Awakening

by LJ

companion piece to "To Natalie On Her Twenty-Seventh Birthday"

 

April 1990

He realized too late what was about to happen: the little pipe bomb would explode, probably right in his face. He would be knocked unconscious from the blast and the resulting injuries. He would go into what he sometimes called a coma while his body tried to repair itself – that sounded more human than admitting that he was essentially dead.

Dead.

Being dead around humans was bad. Very bad. This is what he got for not contacting Merlin or Aristotle sooner. Dead bodies, and especially dead bodies without identification, got mortals thinking and asking questions.

And mortals asking questions was not a good thing.

But he didn’t have time to think on the matter any longer. The pipe bomb left the hands of the gang member as the trio ran. It sailed through the air in an arc – he admired the throw; the kid would have been a natural at baseball – and exploded just before it hit him in the face and chest.

And then he knew only pain and darkness.

And then he knew nothing more.

 

 

He awoke to a strange sensation: cold air moving across his face, bringing with it the scent of death and formaldehyde and all the other chemicals used in a morgue. Some were familiar to him from his last stint as a police officer and the occasions when he had worked with the medical examiner then; some were new. Certainly the last medical examiner he worked with hadn’t smelled of a pleasant, if faint, perfume. Or of a cat. Or of some kind of hair care product that he couldn’t quite place. But something wasn’t quite right.

Then again, the last ME he had known was a man.

He inhaled, the breath bringing in that perfume again – what was it? it almost seemed familiar – and he heard his heart beat, once and strong.

Heart beat. Something about a heart beat.

Unable to figure it out, he gave the situation a mental shrug and felt his wounds finish healing. He heard footsteps: the ME was moving around, no doubt not knowing that she was about to get the surprise of her life. Not that she would remember it for long. Once he fed properly, he would do his best to make her forget it. He swallowed, tasting his own blood in his mouth – it had been a while since he’d been this badly injured – and opened his eyes.

Blinded a little by the lights overhead, he sat up quickly, knowing that his fangs and yellow eyes would frighten her. Maybe she’d faint – that, too, hadn’t happened to him in a while. Fainters usually hypnotized easier.

She didn’t faint.

In fact, she looked at him with a kind of bemused grin.

Something wasn’t quite right about this situation.

She was a pretty woman – not spectacularly beautiful, or exotic like Janette – but pretty nonetheless. She had long, curly hair in that shade that was somewhere between blonde and brunette and it was pulled back, out of her face. She was the kind of woman you loved not because of her looks, but rather because of the person she was.

But he had no idea who she was. "Who are you?" he asked, gazing – no, opening staring – at her.

The grin widened as she laughed, tossing him a bag of blood. "Natalie Lambert, medical examiner for the city of Toronto. And your ticket out of here undetected."

He frowned, wanting to figure out what exactly she meant by that – she knew what he was, and that was going to put her in ten kinds of trouble with the Enforcers and the Community at large – but his hunger forced those thoughts out of his head. He drank. It was cold blood, but it was human, and as much as he didn’t like the fact that it was human, he knew it was the best way to recover from his injuries. He might look phyiscally okay by now, but he was tired from the healing and in the vampire equivalent of shock. As he finished, his eyes and teeth returned to normal – human normal – and the woman – Natalie, a voice in his brain reminded him – handed him another bag. Two bags wasn’t enough to fully recover, especially with the kind of injuries he had suffered, but it was enough to remain not only conscious but in control of himself as well until more could be found.

"Thank you," he said politely. There were only two ways that she knew what he was and still lived: either she was a resistor or she was a Hunter. And if she was a resistor who still lived, she was just as dangerous – maybe even more dangerous – as a Hunter. Best to play nice.

"You’re welcome, Nicholas," she replied.

Nicholas? How on earth did she know his name?

She must have seen the shock on his face, how startled he was by what she had said. "You are Nicolas de Brabant, aren’t you?" she asked. She even pronounced his name properly. All he could do was nod.

"I thought you looked familiar," she continued. How on earth did she know enough about him to know both his name and his face? He knew he had never met her before in all his eight hundred years – and certainly not in the last thirty years, if he was gaging her age correctly. "Welcome to Toronto, my friend."

What? "Friend?" he asked, knowing that she would hear the puzzled tone of his voice.

She winked at him.

She winked.

Dear God.

"Rumor has it you want to be a cop again," she – Natalie, he could not deny the mortal her name any longer – said. "Try over at the 27^th precinct. The captain over there is relatively easy to whammy if you know what you’re doing, but be careful of the day shift guys. One of them always smells horribly of garlic. And I have to work with the guy on a regular basis."

Wonderful. Mortals knowing his name, his face, and even his next career move. And, to top it all off, a potential future colleague who liked garlic. If the officer worked with Natalie that often, he had to work in homicide. Exactly where he wanted to plant himself.

"It would almost be worth it to plant a sudden aversion to souvlaki in him." She began to pull off her gloves – having the corpse sit up on you did make them superfluous, he supposed – and then he realized what she had said. Plant a sudden aversion... Was she somehow connected to a vampire willing to do that for her? Someone must think her very, very important to let her live this long with her knowledge. And be close enough to her that she would make that kind of comment. Whoever her contact in the vampire Community was, he was powerful – and knowledgeable.

"Why are you helping me?" he asked her, frowning again. He had been frowning altogether too much this night. "If you know who I am, then you know how much of an outcast I am." It pained him to admit it, but he was an outcast. Some days it was almost enough to give up his quest to become human. Sometimes the loneliness got to him. But he always managed to find some kind of internal strength to keep going, to keep yearning to be human.

"Why not?" she said almost casually, as if it was no big deal. "Besides, you should always help family," she added, running a cool hand down his cheek. He could feel the soot being dislodged from his skin by her gesture.

A cool hand.

A mortal woman would have felt warm. Would have felt hot against his own cool skin.

She felt the same as he did.

His brain was able to deduce only that she must not be mortal after all when she kissed him.

It had been a long time since he had been kissed – he had been a teacher for the last couple of years, interacting only with his students and the other faculty, and always careful to keep a distance from everyone. He hadn’t done anything but teach in that life, refusing to set down roots. It had been a rebound life, something to recover from the previous life with before moving on to the next one. He hadn’t even bothered to install metal shutters on the windows of the little house he had lived in, unlike the warehouse he had just bought here in Toronto. Cheap but heavy black curtains had been enough for that life. And here he was being kissed again. He responded – not just because of the fact that he was being kissed, but because it was this woman, Natalie Lambert, kissing him. Underneath the pain of his injuries and his shock upon waking, he had wanted to kiss her.

He pulled away, feeling his fangs descending and knowing that if he opened his eyes, she would see that they were yellow.

Would hers be yellow, too?

He inhaled deeply, smelling her perfume again, ignoring the mortuary chemicals in the air. "Family?" he said before opening his eyes.

Her eyes weren’t yellow – at least, not anymore, but the momentary pause had certainly given him time to recover. She nodded at his question and then smiled. Her fangs were descended as his had been, but somehow he found them beautiful.

He would have to get to know this woman, he told himself –

"LaCroix says hi."

[finis]