HOUSE CALL 7 (iv)

by Apache

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

So far this story consists of four encounters between Nat and Vachon, three called House Call and one called Interlude, or Valentine Interlude, or something.  In the last bit, transformation in Human Factor.

Paper lanterns and cheap neon lights.  Slumming Americans, slumming Mexicans from richer neighborhoods, boys who work in the maquilladoras -- where they would all be if not for this, if not for the blouses that slide off their shoulders, the flashy cheap ruffled skirts that bell off their hips, the hot flesh a little slick with the sweat of a warm, busy night... another kind of factory.

"*Munequita, que quieres tu?*"  Just a whisper, and a girl curls into your arms and says nothing about the coolness of your flesh.  I need you, I need you for a while and I will give you a dream--

They have little rooms, little wooden slatted rooms, lathework rooms exactly like the ones such girls had when I knew them as a man-- laughing, dirty girls much like these, girls who shone in the dark like opals, fire flecks under a creamy concealment.

Can I leave them alive?  Can I have them as a man would, and leave?  Why would I want to ?

I am what I have been for centuries, a male vampire -- "kiss the girls and make them cry" says the children's rhyme, but I do not.  The kiss they have from me is a meeting of needs, mine in their blood, theirs in their dreams, and they come to this embrace with a moan of pleasure. I kiss, I caress, my hands find the earliest knowledge of their bodies-- and then their blood begins its singing, the beast asks to be fed, insists on what its unique lust requires, and I bite.  To call it orgasmic, that inrush of the woman's whole life, is almost a cheat-- it is -everything.-

All the years, among the safest hunting grounds, alleys like this one.  Myself just a man strolling down the street in the warm night, with all the fragrances of food, money, gambling, lust swarming in the darkness.  Why does such a man, who is young and not ugly, wish to buy love?... no one asks.

"*Mi linda, confieme*," I say. "*Confeseme el sueno mas hermosa.* Trust me, lovely girl.  Tell me your most beautiful dream."  They look in my eyes and it is the beginning of my having them.  "*Damelo...* Give it to me."  Because I can give it to them, bring them closer to it than their act of selling themselves into a sad mimesis of love will ever carry them.

And the unutterable sweetness of those dreams-- the cliche of the whore's heart is more than true.  Almost always, there is one who comes to save them, a norteno, an angel, a boy from a good family.  In this century, often it is a man from the movies who comes for a moment's casual pleasure and sees the soul shining through-- Valentino, Gary Cooper, Tom Cruise-- tonight one girl's passion for Jackie Chan, a Chinese warrior who would fight off the world for her and carry her away to a silken pavilion where incense burns before a golden Buddha.  How a Mexican border girl came to that dream, a vampire will never know... but I took her blood and gave her the dream, gave her a night in Jackie Chan's arms instead of my cold ones.  "Ay, Dios mio," she sighed, barely conscious of my leaving. "Amor, amor."

Kiss the girls and make them die... Part of the everything is the death, the last yielding, the last of the woman's offering of herself.  If I do it right, it is also the last of her ecstasy-- no pain that is not also understood as pleasure.  There are times when the terror is hot, but in truth-- I love women.  I love their surrender, their passion to yield and be taken.  Yet most often, I leave them alive, did so even before killing became the complicated endeavor it has been for the last few decades.  And I prefer not to terrify them unless I have found them cruel -- and then there is the special spice of killing a killer.

Now I will leave all the little dolls alive, if I can.  Will enter and enjoy their bodies exactly as a man would do, carry through to the end the whore's pathos, the imitated act of mortal procreation, the thing they sell, a sham, a masquerade -- theirs for money, mine for -- curiosity? No, because it is an act I love, though I have had it only with my own kind for hundreds of years, a sterile act, but passionate and satisfying.  Now I will try to have even this pleasure again with a living woman, and leave her alive.  Drink at her fountain, but not to the last; follow the mortal pleasure to its end instead.

Because I am told by science itself that a vampire has had both -- the drinking and the mortal knowing, the possession.

Because there is one mortal woman for whom I burn.

Who burns for me.

~ ~ ~

"Natalie Lambert? This is Will McLaughlin, ER at Mercy.  We have one of your patients here, a Mary Ann Carr, and she was admitted..."

"Wait a minute, wait a minute, back up," I said.  "One of my patients?"  Visions from 'Night of the Living Dead' ran through my head, but I figured it was just a mixup -- somebody'd misread a destination tag or something.

"That's right, Mary Ann Carr, admitted around eleven..."

"Dr. McLaughlin, uh," I said, trying to let him down easy. "You do know I'm the M.E., right?"

His silence was eloquent.  "Uh-huh," I said.  "Well, -now- you know.  So-o, unless this patient is blazing dramatic new trails in post-mortem recovery, she's definitely -not- one of mine."

"Um, Dr. Lambert," he said, and paused.  "The kid who brought her in was very definite that she is yours.  Gave you for the regular doctor.  Spelled your name for the admitting.  If this is a joke, it's not very funny."

"What kid?"  The obvious question.

Sound of paper ruffling; I could see the chart being turned over in my mind's eye.  "Oh Jesus," said the doctor on the other end. "Columbian coffee."

"What?"

"Juan Valdez, Dr. Lambert.  The kid gave his name as Juan Valdez." The voice was peeved.  "I guess the admitting didn't notice."

Then he laughed.  "Oh well, another fun-filled night in the ER.  Trade ya," he offered.

I laughed back. "Nah, I could never give up our way-out wacky nights in the morgue.  What's your Mary Ann Carr in for, anyway?"

"Suicide attempt," he said.  "Slit her wrists, major blood loss. She's getting transfused, won't come around for a while.  Lucky she got here, really."

"Blood loss," I said, glad the resident from Mercy couldn't see my face.  I wasn't laughing anymore. "Maybe I'll drop by just to see if I recognize her from somewhere."

"Sure thing, doc.  I'll be here.  McLaughlin," he said, and hung up.

Extreme blood loss.  I was starting to think it might be one of my cases after all.

~ ~ ~

Dr. McLaughlin turned out to look like he should still be in pre-med, except for the deep black tired circles under his eyes, the hallmark of a rotation on ER.  "The Carr girl is a hooker," he said. "There are signs of," he gave me a slightly squeamish glance that made him look even younger, "uh, both oral and vaginal, but since she's a working girl, we figured..."

"Consensual," I finished for him.  "Yeah. But you notified Metro Police anyway, right?"

"Right," he said.  "We always do.  But she doesn't have any bruises, no sign of a struggle... and her blood's full of downers.. well, what's left of it."

I shut my eyes.  "She gonna make it?"

"Tomorrow'll tell," he said, and showed me where to find Mary Ann Carr.

I'd never laid eyes on her before, but oh yeah, she was one of mine.  The Carr girl had been bitten.  Mercy was too busy with her wrists and putting her on suicide watch to do more than slap a bandaid over the peculiar marks on her neck.  They weren't ev en logged on the chart, just not important, the same way no one had bothered to count the little purple dots on the inside of her elbow.  No one remembered Juan Valdez, except he was a typical Spanish-looking kid who carried her in and disappeared from the waiting room.  End of story.  Not important.

Not important that the "suicide" attempt was some vampire's clever cover-up for an unfinished meal.  Why'd he do it?  Bastard, I thought, imagining how the no-longer-hungry vampire must have gone into the girl's bathroom, found a razor, and made the four deep cuts into the wrist.  Cold blooded evil bastard.

Somebody knew.  Somebody understood enough to get her to a hospital, and make sure I found out about the case.  I didn't understand, so I headed back to the morgue.  I hoped the Carr girl wasn't going to show up there, too.

~ ~ ~

As it happened, there was a surprise at the morgue.  The vampire called Vachon was there.

"You saw her?"

 //Oh. Of course.// So he was Juan Valdez -- Valdez, an old alias. It all fell into place.  A remorseless vampire, covering his tracks, using the name of the one doctor he knows will help keep his dirty secret from both of our communities.  Doctor or no, my first thought was a wish that I could wring his neck.

"That was you?  That disgusting--"

"Stop!"  It was an order, a frightening one.  My hand went to my neck involuntarily.  "No sermons-- not from you," he snarled.

He was prowling the room, black as a shadow, except for the red light burning inside the black eyes.  He'd been waiting calmly for my return, but my reaction must not have been what he expected, and suddenly he was not very well in control of himself.

I wrapped my lab coat around myself like it was some kind of armor and concentrated on staying calm.  Vachon kept pacing for a minute, but didn't like the tension level either, and seemed to consciously gather himself in.  When he spoke, his voice had turned casual.

"So you saw her," he said.  "Alive.  Congratulations, doctor."

"What are you talking about?"  I managed not to say the rest of my thought, which was that every shred of liking for him I'd ever felt had just gone out the window.  //This is the basement, Nat,// said the little second guessing voice that never, ever shuts up in my mind. //No windows.  Maybe you could hang an ant farm?//

"Sex with a mortal, beautiful Natalie," he said mockingly. "Exhibit A, Mary Ann Carr of no fixed address, Toronto."

"Oh my God," I said, sinking into a chair.  "That's what this was about? You... oh my God."  My mind was racing in eight different directions.  Tissue samples.... that girl's life.... bastard....

"Don't you want to know all the facts, doctor?" he continued, still mocking.  "I had to feed first... a lot.  Actually," he said, perching on the examining table, "she wasn't the first.  I conducted -my- experiments elsewhere..."

"What?"  I was far from understanding.  "Experiments?"

 "South of here, doctor.  Juarez, to be exact."  There was something incredibly evil in his tone.  "Las putanitas, doctor --- thousands and thousands of them, little girls with the bad luck to be born mejicanas y pobritas.  They have two lives available, both servicing Americans in their way -- the maquilladoras, and the macs -- the factories or the pimps, doctor."

I got his game.  "Let's see, you're about to tell me it's my fault that you've been... what?  Killing people?"  I said.  Disgust was turning to cold fury.

"In Juarez," Vachon continued, his usual insouciance overlaid with something very cruel, "it was fairly simple to practice.  I tried without feeding the first time, and failed.  The next time... I thought you'd want these details," he said, coming forward to grasp my face and make me look up.

I tried to slap his hand away.  He saw that tears had come to my eyes, and it made him crueler.

"I found I had to kill first, but then it was possible," he said, and shrugged.  He let go of my chin. "There are many, many pimps and thieves who won't be missed, just like the girls...  bad people, beautiful Natalie."  His eyes were open wide, as if guileless, but they were really closed doors, black and unreflecting. "Don't suffer for them."  But his tone said he was mocking.

"I am -not- a judge and jury!" My hand slammed down, then came up to gesture at him sharply.  "They were pimps and thieves? What are you?  What's your word for it?  Serial killer?  Sociopath?  Mass murderer--?"

"Vampire," he said easily.  He looked 25 again, and his eyes crinkled with a small smile before going unreadable.  "I am a vampire."  He prowled away, beyond the gurneys, ran one hand along the shiny aluminum of the autopsy table. "You counted on that."

"Bullshit," I snapped back.  "You didn't need to kill those men to feed.  This wasn't about being a vampire, about surviving.  It was for--"

"--science," he said nastily.  I gasped.

He came stalking across the room.  "You made me into your little science project, doctor.  Your field experiment in vampire sexuality."  My body started shaking.  "No," I said, "you're wrong, that's not what I--"

"Don't lie to yourself, beautiful Natalie," he said.  A voice of light admonition, again with the lilt of a wicked mood powering it.  "You wanted to know."  His eyes were glued on mine, demonic and accusing, and his voice became flat.

"You wanted to know if a -male- vampire could do it.  Knight won't risk it with you, and you know damn well he won't attempt it with anyone else.  So you called Vachon-- Tracy's supernatural buddy, the one vampire you know who just -might- be motivated to give it the old college try."  His rage burned down at me.

"You told me you'd split the vampire atom.  Me."  He snarled and his eyes blinked yellow, then black again. "You stuck a needle in my arm...'can I have a pint, Vachon?  What do you want with Tracy Vetter, Vachon?  Oh no, I'm the last one to warn against the perils of getting tangled up with a mortal' -- and then you told me this latest tidbit from your life as Dr. Quinn, Vampire Medicine Woman."

"Well, here I am, doctor," he hissed, backing away.  "Reporting as desired.  It works. I even made it work after feeding from bottled blood here in Toronto -- Mary was my little lamb.  You can take your information back to Knight and beckon him into your bed, all on a diet of cow's blood.  Congratulations."

"Oh my God," I breathed, seeing it.  He thought I used him, sent him out to kill so Nick wouldn't have to. That I used the vampire in him to protect Nick from his own vampire and still find out...  Horror swept through me, but at least I understood what was happening.  And could try to tell him--

"Oh no," I said.  "I don't think like that."

I met his eyes squarely.  "I don't.  I may not have thought it through, but," my head was shaking, and I felt a great relief inside, knowing I was telling the truth.  "I don't manipulate people, Vachon, not like that.  I didn't set you up."

"No?"  He sounded bitter.  But his eyes looked convinced.

"It didn't seem like a vey beautiful-Natalie thing to do," he said. He knows I hate to be called that; I know it means something to him that I don't entirely understand.  Something about mortal women, I don't know exactly... something that's different between me and Tracy Vetter.  The cynicism that fights all my hopes, while Tracy just wanders through the world like Candide, believing good things will happen around her -- and somehow they do.  Something about me and Nick, and the years we've put in. And something about why I worked to figure out a cure for the vampire plague.  Something that made him grab me and show me the city from twenty stories up on Valentine's Day, just for a breathless moment, a little vampire gift Nick wouldn't dream of giving me.

"No."  I was heartsick for everyone.  Him, me, Nick, the dead pimps and their girls in Juarez, Mary Ann Carr on her IV over at Mercy... "I'm sorry if you think...  but, really, I was just asking."  I met his eyes again.  "And telling.  How could I know...?"

He was silent, and particularly still, looking back at me.

"Oh my God, you're in love with her?"  I felt weak.  Somehow it never crossed my mind that this scruffy, reckless vampire could have serious feelings about Tracy Vetter.  That his fantasy about Tracy could possibly be as deeply rooted as hers about him.

As mine about Nick...

"Love," Vachon said with bitter confusion.  "In love..."  He seemed like he really was about twenty five years old.  Which is to say, completely clueless and at the mercy of his hormones.

How many times since Janette was in this room have I wondered if I could find a scientific basis for what happened to her?  Something I could show Nick, something he and I could try?  Nick-- I know his desires and his despairs so well-- how many times have I felt him bottoming out, or felt him reaching with ecstasy toward the life he wants, a mortal life filled with his goodness?  He works so hard for it, just the simple quality of being good-- and that's inextricable in my mind from his desires, from what he and I want to have with each other.

The thought brought me up short.  No wonder I didn't guess what Vachon might feel -- I didn't think a vampire who wasn't like Nick could have such a feeling.  Love?  Affection?  I thought an active vampire would just take what it wanted-- and leave the body behind.  This vampire wants Tracy Vetter, but alive?  This actively killing vampire feels something I might call love?

Nick doesn't know, I thought.  Nick only knows Vachon's curious about her, he has no idea.... he only ordered Vachon not to put her in danger.

My head fell into my hands.  Right.  Little did Nick suspect that the person who was going to put Tracy Vetter in big danger from a vampire wa-a-a-s, you guessed it, Dr. Natalie Trustworthy Lambert.  Oh Nat, what now...?

Vachon's response to my big intuitive flash was another snarl.  I didn't even bother looking up to see if his eyes turned gold again. Getting more scared than I already was wouldn't have helped.

"Now what?"  I said out loud.  I lifted my head and looked at him. "What are you going to do?"

"Do?" he echoed.  Clueless.  Clueless.

Oh boy, this is really bad.  "Look, I'm sorry," I said again.  "Whatever you want to call it, I never suspected how strongly you felt."  Intuition struck again.  "Ohhh-- and -you- didn't know, either, until what I said"

"made me crazy," Vachon finished.  The words were wild, harsh, but for the first time, the voice wasn't.  It was sad. Partly sad, anyway, partly other things -- things that did look familiar, for the first time.  For the first time, this vampire was wearing an expression I've seen on Nick's face.

Of course, I don't really know what it means in Nick, either.  Except...'help!'

The vulnerability produced a professional reflex.  "You should have called me, or something... or--"

The vampire gave me a sidelong glance, and then laughed at me.  Great, I thought, the traditional he-laughs-at-me moment.  But I'm beginning to see it's Vachon's way of dealing with the distance between us, mortal and vampire.

For once he explained:  "I would have tried it out on -you-, doctor," he said.  His eyebrows came up and his voice crackled with humor, but this was not a joke.

My hands came up to rub my forehead, in anticipation of the bi-i-g headache that's going to be there soon.  And my mind started heading off on tangents again... tissue samples... Mary Ann Carr...what do I tell Nick?  Mary Ann Carr...

"You could have just let her die," I said, looking over at him. "You made the effort to get her to an ER."  In fact, he went through the whole charade of cutting her wrists so she could pass....

He flicked a glance at me.  He smiled. "No, beautiful Natalie, I'm a vampire, remember?"

Bastard.  And that was his last word; in the next instant, he was just gone.

~ Go to House Call 8 (But You Can't Make Him Drink) ~

~ Return to "Forever Knight" ~

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