Nick, though Nick is apparently not in a mood to be humoured, so he simply adds, "But it's always worth something."
Nick turns away and dashes up to the little room, where Natalie is still huddled on the chesterfield, her arms over her face. He has scarcely reached the doorway when she says his name, not as a question but as a statement, and he enters the room tentatively. She starts to breathe more heavily, as if hyperventilating; he crosses the room, glass crunching under his shoes as he walks. He stands far enough away from her that she can't feel him, and extends a hand. Gracefully yet automatically, she extends a hand to grasp his; she is icily cold. There is still a faint trace of blood around the puncture wounds on her throat and he fights down an impulse, swallowing hard and tightening the grip on her hand. She keeps her eyes closed, and her lips are trembling.
"Nick," she repeats, in her strange new voice.
"You knew it was me," he says softly.
"What happened," she murmurs, and she pulls her hand away and tosses her head back and forth along the back of the chesterfield, and her lips keep moving, as if framing oh my love, oh my love. Nick pulls off his overcoat and wraps it around her then sits down beside her and gathers her into his arms. He tells her to open her eyes and she has great difficulty doing so, but when she does they are the eyes he remembers, clear and warm and soft, belying her professional hardness. She buries her face in his shoulder and he holds her like a tired child, and then he feels LaCroix enter. Immediately Natalie stirs, without looking up (though no sound would have alerted her), and her mouth moves against the rough wool of Nick's blazer and she very faintly whispers, "LaCroix." The older vampire smiles benignly at her, then far less benignly at Nick.
*****
Natalie sits in a big armchair in Janette's office, her hands resting lightly and comfortably on its ornate carved-wood arms. She is blindfolded with a narrow silk scarf belonging to Janette. Over the past few minutes, she has with perfect accuracy determined not only the presence but the placement of the vampires in various groups or singly. When Nick goes to stand behind the chair, she names him so reflexively he smiles and tells her that part of the test is over.
"There's more?" she ventures nervously.
"Nothing too complicated," he assures her. "Can you read our thoughts?"
She is a doctor, and while the implications are tremendous, none of this does she find alarming or surprising. "Not precisely," she replies. "For one thing, it's too confusing; you're all thinking at once and you think on many more levels than mortals do. But let's just say I feel you intellectually, not just physically."
"And how do you feel?" Nick continues.
"Like I'm floating," she says slowly, lapsing into herself. "I feel empty, hollowed out, like I want to sleep for a long time. Beyond that, nothing. Am I supposed to feel anything?"
"I'm not sure," says Nick. He looks across the room at LaCroix, who is rapidly losing patience but determined not to lessen the sweetness of this victory by depriving Nicholas of this experience. He arches an eyebrow at Nick's grim silent enquiry, then languidly pulls himself away from the wall where he has been leaning and goes to the bar, where he pours a wineglass of blood from Janette's reserve and crosses the room to place it formally on a little table before Natalie's armchair. At his approach, Natalie's hands briefly tighten on the arms of the chair and her lips part. He gestures her back into her suspended relaxation, then glances at Nick with a challenge: we'll see if she's thirsty. Natalie instantly smells something and leans forward, carefully moving her hands over the table until she can pick up the glass with both hands. She slowly brings it to her mouth then with a grimace of repulsion sets it back down. Nick arches an eyebrow back at LaCroix, who shrugs blandly: that's not what she wants; she shouldn't be weaned yet. Too much the businesswoman now to let anything go to waste, Janette picks up the glass and glares at the other vampires. By this point, Natalie has had enough of the test and she unties the blindfold, although she is still too hollow and bewildered to move from the chair. Janette wanders off towards the well-obscured window; even regarding its heavy filter and blinds and draperies, she winces, but she drinks slowly and thoughtfully.
"What time is it?" she wonders.
"Half past seven," Nick replies, glancing at his wristwatch.
"Then you will have to stay here," Janette decides. To LaCroix, she adds, "You, of course, stay here more often than I would strictly prefer."
"But you wouldn't turn me out now," LaCroix counters.
Natalie watches all of this with a serene fascination and no feeling at all of what she wants to do.
"Speaking of which," she says, "so am I or am I not?"
Janette says to LaCroix, "She is far too strong. I told you it would take a long time and a much greater exchange."
"So I'm not a vampire." Natalie feels gravity collapsing somewhere deep within her, and yet the floating hollowness remains.
"Something happened," Nick tells her. "Your sensory perceptions are more acute; you have limited telepathic abilities which confine themselves to an awareness of other vampires; your link with LaCroix is, of course, strongest."
"You could just send me outside and see what happens," she suggests.
"No, you need to sleep now," Nick says gently. "We'll test your aversions later. The really odd thing is you seem to have an aversion to blood."
"Not a great trait in my profession."
Moving behind the chair, LaCroix reaches down to draw her mane of hair aside. The puncture wounds are still visible but healed considerably, and a quick pressure of the vein tells him her blood is regenerating rapidly.
"You're evading the truth, as usual, Nicholas," he says. "Natalie has started across. Your heroic intrusion, as you must know, either simply slowed her progress, or stranded her halfway, meaning she is not yet a vampire, but she may be a hunter, and your nemesis as much as mine."
At this, Natalie tilts her head back so she can look up at LaCroix. "Come again?"
"You have become a sort of predator, my love," he explains cryptically. "But we and not mortals may well be your prey."
"And all of this to make a wreck of my club," Janette protests. "You two are like children: small boys, locked in a quarrel that can't be settled. I hope you realize I shall split the cost of repairs between you."
"Let's defer this to evening, shall we?" Nick suggests.
*****
Later, while the vampires are sleeping -- LaCroix in the armchair she had occupied, Janette on her big ornately framed bed, Nick at one end of the long sofa where she has been curled up under her coat at the other end -- Natalie quietly leaves. Like them, she fell asleep almost upon assuming a relaxed position, and slept dreamlessly for several hours. It is mid-afternoon; sunset is still at least ninety minutes away. She puts on her coat and makes her way through the debris to the stairs, and up to the room where it happened to reclaim her scarf. For a moment she stands staring down through the gaping hole in the glass at the floor of the club, peaceful in her knowledge of these sleeping presences elsewhere in the building. Then she leaves, tentatively easing herself outside and instinctively fumbling in a pocket for her dark glasses, though the day is dull and damp and raw with threatened snow. Everything seems sharply defined and yet gleaming, like overexposed film, but she feels no aversion. She hails a cab on a nearby street and goes home. There, she showers and scours her hair and body and rinses her mouth out until it tingles with extra-strength mouthwash. She is cold, so cold she turns the thermostat way up, and still puts on two sweaters over a thermal undershirt when she dresses. Her hair she lets air dry, draped over a towel spread over her shoulders. Sitting crosslegged on her sofa with the TV on the home shopping network, the most innocuous thing she can think of, she drinks mug after mug of heavily sugared cafe au lait preserved in her coffee butler, and eats handfuls of Froot Loops from the box. By evening, she is violently ill, then she scrubs herself again, and puts on clean clothes, and gets out her medical bag. An inspection in the mirror reveals that the wounds on her throat have closed but have not entirely healed.
|Part 1|Part 2|Part 3|Part 4|Part 5|Table of Contents
Copyright 1995-2004 by Gisèle Baxter; all rights to original narrative, characters and characterizations reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. Last updated 2 August 2003 by G.M. Baxter.