Part Fifteen
 

Nick flinched from Carrie's touch to his forehead, and groggily spoke with a
raspy voice as he began to awaken.  "What happened?"

"Well, it looks like you tried to exit from the off ramp too fast and wrecked
the car."

Trying to recall the incident, he began to sit up in the hospital bed, but the
pain in his head forced him to lie back down.  He reached up to touch the
throbbing side of his head, and then he remembered.

"No!"  The sounds of his own voice sent a flash of pain from his temple to his
jaw, and he tried to soften his tone before speaking again.  "No, someone
tried to run me off the road, he was tying to kill me."

Carrie flashed a patronizing grin towards him, as she spoke in mock amazement.
"Wow!  You really did hit your head hard!"  She laughed at her own words
before turning serious.  "It was just an accident, Nicholas."

Accepting to himself that she would never care to believe him, he thought
about his Captain.  "Has Captain Reese been notified?  Does he know that I am
here?"

Becoming annoyed with his questions, she wearily answered.  "He was here,
right after they brought you in.  He was real sorry that he sent you out.  It
seems that the call for Mark's office was a hoax.  I told him that the doctor
said that you would be fine, and that I would take care of you so that he
didn't need to stay."

Sighing, Nick moved his pounding head to rest against the side of the pillow,
he still felt as helpless as he did in the car after the accident.  Why didn't
she believe him?  Frustrated, he attempted to have her listen again.  "Carrie,
someone tried to kill me last night."

Pulling the covers up over him, she smiled.  "I think that you should get some
more rest."

"No, I do not need more rest, and stop playing with the covers!  I am not a
child that needs to be tucked in for the night!  I want to speak with Captain
Reese.  A truck driver just ran me off the road then went after me with a
crowbar!"

"If someone tried to kill you, then how did they miss?  Where are the marks
from them hitting you?  The only injury that you have is the one from your
head hitting the window."

Her logic was correct, and that made his head hurt even more.  Throwing the
covers off, he brought both hands to his sore head and rubbed at his eyes.  It
was only his head that showed any evidence of damage, and that could be
explained without any other vehicle or person.  But he had not imagined it,
for some unknown reason he was spared.  Maybe someone had come along and
spoiled the truck driver's plan to kill him.  Somewhere there had to be a
witness to what happened.  But for now, or until he could prove otherwise,
Carrie and the others would believe that he was just speeding too fast as he
approached the off ramp.  One thing he knew for certain, someone stopped that
driver from killing him, but there was nothing he could do until he was
discharged.  He waited for Carrie to walk across the room before grabbing the
call button to summon help so he could find out his condition and get out of
there.  Despite what she told Captain Reese, being around Carrie was not the
way back to health.

                                   --------

The sun had gone down barely an hour, before Vachon was pounding on Nick's
skylight.  The vibrations from the rattling of the glass still hurt his head,
even though the car accident had been more than a week ago.  Nick hardly had
time to touch the multicolored bump on his head before Vachon appeared inside
the loft shouting incoherently at him.  Cringing in agony, he looked puzzled
at his unexpected vampire guest.  "What is it Vachon?  I have to be at work
soon."

Vachon paced the floor as his anger caused him to rave uncontrollably.  "I'm
going to have to kill him Knight.  I don't want to kill him, but I have to.
If you were in my place, you would kill him too.  And even if I don't kill
him, then the enforcers will.  Did he really think that he could get away with
this?  I should kill him just for what he put me through.  I know you don't
believe in killing them, but he went too far Knight.  That's it.  I'm going
now to take care of this."

Seeing the easy going Vachon so upset began to worry him, and he stepped in
front of him to stop his departure.  "Vachon, what are you talking about?  Who
do you want to kill?"

Stopping to stare at Nick in disbelief, he realized that he did not know.
"Your doctor friend's husband.  He had Urs locked up in his lab for close to
three years.  She was starved when she found her way back to me.  He's been
using her Knight like a guinea pig in his experiments.  He knows about us and
has to be destroyed."

Nick moved to sit down on the sofa.  He had thought that nothing could
distract him from the pain in his head, but he was wrong.  Vachon was right
about Mark and if he had been experimenting with Urs, then he had enough
empirical evidence to never allow any hypnosis to work.  When the community
discovered what Mark had done with one of their kind, he and all of his work
would be destroyed.  Nat could be in danger too.  All that Vachon told him
made him realize that Mark knew what he was, and explained why he reacted to
him the way he did.  And it also meant that he knew that Nat was also turning
into a vampire because he had used Urs in his experiments in an attempt to
cure her.  That was why Nat never saw him.  He was consumed with the same
puzzle that Nat had become entwined in with him.  He leaned his head against
the back of the sofa and stared at the ceiling, what on Earth was he supposed
to do now?  Vachon came up from behind the sofa and looked down at him.

"Knight, you better handle this or one of us will.  I have to get back to Urs,
but I'll be back tomorrow night for your answer.  After tomorrow night, it's
out of your hands."

Nick, sat forward to respond to Vachon, but he was gone before he could turn
around.  Moving to his feet, he listened to each of his footsteps echoing
within the large room of the loft as he walked slowly to the window.  The
blinds that he had not opened or closed in years were fully extended and
allowed for a full view of a soon to be spring sky bursting with stars.  With
almost four years of his mortal gift consumed, he could see its end rapidly
speeding towards him.  These last few months with Nat had been the happiest
moments that he could remember throughout the centuries, and no matter what
happened now, he would always be grateful for that small amount of time.
Repeatedly in his mind, he asked himself why Mark would perform such a
dangerous act as to exhume and experiment with a vampire, but he knew the
answer.  Mark did it out of his love for Nat, just as he had sold his eternal
soul for her.  But now Mark had come to an impasse and there was no way out.
There could be no escape.  The only acceptable resolution to this situation to
his community would be Mark's death.  Nick sadly closed his eyes and shook his
head.  Surely, Mark must know by now that Urs had escaped and that there would
be repercussions.  The time had come to go to Mark and discover what it was
that he had planned to do when the inevitable happened.

                                   --------

The new drug trials using the mirrored image equations had taken longer than
expected, but he had managed to survive the necessary time to complete every
one of them, and now it was time to test it on his Jane Doe. If it worked on a
genuine vampire, then it would surely work with Natalie.  The results had
proven to be one hundred percent effective on every lab animal that he could
purchase or steal.  His heart fluttered with anticipation for now he was to
test its effectiveness on a real vampire.  If her cells remained clear of the
virus, then he would inject the small amount that he had left into Natalie.
The lab animals had experienced absolutely no side effects and all were doing
well, this was the cure.  He tried to catch his breath as he coughed the
entire length of the hall to his lab.  Each breath now was a struggle, and he
was more tired than he could ever remember in his life.  Aches and pains
ravaged his body as he swallowed another few pills that the oncologist had
prescribed for him to help ease him through the final stages of his cancer.
He stretched out his arm to place his key into the door's handle, but he
dropped it to the floor.  As he bent down to retrieve it, he noticed a sliver
of light from around the door's frame.  The door was not locked, and he
cautiously pushed on it as he stood.  It swung open freely, and what little
strength he had left drained from him at the sight of his lab.  The room had
been pillaged.  Test tubes lay smashed and shattered on the counters and
floor.  Not a piece of furniture remained untouched; all was crushed and
overthrown.  Years of experiments lay in ruins.  Chemicals of every color
oozed from the walls and ceiling.  All his expensive equipment had been
trampled during the plunder.  Recognizing the odor that he was breathing in,
he ran to the window to clear out the toxic fumes that were arising from the
random mixing of ingredients.  Then he moved coughing and gagging to the
storeroom to check on Urs. Her room was wide open.  The door had been torn
from its hinges, and was half embedded into the store room wall.  The room lay
in shambles around his feet, and she was gone.  Turning, he ran to the cages
that held his experiments, each had been violently dismantled.  On the floor
below lay the dead animals, their eyes wide open with terror, and drained of
their lives.  The Jane Doe had awakened, and destroyed everything in her path.

He ran to the refrigerator where he stored the last of his serum for Natalie's
cure.  It remained intact, he had neither the strength nor the time to test or
make more.  His vampire subject was gone, but the serum had worked in all the
other experiments.  There was no reason to believe that it would not work on
Natalie.  He searched through the rubble for the telephone to call Natalie,
and found it still connected.  She picked up on the very first ring, and he
pleaded with her to join him in his lab.  Worried about his urgent tone, she
agreed to come right away.  The Morgue was not very far from the University,
and he knew that she could be there in less than fifteen minutes.

Grabbing all his notes and Natalie's notebook, he placed them in the sink and
set them on fire.  The experiments should never be repeated, they had taken
away his life, and he would not leave the recipe for self- destruction to
anyone, especially his wife.  After seeing that the experimental materials
were destroyed, he gathered the animals and bagged them for incineration.
With all the other evidence already destroyed by his recently liberated
subject, he turned over a chair and retrieved a piece of paper and a pen.
There was so much to say to Natalie, and with the little time he had left, he
knew that he had to get this letter right the first time.
 

End Part Fifteen

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