She heard Nick's voice downstairs. As her fog cleared she realized she was alone in the big bed. She remembered reaching once for Nick while half-awake, and retreating immediately from the chill of him. Now she strained to find a clock, discovering one over her shoulder on the bookshelf. Just after 3pm. She hadn't slept that late, that soundly, well she had no idea when. She stretched experimentally, finding no end or edges to the bed. Damn. This cop knew how to live, even if he weren't quite alive. He knew how to sleep, anyway. She crawled out of bed, not bothering to pull on jeans. Hey, they'd slept in the same bed, after all, and her t shirt was long enough to cover what needed to be covered. She ventured downstairs carefully, still waking up, rubbing the sleep out of her eyes.
"Just Nick? You got anything resembling coffee down here?" She smelled it at the same time she said it, and two heads
in the living room turned to see her. Two heads. Whoops. She was near the bottom of the stairs when she saw the guy with the receding hairline sitting in the cushy leather armchair across from the sofa. He wore an off the rack type Euro suit, and held a paper cup of coffee he had obviously brought in with him. Nick was dressed in black jeans and white shirt, open necked this time. It was way too late for her to retreat, so she just stopped where she was.
"Uh, hi there." The other guy's expression as he looked from Maura to Nick said he'd found the mother lode in terms of harassment potential. His eyebrows went up, and a grin of joyous discovery spread ear to ear.
"So, Nick, aren't you gonna introduce me to your new friend?" He rose and approached the stairs. Giving up, she descended the rest of the way and stood before him, refusing to be embarrassed. Nick was looking at him with an acerbic expression. Thank goodness he'd gotten up before she did.
"Don Schanke," the man said, extending his hand in exaggerated graciousness and looking back at Nick. "I'm Nick's partner. His work partner." Nick rolled his eyes and got to his feet.
She wasn't sure she heard right. "Skanky?" she echoed. Nick suppressed a laugh as his partner blustered, "Schanke, with a c-h, okay?"
"Sorry." She shook his hand firmly. "Maura Logue, I'm Nick's guest for a couple of days. I work at Raven, and his friend Janette asked if he could take me off her hands. I've been living in the office for the past week, just got to town and no time to find my own place yet."
Schanke's "yeah, sure," smile was firmly in place. "Nice." He turned to Nick, who had come to stand near them. "That's nice Nick, I know you're not much for extended company. So far, anyway. So Maura, hope you like red wine, it's all he has in the house."
She groaned. "Shoulda gone to the all-night place before we got here. Gawd, I can't live without coffee in the morning."
Schanke looked confused. "It's after 3."
She gave him her "look", one that anyone could recognize, that said "duh". "I work nights, just like you guys. Anytime I get up is morning." She turned on Nick. "Jee sus, Nick, you mean you don't even have coffee for guests?"
"Ran out," he said lamely, then took Schanke's nearly-full cup from him. "Here. Schanke drinks too much coffee. Affects his judgment," he looked sharply at his partner, and stilled his protests with, "Myra said so, remember? It makes you cranky, and nobody likes a cranky Schanke. Schank just came over to discuss some case stuff. He never remembers to call," glaring, "do you?"
"Well I always know when you're home. I just didn't expect you'd have a 'guest'." Maura could see he was very glad he didn't call this time. They all stood staring at one another until Nick took Schanke's arm and propelled him to the door.
"Thanks for coming by, we can use this information when I come in tomorrow. After my day off." He had the poor guy halfway out the door, calling over his shoulder, "Nice to meet you, Maura..." to which she replied as Nick slid the door shut behind him with a bang, "Uh, same here. Thanks for the coffee!"
Nick ran his hands over his face as he returned from the door. "Well I think that went well, don't you?"
"Don't fight it. Adds to the air of mystery."
He stopped and stared at her. "Just what I need. More mystery."
"No kidding though, do you have anything here besides Chateau Moo-du-Pape?"
"Nope. I wasn't expecting me to have guests, either. Get dressed and we can go shopping. But first we'll go see my friend Natalie and discuss your body odor problem."
She gave him a look. "Excuse me?"
He tipped her a wink as she went upstairs to change. "Only your best friends will tell you."
The sun had just sunk beyond the Toronto skyline as they got into the car. "This is a pretty cool ride," she told him, "but the color is butt-ugly."
He looked wounded. "It's classic. Besides, people don't steal butt-ugly cars," he explained. When they got to the coroner's office he led the way to Natalie's autopsy lab. "I'll check first to see she's not with a 'client'," he offered, not wanting her upset by some cadaver in mid-dissection.
She stepped with him to the door. "As long as he can't get up, I'll be fine." He'd forgotten what she was and what she'd experienced.
The petite woman with the wildly curly brunette hair lit up as they entered. "Nick! Where have you been?" The light flickered a bit when she saw Maura bringing up the rear.
"Nat, this is Maura Logue." As Maura extended her hand, Natalie pulled off a rubber glove to shake it.
"Natalie Lambert. I've heard of you already."
Natalie cast a meaningful glance at Nick. "Schanke came by to say hello."
He shook his head wearily. "And a whole lot more, I'm sure."
Ignoring this, she spoke to Maura. "So what brings you to Toronto? Schanke said you work at Raven. Rough trade for a newcomer."
Maura shrugged. "I manage security. If you've done it in Boston and Vancouver like I have, nothing much else seems all that rough."
Natalie's eyebrows rose. "A bouncer. Nick, are you expecting trouble at your place?"
Maura could see things were not going to warm up quickly. "I'm not a 'bouncer', Dr. Lambert. I hire and manage them, and work out logistics for security and safety, evacuation in case of emergency, things like that."
"Still, you don't find Raven a little out of the ordinary?"
Maura could tell that Natalie figured she knew nothing about the true nature of the place or its clientele. Or Nick.
"Not in my experience." she answered truthfully, and changed the subject. "Nick tells me you got to know each other through work. Did you meet on a case?"
Nick smiled archly, indicating the autopsy table. "We met on a slab. At least that's where I was." Natalie's eyes widened in shock. "She knows, Nat. She knows about all of it."
Natalie was completely taken aback. She'd never heard of this woman, and though she suspected they'd only just recently met it was obvious there was some connection between her and Nick. "Then she's," then turning to Maura, "you're..."
"No, I'm not. But I have what could be termed an 'ancillary condition'." As she told her story, Natalie forgot her suspicions and was drawn into the puzzle as she had been drawn into Nick's. At least to her it was a puzzle, with an eventual solution. Maura saw her own situation, and Nick's, as a casual if difficult fact of existence.
"Do you mind if I take a blood sample?" she asked Maura. "I'd like to look into this." There might be some link between this and Nick's condition, and she wondered if there were mutual answers to be found.
"No problem." Maura pulled up her sleeve as Natalie prepared a needle.
"I'm still pretty good with live patients," she tried to reassure Maura, who tipped her head back and laughed. Nick shut his eyes for just a second, luxuriating in it. Natalie saw.
"Are you kidding?" Maura inquired, "a needle is a welcome change."
Natalie's clinical curiosity was again displaced by a curt demeanor. "Yes, well, the company we keep, and all that."
"Come on, Nat," Nick objected. "She's told you the reasons."
"Right, Nick. Safety. Familiarity. Understanding. But tell me," she turned on Maura again, "why would a living breathing vampire addiction attach herself to a vampire except to addict him? To control him?"
Maura stood abruptly. She'd been willing to let Natalie's catty comments slide at first, but was finding herself too impatient to wait for Nick's friend to get educated. He hadn't told her the nature of their relationship and she didn't much care. "You call what I've lived with 'control'? You think a hooker controls her pimp? You think a gang rape victim 'controls' her rapists? This is not my fault, Doctor. My veins flow with fucking vampire aphrodisiac, and I give off my own pheromone to advertise it. All of it against my will. Now Janette just introduced me to Nick here last night,"
Natalie cut her off as she turned to Nick. "Janette! What a surprise. It was only a matter of time before she fixed you up with a playmate. What luck she comes with her own recreational drug supply."
"That's enough Nat." Nick warned, offended, and took Maura's arm to leave. She shook him off.
"No, goddammit. You're not my keeper!" She whirled on Natalie. "I met Nick last night. We talked, and he offered me a place to hide out during high season. Yeah, Janette definitely had something in mind pretty much like you said. She's all about 'control', after all. But Nick took me in, gave me a safe place until I can figure out what to do. I'm not after anything from him, not even his armed protection. No secret, no excuses, I would give up anything to any one of his kind for the opportunity to be used by one and only one instead of being handed around like an open bottle, or attacked at will and left for dead. Until next time. And I have done it, plenty, or I wouldn't still be alive if you call this living. In fact, since you're so interested, I tried to make the same bargain with him," she pointed at Nick standing in the doorway, "and he said no. He said I never have to give myself up like that again because he won't use me and he won't sell me out. And it's gonna take a while, but I plan to believe him as soon as I can. And you, madame Doctor, can take your superior scientific attitude and shove it."
She pushed past Nick, leaving him and Natalie to regard each other with mutual disappointment for entirely different reasons. "She's telling the truth, Nat. It's the only way she's been able to survive."
"Until you came along." Her voice was cold, hard-edged.
He took a step into the lab. "You want me to be 'mortal', to become 'human'," he reminded her in a low, tight voice, "well biology is only part of the formula." He turned on his heel and went after Maura.
He found her in the car with the doors locked, fuming. "Some jerk was sniffing around," she told him when he used his key to get in.
"Must be that red hair," he tried to tease her out of it.
"Lucky me," she snapped, turning to nail him with an evil glare that said "don't even try". "I get the assholes for both reasons."
Nick tried to figure out how to characterize what just happened. "Natalie can be... protective where I'm concerned. We've been friends for some time."
"Protective," Maura observed acidly, "try 'proprietary'. She thinks she has the lock on who you are and how to 'cure' you and she thinks I'm threatening her experiment. She's trying to turn the beast back into a prince, and I might just get in the way of the payoff."
"It's not like that with us." He said it to everyone, it seemed. For him, at least, it was true.
"Tell her that." She cast an edgy look around. "Look, let's get some groceries and get back to your place before we have to beat the junkies off with a tire iron."
Nick drove them to Safeway and stuck close by her. It was an odd hour to shop, a bit late for after work and early for the night owls. He accompanied Maura with the air of someone visiting a museum. She made a beeline for the produce section, Nick trailing after. As she worked her way through carrots, pea pods, apples and pears, hefting and fingering each vegetable and fruit against an obvious inner meter, Nick realized something.
"You don't mean to tell me you're," he began.
"A vegetarian?" she finished brightly, brandishing a peach as if it were a shot put. "How the hell could you imagine anything else, with what I've been through?"
"So you've developed empathy with animals used for food," he observed sagely, or so he thought.
She approached and spoke so only he could hear, "I am an animal used for food. But that's not really it. It's not empathy, it's nausea. Anything connected with consuming flesh or blood at this point just creeps me out too much. Well I'm glad you find that amusing, M. Sommelier du Sang." Nick was laughing.
"I don't know, it's just rich. You live among," he whispered the word, "vampires, but you're a vegetarian?"
"Think of me as health food," she smirked, casting a longing look at the garlic bin that Nick gave wide berth to.
"Uh-uh. No garlic."
"But I love garlic," she whined, reaching like a frustrated child for a bulb of the elephant variety as Nick dragged her away.
"You'll get over it."
"Life as we know it isn't possible without garlic," she continued to protest as he led her to the checkout.
"Life as who knows it?" He pulled out his wallet.
"Wrong," she told him, pushing his hand back toward his pocket, "you're not gonna eat any of this stuff. I'm staying with you, but I'm paying for the groceries." She paused and added mischievously, "Except maybe the wine. Hey," she asked the young guy checking out, "You got any Chateau Moo du Pape?" The kid looked confused and was about to call the manager as Nick intervened.
"Pay no attention to her, she's late for her medication," he told the kid as he hustled her to the door.
"Hey, I didn't get my change!" she complained.
"He just earned it," and he opened the massive trunk so she could put her bags in, but the kid chased them out to the parking lot and handed the money to Nick as Maura was getting in the caddy.
"Hey mister, your wife forgot her change."
Nick took it and thanked him, then handed it to Maura who sighed, "Swell. Now I'm the bride of Dracula."
As he got behind the wheel he told her dismissively, "Vlad was a piker." She cracked up, and he looked very pleased with himself.
Back in Nick's kitchen, Maura found gorgeous china and silver stacked in the cabinets and drawers as if they were Corelle and Farberware. She held a Limoges dinner plate up to the light, the shadow of her hand showing through it.
"I don't think I want to know where this came from," she murmured.
"The court of Marie Antoinette and Louis XIV," Nick announced casually
"Yeah, right. How come I keep hearing about you guys hanging with Copernicus, and Shakespeare, and now Marie Antoinette? How come I never yet met a vampire who just shoveled shit at the village cow barn? You're all just like mortals who go in for the 'past lives' crap, everyone's a celebrity. Aside from some dietary differences and specialized 'allergies' you really aren't all that different. A poser is a poser, mortal or im."
Nick was regarding her with a most curious smile.
"What?" she insisted. "You know I'm telling the truth."
"No, it's not that. It's just that you talk about these things, about your life with and knowledge of creatures that most people either hate or fear or simply don't believe in, as if it's the most natural thing in the world."
"Isn't it?"
He considered this for a moment, and had to admit she was probably right. "I suppose it is, at that. For us. I'm just not used to hearing it that way." He reached into a drawer and took out the knife he somehow knew she was looking for.
"More things in heaven and earth Horatio," she reminded him.
"If I'm not careful I might learn something from you," he admonished, standing too close. The rush of fragrance, of vampire pheromone, nearly staggered him as his eyes flashed gold. "Whatever you do," he muttered a little too gutturally as he handed her the knife handle-first, "don't cut yourself." He retreated hastily to the living room as she prepared her fruit salad, taking a glass of blood with him.
"Oh baby, you have outdone yourself," she congratulated as she tossed the diced white peaches and pears in the mixture of yoghurt, honey, and nutmeg. Nick appeared at her side.
"How would you know?"
"I was talking about me. This is heaven in a bowl," she dipped her index finger and held it before him. "Taste. Come on, you are allowed to taste."
He knew she wasn't playing any game with him. She simply was incapable of questioning any of this as out of the ordinary. And she was right. Tasting wasn't consuming, and wouldn't do him any harm. He took her wrist in a light grip, and his eyes never leaving hers, slipped the tip of her finger between his lips. She was right about that, too. Heaven, only this time on warm flesh. It had been so long since he'd bothered, even though he could, he'd been both a gourmand and a glutton in his native France before... had loved the smell and taste and texture of all manner of foods. It was his sensualism in general that got him in trouble in the first place, wasn't it?
Maura felt the cool velvety tongue again as Nick drew her finger first in and then out of his slightly open mouth, felt the soft grip of cool lips as he held onto the yoghurt. The lightest scrape of teeth. Normal teeth, for now.
"Sweet," he barely whispered, or did she only hear him think it? He released her hand and returned to the sofa.
After eating in solitude while Nick read up some case notes, she rummaged through his DVD collection, finding a copy of "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari."
"Can we watch this?" she asked. He saw the title and smiled.
"Sure. It's been awhile since I've seen it."
"Lemme guess. You were assistant director."
"Nah. I was in Russia, shoveling shit for the Revolution."
"Ha, ha," she slipped the disk in the machine and found the right remote, "ha." Then flopped on the sofa next to him. A little too close, apparently, because he slid to the far end.
"Don't worry," she purred in a dead-on imitation of Janette, "I won't bite."
"It's not you I'm worried about. If you want popcorn, there's microwave stuff in the kitchen cabinet."
"Maybe later." She settled into the opposite corner of the impossibly cushy sofa, and made herself comfortable. "Where's the lights?" she asked. Nick reached for yet another remote and killed them, so they were lit only by the silvery glow of the black-and-white pictures flickering on the screen.
"I hope you're not a commentator," she confessed as the opening credits ran.
"Maybe later."
When the movie had ended and Nick faded the lights up a bit, he noticed Maura looking a little disoriented.
"What is it? You feeling all right?"
She looked at him as if struggling to process some foreign concept. "It's the new moon."
"Uh-huh." He tried not to let on he noticed the difference, and how hard it was to keep his distance.
"It's the new moon and I'm sitting with someone I like, someone I trust, watching a movie. I'm not running and knowing I won't get away, hiding in a dark corner, begging for mercy, and never escaping. I'm here, and I'm not terrified or wounded."
Nick smiled gently at her. "It's what you deserve, what anyone deserves."
She looked around, wonderingly. "Safe," she murmured.
"Safe," Nick echoed. And, lightening the mood, "Safe to go to bed, if you're tired. And I think you are."
She had to agree, not bothering to suppress an extravagant yawn. She said goodnight headed for the stairs, but stopped and returned to the sofa where she knelt in front of Nick, hands on his knees.
"Thank you," she told him earnestly, and looked at him very hard so he'd know what she meant. Just in case, she continued, "You think you know what you're doing here, but you don't. Even I can't explain how I feel right now, it's that new to me. You think you're just doing the right thing, helping out someone in trouble, but it's so much more than that."
Her proximity was making Nick supremely uncomfortable as he engaged in the vampire version of battling against a raging hard-on. He wanted her more than any mortal he had ever had, or wished he had. In a moment she sensed it, and took her hands off of him.
"Sorry. I don't want to make this more difficult for you."
The gentle smile again. "Don't worry. It's not more difficult than I allow it to be. Go on to bed. I'll sleep down here tonight."
He didn't have to tell her why. Her body was pumping out vampire pheromone like crazy and the only defense was distance. She wanted badly to give him a hug, a kiss goodnight, something to express what an enormous shift he'd made in her life, but she withdrew and, wishing him goodnight again, went upstairs to get ready for bed.
The shadow over shoulder didn't frighten her, nor the glowing golden eyes she turned to see gazing at her as she brushed her hair. His hand was outstretched, not quite touching, and she felt that he wanted her to push him away. She was convinced that if she told him to go he would find a way to comply. But she didn't want him to go.
"It's okay, Nicolas de Brabant," she told him quietly. "It's okay you're here. You brought me here, and you belong here."
She put down her brush and turned to face him again. For once in her haunted life it didn't feel like endless some variation on an inescapable theme. The look on his face was more desire than hunger, curiosity and need, not power. He was drawn to her as others were, but it was almost as much against his will as it had always been against hers. When he opened his mouth, barely, to speak she could see the fangs.
"I'm sorry," he breathed, his voice a deep echo, "I'm weaker than I thought."
"You're not anything you shouldn't be."
The glow in his eyes faded as a shadow of immeasurable sadness crossed his face.
"Don't," she took a step closer, and the glow returned, his breath modulating to a guttural purr. "It's okay, really. I want to know too." She took one of his cold hands and held it in both her own, blew on it as if she could warm him from outside, knowing she couldn't. His fingers closed on hers, gentle but humming with tension.
"I wanna know," she confessed, "what's it like to share instead of being robbed, and maybe held for once, just held, instead of subdued." She touched his face, and he turned his open mouth to rub his teeth against her palm. "Just this once, okay? Just this once." She said it as if it were her idea alone.
When she kissed him he pulled her hard against him and seized the back of her head with a snarl to hold her mouth to his. Cool, velvety tongue. It was an experiment, she lied to herself, and his strength didn't frighten her any more than the growling. The truth was this was the only semblance of passion she knew, an expression of connection that, though loveless, made human lovemaking seem childish and superficial. There had been a few who were less than violent, though far less than tender, and she'd taken what little solace there was to be had in close contact even as she was being used as a drug of choice. She knew she was likely expecting way too much from this Nick, but figured he might at least be more careful than most. If in the end there was a bargain to be struck, better with one who was given to self-reproach; it might be safer.
Nick had fought this, and in what was left of his logical brain he still did. He was a gentle 'man' in everyday terms but had never been a gentle vampire. He had seized, and immobilized, and drawn dry like his teacher, even when fooling himself by playing at romance. Maura was right, he wanted to know, was prized blood a myth, or a relief, or another road to hell. It had been so long since he had known mortal blood he feared what it might do to him, especially her blood, especially now. What he might do to her. That fear only fueled him.
It was Maura who propelled them to the bed, pushed Nick down on his back and lay atop him, pulled open his collar so she could kiss his throat where no pulse beat. Abruptly he grabbed her shoulders and held her away from him, eyes nearly blue again as he gained control of himself one last time.
"You want this..." he both asked and stated as a fact. She nodded.
"I wanna know," she whispered. "consent, I want to know consent…"
"Then we'll both know," he answered and rolled her to her back, leaning over, no longer trying to disguise the rumbling growls that escaped him. And she shut her eyes to feel him, covering her face and neck with kisses, giving her no room to respond. Kisses. She had never known them from the others, even the kinder ones, no kisses but the unavoidable lip-touch at the first bite. She'd forgotten what they felt like, if she ever really knew.
Any doubts Nick had were removed as she gripped him to pull him closer. "Show me," she muttered, "show me it's different now," and he ran his open mouth over and over, up and down the side of her neck, teasing her, teasing himself, holding the curiosity in anticipation, then reared back with a hiss and fell into her like a dream.
And the last lucid thought that flashed in her mind was, It doesn't hurt... but it always hurts... and then her head dropped against his arm as she breathed through half opened lips, "oh." Revelation.
Flowers and honey, the first human blood he he'd had in a hundred years, and it was nothing like he remembered. It used to taste metallic-sharp, exciting, it drove his madness higher until it was sated. This was... honey and flowers. She tasted as she smelled, sweet, rich beyond imagining. And, after barely a taste, he was drawn into a whirlpool of color and an intoxication beyond anything he'd ever felt. He'd had opium addicts, and absinthe drinkers, people whose blood was laced with hallucinogens and tainted with narcotics, and he'd felt their effects as he fed on them. This was different, this was floating weightless yet rushing beyond speed, instead of firing an insane passion it seemed to spin it into euphoria. No shame, no sin, no regret. And he knew her now, knew her completely, but unlike the others it didn't come to him in a frenzied rush of tumbling images. He felt it all, pain, shame, relentless determination to survive, saw every kindness and evil done and knew where it damaged and strengthened her. It came all at once and separately, and it came in an easy progress of time and sense he could never explain or understand. She didn't feed any hunger he'd known in 800 years, but satisfied an inexpressible craving that had never been apparent until it was being relieved. Finally, he could be gentle. The rough growling in his throat smoothed to a rumble, then a hum, his mouth working softly against her skin like an infant nursing.
Light, her head was filled with light, the darkness that had always swallowed her with the others wasn't dispelled so much as negated. Every nerve was calmed and fired simultaneously, every need triggered and fulfilled, she spun in aching slowness through a thick sea of color and sensation that made any physical pleasure she'd known pale in comparison. No fear, no pain, no regret. She felt herself growing farther away and in a very distant sense knew she was fading. She wasn't frightened. If after all the darkness and pain her own body had brought her she was to die now, suffused in light and pleasure with a gentle humming in her ears and an embrace that would not leave her bruised, it would be a welcome end.
Some final remnant of Nick's awareness told him to stop. He was not feeding his typical hunger, after all, there was no survival imperative or blood madness that kept him blind until his victim was near death. There was just enough left to remind him to be careful, to stop now, enough. With near physical pain he did stop, withdrew his fangs and pressed a tongue-tip into each tiny wound to stanch the flow of blood. The marks would fade in hours. He felt drugged but not weakened, still in the grip of a sensation he couldn't identify. It was as if he had consumed joy. Every dark corner had been lit, and shown to be empty of demons. Instinctively he knew the feeling would fade, but for now he was immersed in a state he had never known even in his before-life: peace. He rested his head against Maura's shoulder, and felt the tremble begin deep inside of her.
Cold. She felt it then, a core-deep cold that somehow didn't ache like the other times, spreading from her bones and seizing her with shaking. She felt a fiery heat outside of her. Nick, Nick was holding her close against him and sharing the blood-warmth she had given him. She was too weak to hold onto him, but he pulled the quilt around them and trapped his heat that went beyond any of the times he had drained bottle after bottle. Her head still fallen back on his cradling arm, she looked at him through half-opened eyes, seeing the gold in his cross over slowly to blue. He was smiling, a trace of her blood on his lips.
"Sweet," he pressed into her hair and cheek in a slurred whisper, "sweet." His lips burned her. She didn't care. He was keeping her warm instead of leaving her alone, and so very cold. Sharing instead of taking, giving some back of what she'd just given to him. Her trembling faded and she was lulled to sleep by his gentle grip and the quiet sound of his voice. "Sweet."
Somewhere in the next hours Maura separated from Nick as his body temperature cooled. She had recovered sufficiently from her blood loss (another "gift" was her body's ability to replenish itself fairly quickly if things didn't go too far) to regain some of her own body heat, and rolled away to settle into her own separate sleep. He wouldn't wake, wouldn't even stir in the barest consciousness, until well after sunrise. She knew his kind didn't need the same kind of restorative sleep as mortals did, it was more of a metabolic recovery, often not long after feeding. Sometimes those she knew rested only two or three hours, but their bodies shut down so completely it was the one time they were, truly, death-like. Maura had also learned that there was nothing magical about the hours that the sun was up, as long as its light could be avoided. She had even known one vampire who kept near-mortal hours, running a computer business from the bricked-up apartment building he'd purchased with the millions he'd accumulated in centuries of life. Because of his work and relationships with mortals Nick's habits tended to overlap the traditional day/night divide.
She woke slowly, easily, opening an eye to see only the tiniest crack in the blackness, where a harmless sliver of light leaked in at the corner of the blinds. The clock read ten-thirty. A short night's rest for most, but she had become accustomed to furtive sleep, wakened by sudden noises that may or may not have been harmless night sounds. This time, as the night before, she'd slept soundly. It felt like ten hours to her. When she climbed out of bed and lit the bedside candle she noticed the pinkish stains scattered on her t shirt. Nick's blood-tinted sweat. She peeled off the shirt and tossed it aside as she reached for his lush silk kimono where it was flung carelessly at the foot of the bed. Everything she found here felt so good against her skin... well he'd said at one moment or other that he'd been a sensualist when he was a mortal. This must be hangover, she figured. Vampire senses were, after all, more keenly sensitive than a mortal's.
She still felt a little dizzy, a little lazy. It was actually rather enjoyable, like the prolonged languor before waking. Except she was awake. And desperately thirsty. She knew she'd left apple juice in the fridge, so she went downstairs to the kitchen to get some.
The voices coming from the living room didn't register until she'd padded down the stairs to the living room calling, "Nick? Didn't get enough of German Expressionism last night?"
She never expected to find Natalie, obviously just arrived, showing him what looked like a medical file. After yesterday's bad beginning she didn't expect to see her here for some time to come.
"Hi, Natalie. Look, I want to apologize for my nasty outburst yesterday," she figured it was a good way to start, and really didn't think much about how she was dressed or where she'd come from. It was such an oft-repeated morning after scene she didn't think twice about the new context.
"Oh, that's," Natalie began, then shut up abruptly when she turned her head to face Maura. It wasn't that she didn't know the woman was staying here, in fact she'd decided that she'd been silly. Nick forged relationships differently than mortals, and this certainly was a different sort of mortal anyway. But there she was, obviously naked under Nick's robe, shiny red hair askew, smiling lazily if earnestly, the kimono wrapped carelessly and wide open at the neck. The neck. The marks that hadn't quite completely faded, surrounded by a round red bruise where he'd tried so hard to be subtle and failed so miserably. Even Nick seemed taken aback to see it. "Vampire hickies" Maura had always called them in the past; they could persist well after the bites healed.
Natalie looked from Maura to Nick, then back to Maura. "Well I see you two have gotten better acquainted," she shut the folder with an unsatisfying-sounding slap and turned to leave in a hurry. "I brought the blood test results by," she said tightly, "I'm sure any doctor could help you look them over." She was at the door and sliding it open before Nick could react. He looked sharply at Maura, who could do nothing but shrug, and ran after Natalie as she fled.
'Nat, come on, don't run off like this." He flew down the stairs and caught up with her as she came out of the freight elevator. She confronted him angrily.
"It looks like you're the one who's running off, away from everything we've been trying to do. For heaven's sake Nick, I don't blame her for finding shelter with someone she knows instinctively won't hurt her, for entering into the only arrangement she knows. But you," she broke off, struggling for words.
"You talk like I'm some kind of vile seducer. Or maybe you think Maura is. Nobody's taking advantage here, no matter what you think. And I'm not running off from what we've been trying to accomplish. I've come a long way, we both know that."
Natalie's reflexive rage seemed to be cooling, but her displeasure was not. "And you're thinking maybe it's far enough, aren't you? I know you, Nick, you're like a drunk who wants to be free of the hangovers but can't face the idea of never having another drink. It's why you keep the bottles, even as you half-heartedly try the things I come up with. You just can't let it go, no matter how much you think you want to be mortal. And now you have a new reason."
Much of what she said was true, but not all of it. "Nat, you can't understand what's happening here," but he was powerless to express it to her, because neither did he. He'd never experienced a more powerful joining, not with Janette, not with anyone. Though it appeared outwardly to be the start of yet another of Maura's protector/dependent arrangements, he knew they were meeting as equals.
"No, Nick, I can't. I'm sorry, but I can't. I'm gonna need a while to think about this." She turned and opened the front door. Nick stepped back reflexively as sunlight poured in just over the threshold.
"Nat, please, this can't be worth throwing our friendship away."
She didn't look at him as she left. "We're both going to have to figure out what it's worth, because right now I just don't know."
He stood watching as she drove away. When he returned to the loft Maura was standing in the doorway clutching his robe around her as if for protection. It was all about protection, wasn't it? Protection from danger, protection from life. Protection from such a dangerous and lonely life that neither one of them had ever suspected it could be otherwise. She went inside as she saw him approach. When he slid the door shut she was in the kitchen washing a wine glass. She didn't look at him as he entered.
"I'm sorry. That was stupid, I should have been more careful."
"She would have found out anyway. We're friends, we have no secrets."
"I think maybe there are better ways to find out, though, than me traipsing in like the Whore of Babylon."
He stepped in her way as she tried to leave the room. "You're nobody's whore."
"First time for everything." She pushed past him and went upstairs to get dressed. When she returned to the living room she grabbed a book randomly from Nick's collection, a history of mutinies. Rebellion, how appropriate. She sat on the sofa all day, sullen, reading silently. What a fucking world, she finally found what might be some escape from the hell she'd been living and even then something was going wrong. She indulged in some internal self-pity. Fucking vampires. Let 'em all take a walk in the sun.