Y-Incisions
by Sue O'Reilly
a Forever Knight story


Danny showed up about an hour into my shift at the precinct.  I 
swear she'll scare me on to my own table one of these nights, the 
way she appears out of nowhere like oiled smoke.  Evidently 
vampires have to *learn* to make a normal amount of noise when
they move and it's a skill that my young friend has yet to 
acquire.  She's been stopping in a few times a month lately, 
poking through instrument racks and medical books, asking the 
occasional question or simply watching me work.

You know, your neighborhood kid vampire popping in on your 
neighborhood coroner.  Just a normal night in the life of 
Natalie Lambert.

At first, I wondered why she was coming around.  I mean, 
stunning company aside, my office is hardly a prime choice of 
hangout for her kind, with their incredibly acute senses.  Nick 
himself has trouble tolerating some of the more decayed cases, 
and he's had plenty of practice.  It doesn't seem to affect 
Danny much, though.  Maybe it's another part of her strange 
metabolism, which from what I understand is the vampire 
equivalent of a brand-new genetic condition.  Or genetic 
disorder, as LaCroix seems to think.  I don't happen to share 
that particular point of view myself.  I would *love* to get a 
few blood and tissue samples to study, but that doesn't look 
like it will happen any time soon.  Such is life.

So, it took me some time to figure out her visits.  Longer than 
it should have, actually.  I guess I've become so accustomed to 
dealing with centuries-old vampires that I started looking for 
complicated reasons behind everything.

Danny misses school.  There are undoubtedly millions of kids who 
would rise up mighty and smite her if they heard that, but she 
does.  Kids are used to routine--even if it isn't always 
enjoyable--and she probably leads one of the most non-scheduled 
lives in existence.  LaCroix appears to give her free rein during 
the hours of his annoying little radio show, so it's up to Danny 
to amuse herself.  She's an intelligent kid, much sharper than 
her years.  Nick says she reads a lot, but it must get dull doing 
all your learning from books.  As a result I get an informal 
student once a week or so, and it's kind of nice.  Not many people
come looking for lessons in a morgue.

It's almost nice enough to make me forget that brand-new vampires 
can scare the willies out of you, without even meaning to do it.

I was doing a routine autopsy that was likely going to turn up 
heart disease as the cause of death.  The guy was pushing 
two-sixty and he had a drinker's roadmap on his nose and cheeks 
in sprays of burst capillaries, but he died alone and was 
therefore my responsibility.

Danny watched for maybe five minutes before losing interest.  
She'd seen me do a similar case last month and her vampire-perfect 
memory made it pointless to do any review.  God, what I wouldn't 
have done for that kind of retention during med school...anyway, 
she was wandering around the back of the room, exploring.  Kid's 
polite, too; she doesn't bother me with talk unless I initiate it.  
I require good manners from all my undead visitors, ha ha.

The man on my table was essentially a closed case after I got a 
good look at his heart.  The rest was standard procedure that I 
could almost do in my sleep--weighing organs, taking samples, 
etc.--so I started a conversation to keep my mind occupied.

"This guy sure wasn't much of a health nut, Danny."

She was sitting on her heels inspecting a tray of bacterial 
slides and didn't look up.  "Heart attack, eh?"

"Uh-huh.  Arteries are so clogged, I can't imagine why it didn't
happen sooner."  I cut the last bit of tissue and transferred a 
very over-large heart to the scale tray.  "Do everything our 
friend here didn't, and you'll live a long and healthy--"

I heard what I was saying and broke off, feeling slightly idiotic.
You'd think I would be used to it after several years, but it's
amazing how much of our everyday chitchat doesn't apply to 
vampires.  I sent Danny a rueful look.  "Sorry."

She just grinned, a crooked kid-grin full of amusement.  "Don't 
worry about it.  I do the same thing sometimes.  We used to sneak 
cigarettes at school?  Vachon offered me one on Saturday and I 
almost turned it down 'cause I was thinking it was bad for me."

I laughed.  Thinking at the same time, her response was the polar
opposite of what Nick would have done.  I could see it in my 
head: he'd look simultaneously embarrassed and wistful and sad, 
and I'd feel guilty.  Danny's so much more relaxed about that kind 
of slip, about her nature, I couldn't help the comparison.

I picked up a saw to widen my work area.  A brief whine exposed 
my patient's lower organs and I started bottling samples, asking, 
"So you hang out with Vachon?"

She didn't answer right away.  I glanced over when I saw her head 
lift out of the corner of my eye and my heart skipped two or three 
beats, because she was looking at the corpse on my table with fixed
fascination and gold-tinged eyes, the points of her fangs showing 
below her upper lip.  I looked down reflexively even as all the 
spit in my mouth dried up: my last cut had exposed a pool of 
fairly fresh blood in the liver.  She was smelling it.

Then she shook her head slightly, her fangs retracting, and tossed 
me an apologetic look.  "Sorry about that."

"No problem," I managed.  I felt this crazed urge to giggle.  <So
sorry, let me put my teeth away.>  It wasn't the first time I'd 
seen her do that (not that I was used to it, no *way*, not that 
blase yet) because she didn't have Nick's control over her 
reactions.  At the same thing it was incredible, any other 
six-month-old fledgling would have been over the table and at 
my throat, forget about a little show of teeth.  Count your 
blessings, I suppose.

Danny strolled over to my bookshelves, hands stuffed in her 
pockets.  She'd already forgotten about her lapse from the 
relaxed set of her shoulders.  "You know Javier?"

For a second I didn't have the slightest idea what she was 
talking about.  Then it clicked--Javier, that was Vachon's first 
name.  "I've met him a couple times.  Seems okay."  <'Okay?'  I'm 
describing a four-hundred-sixty-something Spanish vampire with 
'okay?'>  And I'd thought my life was surreal enough with just 
Nick around.

"He's fun, we play pool.  Sometimes he takes me to see the Maple
Leafs."

I had to smother another laugh--this was worse that surreal.  She 
comes out with things that would make the gothic novelists 
shudder.  "That where you got the T-shirt?"

"Huh?  Oh, yeah."  She tugged absently at the hem of her shirt.  
"We bet on the second period score.  He always underestimates the 
Canadiens."

"You like hockey?"

"Love it."  Danny climbed up on a stool with one of my anatomy 
books and started going through it, eyes flicking rapidly down the
pages.  "I used to play at school, but that's old news.  I don't 
even think the NHL'd let me play now."

"Probably not.  Day games would be a bit of a problem, anyway," I 
said dryly.

That crooked grin again.  "Right."

I was occupied with weighing organs and recording numbers for a 
few minutes before Danny said unexpectedly, "Vachon's the only one 
who really talks to me, you know."

I looked up in mild surprise.  Her tone was neutral; I couldn't 
tell what that was supposed to mean.  "No, I didn't know."

"Yeah.  There's a bunch of younger ones at the Raven--well, older 
than me, but you know."  She paused at something interesting in the 
book, then continued, her voice matter-of-fact.  "They're scared of 
LaCroix."

"Are they," I commented, inwardly thinking that it sounded like a 
very intelligent was to feel.  Danny's master ranked right up with 
the HIV virus on my personal scare scale.  I didn't say it, though.

Danny laughed and I found her watching me over the book.  "I'm not 
stupid, Nat.  They're probably right to be afraid of him."

The laugh aside, there was a casual hardness that made me a bit 
nervous, especially coming on the heels of that little fang 
display...the question came out before I knew I was going to ask 
it.  "Are you afraid of him, Dan?"

Her eyes--seawater blue, not bright like Nick's--went serious and 
she regarded me thoughtfully.  "You think I should be."

I shrugged, uneasy, dropped my gaze to my patient.  "I don't...
well, it's just...I've seen some things that you haven't."

"You--"

Danny cut off in midsentence and looked over her shoulder at the 
door, her head cocked with that eerie alertness that they all have.
A few seconds later I heard footsteps echoing in the hallway.

It was Nick.  He held a sheaf of papers in one hand and wore a 
distracted expression, but his face lightened a bit when he saw 
Danny.  "Hey, Dan," he said, stopping to drop a kiss on her cheek.  
"I didn't know you were down here."

"Bugging Natalie," she answered amiably, and smiled up at him.

Nick smiled back and ruffled her hair but the distracted look 
resurfaced as he turned to me.  He was wearing his detective hat 
now, not the friend or patient-to-doctor ones, and I knew why.  A 
rape-murder case was threatening to dead-end, and he couldn't stand 
it when they ended up in the unsolved cabinet.  I'd been expecting 
him sometime tonight to go over the forensic evidence.  It was his 
pattern.

Tonight, though, it didn't help.  The perp was either very careful 
or very lucky, and we'd never had much to go on.  After fifteen 
minutes of discussion that accomplished nothing, Nick collected 
his paperwork and thanked me disconsolately, and headed back 
upstairs with a wave to both of us.

Danny waited until his steps faded out before she spoke.  "It's 
Nick, isn't it?" she asked--more like *demanded*, her face set.  
"You were talking about LaCroix, you meant stuff between him and 
Nick?"

I sighed, starting to sew up the man on my table.  "Look, Danny, 
I shouldn't say anything at all about your master.  He's already 
warned me off studying your condition.  I'm probably lucky he 
didn't kill me to make sure I couldn't."  I wasn't about to push 
it by getting too deeply involved in his youngest daughter's 
opinion of him.  With LaCroix knowing about my work toward Nick's
cure, I was periodically amazed that he hadn't drained me for that
reason alone.

Almost as if she were reading my thoughts, Danny said abruptly, 
"Do you really think you'll be able to find a cure for him?"

Her voice was curious--but damned if I didn't detect a tiny threat 
of hostility running through the words.  I finally looked back at 
her, answering with the truth.  The honest truth, none of the 
dancing-around-the-topic replies that I sometimes use to keep 
Nick's hopes up.  "I don't know.  But he wants it, so I'm trying."

Danny stared back, expressionless, and her eyes flashed gold for 
the briefest second.  Maybe she didn't even know she was doing it.  
A twinge of fear pulled at my nerves--this was the vampire I was 
looking at, not the fourteen-year-old kid I knew, and the very last
thing I needed was *another* vampire going against my work.

But then she relaxed, nodded, going back to normal with uncanny 
speed.  There was respect in that nod.  "Okay," she said simply.  
"I'll see you later, Nat.  Thanks for letting me hang out."

I made some kind of answer, I can't remember what it was.  My 
triphammering heart was busy trying to find a normal rhythm again.  
I watched her go, a small figure in jeans and sneakers and a Leafs 
T-shirt, looking like any average kid as she went out into the 
night.

END