Down Among the Dead Men
The music competed with the noise of the dancers in the neon-lit dark of the club. The loud rock beat making the bar against the far wall vibrate like it was caught in a mild after shock of an earthquake. Mike was used to it. He'd tended bar in The Dark Star for almost a decade now. Anywhere else would seem too quiet to work in now.

A man with short brown hair and a rumpled casual suit wandered by the bar headed for the back. His walk was unstable, not at all a strange thing to see here so late at night. Mike hoped the guy was headed to call for a ride home. So many people weren't that sensible. As he passed by, he sucked in a quick breath at the glimpse he got of the man's face. He'd been in a nasty fight, no maybe about that! It looked like someone had used him for a punching bag; swollen, dark red and bruised. No wonder he was unsteady. Mike wondered if he should offer help. Well, maybe when he comes back out. Might just want to heave his guts in the men's room in private. That's what he'd done the one time he'd been in anything near that condition. Maybe this guy had dated the wrong girl too. If he didn't come back out soon, Mike'd send one of the bouncers back to check on him.

The waitress, Candi, brought him a new order to fill for a loud table full of frat boys, and he shook off his revery on pain. Poor guy.

The glow from the computer monitor lit Natalie's face with a cold light in the dark office. Her face was intent, body leaning forward in interest as she scrolled through the latest toxicology screening on her John Doe. Officially, she went off duty a half hour ago, but she'd been too busy to look over the tests when they'd come in. The body had all of the signs of being dead for at least a day, but the bartender at the club had seen the man heading for the back only a few hours ago.

It wasn't a bad beating. Post mortem lividity, it's called. The man had been laying face down after death, probably flat on his stomach with his head unsupported, over the edge of a bed, perhaps. No way to tell. Once his heart stopped beating, the blood in his veins and arteries flowed and ran downward, pulled by gravity, to pool in his face, his chest, the front of his legs and feet. Constricting veins stopping the blood's further movement, it had stayed there when the man had gotten up again. That didn't happen for many hours after death. How had he gotten up? And that just doesn't happen. Even having examined Nick and a few other vampires didn't change her mind on how impossible her John Doe was. There was still activity in a vampire body. The blood wouldn't pool like that. Even vampires needed blood moving through their veins to provide nourishment, life, to their cold bodies. What sort of thing didn't?

And another question; why had he stopped moving? His body and organs had been spread out like a messy jigsaw puzzle for her earlier, but nothing had told her why. Not to any of her questions. Unlike most people thought, time of death wasn't really something that could be pinned down neatly. There were too many variables to take into account. Even she had been known to be pressured into giving approximate times of death, but deep down she knew she could be wrong. This time no such worry ate at her. This man had been dead when he'd walked for the last time.

Her concession to being done with her shift was a cold brown glass bottle of hard apple cider, weeping condensation, that she was sipping while reading. The golden tart liquid gave her a similar golden glow inside. One wasn't enough to affect her driving; at least it wasn't if she downed some of the crackers in her drawer and finished reading all of this, which could take an hour or more if she took notes.

Heck, she'd take a cab if necessary. She needed this.

She ran a finger idly around the mouth of the bottle and gently sucked the tip of the finger without taking her eyes off of the monitor. Her thick curly brown hair was hot after a shift in the chill of the autopsy room with its tile, cold metal and colder flesh and her other hand lifted the heavy mass up, letting cool air get to the sweating nape of her neck.

A voice from directly behind startled her. "Dr. Lambert, I hope you'll forgive me for intruding..." Natalie had an unfortunate reaction to being startled, everyone at the morgue knew it and teased her about it, but she'd hardly thought about what she was doing when her elbow jerked back and connected solidly with the body behind her.

She was used to all sorts of reactions to this, but no one had ever grabbed her wrist before she'd even turned in her chair to see who it was. The voice registered in her memory at the same time she saw his short white blond hair and sensual lips with their amused smile, her mind pulling stickily out of fugue state she went into when she was reading. "LaCroix, what the hell are you doing in here!"

"Attempting to not be gutted, apparently. Not breathing can have its occasional rewards. I didn't know you were such a warrior physically as well as mentally." He pulled her wrist up to his face and kissed the clenched fist softly. She glared at him.

He sighed when she continued to try and sear through him with her eyes, not even bothering to reclaim her hand, as if it was beneath her to argue about it with him. Releasing it, he asked, "What, have I offended you? I assure you, it was accidental. Tell me, and I'll mend my wicked ways." He offered her an arch look, but not without humor.

He was pleased when a laugh startled out of her, obviously against her wishes. "I won't hold my breath!" Her eyes had lost the deadly anger, though they were still wary. "Nick isn't here tonight, you know, so why don't you fly back to the Raven?"

He had been looking for Nicholas, but really, as if that was the only reason he ventured out of his club. Why, there was...his thoughts stopped dead when he just couldn't think of the last time he'd done anything that didn't come back to his errant son. Even his radio broadcasts usually were geared to the off chance that Nicholas was listening. The club was where his son was used to gathering information in his homicide investigations and the small interaction he had with the vampire community. After Jeanette had left the Raven to him, he'd moved in and kept it running in the hopes of making himself a stable point that Nicholas felt drawn to more and more. And here he was seeking the boy out again. Old fools, nothing like them.

Now that the doctor had pointed it out to him, LaCroix was too honest with himself to not admit that she was quite right. That didn't mean he intended to let her get away with it. And he really did need to broaden his interests, starting now. That brought another smile to his face, which Natalie viewed with deep suspicion. Showing his teeth slightly, he asked, "Have you eaten yet, my dear?" ******************************