HOUSE CALL 2 (ii)

by Apache

Content:
Het
Vachon; Nick/Natalie
No Sexual Situations
No Violence

That night I wound up pulling a very long shift; there  was a bus accident, one of those sad hit-a-patch-of-ice hideous things.  There was a question of whether the driver was drunk, and that meant a criminal investigation, and that meant me.  Some nights I'd really rather be a doctor for the living.

It was past eight in the morning before I could change my clothes and leave. On my way out the door I spotted a retractor that had slid under a gurney and escaped being picked up, which reminded me of the strange vampire who'd come to visit and say thanks.  The beginning of this very shift, though it seemed like months ago now.  Next time, say it with flowers, I thought, but then there was that interesting kiss...  and damn him for figuring out how I felt about Nick in three seconds flat, incidentally.  Vampires...  And that put me in mind of his friend, Screed (now why did *that* name stick in my memory and not the other one?)

Well, that might be something I could do for the living, I thought.  I decided to swing by that little alley on the way home and see how he was doing.

Exhaustion does that to you, takes away your good sense.

~ ~ ~

I had a flashlight, so I found my way down to the basement level without breaking any bones.  I followed a hallway and eventually came around a right turning and saw the light of what might have been a couple candles burning.  Good sign -- somebody had to light them.  Dropping the flashlight beam down to my feet, I went forward to the threshhold, to where I could just see the candlelight directly.

"Hello?  Hello?  Anyone home?"  Uh... any*thing* home? I'd never seen anything like that pile of rat bodies...  they were like Exhibit A in a class called Contagion 101.  Elementary Epidemiology: don't try this at home, kids...

"Hello--rh!"  A single strong hand lifted me by the jaw and pushed me against the wall; the flashlight hit the floor and shattered.  I was dangling in the dark, with just those two candles off to one side-- that didn't matter.  I didn't need to see anything: I was hearing a vampire snarl.

"Screed...  Screed!  It's Dr. Lambert!" I choked out.  The head reared back and the bared teeth caught the smallest glimmer of light-- fangs by candlelight, I thought.  Why I have this demented sense of humor I don't know, but it never, never stops kibitzing.  The snarl abated; the hand dropped me.  I heard the vampire moving away in the darkness, and it occluded the candles for a moment.

"Wait?... Screed?"  I reached down and groped.  Well, my medical bag was still in one piece.  "I came to see how you are."

I heard a match scrape, and the vampire began lighting candles, improving my visibility.  It wasn't Screed, it was shorter and had long hair-- it was Valdez, Vache-something, the one who'd come to the lab. C'mon it's only been twelve hours, you forgot the name already?  You can still name two hundred bones in the human body, but one little vampire...? Vachon.

As if he heard my mind call his name, he turned back to face me, reasonably well lit by candlelight.  The fangs were gone.

"Sorry if I scared you," he said cheerfully.  He flashed a grin that was extremely wicked and extremely sexy.  It made me want to put him in his place.

"I've seen worse," I snapped.

"You have?"  His surprise was palpable, not to mention enjoyable.  He raked me with his eyes, looking for signs of a lie.

"Oh yeah," I said. "Recently."  Never seen a vampire possessed by a demon, huh, fella?  Well, you just haven't lived.

"Then you should know to let sleeping vampires lie," he came back at me.  His expression had turned hostile.

"I was curious about...ah, Screed.  I thought maybe..."  I lifted the medical bag.

"He didn't make it."  A gentle voice, the hostility gone.

"I'm sorry.  Were you friends?"  Stupid, automatic question, but what I really wondered was, what the heck are you doing down in this hellhole if you don't have to be here?

"We went w-a-a-y back."  The dangerous grin again.  How many pretty girls had died of wanting that grin -- ever since "w-a-a-y back"?

The thought brought all my weariness back.  I wanted Nick all of a sudden, really badly -- Nick who loves life as much as any doctor, who struggles like hell every single day to get away from the marauding beast in him that this vampire probably takes for granted, or even revels in.

"I'm sorry," I said again.  What do you say when a vampire dies?  Good luck in hell?  Maybe you'll only wind up in the Eighth Circle, not the Ninth?  Nick is so sure of all of that medievalist claptrap... what would I have said if he died?

Well, let's not stand here in the dark and worry about that right this minute, OK? I turned to leave, and realized it was pitch black the way I'd come.  I was going to have to go down and get a candle.  There was a half staircase I could see, so I headed for it, which meant I went further into what had been the dead vampire's living space.  If you could call it that.

Now that my eyes were a little bit adjusted, I took a look around the cellar.  The heap of rats was gone, and it was cleaner.  Not clean, not by a long shot, but clean-er.  "Tidying up for the new tenant?" I joked, reaching for a candle.

"Something's bothering you."  The vampire came closer.

"Got a decade?" It broke out of me with a laugh.  "Well, yeah, you probably do.  Let's just say life can be rough."

He looked at me, his face a beautiful study of shadows and Rembrandt-lit pale skin.  His eyes were black and expressionless in that light.  The perfection and passivity of the image made me want to touch him, to make him react and move.  I thought of his eyes as they'd seemed just a few inches away from mine, twelve hours ago, that compelling vampire charm he had...  That funny, sexy grin that meant you were only seconds away from giving in, from losing your life to this killer...

"Well, let's not," I said on an impulse.  "Let's say what's bothering me is... Tracy Vetter.  A lot of people care about her-- a lot."   And one of them is you... or did you know I'd figured that out, this morning?  And I've seen Tracy cry over you...

He blinked with surprise and turned hostile again.

"You telling me to leave her alone?"  In a way, his tone of voice was more frightening than his fangs had been.  And unnecessary, really -- but he didn't know me well enough to know that.  How much should I say?  Well--

"Me?  No-o." It came out with a little laugh. "Look, I'm in no position to preach to anyone about not tangling up your life with a vampire.  Or a human, in your case."  The hostility level dropped.  "But maybe I am telling you... be nice."  Nice?  Nice?  That's the best you can come up with, Dr. Award Winning Pathologist And I Was Also Great On My Psychiatric Rotation Lambert?  **Be nice?**

"Nice?"  Clearly the vampire was as deeply impressed by my words of wisdom as I was.  But it had a good effect; the sheer ineptness of the prescription relaxed him.  Relaxed?  No, let's tell the truth: the vampire laughed at me.

"You know what I mean," I said.  "And if you don't, look it up."  I decided to depart in a huff. I picked up a candle in one hand, and my medical bag in the other and turned to go.  But as I climbed the stairs, the instruments inside rattled and put an idea in my head.  I turned back.

"As long as I'm here... could I have some blood?"

Talk about words coming out funny. Not that the vampire was laughing, however, and I can't say that I was either.  He was looking at me... dumbfounded would be overstating it.  But not by much.

"Ah... let me clarify." I smiled a bit self‑consciously, but this was for medicine -- for Nick -- and I'm very surefooted on this particular ground. It's the one thing I care most about in the world. "Could I have a sample of your blood?  For... research purposes?"  After all, he did say he could never repay me.

I watched him think about it, wondering what the pros and cons of this would be to a vampire mind.  For Nick, there's something in it, but for this one, nothing.  I had one precious sample of Screed's blood, and some of Nick's, but this one would be only my third vampire subject.  I never had the nerve to ask Janette to let me tap a vein.  Comparative DNA, I thought, maybe maybe this will help.

"OK," he said.  His face was still expressionless.

"A whole pint, even?"  He was amused. "It won't hurt you," I promised, and he became even more amused.

"OK, lie down," I ordered.  I am probably the world's ranking expert on getting blood *out* of vampires.  Since they don't have any blood pressure to speak of, it closely resembles getting blood from a stone.  There was a bed, probably where'd he been sleeping.  Anyway, it would do.  "Feet up," I said, and slid a handy cinderblock under them.  He looked askance at my shim.

"Sorry, they have to be elevated-- we kind of have to just drain you," I explained.  "Then I add a little suction."

He blinked with momentary queasiness-- yeah, I bet you've never described it to any of the folks *you* take blood from, have you?  I had to look away to hide a sudden flush of hostility-- with Nick, I'm always dealing with someone who is utterly miserable at the thought of all his killing, who stopped long ago.  But this one-- he's probably still active, still a free and easy murderer... I have to keep that thought out of my mind in order to deal with him clinically.  Just be a doctor, Nat, not judge and jury.

He watched with fascination as I slid the big needle into his arm, and as what passes in vampires for blood came leaking out into the bag.  It's a slow process, but he seemed not to lose interest as the minutes ticked by, watching his blood (whose blood?) drain down the tube toward the bag.  I got over my little flash of anger, and remembered that he, alone of a hundred (a hundred?), had come to thank me for his life.  The silence wasn't uncomfortable, but eventually I broke it anyway.

"Let me guess, you're not a regular donor," I said drily.

He turned his attention on me then, looking at me with the same kind of disinterested yet intimate fascination that he'd given to watching his blood drain.  I couldn't bear it, looked at the bag.

"You and Knight," he said, unexpectedly.  He stopped, but I knew what he meant.  He was looking at me with the friendliness he'd offered in the lab last night.  I gave him the best answer I'd ever come up with.

"It's complicated."  I checked the bag, the tubes.  "But as long as we're prying... you and Tracy?"

The dangerous grin again, but he let it fade.  "Not complicated," he said thoughtfully.  "Not yet.  But it could get there."  His eyes blurred.  Talk about watching someone get lost in his thoughts... he was in tall timber without a map or a compass.

So that's what the kiss in the morgue was really about.

"What're you going to do about it?" I asked.

"I don't know?"  His eyes swung down to mine; even this non-answer was a question.  He swallowed, licked his lips, and looked at me with pure confusion.  In fact, he almost looked like he might want a confidante.  No, no, no, no, no.  I don't do vampire lonelyhearts.  I dropped my eyes down to the blood bag, and let long minutes tick by before I looked back up at him.

When I did, he was watching me with pointed attention.  His free hand reached forward to run a strand of my hair through his fingers, and then he reached back to do it again.  I pulled my head out of reach.

"Why do you spend your life, your beauty, on the dead?" he said whisperingly.  "Look at you... you should be cherished."

It made me mad.  "I bet that line has gotten you a lot of free lunches over the years," I snapped.

Nick would've recoiled in horror; he finds it unbearable to be reminded of his past, and also to be reminded that I'm capable of figuring out what some of it must have been like.  But this Vachon was just amused.

"You could say that," he conceded with a small smile.  Then he looked at me seriously.  "But that's not what's happening here, *Doctor*," he looked pointedly at the needle lying against his arm, its tip inserted in a vein.  "It makes you angry to be called beautiful," he observed. "At least by me."

Too much hit, and too much miss, for me to deal with.  "Let it go, OK?  Just," I waved a hand, "let it go."

The bag was pretty full, and I sealed it up and took the needle out of his arm with a nice swab and a bandaid, pointless in his case, but good habits.

I picked up a candle and headed for the stairs again.  "Thanks for the contribution, Vachon," I said.  "See ya around."  I think I was hoping that was true.

I headed back for the building exit with the sense of relief I always discover I'm feeling the minute I get out of the presence of any vampire but Nick -- no matter how superficially friendly they are, I'm always aware my life could be in the balance.  Maybe it's pure prey instinct, what an antelope feels at a waterhole, sensing a lion somewhere in the near distance.  It doesn't matter if they've just fed-- they're still lions.  And yet something in me likes them.

Unfortunately a crossdraft knocked out my candle.  I breathed a curse under my breath, and started to grope my way forward, found the next bend, put my foot in a puddle, cursed again, slid my hand along the wall and touched... a body.  I jumped, but I should have known.  It was him.

He slid a hand all the way to my elbow, and began to lead me forward.  For me it was pitch black, steps in the darkness, but I knew he could see.  "A stair," said a soft voice, and I felt with my foot for the riser.  "More stairs..."

He led me slowly, telling me where there were overhead pipes to duck, leading me around corners... it was eerie, that absolute dependence on my guide, the vampire.  I put my other hand out once, as if to feel for a wall, and he touched it immediately so I would have something to grasp...

Somewhere along the way it dawned on me.  "You could have just lit the candle."

"I prefer to stand and praise the darkness," he said in his wry voice.  It was a joke and not a joke, and suddenly I felt his presence right in front of me, and a hand ran up from my elbow to my shoulder, my neck, my cheek again.

"Oh, what a fragrance you have," he said in a half whisper.  "Knight is a fool..."

"Stop it."

"He's a fool, beautiful Natalie," he said.  "Or you are."

"Stop it.  You don't know--"  I felt confused.

He retreated to arm's length again, as he had while he was leading me through the dark.  "A right-hand turn," he said, in the neutral voice he'd used to guide me, and there it was, a shaft of light at the end of that corridor.

"There's your sun, Doctor," he said.  "Don't come here again."  He started to leave, but I still had a good grip on his wrist; I tugged on it, and he stopped.

"It's not that simple," I said.  "You know it isn't.  Not for any of us."  I felt his muscles relax and saw tiny reflections of light on his hair; he was nodding.  But he didn't bother to say anything, just pulled free and left, back into the pitch black.  I walked toward the sunshine, abruptly feeling it again, how bone-tired I really was.

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