When Day Breaks, Part 2
Nick picked up the phone and speed dialed Natalie's number again. And again, it rang exactly four times, then the machine cut in with the exact same recording. And again, Nick left the exact same message he had the last three times he called, and hung up.
He sighed. She was definitely ignoring him. And, as usual, he had absolutely no idea which of his innumerable faults she'd decided were pissing her off that day. And, also as usual, she probably wouldn't tell him until she'd cooled off, in which case it wouldn't matter anymore. And the entire thing would be forgotten, at least until it came up again. Nick shook his head, and sighed again.
There was, of course, the possibility that Lacroix had finally decided that his little fit of altruism had worn off, and was draining her right now as he sat... yeah, right. He rubbed his eyes, and cursed an overactive imagination. The entire idea was idiotic. Why would Lacroix choose now, when he could have struck easily so many times before? Unless...
Lacroix had had so much more time to see the two of them together recently. Especially when he had been possessed. He (part of him rebelled at the idea of recognizing any part of the demon that had possessed him as part of his own self, but he had to be honest, with himself, if no one else) had thrown Lacroix across the room with hardly a second thought, yet found the strength to banish the demon, rather than harm a hair on Natalie's head. What other explanation could there be, than a man in love?
He grabbed his coat, and started for the door. He knew perfectly well that she would not be happy to see him. She would meet him with that cool stare that bored right through him, and uninterestedly ask him to come in. Or she might just slam the door in his face. But she would be all right, and Natalie angry was infinitely preferable to Natalie dead.
***
Nick pulled up to Nat's apartment. Her car space was empty. He kept telling himself that didn't mean anything, nothing at all. She went out to get Sydney more catnip, or something. That's all it was. Besides, he wasn't sure if Lacroix even knew how to drive. And even if he did, he would never stoop so low as to use one to dump a body. He looked up at her window. A light was on, but Natalie always left a light on, so it always looked like someone was home. Again, it meant nothing. He strained his ears, listening. Softly Sydney meowed at the door. Sydney got his food as soon as Natalie got home in the evening, so he never failed to sit and wait by the door for her to get there.
Sydney was still meowing. She had never gotten there.
Nick took to the air in an instant, pushed out all other thoughts, and concentrated on listening to the city. Usually he tuned out the majority of the noise, just for sanity's sake. Too much information at once usually wasn't a problem most people had to face, but to them it was occasionally a real danger. The first things he had learned in his new life were to keep out others' thoughts, and to keep out others' noise. It was one of the many things you learn to mimic, to appear more human. But now he let all that go for a moment, and really, truly listened, to everything and everyone. Rats scurried next to the garbage cans beneath him, dogs howled forlornly down the block. As his range expanded, tires screeched, horns blared. And the people! Crying, laughing, talking, screaming. It was a trick he rarely used, and now he remembered why. Sometimes it felt like he could hear every sound in the city, every screech, whine, howl, and whimper. It lent itself so easily to the feeling of godhood, when it was simply a useful tool to aid in the kill. To hear the heart of the prey. Occasionally, as now, it had its uses. That was all. He closed his eyes, and pretended that his heart didn't leap at the feeling of power, in joy and in fear. A tool. That was all.
And though he listened with all his might, ten miles of solid sound, he couldn't hear a whisper of her.
***
"Hello, Detective Vetter speaking."
"Tracy? It's Nick. I want you to put out an APB on Natalie's car."
God, did she ever hate that authoritative tone of voice. It never failed to remind her of her father, and bring out the worst in her. "A... All right. But isn't she at home by now?"
"I'm at her place now. It looks like she never got home."
Tracy's brow knotted instantly. How did he know that? "But, Nick..."
"And odds are that she's out of the city, so focus your search outside the metro area."
Her jaw dropped at that. What did this guy use for clues, a Ouija board? "Nick, what is going *on*?" But he had already hung up. She glared at the receiver for a moment. She knew perfectly well she was being snowballed. But he wasn't going to get away with it this time. She quickly put out the APB, then grabbed her coat and ran for her car, trying to remember where exactly Natalie lived again...
The caddy was parked in front of Natalie's apartment, but Nick was predictably nowhere to be found. What he thought he could do on foot in the snow, who knew? Natalie's place was locked tight, so how could he have known that she wasn't just asleep, or hurt? Maybe he had a spare set of keys. Not enough clues, Vetter, you're spinning your wheels...
Tracy was so sick of trailing after her partner like an unwanted sibling, she could just... impulsively, she lashed out with one foot and kicked the bumper of Nick's car. It felt good enough that she kept right on going. "Darnit! My *stupid* partner and his *stupid* secrets, his *stupid* arrogance, and his *stupid* half-ass self-reliance! He's going to get himself *killed* with this crap! His partner? No, apparently, I'm just the nearest convenient *phone* operator!"
She peered at the section of bumper she'd been beating on. Not a scratch. Of course. She resisted the temptation to kick it again, and stalked back to her car. Time to go back to work. Where she could sit by the phone and wait for His Highness to clue her in.
"Jerk."
***
Natalie finally found the side street they were looking for, after a couple wrong turns to make time for someone to figure out she was gone. She knew it wasn't much, but even a little more time certainly wasn't going to hurt her. But she could only stall so long, and they did eventually turn and make their way up the long driveway. The actual house was about half a mile in from the road. The idea of clearing the road of snow was a joke, so it seemed that whoever lived there either didn't use it in winter, or didn't mind being stuck inside once the snow fell. This week had been particularly bad for weather - it had been clear, sunny, and wickedly cold. So even though snow should have fell long before, the ground wasn't very icy, and they had no trouble navigating the road in Natalie's small city car.
She finally saw the house up ahead, and blissfully there was a long stretch of road leading up to it that was very straight and flat. Perfect. She tried to remember as clearly as she could exactly what had happened when they all loaded into her car. Her memory was kind of hazy once she saw the knife, but she was fairly certain none of them had put their seat belts on.
She slowly drove to the flat stretch, took one deep breath for courage, and hit the accelerator as hard as she could. All three of the boys were thrown backward, yelling and cursing. But by the time they could retaliate, she slammed her car into the side of the house at full speed. She caught the faintest glimpse of bodies flying past... then she smacked her head on the steering wheel, and slumped forward, unconscious.
***
Natalie groggily raised her head, and tried to remember exactly where she was. Her eyes slowly focused on the steering wheel in front of her, an impressive dent where she'd bashed her head against it. But that didn't really help her figure out where she was. Next she tried to focus on something a little farther, outside the car. A wave of nausea almost persuaded her that it wasn't worth it, but she thought she could see something. Something on her hood... she squinted her eyes to see more clearly, because it looked an awful lot like a body, which of course was crazy. What would a dead man be doing lying on top of her hood...?
Memory returned in a jolt of adrenaline, which did her headache no good at all, and she winced. She quickly scanned for the other two, ignoring the way her eyes swam whenever she moved her head. She could get out of here with a concussion, if she had to. But I don't have to enjoy it, she thought, as a particularly large spike dug into her forehead, right *there*. She caught sight of another of them, lying next to the side of the house, with his face toward her. He was obviously dead.
But it was pointless to try to find them. Her first priority was to get the hell out of Dodge, and call for an ambulance, police, whatever. Bring in the cavalry, and never ever drive down this road again. Fortunately the car was still running, which meant she had some gas left in her tank. Having no clue how long she'd been out, she'd better assume that it was just about gone. Better use it while she could. Slowly, methodically she focused on the gear shift, and put it in reverse. Setting her teeth against the pain of looking out farther than her nose, she zoomed backward, sliding the other body off her hood as she went.
She never heard or saw the third one, the one seated directly behind her. She barely even got a good glimpse of his knife before it plunged into her heart. But she heard his voice most clearly, as if it were the only sound in the world. "Luke was stupid not to kill you in the first place." And as she sank for the last time into the enveloping darkness:
"They're all more fun dead, anyway."
****
Nick had been prowling the city in ever-widening circles, listening for the slightest sound that could lead him to Natalie. He had searched by air for as long as he could, in all the nearby cities and towns, and he still couldn't hear her. Then he tried a different approach. He started scanning by sight for her car, her hair... until he suddenly realized, to his horror, that he couldn't remember what she had been wearing that day. The tension of hours of searching, kept carefully hidden, came abruptly to a head as Nick's hands began to shake, and he felt panic begin to forcibly set in. Stupid, stupid! What in God's name was she wearing today? This was not a trick question! Green, blue, brown, pick a color. His palms ground into his eyes in an effort to force the information out. Had he not even gone to see her today? Could that really be the answer? How could he not go to visit? How could he forget? He always visited her, always. Every day.
Every day except today. Nick landed on a nearby roof and waited a moment till his thoughts regained some order; clasped his hands in front of him, and willed them not to shake. There were dozens of perfectly reasonable things she could be doing right now. She could have just decided to visit a friend, and had forgotten to tell him. She could be at a birthday party that had completely slipped his mind. She'd meet him in the morning with a disapproving look, and a small piece of cake to watch him force down as penance. She'd be all right.
She'd be all right.
But when Nick lifted into the air, and resumed his search, his hands were still shaking.
***
It didn't take him long to find her car, once he was looking over the right area. There wasn't much around in the way of people or supplies because, as much as some people might wax philosophical about the good old days when there were less people around to muck things up, the human is far too social an animal to enjoy solitude for long. Only a very few have the temperament for it.
The front end of the car looked pretty banged up, even from this height. Then he saw two specks nearby. They weren't... Nick fell like a shot to the ground, and carefully examined them. No. Neither one was Natalie. He carefully circled the place, keeping his footprints apart from the rest in the shallow cover of snow. If they could get a team out here, they might even be able to pull some footprints off of some of them, a clinical portion of his mind remarked. But he saw no sign of Natalie. She must have gotten away. She must have. It was then, as he turned the last corner of the house, and approached the car from the other side, that he saw her.
Nick found himself sitting next to her. He gently brushed her hair out of her eyes, but the matted frozen blood simply made it break off when he moved it. A part of his mind catalogued the cause of death, estimated time since death... all the details stored themselves away to a place in his mind that was far away from where he kept Natalie. He watched himself as if from a great distance, some far-off place where it somehow wouldn't matter. He could see himself, and her, still and cold in the blowing wind, the trees swaying, their branches clicking together, and he was silently amazed at how seamlessly life flowed around and past him, moving on when he could not.
And so he sat, and looked at her, and wordlessly raged against the blowing of the wind, that reminded him that time was passing, that he needed to get up, to report the scene to the proper police, to take notes of what he found as he found it. To put her face behind him. Forever.
Nick Knight sat in a dusting of snow, and held a dead body tightly, for no good reason at all.
So deep in shock was he, that he barely noticed her first gasp of breath against his chest, and her frozen hand clench his tightly. He only heard her whisper his name, before she succumbed to a fit of coughing, and began to shiver violently in the winter air.
When she finally got her breath again, her first words were, "Nicholas B. Knight, if you brought me across, I am going to kill you." A final coughing jag hit, "Twice."
Nick's eyes brimmed with tears, and he hugged her tightly enough to break ribs.
Nick picked up the phone and speed dialed Natalie's number again. And again, it rang exactly four times, then the machine cut in with the exact same recording. And again, Nick left the exact same message he had the last three times he called, and hung up.
He sighed. She was definitely ignoring him. And, as usual, he had absolutely no idea which of his innumerable faults she'd decided were pissing her off that day. And, also as usual, she probably wouldn't tell him until she'd cooled off, in which case it wouldn't matter anymore. And the entire thing would be forgotten, at least until it came up again. Nick shook his head, and sighed again.
There was, of course, the possibility that Lacroix had finally decided that his little fit of altruism had worn off, and was draining her right now as he sat... yeah, right. He rubbed his eyes, and cursed an overactive imagination. The entire idea was idiotic. Why would Lacroix choose now, when he could have struck easily so many times before? Unless...
Lacroix had had so much more time to see the two of them together recently. Especially when he had been possessed. He (part of him rebelled at the idea of recognizing any part of the demon that had possessed him as part of his own self, but he had to be honest, with himself, if no one else) had thrown Lacroix across the room with hardly a second thought, yet found the strength to banish the demon, rather than harm a hair on Natalie's head. What other explanation could there be, than a man in love?
He grabbed his coat, and started for the door. He knew perfectly well that she would not be happy to see him. She would meet him with that cool stare that bored right through him, and uninterestedly ask him to come in. Or she might just slam the door in his face. But she would be all right, and Natalie angry was infinitely preferable to Natalie dead.
***
Nick pulled up to Nat's apartment. Her car space was empty. He kept telling himself that didn't mean anything, nothing at all. She went out to get Sydney more catnip, or something. That's all it was. Besides, he wasn't sure if Lacroix even knew how to drive. And even if he did, he would never stoop so low as to use one to dump a body. He looked up at her window. A light was on, but Natalie always left a light on, so it always looked like someone was home. Again, it meant nothing. He strained his ears, listening. Softly Sydney meowed at the door. Sydney got his food as soon as Natalie got home in the evening, so he never failed to sit and wait by the door for her to get there.
Sydney was still meowing. She had never gotten there.
Nick took to the air in an instant, pushed out all other thoughts, and concentrated on listening to the city. Usually he tuned out the majority of the noise, just for sanity's sake. Too much information at once usually wasn't a problem most people had to face, but to them it was occasionally a real danger. The first things he had learned in his new life were to keep out others' thoughts, and to keep out others' noise. It was one of the many things you learn to mimic, to appear more human. But now he let all that go for a moment, and really, truly listened, to everything and everyone. Rats scurried next to the garbage cans beneath him, dogs howled forlornly down the block. As his range expanded, tires screeched, horns blared. And the people! Crying, laughing, talking, screaming. It was a trick he rarely used, and now he remembered why. Sometimes it felt like he could hear every sound in the city, every screech, whine, howl, and whimper. It lent itself so easily to the feeling of godhood, when it was simply a useful tool to aid in the kill. To hear the heart of the prey. Occasionally, as now, it had its uses. That was all. He closed his eyes, and pretended that his heart didn't leap at the feeling of power, in joy and in fear. A tool. That was all.
And though he listened with all his might, ten miles of solid sound, he couldn't hear a whisper of her.
***
"Hello, Detective Vetter speaking."
"Tracy? It's Nick. I want you to put out an APB on Natalie's car."
God, did she ever hate that authoritative tone of voice. It never failed to remind her of her father, and bring out the worst in her. "A... All right. But isn't she at home by now?"
"I'm at her place now. It looks like she never got home."
Tracy's brow knotted instantly. How did he know that? "But, Nick..."
"And odds are that she's out of the city, so focus your search outside the metro area."
Her jaw dropped at that. What did this guy use for clues, a Ouija board? "Nick, what is going *on*?" But he had already hung up. She glared at the receiver for a moment. She knew perfectly well she was being snowballed. But he wasn't going to get away with it this time. She quickly put out the APB, then grabbed her coat and ran for her car, trying to remember where exactly Natalie lived again...
The caddy was parked in front of Natalie's apartment, but Nick was predictably nowhere to be found. What he thought he could do on foot in the snow, who knew? Natalie's place was locked tight, so how could he have known that she wasn't just asleep, or hurt? Maybe he had a spare set of keys. Not enough clues, Vetter, you're spinning your wheels...
Tracy was so sick of trailing after her partner like an unwanted sibling, she could just... impulsively, she lashed out with one foot and kicked the bumper of Nick's car. It felt good enough that she kept right on going. "Darnit! My *stupid* partner and his *stupid* secrets, his *stupid* arrogance, and his *stupid* half-ass self-reliance! He's going to get himself *killed* with this crap! His partner? No, apparently, I'm just the nearest convenient *phone* operator!"
She peered at the section of bumper she'd been beating on. Not a scratch. Of course. She resisted the temptation to kick it again, and stalked back to her car. Time to go back to work. Where she could sit by the phone and wait for His Highness to clue her in.
"Jerk."
***
Natalie finally found the side street they were looking for, after a couple wrong turns to make time for someone to figure out she was gone. She knew it wasn't much, but even a little more time certainly wasn't going to hurt her. But she could only stall so long, and they did eventually turn and make their way up the long driveway. The actual house was about half a mile in from the road. The idea of clearing the road of snow was a joke, so it seemed that whoever lived there either didn't use it in winter, or didn't mind being stuck inside once the snow fell. This week had been particularly bad for weather - it had been clear, sunny, and wickedly cold. So even though snow should have fell long before, the ground wasn't very icy, and they had no trouble navigating the road in Natalie's small city car.
She finally saw the house up ahead, and blissfully there was a long stretch of road leading up to it that was very straight and flat. Perfect. She tried to remember as clearly as she could exactly what had happened when they all loaded into her car. Her memory was kind of hazy once she saw the knife, but she was fairly certain none of them had put their seat belts on.
She slowly drove to the flat stretch, took one deep breath for courage, and hit the accelerator as hard as she could. All three of the boys were thrown backward, yelling and cursing. But by the time they could retaliate, she slammed her car into the side of the house at full speed. She caught the faintest glimpse of bodies flying past... then she smacked her head on the steering wheel, and slumped forward, unconscious.
***
Natalie groggily raised her head, and tried to remember exactly where she was. Her eyes slowly focused on the steering wheel in front of her, an impressive dent where she'd bashed her head against it. But that didn't really help her figure out where she was. Next she tried to focus on something a little farther, outside the car. A wave of nausea almost persuaded her that it wasn't worth it, but she thought she could see something. Something on her hood... she squinted her eyes to see more clearly, because it looked an awful lot like a body, which of course was crazy. What would a dead man be doing lying on top of her hood...?
Memory returned in a jolt of adrenaline, which did her headache no good at all, and she winced. She quickly scanned for the other two, ignoring the way her eyes swam whenever she moved her head. She could get out of here with a concussion, if she had to. But I don't have to enjoy it, she thought, as a particularly large spike dug into her forehead, right *there*. She caught sight of another of them, lying next to the side of the house, with his face toward her. He was obviously dead.
But it was pointless to try to find them. Her first priority was to get the hell out of Dodge, and call for an ambulance, police, whatever. Bring in the cavalry, and never ever drive down this road again. Fortunately the car was still running, which meant she had some gas left in her tank. Having no clue how long she'd been out, she'd better assume that it was just about gone. Better use it while she could. Slowly, methodically she focused on the gear shift, and put it in reverse. Setting her teeth against the pain of looking out farther than her nose, she zoomed backward, sliding the other body off her hood as she went.
She never heard or saw the third one, the one seated directly behind her. She barely even got a good glimpse of his knife before it plunged into her heart. But she heard his voice most clearly, as if it were the only sound in the world. "Luke was stupid not to kill you in the first place." And as she sank for the last time into the enveloping darkness:
"They're all more fun dead, anyway."
****
Nick had been prowling the city in ever-widening circles, listening for the slightest sound that could lead him to Natalie. He had searched by air for as long as he could, in all the nearby cities and towns, and he still couldn't hear her. Then he tried a different approach. He started scanning by sight for her car, her hair... until he suddenly realized, to his horror, that he couldn't remember what she had been wearing that day. The tension of hours of searching, kept carefully hidden, came abruptly to a head as Nick's hands began to shake, and he felt panic begin to forcibly set in. Stupid, stupid! What in God's name was she wearing today? This was not a trick question! Green, blue, brown, pick a color. His palms ground into his eyes in an effort to force the information out. Had he not even gone to see her today? Could that really be the answer? How could he not go to visit? How could he forget? He always visited her, always. Every day.
Every day except today. Nick landed on a nearby roof and waited a moment till his thoughts regained some order; clasped his hands in front of him, and willed them not to shake. There were dozens of perfectly reasonable things she could be doing right now. She could have just decided to visit a friend, and had forgotten to tell him. She could be at a birthday party that had completely slipped his mind. She'd meet him in the morning with a disapproving look, and a small piece of cake to watch him force down as penance. She'd be all right.
She'd be all right.
But when Nick lifted into the air, and resumed his search, his hands were still shaking.
***
It didn't take him long to find her car, once he was looking over the right area. There wasn't much around in the way of people or supplies because, as much as some people might wax philosophical about the good old days when there were less people around to muck things up, the human is far too social an animal to enjoy solitude for long. Only a very few have the temperament for it.
The front end of the car looked pretty banged up, even from this height. Then he saw two specks nearby. They weren't... Nick fell like a shot to the ground, and carefully examined them. No. Neither one was Natalie. He carefully circled the place, keeping his footprints apart from the rest in the shallow cover of snow. If they could get a team out here, they might even be able to pull some footprints off of some of them, a clinical portion of his mind remarked. But he saw no sign of Natalie. She must have gotten away. She must have. It was then, as he turned the last corner of the house, and approached the car from the other side, that he saw her.
Nick found himself sitting next to her. He gently brushed her hair out of her eyes, but the matted frozen blood simply made it break off when he moved it. A part of his mind catalogued the cause of death, estimated time since death... all the details stored themselves away to a place in his mind that was far away from where he kept Natalie. He watched himself as if from a great distance, some far-off place where it somehow wouldn't matter. He could see himself, and her, still and cold in the blowing wind, the trees swaying, their branches clicking together, and he was silently amazed at how seamlessly life flowed around and past him, moving on when he could not.
And so he sat, and looked at her, and wordlessly raged against the blowing of the wind, that reminded him that time was passing, that he needed to get up, to report the scene to the proper police, to take notes of what he found as he found it. To put her face behind him. Forever.
Nick Knight sat in a dusting of snow, and held a dead body tightly, for no good reason at all.
So deep in shock was he, that he barely noticed her first gasp of breath against his chest, and her frozen hand clench his tightly. He only heard her whisper his name, before she succumbed to a fit of coughing, and began to shiver violently in the winter air.
When she finally got her breath again, her first words were, "Nicholas B. Knight, if you brought me across, I am going to kill you." A final coughing jag hit, "Twice."
Nick's eyes brimmed with tears, and he hugged her tightly enough to break ribs.