~Author's Note: I wrote this after a bunch of the others, but it is actually a prologue to my "Sons of Lilith" series and should be read as such. Forever Knight: The Sons of Lilith Last Knightmare By April French Toronto: 1996 Face twisted in anguish, LaCroix raised the stake. "Damn you, Nicholas!" *** Nick bolted upright in bed, gasping. "Oh my God," he muttered, wiping the blood from his forehead. "God god god god..." Violently tearing the blankets from his legs, Nick stumbled downstairs. He hit the floor running, bracing himself for the carnage-- But there was nothing there. No one. His heart was racing; Nick felt the organ beat five times in ten minutes, and his stomach lurched. His hands were shaking as he picked up the phone and dialed a number. It rang, and rang, and rang, and Nick's confidence began to waver, when a groggy voice finally said, "Hello?" "Nat," Nick breathed, relieved. "Nick! Do you know what time it is? I work the night shift, too, you know." "I know, I know, I just... I wanted to check in. I wanted to make sure you were okay." "Is there some reason I shouldn't be?" "No, no. Of course not. Sleep well, Nat. I'll see you tonight." Nick punched the OFF button and stood there holding the phone, chewing on his lip. "It was just a dream," he told himself firmly. All chances of sleep gone, Nick went to take a shower, and drown the vestiges of nightmare-haze in scalding hot water. *** Nick leaned his elbows on the desk and rubbed his eyes. "Hey, Nick. You okay?" "Yeah, Trace." Nick took a deep breath and began to go through his reports. "I didn't get much sleep today." Tracy nodded understandingly. "Nightmares?" "'Visions of hell,' might be more descriptive." Nick immediately felt remorse. Tracy had just lost her best friend; he had no right to be complaining to her. Best friend... that was how the dream had started. With Natalie losing a friend to suicide. And then LaCroix had wanted to move on... and wanted Nick to go with him. Nick was just getting up and he had turned around--and nearly smacked into the medical examiner. "Whoa, easy! Hi, Nick. Sleep well?" "Yeah, sorry about that, Nat." "Eleven o'clock this morning, he calls me," Natalie complained to Tracy. "Says he just wants to check on me." "Aw, go easy on him, Nat. He had a bad dream." "Well, I was having a very good dream, which interrupted." "I feel no remorse," Nick replied, holding up his hands. "I just wanted to check on you," he added softly. Tracy looked down at her shoes, fighting back a grin and some tears. They were so cute together, even if they weren't actually together. "I needed to." His brilliant cobalt-eyes pleaded with her, puppy-like, to accept his explanation. "Okay," Natalie said finally. "Next time you need to check on me, though, just remember that we do keep similar hours?" Nick smiled. "Sure thing." He grabbed up his duster. "Listen, Trace, I've got to go see someone about... something." Before she could protest, Nick was out the precinct door, leaving Tracy with a mountain of paperwork and Natalie with a tingling patch of skin on her cheekbone where Nick had kissed her. *** "Nicholas," greeted LaCroix with some mild surprise. Nick slid into a seat at the bar and allowed Miklos to pour him his usual. "Come to help me think of a topic for tonight's broadcast?" "Have you thought recently of, well, of moving on?" "I beg your pardon?" "How are you coping?" Nick asked bluntly, clenching and unclenching his fingers around the stem of the goblet. "I had the most horrible dream today and I don't want it to come true. How are you?" LaCroix drew his dark eyebrows together in a thoughtful frown. He, too, had been having some horrible dreams, dreams of his master and her second demise, dreams of his life in Rome, something he had not dreamed of since World War One. Nicholas had suffered, certainly, during Divia's brief return, but hardly to the point where he would be losing sleep over it. Perhaps his own slight traumas were spilling over to Nicholas. It had happened before... "What have you dreamed?" "That I fed from Natalie. That I drained her. And killed her." Nick scrubbed a hand through his blond curls. "That I asked you to stake me, so I could join her in death. "And you did it." LaCroix twisted a glass between his fingers. "That is quite the admission, Nicholas." His expression hardened. "Considering that for a year and a half now, I have been led to believe that you had no such feelings for the good doctor." "Oh, don't patronize me, LaCroix! I'm not a provincial idiot!" "But you do such a good job at times." "Then why let her live?" Nick shot back. "Don't change the subject, Nicholas, it's tiresome." "I didn't--!" "Shall we look at this nightmare of yours systematically? Point number one: you fed from the doctor." "She asked me to," Nick whispered. LaCroix looked up, interest peaking even higher. "Indeed? What exactly did she ask?" "She..." Nick sighed raggedly. "She asked me to make love to her. She said if I took too much, I should bring her across." "And you agreed." Nick nodded. "Have you ever sensed such desires from her for you, in actuality? Ah. Well, ask a silly question, et cetera, et cetera. Of course you have. have. Point number two: that you agreed in your dream is clear evidence to me that you would be more than willing to capitulate in 'real life.' Point number three: that you could not stop--an obvious sign of your severe lack of practice, I might add--and that you killed her, that, Nicholas, is your greatest fear, is it not?" Hands shaking, Nick couldn't even hold his glass of bloodwine stable. "What puzzles me most, mon Nicolas, is the fact that you asked to put you out of your self-induced misery. And that I obliged you. That is a fragment not even Freud himself could deduce. So I shall ask you: Why did I agree, Nicholas?" "Because I asked you to. Because I told you that... you were my closest friend." Reaching out, LaCroix wrapped one hand around Nick's wrist, steadying the goblet. His ice-blue eyes bore into Nick's cobalt ones. "Why did you say that, Nicholas?" Nick stared back at his master, eyes again pleading, this time internally, pleading with himself not to reveal anything more to the devious Roman who was his master. LaCroix searched his face... and released Nick's wrist. "You're afraid, Nicholas," he said at last, turning around to face the crush of people held within the walls of the Raven. "My advice to you is to stop thinking so much. Follow your instincts. You still have instincts, I hope. "And no. I am not moving on. I have thought of it. With all that has happened recently, I have seriously thought of it." "What stopped you?" "The realization that if I ran from every memory that haunted me, I would become you. And that thought causes my blood to congeal." Nick glared at LaCroix, and opened his mouth to say something--and the implications of LaCroix's words hit him like a ten-ton truck. "Congeal," he muttered. At the sound, LaCroix turned, but Nick had left the club. *** He raced over to his loft and all but ripped open his refrigerator. He pulled out the bottle he had drunk from last night, stared at the label, and groaned, rolling his eyes at his own stupidity. The expiration date had passed. ~Finis--January 28th, 2003~