Date: Sat, 25 May 1996 19:18:33 +0000
From: Lisa Wolters <redjasper@earthlink.net>
Subject: *LK SPOILERS* ...about last knight (1/1)

<<<<< LAST KNIGHT SPOILERS AHEAD >>>>>
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DISCLAIMER:
I'm not sure which corner of my brain this story came from.
I'm not sure I want to know. It offers *a* scenario among
many possible ones, okey-doke? If you feel the need to hit
or flame, I'll be wearing my extra-padded, fire-proof
suit. In other words, please send feedback!  :)=
 
 
 
...about last knight (1/1)
by L.A. Wolters   (redjasper@earthlink.net)
 
 
Natalie shivered as she drifted back to consciousness, feeling
dizzy and disoriented. Something cold and immovable was
pressed against her side and slung across her. She managed to
get her eyes open, and focused on a pale hand on her breast.
A dead hand, the coroner in her processed automatically just
before the rest of her gave an inadvertent "Oh!" and tried to throw
off the covers and bolt. The room started to spin.
   She blinked and pinched her eyes shut, throwing out one hand to
steady herself. She grabbed the cold, solid thing, and trained her
still-blurry vision on it. An arm. Her eyes traveled farther up.
Nick, eyes closed, on his back. Not dead, then, but undead, and
asleep. But dried blood everywhere, mostly around Nick's
midsection, and an irresitable, hard-to-place odor... Natalie shook
her head, and gasped "Oh!" again as her unsteady focus rested on the
being who sat in a chair by the bed.
   "Dr. Lambert," LaCroix acknowledged her coldly.
   "Wha--?" Natalie started to ask, but her throat was
sandpaper-dry.
   LaCroix handed her a bottle. She snatched it instinctively. As she
drank, her entire body shook, as much from fear and realization as
first hunger. It was empty too soon. LaCroix handed her another
bottle, then another, and another. She finished the last one, and
started to gag. Her eyes flew open; the room--Nick's bedroom--had
taken on a red glow, and her gums itched unbearably. She raised her
hands to touch her new fangs, and stared at LaCroix with wild eyes.
   He raised an eyebrow. "It's cow. Horrible stuff, and insufficient
for your current needs, but it was all he had left. Oh, well."
   "You brought me across?" she asked. That provoked a small,
pained grimace from him.
   "No. That was Nicholas' doing. It was, of course, accidental. He
never was good at family planning."
   Natalie nodded absently. The room was starting to spin again. She
licked her lips; she was still hungry. "What's happened to Nick?" she
asked, running a trembling hand over his cheek in a caress that was
both tender and clinical.
   "Something quite permanent, I'm afraid."
   She focused again on his bloody shirt, on the gaping wound in his
chest. She frowned. "He's not healing," she said in a confused voice.
   LaCroix reached over and grabbed Natalie by the back of her hair.
"No, doctor, he is not. And will never heal now. Nicholas is <dead>,"
he snarled, and pushed her forward so that she fell onto Nick.
   "No," she whispered. "No. He can't be dead. His...body...is still here."
She touched his skin, so ashen, and sensed that LaCroix was right.
Nick <was> dead. But the wound... "It didn't hit his heart. How can
this be?" she frowned, trying to sound detached and failing
miserably.
   "He was...mortal...apparently," LaCroix sneered.
   "Oh, my God," Natalie murmured. "You murdered him."
   He yanked her from the bed by the elbow and threw her across the
room.
   "I <immobilized> him!" he countered. "If it weren't for you, that is
<all> the staking would have done to him. He thought you were dead,
dear, sweet Natalie, and so did I at that moment. He begged me to
kill him so he could join you. That would <not> do. Nicholas was
beyond reason, and so I reverted to a more...persuasive...method of
counteracting his suicidal tendencies. Unfortunately, his heart
stopped beating at the moment of impact. Cardiac arrest, I believe.
There was no chance to bring him back over."
   Natalie slid down the wall, blood tears streaming down her face.
Nick was dead. She was a vampire. Janette's cure had worked, but in
a way neither of them could ever have anticipated. She wanted to
die.
   "Why don't you kill me?" she sobbed.
   "Because you've asked me to," LaCroix shrugged. "And because
living will be so much more painful for you than dying." He crossed
to her and knelt to cup her chin.
   "It doesn't have to be, you know. It was for Nicholas, because he
resisted. But that is not always our way." He appraised her
slowly, as one would examine a new purchase. "It wasn't so for
Janette, and it would not have been for..." He drifted off, and
shocked her by smiling, not a feral smile, but something almost
soft. "For Fleur."
   Natalie squirmed under the intense gaze of those ice-blue eyes,
then held herself still as LaCroix took a strand of her hair and
wound it between his fingers. As much as she wished to die now,
she knew in her heart that it was a lie. Suicide, she thought, never
<was> an answer. Somehow, she would have to survive, to try to
make up for the horrible wrong she had wrought last night.
   "You are all I have left of them," LaCroix whispered. Natalie's
breathing was shallow, her eyes wide with fear and something else.
As he leaned forward to kiss the tears from her cheeks, she closed
her eyes to block the sight of Nick laid out on his bed, and silently
begged for his forgiveness, and prayed that he, at least, had found
peace.
 
 
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