The line stretched across the cracked pavement of the Magburaka town square. It had grown during his lunch break. There were at least two hundred adults and children standing, sitting, and squatting patiently outside. The lucky ones, who had been there since early morning, were flattened against the wall to take advantage of the meager strip of shade. The sun beat down mercilessly on the rest, waiting in a line straggling through the square and into the buildings beyond. Some held leaves or pieces of cardboard over their heads as shields from the heat. Many were mothers, holding their shawls or headscarves over the heads of the children in their laps to provide a little shade. Sweat streaked the dust on their faces. There was little conversation. The crowd was silent, stoical, rendered mute by the thick blanket of the heat, but prepared to wait until they had what they had come for. Marcus looked away from them and continued trying to repair the venetian blind over his desk.
It was no cooler inside. He dripped with sweat. He applied a little more pressure to the blind, and the bent slat broke off in his hand. A stream of sunlight fell across the teachers' desk he used as his station, dazzling his eyes. He would just have to ignore it. He got out the cooler that held the remaining supply of measles vaccine. Blinking to refocus his eyes in the comparative dark of the classroom, he counted the stock. There was enough for less than half of those waiting in the square. The supply truck should have arrived three days ago. He hoped it was held up for merely mechanical reasons. Fighting between rebels, many hardly more than children, and army forces had increased in the area since July. Thousands had been driven from their homes. The combination of rebels, soldiers, and refugees roaming the area made travel dangerous and unpredictable. He would continue inoculations until he ran out of vaccine, and then he'd have to send the rest of his patients home. But perhaps the truck would arrive soon.
After nightfall, when it cooled, he would walk back up to the hospital in the church to assist with the critically ill and wounded there. If the supply truck had arrived by then, he could bring essential supplies with him. Several of the patients wouldn't last more than a couple of days without more help than he could now provide.
He closed the cooler, checked his supply of sterile needles - short, of course, but they should hold out as long as the vaccine did - and checked his watch. He smiled automatically when he looked at it. It was a parting gift from Natalie, a Canadian coin as its face. "To remind you of home", she'd said. As if he needed reminding. Every time he closed his eyes to sleep he saw her face. He was needed here, truly needed. But he wondered daily if that was reason enough to stay. He gave himself a mental shake. He wasn't going to solve that question now. It was two o'clock; time to start. He called into the next room. "edgar? You all set?"
"All set here." A tall, slender Sierra Leone native came through the door, wiping his hands on a rag. "Same routine?"
"Yeah. You do the blood pressure and pulse rates on the way in, and send home anyone who looks sick." It was a wise precaution anyway, but mostly he was doing it to conserve supplies. No point using up the available vaccine on anyone who was going to have a bad reaction.
edgar nodded and held out his hand. "I need your watch again. Mine's still busted." He took it from Marcus and strapped it on, running a hand through his hair to dislodge the sweat. "Man, it's hot. Glad I'm not out there. Sundown can't come too soon." He crossed the room and opened the door to the first patient.
Marcus watched the line through the broken slat in the blind. The crowd turned and looked as one towards the opening door. He could see the hope in their eyes. The line rustled quietly as those sitting or squatting stood up and moved slowly forward.
***
The supply truck arrived at the height of the afternoon heat. edgar had set a gallon jug of water and a supply of paper cups outside the door for the children half an hour before, and had already gone out twice to refill it. Marcus was down to his last four doses of MMR vaccine. He was on the verge of sending away the rest of the line when he saw in the distance the dust cloud of the truck on its way up the road.
It pulled up outside the schoolhouse ten minutes later. A slender blonde woman stepped out of the cab, wearing khaki trousers and shirt deeply stained with sweat under the arms and between the shoulderblades. She rubbed her eyes with the back of her hand and looked around as Marcus came out to greet the driver. "Anneliese?" he said with surprise when he recognized his colleague, a fellow MSF doctor. "Where's Albert? I thought you were staying in Freetown. The roads aren't safe." Albert was the regular driver, an ex-militia man with relatives in Magburaka.
"I was. Albert's got the flu. We scored you the three doses of Ornidyl you phoned and begged for, and I didn't want to wait to get them to you." She sighed. "Then the truck broke an axle halfway between Masiaka and Masuri and it took three days to repair. The phones were out. I'm sorry."
"Ornidyl?" Marcus focussed on the important point. "That's great! How did you manage that?" He had twenty patients this week in the hospital with sleeping sickness. Three had resisted the usual treatment with melarsoprol. Two of them were now in a coma. Ornidyl was the only thing left that could help. "I've got to get this up to the hospital now. I hope it's not too late."
"It's positively the last of the batch, Marcus. We've got no more."
Marcus had already climbed into the back of the truck and begun hauling out crates of supplies. "No luck with Hoechst yet?" he called back over his shoulder.
"It's the small black case towards the front. Hang on, I'll find it for you." Anneliese jumped up onto the tailgate and made her way to the front of the cargo area. She fished a battered black plastic box out from under the larger crates and handed it to him. "And no. The W.H.O. is leaning on them, but Hoechst is insisting that they can't afford to make more without funding from somewhere. But there is no funding." She seemed worn out. Hoechst had stopped manufacturing Ornidyl in 1999, because the market for it, sub-Saharan Africa, could not afford to pay a high price for the drug. Dr. Anneliese Eckhart had worked tirelessly in the campaign to press the company into continuing production. But now even she sounded hopeless. Marcus looked at her with concern. She caught his expression and shrugged. "I'm just tired. We can talk later. Why don't you take this up to the hospital right now and start your patients on the treatment? edgar and I can finish up your afternoon clinic, if he'll help me unload."
edgar had already appeared by the tailgate and was pulling crates out and stacking them on the ground. Marcus looked around. The remainder of the line-up was still waiting patiently, looking more cheerful now that the truck had arrived. "Okay. Thanks a lot. I would like to take care of that quickly. I'll get back as soon as I can, and help close up and store the supplies."
Anneliese raised her hand in a wave in his general direction, balancing a box against her hip with the other. "Sure." Marcus was already halfway to his ancient bicycle, the precious case of Ornidyl tucked into his shirt for safekeeping on his ride to the hospital.
***
Forty-five minutes later he was finished at the hospital. He had administered the first injections himself, and left instructions with the nurse in charge for the rest of the regimen. Early signs indicated that all three patients were responding well to the drug. Never mind, he thought, that the next sleeping-sickness patient who needed it would die, and the one after that, and the one after that. Never mind that they would die because of simple greed. A drug company that didn't need the profits was nevertheless going to let thousands of people die because the market wasn't profitable enough. He felt himself growing angry as he thought about it, and took a deep breath as he stripped off his gloves. His anger would help nothing, he knew. Natalie could always calm him when he got into this frame of mind. He could almost hear her voice now, as he washed his hands at the sink in the storeroom. "You can't save the world by yourself, Marcus," she would say. "You just have to do what you can, and let the rest go." And then she would offer him a backrub. He could use a backrub now. Even without the further pleasures one of Natalie's backrubs always went on to offer. He closed his eyes and sighed.
A low boom shook the church that housed the hospital, and he looked up, surprised from his thoughts. What the - ? Outside the storeroom he heard a commotion, voices and people running, and he ran out into the main hall. "What's happening?" he asked the first person he met, a young man who was running for the outside door.
"The clinic's on fire!" he heard as the man ran past. Marcus felt a cold chill of fear. He brushed past the confusion in the hall and burst out the main doors himself. Outside it was already growing dark. Flames were clearly visible, shooting through the roof of the clinic half a mile away. Oh, my God, he thought, crossing himself automatically. The supplies. edgar. Anneliese. Lord, please save their lives. He ran for his bicycle, parked under a tree around the side of the church.
As he rounded the corner of the church a youth stepped out of the shadow towards him. "Dr. Mackenzie?"
Marcus slowed, turning his head automatically towards the speaker. "Yes, what -?" He heard rather than felt the crunch of the blow to the back of his skull. Then he knew nothing more.
§§§§§§§
Natalie returned late that afternoon after performing a tricky emergency C-section. Mother and child were fine, although it had been touch and go for a few minutes, and ordinarily she would feel elated. Instead she felt worn out. Whether it was her late night, unexpected visitor, or fraught emotional state, all she wanted to do was collapse into bed. She was half-tempted to call Nick and cancel their appointment. Perhaps a quick bath would perk her up. If she still felt flattened, they could just go for coffee and she would make it an early night.
While the bath ran, she fed Sinbad and checked her messages. Several from her dinner guests, thanking her for the evening. Less than 24 hours ago, and it felt like weeks. Nothing yet from Marcus. No point worrying, she told herself. She piled her hair on top of her head and slid into the bath, letting the heat relax her tired muscles.
The buzzer startled her out of a doze. She looked at her watch and leaped out of the tub, dripping and grabbing a towel as she ran to the intercom. "Hello?" A familiar voice crackled through the speaker.
"Nick Knight here."
"Hi! Uh - " she thought hastily. She hadn't intended to let him into the apartment. But she could hardly expect him to sit in the lobby for another fifteen minutes while she got ready. "Come on up! I'll be a few minutes." She buzzed him in and dashed to the bedroom, grabbing a pair of cords and the first sweater she laid hands on. Whatever they did this evening, she wasn't planning to start it with a peep show. Or by showing up at the door in a bathrobe. She was searching for two matching socks when he knocked, and walked over to the door barefoot to let him in.
Nick was dressed casually in jeans and a blue turtleneck under his black leather jacket. He looked as if he'd strolled off the cover of GQ. "Sorry, am I early?" he said, looking at her feet. "I wondered if you were home yet - I buzzed a couple of times."
"I'm so sorry - I fell asleep. I'm just looking for some socks. I'll be with you in a minute. Were you waiting long?" Natalie heard herself babbling and closed her mouth firmly. She felt flustered and still only half-awake. So much for being calm and collected when he arrived, she thought ruefully as she headed back into the bedroom to finish dressing. At least he's seeing the real me. No makeup, hair like I've been pulled through a hedge backwards, I don't **think** I've spilled anything on this sweater - she checked hastily as she pulled on socks and shoes.
"Not at all - I'd really just got here. Take your time", Nick said from the living room. Natalie hastily brushed the knots out of her hair, decided against earrings, and came out to join him. She discovered him at his ease on the couch, scratching Sinbad between the ears. The cat was stretched ecstatically across his lap, ears flattened, purring loudly.
"Amazing", Natalie said. "He never does that with strangers."
"I've gotten much better with cats", said Nick. He stood up. He seemed oddly unsure of himself. "Do you still want to go to a movie?" he asked. "If you've had a rough day - perhaps you'd rather rest?"
Natalie shook her head. "No, it will do me good to get out." And I don't want to hang around the apartment with you and maybe rent a video just the way we used to and act as if nothing ever happened, I didn't nearly die, you didn't vanish without a word, and five years haven't gone by, she thought. "I think if we move fast we'll be just in time to catch an early show. If you still want to, that is. Then we can go for coffee afterwards if I have the energy, or else make an early night of it."
"Well - " Nick hesitated. "Does it HAVE to be Mission Impossible?" He gave her a look of appeal.
Natalie smiled. "I've changed my mind about that anyway. Now I want to see "The Legend of Drunken Master." I hope you like Jackie Chan."
"Never heard of him. Is it about a schoolteacher?"
"Not exactly. Oh, hang on a second - " Natalie turned just as they got to the door. "I brought your files home with me, and put them - aha." She scooped a stuffed zippered portfolio off the kitchen table and came back out into the hall to hand it to him. "There are a few folders in there, with my log notebooks, and hard copy notes of all experiments, results, and printouts of all data I collected. I also put in the blood and tissue sample slides, and all the relevant disks."
Nick weighed the portfolio in his hand. "Could I leave this here until later?" he asked. "I can pick it up on my way home. I don't want to risk leaving it in a café or theatre."
"Sure. Remind me." Natalie got her coat out of the closet as she spoke. "Shall we?" Nick set the file down on the hall table and followed her out.
"Any word from Marcus?" Nick asked as they waited for the elevator.
Natalie shook her head. "I'm going to try again to get in touch on Monday. I'll call their headquarters in Belgium and see if they can give me any information. They may have updated contact numbers for Sierra Leone. I should have thought of it before. But I didn't want to feel as if I was hounding him."
"I'm sure he'll be very happy to hear from you, Nat."
Natalie sighed. "I hope so. I'm afraid he'll wonder if I deliberately got pregnant."
"Why? To trap him into marriage? Do people still do that?" asked Nick.
"I don't know. I wonder about some of my patients sometimes. I don't think it works too well."
"Nobody knowing you could possibly think you'd do such a thing," said Nick firmly. "From everything you've said about Marcus, he knows you well and has a deservedly high opinion of you", he added. "I wouldn't worry."
Natalie smiled briefly. "Thanks, Nick." She looked away unseeingly at the elevator. "I suppose I'm also worried that - " she shrugged. "I don't know. I'm afraid he's the type to do the right thing no matter how unhappy it makes him. He's likely to think he has to marry me whether he wants to or not. That's not what I meant when I offered. I just wanted to give him the option."
"Because it was the right thing to do, whether or not it made you happy?" asked Nick. "You sound like soul mates."
Natalie grimaced. "When you put it that way it sounds silly, doesn't it." She fell silent. The wheeze of the elevator climbing to her floor grew louder in the silence. "Still, if we did marry, it would probably work out all right", she added after a moment. "Hardly an endorsement, is it."
"Well, I don't know if "it would probably work out all right" is a great reason to get married," said Nick. "Though I'm no expert. But I would have said that the only reason to marry is because you're sure you want to."
"There is the child's welfare to consider."
"Yes. Though raising it on your own isn't impossible."
"No, but it's not the best option." Natalie sighed. "Anyway. What I really need is to talk to him. We could clear all this up in a single conversation. It's so easy to invent phantom problems."
"I'm sure you'll hear from him soon."
"I hope so".
Natalie sounded tired. Nick looked down at her. Her head was lowered, eyes on the floor. "Nat, are you sure you want to go out?" he asked again. "You look exhausted."
She straightened up. "I'm fine. I'm worried, but that won't help anything. I need to get out of the house. Jackie Chan is the perfect distraction, trust me." The elevator doors opened.
"So, tell me about Jackie Chan," Nick said as they entered.
Natalie smiled wickedly. "You'll see."
§§§
The movie revived Natalie's spirits. She was still giggling as they exited the theatre, two hours later. "That was great! I couldn't believe the fight scene in the foundry. It was incredible! "
Nick smiled at her. "I'm glad to hear it. I'd have to worry if you COULD believe it. The fight scenes were as choreographed as professional wrestling."
"Oh, please, Nick. They were far better choreographed than that. What was your favourite part?"
"'Favourite' isn't exactly the word. I was petrified. That man is as reckless as I am - but I know I won't die. Or is he just using up his stunt doubles at a frightening rate?"
"Oh no, he does all his own stunts. That's what the out-takes at the end showed - times the stunt didn't work. He does amazing things."
"Suicidal you mean. I am amazed - that he's lived so long. You're sure he goes out in daylight?"
Natalie grinned at him. "Oh yes, and he ages too. Probably faster than a lot of us."
"Scratch that theory then." Nick spotted a café across the street. "Was the hot dog at the movie enough for you? Or would you like to stop in for something to eat on the way home?"
"That hot dog didn't even qualify as food. Fainting of hunger would have been a better choice. I'm starving." Natalie considered the café. "Let's see what they've got." They crossed the street together.
Natalie was hungry enough to start on her chocolate milkshake before her pizza arrived. Nick watched her, amused. "I didn't know they prescribed chocolate for pregnant women these days. Or pizza. "
"Milk. Cheese. Dairy products," said Natalie cheerfully. "The only palatable way to ingest them, as far as I'm concerned. "
"I've never seen anyone order the two together," added Nick,
"You haven't eaten with a lot of pregnant women, have you." She drank again from the milkshake. "I'm just sorry they couldn't give me a side order of pickled artichokes." She grinned as he shuddered, and wondered idly what Nick was drinking these days. His business, whatever it was. He wouldn't have gone back to killing, at least; if he had, he would never have called her.
Thinking about his diet brought to mind her late-night visitor, and her mood sobered. She had thought over his visit as she worked that day. She had been enjoying the evening and didn't want to spoil the mood, but she couldn't put off this conversation any longer.
She had another sip and set down the half-empty glass. "Nick? Something I meant to tell you."
Nick turned to her, alert to her change of tone. "Trouble?"
"I hope not." She took a breath. "Your friend LaCroix visited me late last night. He appeared at my balcony door after my guests had left."
"What?" Nick straightened in his chair. "What did he want?"
"Of course he didn't exactly tell me," said Natalie. "But the interview seemed to be over once he was sure I wasn't planning to continue research on a cure. He was even marginally pleasant as he left."
Nick looked away from her. From the set of his jaw she could tell, even in the café's dim light, that he was angry. "I'm sorry", he said. "He promised not to interfere. I'll deal with him."
"He would tell you that he was just visiting an old acquaintance. At least that's what he told me. The thing is." Natalie hesitated. This was hard to say. In the past she had rarely discussed Nick's vampire associates with him, but this was necessary. "He threatened me. He showed me how vulnerable I was by visiting me at all. He pointed out that I had a lot to lose. Then he suggested that further research on a cure could be dangerous."
She heard an intake of breath from Nick, but continued without pausing. She needed to speak her piece without faltering. "I think he left convinced that I wasn't planning any. But, Nick. I was terrified. And I won't put up with this. I'm glad, I'm very glad, to have seen you again. "
She took a breath. "It lifted a weight I didn't know I was carrying to be able to talk to you," she continued. "There was so much I needed to say. And it means a lot to me that you came at all. If you want to, I'll be happy to stay in touch with you." She looked at him steadily. "But not if it puts me at risk from your friends."
"I entirely understand", Nick said. His expression was unreadable. "I'll deal with LaCroix. You're in no danger. I promise you, it won't happen again."
Natalie's suppressed emotion, the agitation she still felt from the night before, abruptly ran over. "Nick, how can you possibly know that? He threatened my life! If he promised not to interfere, what was he doing in my apartment? How can I trust either one of you?"
"Nat". Nick drew her attention with a touch on her arm. "LaCroix has never broken his word to me. He promised me that you were in no danger from him. He disapproves of friendships with mortals, and if he can frighten you away without breaking his word, he'll be pleased. If you want me to leave of course I will. But he won't hurt you. Honestly."
Natalie looked down at her milkshake. Her stomach churned with tension and she pushed it aside. "You're sure."
"I am."
"What about your Enforcer buddies?" She had thought of them, also, in the depths of the night after LaCroix' visit. It hadn't helped her sleep.
Nick looked around at the café. There was no one within earshot; the tables around them were empty, the other late-night customers gravitating to the bright lights at the front of the café. Nevertheless, he kept his voice low. "They're under the impression that you never knew much, and that what memories you had were wiped during your illness."
"How'd you manage that?" Natalie was more than a little concerned that the question had come up at all.
"LaCroix has some influence. He handled it."
"And how'd you manage THAT?"
"Let's just say he's been made aware of the importance of your wellbeing." Nick spoke wearily. "Look. Nat. You have nothing to fear. Trust me."
Natalie felt tired and old. "I just don't feel like dealing with this, Nick," she said finally. "You and LaCroix can play your little games forever, but I don't want to be a pawn. I don't want to be forever looking over my shoulder. I don't want any more two a.m. visitors landing on my balcony." She noted Nick's guilty look. Interesting. She'd had the feeling in her kitchen late last night that she was being watched. "None", she added firmly. "I didn't buy a 12th-story condo so people could stare in my windows.
"I don't want your creatures of the night cronies breathing down my neck. I just want a normal life. I want to go to movies and read books and have my friends over to dinner sometimes. I want to go for walks and wonder what to cook for dinner. I want to deliver babies and maybe do a little research in gynecology, and live with my friends around me, and family too if I have one, and feel as if I'm doing some good in the world, that I'll leave some corner of it a better place than I found it. I want to love as well as I can and work as well as I can and enjoy life's small pleasures and die old and disgustingly happy and at peace with God. I'm asking a lot, I know. But that's what I'm trying for.
"And I don't want it to be cut short by your serial killer colleagues. I don't want to even have to worry that it might be. I left all this behind me in Toronto and damn it, I want it to STAY there. In my past."
Her voice had been rising as she spoke, but she lowered it as Nick looked quickly over his shoulder again for eavesdroppers, and ended quietly. "I didn't say any of this earlier because I wanted to enjoy the evening with you. I've enjoyed seeing you, and I'll be happy to do it again sometime when you're in town. If you want to. But that invitation does not extend to your 'old friends'."
Natalie took a deep breath and feel silent. She had spoken more forcefully than she'd intended, but she regretted none of what she'd said. Nick had allowed her to go on uninterrupted until she was done. Now he nodded. "Understood. Nat, you don't know how much I want that life for you. If my presence would endanger you, believe me, I would never have come. All this is already taken care of. You didn't need to say any of this."
"Yes, I did."
"Sorry. Of course you did. What I meant was, I already knew it. I knew you would accept a friendship on no other terms. I'm happy to agree to them." He looked at her soberly until she nodded. "Okay?"
Natalie exhaled. "Okay."
"Are we okay?"
Natalie hesitated, then nodded again. "I think so. But I meant it."
"I know you did."
Their conversation was interrupted by the approach of the waiter with Natalie's pizza, and a glass of red wine for Nick. "Double cheese, mushroom, and pineapple?"
"Right here, thanks." Natalie had relaxed and felt hungry again. She dragged a piece of pizza onto her plate and took a healthy bite, washing it down with a sip of milkshake. "I would have asked for garlic, but I thought you might still -"
"Thanks. Very thoughtful," Nick said. He still looked faintly green. "Nat, I never saw even Schanke eat pizza with pineapple."
"Didn't know what he was missing." And now he never would, she thought. A flicker of sadness crossed her face.
"I know," said Nick. "I miss him too." They sat for a moment in silence. "But he wouldn't want you to let it get cold", he added.
Natalie smiled. "No." She took another bite.
"And I do want to," he said. Natalie looked at him, puzzled. "Stay in touch", he clarified. "You keep sounding as if you're not sure."
She swallowed. "Frankly, Nick, I'm not sure why you showed up in the first place."
"I missed you." Natalie had finished her first slice, except the crust, which she left on the edge of her plate. Now her head was bent industriously over the pizza as she tried to separate another piece without trailing cheese over the table. He smiled as he watched her. "I missed you a lot. You don't know how long it's been since I had someone I could talk to."
Natalie looked up, pizza successfully transferred. "I missed you too, Nick. You were a good friend to me. And you certainly opened up my horizons," she said. "But surely you can talk more easily with other vampires?"
"Not about anything that matters", said Nick. "Certainly not with LaCroix. Not even with Janette, much as I loved her. But our perspectives on life are too different."
"Have you seen her? How is she?" Natalie asked, while she digested this. He had told her in a few sentences more than he had said in six years about the most important people in his life. This was a new Nick.
"I've run into her a couple of times in Paris." Nick looked away, unseeing, at the bull-fighting scene painted on purple velvet that hung on the wall beside their table, thankfully poorly illuminated. "She's - sad. She misses Robert. I'm surprised she was willing to see me."
Natalie felt an unexpected pang of sympathy for the beautiful vampire, trapped in an immortality she no longer desired, and cursed, besides, with a perfect memory of what she had lost. "Perhaps she doesn't blame you," she said.
"She doesn't. She says it's poetic justice", said Nick. "Still, if I'd really been her friend, I would have let her go." Natalie had no answer to this. Nick looked at her oddly. "You're not going to tell me I'm wrong?"
"I can't judge," said Natalie. "It's not a temptation I'll ever face. If she's forgiven you, though, you may as well do the same."
"That's what she says. I find it hard to do."
"You always did. Perhaps that's your particular burden."
"What is?"
"Learning to accept forgiveness. It's always hard to do. Not only for you."
Nick looked down at the table. "Other people don't have so much to be forgiven for," he said quietly.
"Doesn't matter. We all have something."
"Easy for you to say. What have you got on your conscience?" said Nick.
"When I was eleven I let Roddy Beacham kiss me," Natalie said promptly. "Even though I didn't like him. I only did it because I wanted him to ask his parents to take me along with his family to Canada's Wonderland. I wanted to ride on the rollercoasters."
Nick began to smile. "A major crime," he said.
"It was pretty nasty", said Nat. "I knew he really liked me, and I didn't care if I hurt him. I thought of his feelings as a tool that would let me get what I wanted. I thought of him as an object. Which is the source of most human evil in a nutshell. Fortunately I didn't get away with it."
"What happened?"
Natalie had taken another bite of her pizza, which was growing cold after all, and made delaying gestures with one hand while she chewed and swallowed. "My grandmother knew I didn't like Roddy, because I used to make fun of him to my friends," she said at last. "So she made me turn down the invitation. And when I let slip that he had kissed me, she made me go over to his house and apologize to him for leading him on. It was awful! He felt so bad, and I cried. Then she wouldn't take me to the National Exhibition that summer, as punishment. I'd saved up my money all year to go on all the midway rides, and I couldn't go."
"Your grandmother was one tough old lady!" said Nick.
"She had a lot of good points," said Nat.
"What happened to Roddy?"
"Oh, we became friends in high school. We even studied together. But the worst of it was, he suddenly shot up when he was sixteen, gained about a foot in height in one summer, and he was a lifeguard, so he had a tan and this mane of blonde hair and was totally gorgeous, and was funny and cool and every girl in school including me was dying to go out with him. And he never looked at me again. Went out with all my friends, too. Ouch!"
"Now THAT's poetic justice!" Nick was laughing.
"I'll say," said Nat.
"But I don't see what it has to do with forgiveness," he said more soberly.
"Really?" said Nat. "Roddy forgave me, and we even became friends. Eventually I forgave myself, though that was harder. I'm sure I remembered longer than he did. But I did my very best ever after never to treat anyone like that again."
Nick smiled, but looked abstracted. Another trip down memory lane, Natalie thought. "It's hardly the same, though, is it," he said eventually.
"The principle is."
"So you think I should just forgive myself for destroying Janette's one chance at mortality", Nick said harshly. "Let myself off the hook."
"Why not?" Natalie said. "She has. Maybe you could think of it as an exercise in accepting forgiveness."
Nick was silent for a few moments. Natalie took the opportunity to finish her milkshake and have another few bites of pizza. Finally he said quietly, "the last few days have already been that. I never really thought you'd forgive me. Your generosity astounds me."
"I had to forgive you," Natalie said seriously. She set down the pizza crust and wiped her fingers and lips on a napkin. "I had to if I was going to recover myself. I could have spent my life brooding and weeping, but what kind of life would that have been?
"After you left Toronto, I was truly miserable. I thank God I had a good therapist. She helped me see what I'd done to put myself where I was, and forgive myself for all the mistakes I'd made, let go of them and go on. And I found I couldn't forgive myself without forgiving you."
"Your therapist sounds like a miracle-worker", said Nick. "What on earth did you tell her about me?" he added. "I've tried to imagine."
"I didn't say anything about you at all for the first six months", Natalie answered. "I used to come to the session, and we'd chat about nothing in particular, and I told her a little bit about my family, but I couldn't bring myself to say anything about recent events. Sometimes she'd ask, but I always changed the subject.
"Finally one day I was ready to talk. I told her I'd had a lengthy relationship with a junkie who said he was trying to quit. You had a shady and I believed criminal past that you didn't like to talk about, an abusive father who still tried to control you, and continuing relationships with friends who were still users. Your drug was heroin, which explained the lack of sex."
"Don't heroin users - " began Nick.
"Not often. It kills desire, and over time they often become impotent. Not that they care, because heroin is supposed to be much better than sex. I thought about making you gay," Natalie added, "but making you an addict was a better analogy, because I could reasonably have hoped that someday you might stop being an addict. And right to the end, I did hope that we could find a cure for your vampirism. "
"Some women do hope to convert gay men," Nick pointed out.
"True", Natalie said. "But I didn't want to look like even more of an idiot than I already did. Also, drug addiction naturally gave you ties to a criminal underworld it would be dangerous to talk about, so I even had an excuse for not being able to talk to anyone about you.
"Anyway, I told her that after several years of frustration I'd finally insisted on shooting up with you, since sharing a needle was the closest it seemed we would ever get to making love. But I'd had a bad reaction to the drug and nearly died. While I was in hospital recuperating you'd left town. I hadn't heard from you since."
Nick went silent again, and Natalie eyed him with some concern. Perhaps she should not have been so candid. "That sounds as if it covers the important points," he said at last. "But with that description, she must have wondered what you were doing with me. You must have wondered yourself."
"I was putting it as harshly as I could. By that time I was furious with myself for having anything to do with you," Natalie said. "But she was great. The day I told her all this, she waited until I was done, and then she just said, 'he must have been pretty special, for you to love him so much.' That opened the floodgates. I cried for the entire hour, that session and the next. After that things progressed quite quickly. She helped me forgive myself. And she helped me to see how hard you must have tried, all along, not to hurt me.
"In the end I realized you were doing the best you could at the time", she concluded. "How could I not forgive you?"
"I'm not sure I deserve it," said Nick.
"Nobody ever deserves to be forgiven," said Nat. "That's the whole point. Fortunately it's free."
"I don't really understand that," said Nick.
"It'll come to you," said Nat. There was a pause. Natalie polished off the second slice of pizza and contemplated the platter. Perhaps one more slice.
"Go ahead", Nick urged, seeing the direction of her gaze. "It's for the baby."
Natalie's lips twitched. "Well, when you put it that way." She slid another piece onto her plate. "It's awfully good," she added. "I've always been sorry you can't eat."
"If I could, I don't think I'd start with pizza", Nick said.
"You don't know what you're missing either." Natalie was no longer as hungry as she had been. She nibbled at one edge of the slice and thought over their conversations. Nick had said a great deal, but somehow he had still managed to be less than forthcoming about how he'd spent the time since he'd left Toronto. Well, try the direct approach. She swallowed. "So how have you spent the last five years?" she asked.
There was a pause. "Pretty quietly", said Nick at last.
"So if I get bored I'll stop you." She kept her eyes fixed on his face, and settled down to listen. If he really didn't want to talk about it, that was his business; but she wasn't going to make it easy for him to fall into his old secretive habits.
Nick shrugged. "I was - thinking about my life, mostly". Natalie nodded encouragement. He paused, and seemed to be ordering his thoughts.
"That night I nearly killed you was a terrible shock to me." he began. "You must know that you were - are - very important to me. I know you were sometimes frustrated with me." To put it mildly, thought Natalie. "But despite that, you'd always done your very best to help me. I know - " he waved off Natalie's attempt to interrupt - "your motives weren't entirely disinterested. It doesn't matter. You were still trying to help, you had treated me with kindness and concern, and I'd rewarded you by killing you, or close. I couldn't figure out how we had got there, from where we began. Things had started out so well. I'd had such hope. We both had. What went wrong?
"Once I was sure you would live, I went back to Paris with LaCroix. I lived with him for a few months. I can't have been much fun." He gave her a wry smile. "I refused to go anywhere or do anything. I wouldn't talk to anyone. I wouldn't even listen to music, let alone play. I didn't bother to turn the lights on unless someone else was in the room. I sat in the dark night after night.
"I despaired. I finally understand the meaning of despair. It means you have no hope at all. I knew that of course, from the French, but I'd never really experienced it before. I'd always thought that there was something else to try, some new approach I hadn't thought of yet. But everything I'd tried, for so long, seemed to go so horribly wrong, and now my last attempt, with you, had ended in utter disaster.
"What was even worse, you were gone. You had always given me hope when I was losing it. Even when you didn't have some new approach to try, you always had boundless cheerful optimism that something would come to you, that we would find a way, and the cure was just around the corner. I felt better just being around you. But instead of finding a cure, you were nearly dead yourself. My hope was gone. There seemed nowhere else to turn. I felt finally trapped. I was lost.
"Meanwhile LaCroix tried to entertain me. He really did his best. He couldn't understand what was wrong. You were alive, after all. I was alive. I was in Paris, the greatest city on earth, especially for those who live only at night. Every pleasure the world had to offer lay at my feet. And I sat in the dark and brooded. He did what he could. In the old days he would have beaten and insulted me, forced me to behave as he wished. But to his credit, he seems finally to have realised that those methods don't work on me. Or perhaps he just tired of them. In any event, he treated me quite well, for LaCroix. He even supplied me with cow's blood when I refused to drink human.
"But finally one night he told me he couldn't stand it anymore. Knowing he was going to come home every morning to my long face in his parlour was taking the pleasure from his own life. He asked me to leave.
****
LaCroix leaned his shoulders against the mantlepiece in the darkened room. He sipped blood wine from a leaded crystal glass. "I said, good evening, Nicholas", he repeated gently. There was no response from the figure slumped on the couch before him, eyes resting blankly on the images flashing silently across the television screen. Nick continued surfing listlessly from one channel to the next. He didn't turn his head or acknowledge LaCroix' presence.
Behind him there was a faint snap as the glass stem broke in LaCroix' hand. He laid the base and bowl carefully on the table. Then, in a blur of speed, he stood beside Nick, holding the remote he had wrested from his hand. He turned the television off and threw the control against the far wall.
At last Nick looked up, wearing an irritated frown. "LaCroix, what the -"
LaCroix raised a finger to silence him. "No, Nicholas, I will speak." He waited until Nick subsided. "I used to enjoy your visits, mon cher. For old times' sake, I have endured your brooding, your boorishness, and your sullen ingratitude these last months. But even I have my limits. I have had enough of your dreariness. In your present mood, you're hardly an amusing guest.
"Eight hundred years ago I made you a priceless gift. It has been centuries since you've appreciated it as you should. What point is there in immortal life when you waste it sulking? I have done my best to help you realise the advantages of your position. But I'm weary of the effort.
"So I make you another gift. Take your freedom. It's what you've always said you wanted. Go where you please, do as you wish. The workings of your guilt-ridden psyche cease to entertain me. Take it elsewhere. Continue your pathetic obsession with mortal affairs if you wish. I will not interfere. Stay in touch or not as you choose. I won't press you further, Nicholas. I have more interesting ways to spend my time than acting as nursemaid to you."
Nick stared up at him numbly. "You mean it."
"I don't simply 'mean it', Nicholas. I insist on it. I have tired of this. Do as you wish. It's your life." LaCroix poured himself a fresh glass of blood wine from the decanter on the side table. "I don't seem to be helping you. I am no longer amused myself. So go." He looked at Nicholas over the rim of the glass as he drank. "By the end of the week, preferably."
Nick stood. He turned and walked to the window, pressing his forehead against the cool glass, and looked out onto the lights of Paris against the night sky. How much the city had changed; but he could still make out the outlines of the old Paris buried amid the new, his home ground for how many centuries now. He felt abruptly bereft, as if he was being thrust from his last refuge. He started to speak and stopped. LaCroix watched him, his lip curled with amusement. "Second thoughts, Nicholas? Are you sure that, after all, freedom is what you seek?"
"Yes, but - " he stopped again, took a breath, and turned to face LaCroix. "Yes. I thank you for your care, LaCroix. I apologize for being such poor company. I'll be gone by Friday." LaCroix inclined his head and turned away. Nick hesitated, then turned and left the room.
****
"He said he was giving me my freedom", Nick continued. "Freedom is a relative term, of course. I suspect if he heard that I'd gone on looking for a cure, he'd suffer a sudden relapse."
"Indeed," Natalie said, thinking of LaCroix' late-night visit.
"Still," Nick continued, "for the first time since I'd become a vampire, I felt I could decide my own life. It felt - " he groped for words. "Lonely. For all those years, even from a distance, even as my enemy, LaCroix had been my constant companion. Fear of him had never been far from my thoughts. And now even he was gone. It was a huge relief, of course. But still, I felt I'd been cast utterly adrift, at the lowest point in my life. I was without LaCroix, or Janette, or you. And worse, I was without a purpose.
"I left Paris as soon as I could. It held centuries of memories, almost all as a vampire. There's hardly an alleyway or a deserted corner in the old city where I haven't killed some poor beggar, or unlucky miscreant, or respectable burgher out too late at night. There's hardly a deserted alcove or sewer entrance where I haven't stowed an inconvenient body, when I didn't have time to drop it in the Seine." He spoke quietly, looking Natalie full in the eyes. She blinked and drew back, partly in surprise. He had rarely spoken of his life as a killer to her, and never so bluntly. "I don't blame you for not wanting to hear that, Natalie," he said. "I don't want to say it. I don't want it to be true. But it is true, and that's what I have to find a way to live with."
Natalie nodded without speaking. He was right. She had never wanted to hear. She had never wanted to think of Nick, her Nick, as she had once hoped, as a cold-blooded murderer. It was hard to look into his angelic face and see a killer. She'd done her best to block that out of her mind, as far as she could, in her years in Toronto.
"I always told myself it didn't matter", she said eventually. "It wasn't what you were doing now. The past was the past. You weren't that person anymore."
"It is the past," Nick agreed. "But it still matters. I live with those memories every day. I have a perfect memory, Nat. And it's not just memory. Our past is part of who we are. That person made me. I am what that person became. He isn't gone." When Natalie didn't answer, he added, "I notice you haven't said that I just have to get over it and move on."
Natalie shook her head. "That's the kind of thing I used to say. I was a lot younger then." Nick's lips twitched. "I know, that sounds funny to you. But there's a lot of difference between the late twenties and late thirties. I used to deal with my past, the unpleasant parts, my parents' death, my grandmother's physical abuse, by walling it all up and doing my best to forget about it. I told myself I was 'over all that'. As I get older I see that I wasn't at all. I was just refusing to deal with it. I didn't know then how much time, and how much work, it takes to really "get over" past pain, let alone guilt. And I have so much less than you to deal with.
"You know better than I do how much you need to "get over it and move on". But I no longer think it's an easy thing to do." She looked at him sympathetically. "I'm sorry I can't be more help."
Nick shook his head. "Just acknowledging that it's hard is help. Whenever I tried to say anything about it before, you used to brush off the conversation, change the subject. It made you uncomfortable."
"I didn't want to know, " said Natalie. "It wasn't something I could cure." She paused, and added, "Frankly, it still does. Make me uncomfortable. It bothers me a lot that you're a mass murderer. If I thought you'd killed anyone recently I'd phone the police myself." She stopped suddenly, and looked at him.
"No, of course not", Nick said. "Not for a long time. Except in police work, when I had to, once or twice."
"Not even Janette's killers?"
Nick was shaking his head. "No. I was as surprised as you were. That was LaCroix. At least, it must have been. It wasn't me." He thought a second. "Of course it could have been Janette herself. Certainly she had reason."
Her face cleared. "I 'm glad to hear it. I could understand your motive, but -"
"No. He smiled bitterly. "The only person I've drained in the last century is you, Nat."
"Don't torment yourself. I begged you to. And I lived." There didn't seem to be anything more to say. He would forgive himself, or he wouldn't. She touched his hand, a gesture of comfort, and he covered her hand gratefully with his. After a moment she withdrew it. "So what did you do after you left Paris?" she asked.
"I went to the former Duchy of Brabant. I rented a farm not far from my old home. The countryside is unrecognizable now, of course. The forests have been cut down, and a lot of the farmland is paved over. But what's still farmland feels familiar, like something I might have ridden past on a day's excursion as a boy. And I'd always tried to avoid hunting in Brabant, as much as I could, so my memories of the area are mostly pleasant. I even remember what it looks like in daylight." Natalie looked at him sympathetically. "I settled down there. I thought it would be helpful for me to return to my roots. And I thought over my life."
Nick's voice faded, his mind clearly wandering. His gaze fastened on the cooling pizza on the table between them. "I really do miss Schanke, you know," he said inconsequently. "He loved life so much. Being around him reminded me daily of why I wanted to be mortal."
"What, even his taste in music?"
Nick smiled. "Even the polka music. His enthusiasm for everything in his life was so - human. It was good for me to be around him. It really felt as if it was when he died that everything began to go wrong."
He looked abstractedly at the pizza, and shook himself. "Anyway. I stayed in the farmhouse for three years. I read a lot. I went for long walks through the fields in the evenings. I didn't go out past midnight because those used to be my prime hunting hours, and I didn't want to be reminded. Sometimes on my walks I'd meet a local, bicycling home after dark, and say hello. In the first year that's as much human contact as I had.
"Those walks were as close to coming home as I'll probably ever get in this life. There was a bend in the river near the farmhouse where we used to swim in summer when I was a boy. It was right on the edge of our lands; a long walk for a child, but it was worth it. The water was still and deep, and had a rock escarpment on one side, for jumping. The bank had silted up a lot, in eight centuries, but I could still recognize the place once I found it, on one of my evening rambles. After that I visited it often. I'd sit on the bank and dangle my feet in the water and remember swimming there with my older brother.
'But that time was gone. Not just my youth. My life. I could remember perfectly what the river looked like in daylight. But I could only visit in darkness. And then it smelled different. You know the smell of damp soil and river water and growing things, at night when it's still." Natalie nodded. "Part of the change was the smell of pollutants, chemical fertilizers and who knows what else washing down from the industrial parks upstream. But it wasn't just that. My sense of smell is so much sharper than it was when I was a boy. It's a different sense entirely, for a vampire. It's not just that the river smells different. I can't smell it the same way. And I can't see it in daylight. All reminders that what I was then, I had lost.
"I spent months walking out to that riverbank every night, sitting on it and remembering. And for the first time, I mourned my life. I wept. For months. I grieved for all that I lost, the night LaCroix brought me across. In all the years since, I'd never grieved before.
"For a long time, centuries, I refused to admit I'd lost anything that mattered that night. And when I couldn't deny it to myself anymore, I was furious, at LaCroix, at any murderer who stole the life of an innocent, at anyone who destroyed their own lives or other people's. At myself, really, of course. And when I had to admit that anger didn't ease the pain, and endangered the innocent too, I started trying to find a way out. Any way. That was when I began looking for a cure, a century ago. I thought, if I stop killing, and if I look very hard for a cure, surely this curse will be taken from me. Surely God will see that I'm sorry. And he'll give my life back to me.
"After the disasters in Toronto I simply stopped believing that would ever happen. I stopped believing there was any way out. Any way back to what I was. I fell, as I said, into despair.
"But it wasn't until I went back to Brabant, and spent most of that summer sitting on a riverbank, weeping, that I finally grieved what I lost, and what I had become instead. It wasn't until then that I accepted that my life was gone forever. Even if there were a cure, it wouldn't give me back the life I gave away. I can never go back to 1228, and choose again. I chose. I was wrong. I can't rewrite it. And the same is true of everything that's happened since. I can't change any of it. I can't make it not have happened."
Nick paused for a moment, staring at his hands on the table before him. Natalie took a sip of water from her glass, quietly, to avoid interrupting his train of thought.
"I'm glad LaCroix wasn't there," Nick went on in a low voice. "He would have ridiculed my weakness, and I would have felt forced to hide it from him. As it was, I spent months weeping. But eventually the tears stopped coming so frequently. One evening, towards the end of the first year, I woke up and realised that for the first time in centuries, although I was sad, I was at peace. I had finally accepted that I couldn't change the past. I can't resurrect the dead, either my victims or myself. All I can do is go on. And do my best to do better in future than I have in the past."
He stopped again, and seemed to have no inclination to continue. Natalie wasn't sure what conclusions he had reached. "So what did you decide to do?" she asked.
"What anyone does," said Nick. "Get on with my life. Make that my 'life'," he added with a ghost of a smile, sketching quotation marks in the air with his fingers. "Try to do as much good as I can, and as little evil. Try to remember to enjoy myself. I know you and Schanke would tell me to do that, so I try," he added.
"You make it sound like some noxious therapeutic exercise. Enjoy yourself, twice a week, whether you want to or not.'"
"That's how it feels, sometimes. It was worse to begin with, that first year in Brabant. I had to consciously persuade myself to do things I might enjoy. Go for a walk, go into town to see a play, read a book by an author I liked. I didn't want to do any of those things. That's not uncommon, for seriously depressed people, and that's what I was. But I don't want to spend as long as I'm likely to live being miserable. So I made a real effort to keep my spirits up. And I thought over what had made me feel good in the past.
" What always made me feel best, I realised, was feeling as if I was being some use, making the world a better place in some way. Police work did that, but it also let me indulge my vampiric tastes for hunting and for violence, and I think that's not good for me. At least not right now. So I spent the next few years casting around for good works to become involved in.
"After the first year, when I did nothing much, I arranged to run the daily operations of the Brabant foundation from the farmhouse. It was easy enough to do with a good computer hookup and a fax machine. I went into Paris every couple of months for a few nights, to handle what couldn't be done from the farm. And it kept me reasonably busy, filled in the hours from dusk to dawn pretty well. But the problem is that I'm a lousy administrator. You remember what I was like with paperwork."
"Your partners mentioned it. Frequently and colourfully."
"Exactly. And daily operations of the foundation were nothing but paperwork. I did the best I could, but I finally decided that - "
"Your talents were better suited to another role?" Natalie filled in.
"Any other role." Nick grimaced. "One good thing did come of that period, though. My relationship with LaCroix has greatly improved. A few months after I started coming in to Paris from time to time, LaCroix wrote to me at the farm. Obviously he was keeping tabs on me, but I expected that. Thick vellum, beautiful copperplate handwriting, probably written with a quill."
"Not a papyrus scroll?" asked Natalie. "He's moving with the times, I see."
"I think he just likes to look old-fashioned. He invited me to stop by the next time I was in Paris. So I did. We had a surprisingly pleasant evening. We stayed on neutral topics. I think we talked about early music. He was charming, courteous, and never once criticized or tried to pressure me." I'll bet, thought Nat. He's decided to try more subtle tactics, that's all. "As I left he told me I was welcome to visit when I was in town in future, with sufficient advance warning", Nick continued. "After that I stopped by every couple of months. We rarely stray into contentious subjects. He knows what I'm doing and finds it amusing, but he assumes I'll tire of it. He's always pleasant and interesting company. I enjoy our evenings."
He looked at Natalie, seeking her understanding. "The thing is, I've known him so long. I'd rather salvage the relationship than destroy it. If I can. He has caused me enormous pain over the years, but I can't blame him for everything. Even the night he brought me across, I had a choice." He paused. Natalie diplomatically held her tongue. "Besides", Nick said, "I think he's lonely."
Natalie could contain herself no longer. "Of course he is. No one in their right mind would trust him, and he's killed anyone who could have been a friend. That can lead to spending your nights alone."
"I know he's not a sterling character," Nick said stiffly.
"He's your friend," said Natalie. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't have said anything about him. But take care of yourself, Nick."
"Of course. I'm aware of his flaws, Nat."
And he can play you like a violin, thought Natalie. Time for a change of subject. "So what did you do after you gave up administration?" she asked.
"I added myself to the research department of the Brabant Foundation", said Nick. "My job for the last couple of years has been to investigate projects to which the Foundation might want to make a donation. It's useful work, but in fact I'm doing it mostly for myself, to find out what kind of work I would like to give not only money, but also my time and energy. So I left the farm in Brabant, stored my things in Paris, and I've moved around a lot."
"What sort of thing have you been doing?"
"All sorts. First I helped build a few houses with Habitat for Humanity, in the Southwest. The Brabant Foundation funded the materials, and suggested that Habitat try adding a night shift. The excuse was that a lot of volunteer builders have day jobs, but could spare a few hours in the evening or night. And that way I could help with the building myself. But the rate of minor accidents on the job went up. People who've been working all day aren't at their best on a building site at night. It was only a matter of time before there was a major accident. So I had to let that idea go."
"Did the Brabant Foundation continue to donate funds?"
"Of course. It's a good cause. After that, let's see, I drove a shelter bus scooping homeless men off the Edmonton streets one winter. Then I cooked for a soup kitchen in Minneapolis for a few months."
"You cooked?" said Natalie. "Where did you learn?"
"From the soup kitchen's cookbook. Anyone who can read can cook, Nat. I have to admit, though, it's not the most interesting work for a vampire. I wouldn't notice if I made mistakes. I accidentally put in sugar for salt once and didn't realise it because I never tasted the stuff myself. It was lonely, too, all by myself in the kitchen at night. So I moved on."
"What was after that?"
"The Foundation gave funding to a men's shelter in Tallahassee, and I worked there as a janitor for a bit. Back in Europe I worked as an assistant at a church detox center in Marseilles, and as homeless shelter volunteer in Zurich. I don't enjoy working in the Old World as much, though," he added. "Too many memories. I've also worked as an assistant in a childhood vaccination program in Benares. That was a lot like my work in Vietnam, when I was with the Red Cross. I would have liked to help dig some wells and lay water pipelines for the Foundation's clean water program in Congo, but I ran into the same problem as I did with Habitat. Generally construction work can only be done during the day, especially in the Third World, where it's too expensive to run lights at night. In between I'd go back to Paris and talk to the accountants, figure out what to do next."
"You've been very busy!" Natalie was fascinated. "Did you find any one kind of work appealed to you more than the others?"
"More or less. I find that I'm particularly attracted to work with the homeless, and with addicts. The homeless I think because they were my prey for so long."
"I thought you said you weren't trying to atone anymore?"
"That's not exactly what I said. I don't think I can earn forgiveness, and I can't erase past crimes. But - " Nick broke off, and thought. "Helping the homeless makes me feel better," he said at last. "That seems to me to be a good enough reason to do it."
Natalie shrugged assent. "Good enough. And why addicts, do you think?"
"It was no accident that you could tell your therapist I was an addict, Nat. I identify very closely with substance abusers. I know so well what it feels like to be driven by a blind compulsion to use, no matter what damage it does you, no matter what damage it does anyone else, no matter what you have to do to get your stuff, no matter that once you've got it, it gives only a brief respite before the hunger starts again. And again. Over, and over, and over." Nick's voice was low.
Natalie looked at him without speaking for a long moment. "Is it still as bad as it was?" she asked quietly.
"Not now, no." Natalie waited and after a moment he continued. "That last year in Toronto I backslid quite a lot. I let LaCroix give me human blood at the Raven more than once. I started stocking some in the loft for "emergencies". And there always seemed to be one. Every time I drank it was during some sort of crisis, and I would convince myself that I needed it just this once. Every time was always going to be the last time. I didn't even notice that it was happening more often, or wonder if I was manufacturing crises in order to have an excuse to drink human again.
"Then after the night I thought I'd killed you, the appetite came roaring back full force. It was intense. All I wanted was human blood. It was almost as bad as the First Hunger. But I couldn't do it. Out of respect for you, I couldn't. If there was one thing I could do for you, for your memory, it was give up human blood. If I'd done it sooner I wouldn't have endangered your life. So I refused. I tried to stick to protein shakes but I just couldn't. I'm sorry." He looked at Natalie apologetically.
She shook her head. "Don't apologise to me, Nick. It was your business what you drank."
"But you used to nag me about it regularly."
"I know. That's called 'codependence'", Natalie said. " I should have supplied you with the protein shakes and then just stepped back. Deciding whether to drink them was your concern, not mine."
Nick frowned. "I don't think your nagging was a bad thing for you to do at all. It meant you cared about me. I'm sure I drank more of that wretched stuff - I mean, that wonderful elixir," he hastily added over Natalie's shout of laughter, "because you nagged me about it."
"Well, I did care about you," Natalie said. "But all nagging did was turn me into your mother." Now it was Nick's turn to laugh. "No, really," Natalie insisted. "Nagging turned you into a five year old who wouldn't drink his milk. But you're an adult. It was your choice."
"Anyway." Nick sobered. "After a couple of days on what protein shakes I had left, I went back to cows' blood. I had a very bad couple of weeks. I stayed in the loft partly because I was afraid of what I'd do if I were surrounded by humans. Even hearing a bus go by in the street outside tormented me. I'd imagine it full of unsuspecting people, ripe for the picking. I fantasized about going out to Yonge St. at night, just to smell the crowds, I told myself, I wouldn't actually take any. I had more sense than to go out the door. LaCroix was helpful there. Of course it would have endangered the community if I'd gone on a killing spree. But he kept me from leaving the loft, supplied me with cows' blood and anything else I needed so I had no excuse to go out.
"By the end of the second week the hunger had subsided some, but it was still worse than it had been for years. The horrible part was that I knew that draining you was what had ignited it. I'd 'mainlined' again, and the addiction had roared back full force. I felt as if I deserved the pain I was in, because I'd brought it on myself by nearly killing you. So I didn't give in to it. I stuck to cows' blood despite everything LaCroix could do to persuade me.
"The months I spent in Paris with LaCroix weren't as bad as those first few weeks, but still worse than anything I'd suffered in the last century or more. Even once I went to the farm the hunger didn't fade much. It was hard. I woke up in a blood sweat most evenings. I had horrible dreams. I was acutely sensitive to heartbeats. That was one reason I retired to the farmhouse. I was afraid to be around humans for fear of what I might do. The hunger would fade for weeks and then inexplicably return full force. I felt as if all the work we'd done, all the progress I'd made with you, had all come to nothing."
"I feel terrible, Nick," said Natalie. Tears stood in her eyes. "I brought this on you. I should never have pressed you that night. I'm so sorry!"
Nick laid his hand over hers reassuringly. "Don't, Nat. I think we already agreed that neither of us were at our best that night. Let's just not do it again."
Natalie nodded, too shaken to say more. Nick patted her hand and went on.
"I still didn't succumb. But one night I finally couldn't take anymore. I remembered what I'd heard at that AA group I went into undercover, that I should turn my problems over to a higher power. I thought that was pretty laughable at the time. Since I became a vampire I've never seen any point in praying, because why would God listen to something like me? But I just couldn't go on. And I couldn't think of anything else to do. So I prayed for help. "
He paused, remembering that night.
***
He had been sitting at the kitchen table in the farmhouse, head in his hands. He'd been there for at least an hour, afraid to move lest he go out the door and into the night, in search of an unlucky local. His muscles were stiff with the effort of resisting his need, clothes drenched and face slick with blood sweat. He'd shifted position slightly for the sake of comfort, and his elbow slid on the smooth wood of the tabletop. A small sliver found its way into his arm. It was painful out of all proportion to the size of the wound.
Something inside him snapped. He screamed with frustration and pounded the table with his fists, breaking through it with the force of the blows. A dozen more splinters entered his hands but he ignored them, pounding on the table again and again until it was reduced to splintered kindling. He had looked down at the ruin, hands and forearms running with blood from a score of scratches and cuts. His throat was hoarse and he realised that he was shouting, over and over, I can't stand this! I can't stand this! I can't stand this! Abruptly, he realised it was true. He could go no farther. He was certain to kill again.
He sagged to his knees and without any thought or preparation, began to pray. He hadn't prayed in nearly eight centuries. Later he was astonished. At the time it seemed the only thing he could do. He could feel blood tears trickling down his cheeks. His voice began barely audibly, but gained in strength. "I'm sorry. God. I'm sorry," he heard himself saying. "I don't know if you even listen to people like me. But I'm sorry. I'd take it all back if I could. Please forgive me. Please help me now. I can't take anymore. I'll do anything. But I can't do it without your help. Please help me."
He had remained on his knees for a long time. He couldn't feel any change. I'm still a vampire, he thought eventually, disappointed, and embarrassed when he realised what a childish hope he had harboured. If I can get through the next twenty-four hours without killing someone, that will be miracle enough, he finally thought wearily, and stood up unsteadily, feeling suddenly very tired. He rubbed his face and stumbled to the couch, where he fell into a dreamless sleep.
***
Nick came back to the present with a jerk and realised that Natalie was looking at him inquiringly. "After that things gradually improved", he continued. "I hoped for a miracle, that the craving would instantly vanish completely or something, and when I woke up the next evening I was so disappointed that it hadn't. My first thought was "it hasn't worked." But I did feel a little better than I had, able to function. I had a shower and went out for a walk. And I decided that I was just going to have to trust that God was doing something about the problem now. But not necessarily on my timetable.
"I found the swimming hole on a walk a couple of nights after that. And, I don't know, the craving was never as bad again. In the last few years it's gradually gotten much easier. I can't say I never feel the hunger, but it's much fainter. I don't think about it much. It would be nice to be able to get off cows' blood. I think of it as methadone. Maybe someday."
"I'm sorry," Nick added, seeming a little embarrassed, when she didn't immediately respond to his story. "That's probably more than you wanted to hear, Nat."
"Not at all!" Natalie had been too absorbed to say anything at first. "And have you kept on? Praying for help, I mean?"
"Kind of. It still makes me pretty nervous. I find it hard to believe God wants to hear from something like me. But whenever the craving was particularly strong, after that night, I would think something like, God, please do something about this, because I can't."
"And it helped?"
"It seemed to. And eventually the craving died down generally. Who's to say why?"
"Who indeed?" Natalie agreed. "So, where to from here? Are you still looking for a cure?"
Nick shrugged slightly. "Not obsessively. I certainly wouldn't turn one down if it were offered. But I realise now that what I was looking for before wasn't so much a cure, as a quick fix. Do you remember the time I tried to induce a near-death experience, to go back to the gate and choose again?"
"And you were dead for ten minutes, and I had to inject you with rat poison to bring you back?" asked Natalie. "Vividly."
"I thought at the time that the lesson I was supposed to learn was that forgiveness had to be earned. Now I think the lesson was, there's no quick fix," said Nick. "I made a decision eight hundred years ago. That decision had consequences. When I tried to go back to the gate and choose again, I was looking for a quick way out, a way to escape those consequences, by dying.
"Looking for a cure was another attempt at a quick fix. For eight hundred years I've been a vampire. A serial killer. A monster who preys on the guiltless. Somehow I'd been assuming that becoming mortal again would restore my innocence as well, and erase all I've been and done.
"But innocence is the one thing I can never have back. I've killed thousands. Their deaths affected tens, hundreds, of thousands more. A cure won't turn the clock back. It won't restore those robbed lives, or wash that blood from my hands. Maybe someday I'll be mortal again, but I'll still be a mortal who was once a vampire. A cure for vampirism can't rid me of my past. There's no quick fix for that.
"Even when I asked LaCroix to kill me, that night in Toronto, I was trying to escape the consequences of my own act. I thought I couldn't live with the pain, and I tried to evade it by committing suicide. But I see now that I don't get that choice.
"I was working with the police as atonement for my sins, or so I thought. By saving lives, when I could, and by bringing murderers to justice, I thought I could somehow compensate for all the murders I myself committed. And police work is a worthwhile thing to do, but I see now that there's no such thing as compensation for past crimes.
"I think now that my atonement isn't police work, or good deeds of any kind. Real atonement is simply bearing the consequences of my actions - my own pain and loneliness - as best I can, for as long as I have to. I don't have to make it worse for myself, by hiding in a cave somewhere and flogging myself or something. That would be pointless. I can try to alleviate it by any means I wish that doesn't involve doing wrong. But I have to live with the pain I have. Just as anyone does. And if I have more pain, more guilt, more horrible memories than most, I truly brought it on myself.
"I have repented of my sins. I began to do that a long time ago. But penitence doesn't erase consequences. It was my mistake to think that there was a quick way to be released from this life, by death or by becoming mortal, once I didn't want it anymore. I think my punishment is perhaps that it may be a very, very long time before I am."
He looked up at her. "Did you ever read 'The Gulag Archipelago'?"
"Uh, I got partway through volume one."
Nick smiled. "It is pretty grim going. There's a story partway through volume three, I think it is." Natalie knew he remembered perfectly, but the pretense of forgetfulness, like the pretense of breathing, was second nature to him now. "Solzhenitzyn tells about an old woman who was sent to the same concentration camp as he was, in Siberia. She was a blameless old grandmother, as far as anyone could tell, and deeply religious. She had a life sentence, like everyone in the camp. But she never insisted on her innocence, as everyone else in the camp did. She said that she was a miserable sinner, though she didn't say how, and that she would be released from the camp when God forgave her sins. Everyone made fun of her faith. But in two years, a pardon arrived for her, and only for her, and she went home.
"I have faith that when my sins are forgiven, I'll be allowed to come home. One way or the other. By dying as a mortal, or just by dying. I hope I'll find a way to spend some time as a mortal first. But if it doesn't happen, it doesn't."
Natalie thought this over. "Maybe it doesn't have anything to do with forgiveness", she said at last. Nick arched an eyebrow. "Maybe you're still alive because there's a lot of good you're meant to do before you die," she went on. "I mean, you've repented. You're resolved to lead a better life. Why wouldn't you already be forgiven? Why would it take a long time?"
"Give me a break, Nat. It's a major step for me to believe I can ever be forgiven at all."
Natalie smiled. "Good point."
"And you've forgotten something. I'm a medieval Catholic. In my day they were big on atonement. Also on confession, absolution, and taking Communion."
"Well, if you think those things will help you, you should do them," said Natalie.
Nick looked at her in surprise. "This is Dr. Lambert I'm speaking to?"
"This is Dr. Lambert ten years on", said Natalie. "When you met me, I would never have considered speaking to a therapist, either. Now I'd say, take whatever help you can get, in whatever form works best for you. If confession will help you, do it."
"Making careful choice of a confessor," Nick said.
Natalie's lips twitched. "I wouldn't pick one with a heart condition."
"No." Nick smiled in response. "I am thinking about it, Nat. It takes some working up to. Perhaps the heretics are right, and a priest isn't necessary."
"Protestants you mean."
"I was born in the twelfth century. I know what I meant." But he smiled.
Natalie considered the now-cold pizza left on her plate and decided against it. "But you still think there's some point in looking for a cure?" she asked.
"Oh, yes," said Nick. "I don't think it's a bad thing to want, to be mortal again. I just won't be doing it for the same reasons. I won't be doing it to erase my guilt anymore. The past is the past. I can't alter it." He shrugged. "Anyway, if I don't keep looking for a cure, I'll never know if I was meant to find one. Fatalistic, isn't it."
"Not really," said Natalie. "'God helps those who help themselves'."
The café had fallen silent, and when Natalie looked around her she realised to her surprise that they were the only clients left. She checked her watch. "Oh my gosh. Nick, I have to get home! I'm sorry, I - "
"Not at all." He was already rising; Natalie followed him, pulling on her coat. "I wasn't keeping track of the time. I know you need rest. Should we call a cab?""
"It's probably faster to walk than wait for one." The waiter had come over with the bill when he saw them stand. Natalie waved off Nick's credit card and got out her own. "You got the movie, Nick. And it's not as if you ate anything." She signed the credit slip and turned back to him. "Shall we?"
"Would you like to wrap the rest of the pizza to take with you?" Nick asked.
"Cold pizza for breakfast, that delicacy of my student days?" Natalie looked at it longingly, but shook her head. "Not till the morning sickness wears off."
Nick held the door for her. "Has it been bad?"
Natalie shook her head. "Compared to some of my patients, I can't complain."
A damp wind had sprung up while they were in the café. Natalie looked up at the darkened, lowering sky. The few stars had been blotted out by thick clouds. "It's coming on to rain." She nodded towards the park. "Let's cut through there. It's quicker." She set out across the street, leaving Nick on the curb.
"I thought jaywalking was illegal in Vancouver," Nick said as he caught up to her.
"So arrest me. Oh, that's right, you can't." Natalie grinned. "So what is an ex-cop doing in Vancouver anyway?" she asked as she started down the path. "You haven't said."
"Haven't I?" Nick thought back. "You're right, I haven't." He followed Natalie into the park. "I'm setting up a branch of the Brabant Foundation in Vancouver. It will specialize in funding addiction research initiatives, but will also fund some rehab programs and community outreach on the east side."
"We can certainly use it," Natalie said. "The heroin problem in Vancouver is only getting worse. Not just on the east side, either." She looked at him curiously. "So what will your role in this be?"
"Set-up, for now," Nick said. "I'm setting up the office, hiring staff, arranging to apply for matching funds from the provincial government, and helping to establish the rehab and outreach programs. After that, if it's going well, I'll hand over administration to someone who likes it. Then I thought I might volunteer to do street outreach. That's best done at night, so it fits my schedule."
Natalie's head swivelled towards him. "So you're thinking of staying in Vancouver for awhile," she said flatly.
"Maybe. If - if it suits you, Nat. I mean, if you don't mind." Nick faltered under the full force of Natalie's clear blue gaze.
"Why Vancouver? There are lots of cities with drug problems. Seattle. L.A. Atlanta. Nanaimo, for heaven's sake. Why pick here?" Natalie was caught off-balance. Seeing Nick occasionally when he happened to be in town was one thing. But Nick in Vancouver full-time? She'd left Toronto partly, largely, to avoid the memories of Nick that haunted every street. And now he was planning to invade her new territory too? A friend of hers had once said she wished her ex-boyfriends would move to desert islands so she didn't need to fear tripping over them every time she turned a corner or went into a café. Suddenly Natalie knew exactly how she felt.
Nick studied the play of emotions across her face. His shoulders sagged a little under his jacket. "You don't seem too pleased," he said.
Natalie realised they were standing stock still. A cold wind was blowing up and she could feel the first chill drops of rain on her face. She turned away from him and continued down the asphalt path, her hands buried deep in her jacket pockets. "Honestly?" she said without looking at him. "My first reaction is no, I'm not. I left Toronto to get away from you. Memories of you. I don't want to have to leave Vancouver too." She was appalled to hear the words leave her mouth. Well, better he should know how she really felt.
"Nat! No. My God, I'm sorry." Nick caught up and turned to face her. "If it makes you uncomfortable, I will leave. I don't have to be in Vancouver. I can do this kind of work in a lot of places. I just -" She was walking fast, not responding. "Nat, you're the only mortal friend I've got."
"You're a nice guy. You make friends easily enough. Go get some more."
Nick seemed taken aback. "You know that's different", he said after a moment. "You're the only one who knows what I am."
"That doesn't have to be the case. Just choose carefully." Natalie was still stunned. She needed to think this over. Why was she angry? Would it be so bad to have Nick in the same city? In a way it was flattering that he wanted to be. But why did he want it? A possible answer came to her. She stopped dead and faced him. "I'm your proof, aren't I."
"I don't understand."
"I'm the one that lived. I'm the proof that knowing you doesn't have to be lethal. That's why you want to stay in touch."
"No, I - " Nick stopped, and Natalie watched him discard his automatic denial. "Not only that. You're the one that believed in me, Nat. You're the only one for centuries. It's been hard, the last five years, trying to be human without you. I'll keep on trying anyway. I have to. But it was a so much easier when you were around."
It was hard not to be touched. "I'm glad to hear knowing me had some effect," Natalie said. She turned and walked on, head down against the wind. It was carrying more rain now; her coat was damp.
"Oh, it did," Nick said, following in her wake. "The last person who believed in me was Joan. Of Arc", he added to her inquiring look. "Your faith meant more to me than you can imagine."
"I'm not a counsellor, Nick," Natalie said. "And I mean it, I'm not looking for your cure."
He was shaking his head. "I know. That's not what I want. I'd just like to be able to talk to you sometimes."
"Be friends."
"Unless you have an objection."
Natalie sighed. "I don't know, Nick. This is all moving way too fast for me. I don't even think I'm the person you miss anymore. I haven't seen that cheerful optimist in years myself."
"Yes, I agree." Natalie looked up in surprise. "This is going too fast," he continued. "We shouldn't even be having this conversation now. Let's not try to decide things in advance, Nat. Why don't we go one step at a time, and just see how it goes, as you said before?"
Natalie had an uneasy feeling she was being politely railroaded. "But you said you were moving to Vancouver. That's damn fast."
"It's only a possibility. I don't have to." Nick touched her arm, drawing her around to face him. "Honest. Nat. I won't move here without your express permission."
Nat felt a little ashamed at his obvious sincerity. "I'm sorry, Nick," she said. "I don't suppose I have any right to tell you where you can live."
Nick shrugged. "I have a right to take your opinion into account, though. Look, I'll be back in town at the end of the month for a few days. Can we just say I'll give you a call then? Maybe we could get together for coffee. You can tell me how the pregnancy's going." He grinned engagingly at her.
Natalie couldn't help but soften at his smile. "Sure," she said, relenting. "It will depend on my patients, though - I have three who could go into labour around that time. I'm hoping they don't all pick the same night."
"I'll keep my fingers crossed, then."
Nick released her arm and Natalie looked up at the sky. A genuine rain was beginning to fall. "We'd better move, Nick - this coat isn't waterproof." She set off at a quick pace down the path, Nick beside her. Despite their speed, by the time they reached her building Natalie's hair was wet. She turned at the door and held out her hand to him in a polite handshake. "I'd better get upstairs and dry off before I get chilled. It was good to see you, Nick. Please do feel free to call when you're next in town."
Nick smiled and touched her fingers briefly. "Of course, but may I pick up my files? We left them upstairs."
Natalie dropped her hand, feeling awkward. So much for a quick, neat leavetaking. "I forgot. Come on up".
They were silent in the elevator. As they reached her door Nick asked, "would it be all right if I looked through the files before I left, in case I have any questions? It shouldn't take long; most of it we must have discussed in Toronto. We can leave it, if you don't have time."
Natalie hesitated and consulted her watch. "I can give you half an hour," she said. "I don't mean to sound inhospitable, but I am tiring easily these days."
He nodded in understanding. "Of course. I don't want to tire you out."
"I don't usually go to bed until after the news anyway", Natalie said as she opened the door. "I'll be fine." She nodded him through the door and followed him, pulling off her coat. "You can hang your jacket on the rack there", she said. "I'm just going to grab a towel for my hair, do you want one?"
"I'm fine, thanks," Nick murmured, distracted by the contents of the portfolio, which he had already picked up and unzipped.
"Can you turn on the TV?" Natalie called through the bathroom door. "I'd just like to catch the headlines. It's already on the station."
"Sure. " Nick wandered through to the living room, leafing through Natalie's meticulous notes on all the tests and treatments she had conducted in the six years in Toronto. He found the TV remote and pressed the power button as he settled down on the couch and began to read from the beginning. He'd never seen it all collected in one place.
He became absorbed in the file, and it was a few moments before he registered the voice from the television and looked up at the screen. He started to call out, stopped, and went to knock on the bathroom door. "Nat. You'd better come and see this."
"What?" Natalie stuck her head out the door, her hair half-dry, a towel around her neck.
"There's something from Sierra Leone on the news."
"What?" Natalie looked at his face, alarmed, and brushed past him to the living room. She could tell from his expression it was nothing good.
The footage onscreen showed a burning schoolhouse. As they watched the roof caved in in a shower of sparks, and black smoke billowed into the sky. A dusty van with the MSF logo stood by the building. Two youths in uniform ran by, submachine guns at the ready. Over the crackle of the flames and the sound of voices shouting or screaming offscreen the announcer's voice was saying, '... early this evening in Magburaka, Sierra Leone. Rebel forces are claiming credit for the bombing, which destroyed the Doctors Without Borders vaccination clinic. Some staff escaped, and it is believed ... "
Natalie was staring at the screen. "Nat, what is it?" Nick said urgently, seeing the expression on her face.
"The door."
Nick looked and inhaled sharply. Half-in and half-out of the door, partially obscured by the truck, was a body, one hand flung out towards the street, as if its owner had died trying to crawl out of the building. It was burnt beyond recognition; he couldn't even tell if it was male or female. "Nat, you don't know who - " he began.
"The watch," Natalie said. She was staring at the screen without blinking. "See the two-tone face?" The watch face was almost too small to make out, but it did seem to have an inner darker disk surrounded by a larger lighter one. "It's a toony. A Canadian two-dollar coin. The Royal Mint sells them. I gave the watch to him before he left, so he'd have something to remember Canada by.
"It's Marcus, Nick." Tears were streaming down her face now. "It's Marcus."
Nick hesitated, and laid his hand on her shoulder in wordless sympathy. She didn't seem to notice it.
As if on cue, the phone rang. "That will be Claire", Natalie said, rising. "Marcus' sister." She walked over to the side table, still streaming tears, and took the handset into the next room. Nick could hear fragments of the conversation but refrained from listening. After a short time she returned and hung up. She looked exhausted, and suddenly ten years older. She passed an unsteady hand over her wet face.
"MSF called her half an hour ago. That was Marcus' clinic." She paused and swallowed. "I'm going over to her place to spend the night. I'll just get a couple of things. Can you let yourself out? I don't want to rush you or - "
Nick had already risen from the couch. "I'll leave with you. Can I escort you anywhere?"
Natalie shook her head. "I can drive. I'll drop you off at your hotel."
"Nat, the state you're in, you shouldn't be driving. I'll drive you over in your car and leave it there."
"But how will you get back to - oh, right. You'll fly." Natalie closed her eyes. "Good idea. I'm not thinking too clearly." She walked towards her bedroom for a change of clothes. One hand went unconsciously to her abdomen.
Nick's nostrils flared. "Nat?" She turned her head, and he said gently, "I smell blood. Maybe you better check." She looked puzzled, then shocked.
"Oh no." She rushed into the bathroom. He could hear the rustle of clothing. A moment later her voice came back. "There is. Not much, thank God." She ran back out to the phone, dialing with one hand while she finished buttoning her waistband with the other, oblivious to his presence. "Page Dr. Sanjit Singh, please. Tell her it's an emergency." She waited at the phone, pacing nervously back and forth, until another voice came on the line. Again she took it into the other room. Nick heard isolated phrases. "Light spotting...no, no pain ... uh, let me check ... no, it's not ..."
Natalie reappeared, still holding the phone. ""Sanjit thinks it's okay. I just need to rest. Lie down. Damn. I told Claire I'd be there by now." She looked around, distracted. "I have to get some clothes together."
"Nat." Nick crossed the room and took the phone quietly from her hand. "I'm sure Claire will understand. What you need to do now is rest."
"But she needs me."
"And you need to lie down right now. And rest. Rushing around won't help the baby. You know that. Lie down. Reassure the baby. Tell the baby everything is okay. Rest." Nick led her towards her couch as he spoke, and gently urged her to sit down, moving her feet up onto the couch. His soothing voice had its effect and Natalie relaxed into the cushions.
"You're right." She smiled wanly. "I should call Claire."
"I can do that if you like. Would you like her to come here instead?"
"She has enough to deal with right now." She closed her eyes wearily. "I can't believe Marcus is dead. " She lay silently while Nick rearranged a pillow under her head. It was a moment before he saw the silent tears that had begun to flow again from under her closed lids. He stroked her hand awkwardly. There seemed nothing he could say. After a moment she spoke in so faint a voice that her words didn't initially register. "I'm so scared I'll lose the baby."
"Don't be," Nick said firmly, continuing to stroke her hand. If he could do nothing else, he could help her calm down. "Everything will be fine. You'll have a fine healthy baby. Don't worry. The baby is just fine. You can relax now." His voice continued, low and hypnotic, and Natalie gradually relaxed, lulled by the sound. She felt as if she was rocking on soft, soothing waves. She could not have said when she fell asleep.
Nick waited until he was sure she was asleep. The marks of worry and grief had gradually smoothed from her face as she dropped off. She looked more peaceful, though an anxious line still appeared between her eyebrows. He reached out and stroked it gently, until that, too, relaxed.
He found Natalie's address book in the drawer of the side table, and called Claire from the next room. That duty done, he came back into the living room and settled himself comfortably into the loveseat for a night's vigil by her side. The smell of blood was fainter now, and he was fairly sure she was out of danger. But if she needed him, he would be there.
Raven image courtesy of Lisa Konrad, who
retains copyright, and whose clipart website can be found here.