I've been feeling rather guilty about what I did to Nick and Nat in
Breaks the Dawn.  Perhaps this will begin to make amends.  Many thanks to
Jen Lackey, my faithful editor, who both approves and improves everything
I write.  Comments solicited to welshkin@dfw.net.
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One Brief Shining Moment
 
by Sarah Welsh
 
 
Reaching out, Natalie quickly switched off the alarm before it could
wake Nick.  She kept the clock radio turned low anyway; it took very
little to wake her.  Once the sun came up, her body switched on to
standby mode, only waiting for those first few bars of song to power on
entirely.  A revolt against all those years on the night shift, she supposed.
Now that she slept nights, she reveled in the hours of daylight.  It was
quite a change.
 
Turning carefully in bed, she looked down at Nick beside her.  His face
was slackened in sleep, his mouth slightly open, his hair tousled against
the pillow.  She smiled down at him.  She could just barely trace the
beginnings of crinkles at the corners of his eyes, and he was losing his
hair ever so slightly at the temples.  The signs of age in him were
precious.  Softly, she smoothed his hair back from his face.  He stirred
slightly and made a reluctant morning noise at the back of his throat as
his eyes blinked open.
 
She grinned down at him.  "Morning, sunshine."
 
He grunted.  "Mmph.  What time is it?"
 
"Six o'clock.  Go back to sleep.  You don't have to be in until this
afternoon."
 
"No, no," he muttered vaguely.  "I'll get up.  Give me a minute."
 
Nat slithered off the bed.  "I'll be in the shower."
 
When she came out of the bathroom, he had rolled over, his arm cradled
over his head as if to shut out the morning.  He was dead to the world
again.  She smiled to herself.  Nick was definitely not much of a morning
person.  Of course, considering his history, it was a miracle he was a
morning person at all.  She slipped quietly into her clothes and headed
for the kitchen.
 
She was rinsing out her cereal bowl at the sink when Nick staggered
down the stairs.  He hadn't combed his hair and was wearing a ratty
bathrobe loosely tied around his waist.  He rubbed a fist across his
sleepy eyes and rasped, "...Coffee?"
 
She grinned as she poured him a steaming mugful and handed it to him
as she crossed the loft to get her coat.  "You didn't have to get up, you
know."
 
The caffeine hit him in a wave, and he blinked a few times before heading
to the kitchen to poke around for some breakfast.  "Sure I did.  If a guy
can't get up to see his wife off to work...."  He came up cheerfully with a
powdered donut and took a bite.
 
"Hey, hey, hey!"  Nat spoke sharply.  "You better watch out for those
things.  You're gonna end up on Schanke's diet if you eat too many of
those."  She swept back across the loft to pick up her car keys.  They
had kept the Cadillac for purely sentimental reasons but rarely drove it.
 
Nick's eyes were wide and innocent.  "Are you trying to imply that I'm
gaining weight?"
 
"Well, you know I only married you for your boyish good looks," Natalie
joked.
 
Nick came up behind her and enclosed her in his arms.  "Well, I'd better
be careful then.  Because I don't know what I'd do if you left me."
 
Nat laughed.  "Not a chance.  You should be so lucky, buster."  She
closed her eyes half-way as Nick began to nuzzle soft kisses along the
side of her neck.  "Oh, Nick," she purred.  "You have got to get over
this neck fetish."
 
He cracked up.  "You sure know how to ruin a moment, Nat."
 
She grinned.  "No time this morning.  I'm about to be late as it is."
 
He kissed her again, long, softly, and deeply.  "I love you."
 
"I know," she murmured back.  With one arm, he held her to him, while
the other hand felt its way downward to curve around the soft swelling
where his child lay.  Her hand found his there, and their fingers
intertwined against the bulge that was their own version of immortality.
 
Janette sat barricaded against the daylight in the dark heart of her club
and contemplated the picture in its golden frame.  She thought back to
when Nicolas had ventured into the Raven to give it to her.  It had been
one of the few times he had been there after he crossed back.  It still
shocked her to see the pink of his flesh, hear the quick pitter-patter of his
mortal heart.  His weakness astonished her; when she had accepted the
gift, her cool, firm fingers had brushed his own and been amazed at their
soft warmth.  She was glad he had not been there often; it sorrowed her
to see and feel the tangible evidence of his separation from her.
 
The picture had been taken a few months after the marriage.  They had
been on a picnic, of all things, with his abominable partner and his family.
The child, Jenny, had joined a photography club at her school and was
never without a camera.  Nicolas and his doctor were seated in a field
of tall grasses, yellowed with the season, spotted here and there with late
wildflowers.  They were in profile, their attentions absorbed by some
trivial event that had just happened off-camera.  Nicolas was dressed in
a casual white tunic, a gift from his wife.  He never used to wear white
very often, a part of his penance, she guessed, for his supposed sins.  He
was stretched out on the blanket, one arm holding him up, the other
thrown around Natalie's shoulders.  His mouth was partly open as if he
had been captured on the verge of speech.  The sun was caught shining
in the gold of his hair.  Janette could not remember seeing anything so
bright.
 
She raised her eyes to see LaCroix strewn casually over a couch on the
other end of the room.  He plucked idly at his rebec, picking out
snatches of  a tune that had been old a thousand years earlier.  Feeling
her regard, he looked up and met her eyes.  Laying the instrument aside,
he rose from his couch.  "Soon now," he promised.  Between them, on a
table in the middle of the room lay the young, strong body of a fair-
haired young man.  The wounds on his neck were already beginning to
heal.  It had not been difficult to find him; they had kept track.  How
fitting that it was all beginning again in Toronto, the city where Nicolas
himself had died, not the in the clean, spare ash of the vampire, but
consigned to the cold, damp rot of a mortal grave.  She examined his
clear, strong face.  So like his great-grandfather.  The young man stirred
on the table, and Janette's fingers turned the picture on whose frame they
still rested face down.  "Say good-bye to the light, Nicolas," she
whispered.