This story is set again during the second season. It is a sequel, of sorts, to my Valentine story, "A Knight to Remember". You don't have to have read that in order to read this story, it pretty much stands alone. You can find "A Knight to Remember" on both Mel's webpage and the ftp site. We're heading into uncharted waters here for me. I still feel quite the newbie to fan fiction, so please handle with care and send comments to: Nancy Taylor Disclaimer: These characters are not mine. They belong to Sony/TriStar and were created by James Parriott and Barney Cohen. I'm only borrowing them. No copyright infringement was intended. A Taste of Mortality by Nancy Taylor c 1997 He was hungry ... and he was hot. Nick had barely made it through work that night. Stumbling into the loft he headed straight for the refrigerator. Opening the door, he stood basking in its coolness. He grabbed the nearest green bottle and, pulling the cork with his teeth and spitting it halfway across the room, downed the entire contents without taking a breath. He leaned heavily back against the appliance, still enjoying the cold emanating from it and reluctant to close the door. Taking another bottle, he grudgingly left the coolness of the refrigerator to sit heavily down on the couch. His remote closed the blinds, lit the fireplace and turned on the TV. He opened the second bottle with a little more care, but still drank directly from it, foregoing the use of a glass. he thought. He hadn't felt like this in the entire 767 years of his existence as a vampire. He could barely remember *ever* feeling like this, even as a mortal. His stomach was churning. He felt the frightening sensation as his stomach began to contract. He jumped and ran, with vampiric speed, to the downstairs bathroom, barely making it in time to vomit up the entire contents of his stomach in the porcelain basin. He sat back on his haunches. He felt weak and dizzy. This was not good, not good at all..... * * * * * Natalie was worried. Nick had not shown up for work that night, nor had he bothered to call in. Schanke was running around checking with everyone he knew that might know Nick's whereabouts. Cohen was on his case to get it together with his partner and fast. There was a new murder to investigate and Nick seemed to have vanished. Natalie finally decided to go to the loft and see if Nick were there and just not answering the phone for some reason. She assured Schanke that she would call if she found him. Armed with that reassurance, Schanke went out to the crime scene alone. Natalie buzzed when she reached Nick's loft, but when he didn't answer, she entered the alarm code herself and let herself in. What she saw made her freeze momentarily in her tracks. Nick was laying on the couch, curled into the fetal position and shaking like a leaf. The doctor in Natalie kicked in and she was at his side in a flash. She put her palm against his forehead and was surprised by the warmth there. A fine sheen of blood sweat coated his face. She tried shaking him gently. "Nick? Nick, can you hear me? Nick, are you all right?" Natalie was becoming more desperate in her shaking as she got no response from Nick. She smelled the scent of stale blood and saw some vomit stains on his shirt. Whatever was wrong was deathly serious. How could this be? Vampires don't get sick. They *can't* get sick! It was obvious to Natalie that Nick would need blood; lots of it, and fast. She wasn't sure how he would react if he woke up now and she certainly wasn't in the mood to be lunch right at the moment. She remembered Nick having some blood packs in the freezer and went to the refrigerator to remove several. She needed to thaw them quickly, but the microwave was not a good option if the blood was to retain any nutritive value to Nick. She hunted in the cupboards until she found a large Pyrex bowl. She half-filled it with water and put it in the microwave to heat. She then put the frozen blood packs in the hot water and went back to check on Nick. He had rolled onto his back and was moaning and babbling incoherently. His words made no sense to her, just the ravings of a fever-induced delirium. She sat there holding his hand for several minutes. When she couldn't stand it any longer she got up to check on the blood packs. The water had turned cool and the packs were thawed, but not warm yet. Natalie dried them off and stuffed them up her blouse, hoping to warm them to body temperature. Nick was calling for her now, but he still wasn't conscious. He was beginning to thrash around and Natalie had to hold him still so that he wouldn't hurt himself. She rummaged around in her bag looking for a needle and tubing so that she could start transfusing the blood into him as soon as possible. If he couldn't take it through his stomach and keep it down, perhaps straight into a vein would do the trick. It wasn't easy holding Nick's arm still enough to insert the needle, but she finally managed. She withdrew a blood pack from inside her blouse and hooked it up to the IV line. She held it up, squeezing gently to start the flow. Nick's body responded almost immediately to the presence of the blood and Natalie found that he was absorbing the blood much faster than she would have expected. She was kept busy changing the empty packs for full ones. Nick had apparently been on the verge of starvation. By the fourth blood pack, Nick had settled down, and a few minutes later he opened his eyes. "Nat?" His voice was weak and hoarse. "I'm here Nick. Everything's going to be okay. Can you tell me what the matter is? You're burning up." "Nat?" "Yes, Nick, it's me. It's Nat. Can you talk to me? You're sick. How can you be so sick?" Nick closed his eyes and Natalie was afraid she was going to lose him again. He heaved a sigh and opened his eyes to look at her. "I'm hungry. Help me, Nat...." He sounded so pathetic that Natalie felt the tears beginning to form in her eyes. She placed a fifth blood pack on the IV line and noted that although Nick's body was still absorbing the blood at an enormous rate, it had slowed down a bit. She realized she was going to need to thaw more packs and probably get more from the morgue somehow. She got up to put more of the blood packs in the warm water to thaw and came back over to Nick. Out of curiosity, she rummaged around in her bag until she produced a Thermotemp Strip (tm) and popped it in Nick's mouth under his tongue. When she pulled it out again she was more than surprised to see it read 98 degrees. she thought to herself. This was a tad low for a mortal, but practically burning up for a vampire! She pulled out her stethoscope and pressed it to Nick's chest. At first she heard nothing, but with patience she soon heard the tha-thump of his heart. What surprised her no end was that about thirty seconds later, tha-thump, there it was again! For a man whose heart rate wasn't supposed to be more than one in ten minutes, Nick's pulse was practically racing. Something stirred inside of Natalie and she began to get really excited. "Nick ... how long has it been since the last time you drank blood and were able to hold it down?" Natalie checked on the blood pack, realizing that she would have to get up and change it again soon. "I don't know.... A week, maybe ten days," Nick replied weakly. "What?!" Natalie practically screamed at him. "It's been that long since you could hold down blood and you didn't tell me??" "No, no, Nat, it's not like that at all. I haven't been able to hold blood down since, oh, last night? I've been drinking your protein shakes instead." "...P-protein shakes? You've been drinking those without me forcing them down you?" Natalie was amazed. "Well, yeah. Remember Valentine's Day? We decided then that the engagement would stay just that until we found a way to bring me back across." Nick looked at Natalie with love and longing in his eyes, despite his weakened condition. Natalie could tell he was very serious about this. "I've been taking the Vitamin A pills every day too, and the garlic." Nick made an awful face at that statement, wincing inwardly at the memory. "You've really been trying...." Natalie's voice trailed off as her mind drifted over the possibilities. Nick moaned softly and Natalie noticed that the blood pack was empty again. She disconnected it and got up to fetch a fresh warm one. As she turned to the kitchen, she felt a slight disturbance in the air and heard a gentle 'whooshing' noise. Looking up, she saw LaCroix standing not six feet away. She shivered. This was not what either she or Nick needed right now. "What are you doing here?" she confronted him with as much courage as she could muster. "You think I wouldn't notice when Nicholas is suffering? I came to see if I could be of any service." LaCroix's smile looked more like a leer to Natalie. This man did not in any way have Nick's best interests at heart. He probably had come merely to watch Nick suffer. "I've got things perfectly under control here, thank you," she replied. "I would appreciate it if you would kindly leave and allow us to get back to our business." "And that would be....?" "Making Nick well again," she stated flatly. "Not until I've said my greetings to my son." LaCroix walked over to the couch and looked down on Nick, who had drifted off to sleep again. "Well, well, Nicholas, what *have* you gotten yourself into this time?" He noted the tubing and empty blood bags and looked back up at Natalie. "You *will* take excellent care of him *doctor*, or I shall surely return to take out my revenge on *you*." And with that LaCroix was gone as quickly and as quietly as he had arrived. Natalie went back to the kitchen and picked up the blood packs. Taking them back over to the couch, she hooked another up to the IV line. Nick was resting comfortably, and Natalie finally remembered her promise to call Schanke. "He's got a bad case of the flu, Schank," she explained. The groan on the other end of the line as Schanke realized he was working this homicide alone made Natalie smile. It wasn't that she liked to make Schanke miserable, it was just that this made Nick seem so ... human. * * * * * Within twenty-four hours Nick was sitting up on the couch and looking much more his old self. Natalie was delighted with his speedy recovery, thanking whatever powers that be that vampires healed so quickly and so well. She had been mightily worried about Nick there for a while. She pulled the Thermotemp Strip (tm) from Nick's mouth and looked at the readout. "Hmm ... just as I suspected. You don't even register on these things anymore. I guess you're back to normal." Natalie sighed a little sigh. "It just seemed like we were so close." "Maybe we were," Nick said getting more animated as he thought about it. "My temperature and heart rate were up, maybe I was beginning to come back across. Do you think?" "I don't know Nick," Natalie tried to be circumspect. "I wouldn't want to get your hopes up, but it looks like we might be on the right track. Maybe the reason you came down with those flu-like symptoms had to do with the vampire's system being weakened. We were *this* close...." Natalie sighed again. "But I wouldn't want to see you that sick again, Nick. You really had me scared." "You and me both." Nick smiled at her. "But it would all be worth it to be able to be with you." Nick pulled Natalie to him and laced his fingers in her hair. Leaning gently toward her, he placed a warm and delicate kiss on Natalie's forehead. Not content with such a chaste kiss after such a monumental scare, Natalie connected firmly with Nick's mouth and kissed him for all she was worth. "We're in this together, Nick, and together we *will* find the cure." Nick wrapped both arms around Natalie and held her ever so close, listening to her heartbeat, smelling her vanilla and cinnamon scent, filling himself with her essence. One day he *would* be mortal again, and all he held in his arms at this moment would be his, if only ... if only he could stand the wait. The End Comments cheerfully accepted: Nancy Taylor Nancy Knightie, N&NPacker, JamiePacker Adoptive Bat Mom ^^v^^ FK Welcome Wagon Salem, Oregon