FK/FW FanFic: Bitter Ties (Night Waves 5)
Raven Nation Spoiler! (although there's not much spoilage, it is there...)
Night Waves 5: Cade's new army -- the Raven Nation -- is developing a weapon that will kill only Gua. But how will the Alien Hunters know who the Gua are? Cade has the answer, and hopes Nick Knight will be willing to help him out.
I didn’t want to be here.
Of all the places to be, this was not at the top of my list. When you’re Cade Foster, twice-blessed alien hunter and vampire, life - or death - leaves you no choice.
I made the painful decision to leave Katy behind this time as I searched for someone I was certain she wouldn’t want to see again - Nick Girard. In her past life, Katy Johannson was a vampire hunter, until she got bit by one and it was Nick who brought her across the rest of the way.
And now, I was outside NK’s Pub, the place Katy and Nick owned together at one time. Katy told me she’d written to Nick to tell him to either keep it or sell it. Gutsy move, if you’d asked me.
I came in search of Nick because I knew he could prove an invaluable ally in my fight against the Gua.
There was another reason I was at NK’s. I felt a familiar, powerful pull, that of my Mistress. The woman who brought me across finally had a name, thanks to Katy. She was Nick’s vampire "sister" and lover; her name was Janette DuCharme. It seemed very strange that this was all intertwined somehow, like I was caught up in an eternal soap opera.
I sensed dawn was only a few hours away, and while Nick had apartments below the pub, I had a feeling I wouldn’t be invited to stay over.
Although I’d first heard of NK’s Pub from an email to the Paranoid Times maybe eight months ago, it felt like another lifetime ago.
A case of vampires getting sick because they were feeding on the Gua led me to the pub, and to Katy. And for the first time since Hannah was killed, I’d truly fallen in love. I hadn’t even told Katy that, as it was a recent revelation even to me. Katy began my transformation, and Janette finished it.
Janette had known who I was - she’d known Nostradamus - and told me I had another mission to fulfill. I was Nostradamus’ Twice-Blessed Man.
And now, confined to the darkness, I had to rely on my human partner more than ever - Crazy Eddie Nambulous, publisher of the Paranoid Times.
It appeared, however, that I now had an army to fight with me. They called themselves the Raven Nation, and their leader was a strong-willed woman named Jordan Radcliffe. She said she was on my side, and I know she’s not Gua. But could I trust Jordan to guard the fort with Eddie? Even more importantly, could I trust Katy with Jordan?
Knowing that Katy was probably furious with me already, I gathered my wits, and entered the pub.
~*~
Nick was behind the bar at one end, at the other end was Brad. It was Brad who had told be where I could find Katy those many months ago. And it was on that search that I’d first met Janette, at a place called the Night Shift.
I knew she was the elegant woman sitting at the bar, and I heard her say,
"Ah, Nichola, I believe we have some company."
And when Nick looked up and saw me, his eyes immediately glowed with anger.
"What do you want?" he seethed through his fangs.
"I need your help," I said.
I knew that was the last thing Nick expected me to say, and his face showed it. His eyes and teeth returned to normal, but he made no friendly invitational gesture.
"Who made you?" was what he did ask.
"Nichola!" Janette chided. "You do not know?"
Nick seemed to ignore Janette’s question, and I approached the bar.
"Look, Girard," I started.
Janette looked from me to Nick, and raised her eyebrows questioningly.
"It’s Knight," Nick retorted.
"As in, ‘in shining armor’?" I asked casually. Nick didn’t reply, so I took that as a yes. It only took a moment for its importance to hit me. I vaulted the bar and aimed to grab Nick’s neck.
"Why you - " I said. Nick saw me coming and pushed me away. Since vampires have unnatural strength, it was as if I flew into the wall where he’d pushed me. I hit the wall near the ceiling and fell to the floor.
"I don’t know what you’re talking about!" he hissed. His fangs were showing once more. I stood up and walked back to the patrons’ side of the bar.
"The name of the bar," I said. "NK’s. Nick Knight’s."
"She gave me her half," Nick defended.
"You didn’t even have to change the name!" I was angry now, and I felt my fangs full in my mouth.
"Nichola has always thought of himself as the proverbial knight," Janette said, sipping her drink. I looked at it. It was blood, straight up, and it made me very hungry. Janette offered me the goblet, which I took, and drained eagerly, the blood dripping down the sides of my mouth.
"Thank you, m’lady," I said, returning the goblet with a slight bow. Janette smiled.
"Perhaps if Nichola took lessons from you, he and Lacroix might not be so… estranged," Janette told me, but was watching Nick as she said it. Then she turned to me.
"You need Nichola’s help, or mine?" she asked, seductively. I watched her mouth as she spoke to me, and I thought about kissing those soft red lips. I even licked my lips as if preparing for a kiss.
"Both," I said, suddenly remembering what I was doing there in the first place. "You can sense them. I can too. All vampires can," I said, and explained. The Raven Nation was developing a weapon that would kill only the Gua. The trick was to find out a way to figure out who was an alien and who wasn’t.
"Human blood smells sweet, intoxicating, like wine," I said. "Gua blood smells like rotting, decaying fruit." I shuddered, having had that privilege before.
"I thought they just didn’t know what a bath was," Janette said slowly, playing with the stem of a new goblet of blood. I didn’t know when she’d gotten the refill, but it was making me ravenous again, and I knew Nick wouldn’t serve me, a paying customer or not. Let’s just say it was a very sore topic when Katy left Nick for me.
Nick stared at me blankly.
"Look," I said watching Nick, but smelling the heady scent of the blood, "I got shot on national television to prove a point. The world thinks I’m dead!"
"Cade," Janette said, offering me the goblet. She waited until I drank the whole thing - like a man who’d been stranded in the desert drinks water - before finishing her thought: "You are dead."
"I know that. But my believers don’t. And we do have a way to tell who’s human and who’s Gua. But I can’t do it on my own." I hoped I didn’t sound like I was begging.
Janette came over to me, and offered me a seat on the stool that I’d been standing next to. She stood next to me, almost leaning in my lap, and played with my ear and the hair at the base of my neck with her fingernails. They too, like her lips, were blood red.
I looked up and glanced at Nick. He was drying some wine glasses - a nervous gesture I figured - and he caught my eye. He stared, and in that split second, he knew. He crushed the glass in his hand as the realization dawned.
"How could you, Janette?" he said with obvious disapproval.
"Why Nichola, mon cherie, you are jealous. Tsk. This does not become you."
"Jealous? Of what?" Nick demanded. Janette continued playing with my hair, and running her fingernails along my neck. Then she kissed me, and I was lost. It was sensual, practiced, and very addicting. Her lips were soft, and they nipped mine with an expertise that I didn’t want to question.
When she ended the kiss that left me stunned, she addressed Nick’s question.
"’Twould seem that our fair Cade has something you desire, Nichola." Fair Cade? I thought. That was new to me. But Janette was right. She knew nothing of the triangle that she had complicated by bringing me across.
"It’s an hour until dawn," Nick said, ignoring Janette’s baiting comment. I knew Nick wasn’t going to talk about it, so it would be up to me to fill in the pieces.
"Are you throwing me out, Nichola?" Janette sounded like an innocent young girl, but I knew she was far from both. She even fluttered her eye lashes at Nick.
Nick looked up from where he was cleaning the bar.
"Yes, Janette, I am." And he went back to his busywork.
"I booked a hotel room before I came," I said. "No windows."
Janette stood, and allowed me to take her arm to escort her from the pub.
"Some people still have manners, Nichola," she called over her shoulder as we left the pub. I saw Brad and waved. He waved back and gave a thumbs-up sign. At least he didn’t hate me.
~*~
"There is still some time before the dawn, why don’t you tell me what has happened?" Janette said, sitting on the edge of the bed, motioning me to sit beside her. I declined, and remained standing, leaning against the dresser.
I started with Brad’s email to the Paranoid Times, and finished with our joint quests, and that mine had brought me to the Night Shift in the first place.
"She told me that Nick let her go to me, and that he’d be waiting if she returned. But she was happy with me. I guess Nick is jealous," I concluded. "I have Katy."
"That does sound like Nichola, going after things he can never have. Years ago, he wanted mortality. Something, or someone, changed that, I am pleased to say," she said.
I was silent. It was not my business to pry into Nick’s past.
I could sense that the sun was just about up, and I offered the bed to Janette while I sat in the chair at the table that every hotel room has. I did not want to sleep before she did, and I had to wake before she did. It’s not that I didn’t trust her.
Ok, I didn’t.
She stretched out on the bed much the way a cat would stretch out after a long catnap. I knew she was trying to seduce me. But the moment I felt the sun hit the horizon, it was as if I was falling into an abyss.
~*~
I woke with a start, and slowly sat up. I was assailed by two senses at once. The first was that Janette was awake and watching me. The second one was Katy.
I jumped out of the chair and grabbed my jacket and was out the door. Janette started to call me back, but I resisted her pull. Why did I sense Katy when she was with Eddie and Jordan…
Jordan had to have known by now that Katy and I were vampires, didn’t she? I hoped she didn’t do anything to provoke Katy.
"Man, am I glad to see you!" Eddie said when I poked my head in the trailer once I’d arrived. I could still sense Katy, but I couldn’t pinpoint her location.
"What the hell is going on?" I demanded of Eddie.
"They’re in the bunker. Man, Foster, Katy was a wreck when she awoke last night, and Jordan said you weren’t coming back. Katy went to look for you, but came back just at dawn. She curled up in the trunk of the Caddy - in the trunk, Foster! - and at dusk she found Jordan and took her down into the bunker. That was a half an hour ago. No one’s heard anything."
I turned and was out the door. I heard Eddie calling me, but ignored it and headed down to the bunker.
"Katy," I called, both aloud and mentally.
Cade! I heard her relieved reply in my mind. She said you’d gone. Said you went in search of - ahh, hell, I don’t know. It sounded good. She sounded like she’d actually believed whatever Jordan had told her.
From our mental conversation, I was able to find her in a room, Katy sitting on the bed, Jordan propped up against the wall like a rag doll.
"What did you do to her?" I demanded.
"I’m sorry. I guess I don’t know my own strength," she said. "But she’ll live."
I sat down on the bed next to her and took her hands in mine.
"Listen, Katy, we’ve only known Jordan what - a few weeks? And you’re ready to take her word over mine? I told you I was searching for allies and I’d be back. You know I’d never leave you Katy," I said. "I love you."
She was silent, mulling over what I’d told her, and I didn’t know how she’d react, but then I saw her eyes turn gold and her fangs parted her lips slightly. Not breaking contact with my eyes, she brought the hand that held hers up to her lips and kissed it. She leaned over and kissed my wrist then, and trailed kisses up my arm, my shoulder, neck, and finally kissed me full on the lips.
My fangs were already full-length, and I moved my mouth away from hers and kissed down to the soft part of her neck by her shoulders. I felt her lips at the same place on me, then I felt her fangs sink in as I did the same. We were both ravenous and the blood was so sweet.
We stopped within moment of each other, and I kissed her lips again.
"You disgust me," we both heard from the floor. We looked over at Jordan who was holding the back of her head as she stood.
I watched as she stalked out of the room to her own quarters. I followed her, knowing that Katy would be listening in. I had no idea what I was even going to tell Jordan.
Jordan Radcliffe was an heiress who’s brother had been Subject 23 in the same experiment that had killed Hannah. Jordan put her money and all she had into fighting the Gua. And in their secret bunkers, Raven Nation was working on their secret weapon.
"Jordan," I said when I found her. She was sitting on her bed in her quarters. In her hands, she held a bound book of the pages of the Paranoid Times. My journal entries.
"Are you the same man who wrote these?" she asked.
That was tough, I thought. I was - and I wasn’t. Maybe she didn’t know. But if I lied, I was certain she would know that. I tried to make eye contact with her, but I was drawn to her pulsating neck, my fangs growing with hunger. I felt my eyes change, and I did turn my gaze to Jordan.
"No, I’m not," I said, answering her question.
She reached for the gun in the holster she always wore and aimed it at me.
"What are you?" she demanded, cocking the gun. "Are you Gua?"
"I had the same reaction when I met Katy," I explained.
"She’s one too?"
"Jordan," I said, capturing her stare with mine. "You didn’t see me like this. I am the same person as I have always been. But I can tell who is human and who is Gua." My eyes and teeth returned to normal, and Jordan shook her head clear of the trance.
"Cade? How did I get back here?" she questioned, holstering her gun. "I have to go apologize to Katy - I said a few things - " She left her quarters as she was talking. I smiled.
At least that had gone right.
~*~
I had to return to NK’s, but I didn’t want to tell Katy where I was going. I didn’t exactly want to return there, but Nick and the Community could be very helpful to me. I hoped in the time I had patched things up with Katy and Jordan, Janette had spoken with Nick.
"Careful, buddy," Eddie warned me. But my glowing eyes put him at ease. And I’d sensed Katy behind me, so my fangs started to grow.
"You’re off again?" she asked. "You can’t tell me where you’re going, can you?"
"Now you know how I feel," Eddie interjected.
"I don’t think you’d want to know," I said honestly.
"So you are going to see Nick," she said, catching me off guard. That’s not easy to do to vampires. But I couldn’t lie to Katy. I nodded.
"I’m coming with you," she said.
"I don’t think that’s a good idea," I cautioned.
"He kept the bar," she said. It was not a question.
"Yeah," I confessed.
"Oh," she sounded lost, confused, hurt. I held her close to me, embracing her in my arms. She wrapped her arms around me too.
"Excuse me," I heard Eddie say, and then heard him go back into the trailer. She looked up at me, and I kissed her.
"You know I’ll be back," I reassured her. She nodded, and I took off.
~*~
This time, I entered the pub with no hesitation, and I could see that unnerved Nick. Janette had been there earlier, but I couldn’t sense her when I entered. Nick didn’t even look up when I came in.
"Janette isn’t here," he said.
"I was looking for you," I explained.
"Why me?"
"Good question." I said. I had no idea why. Other than that the more vampires knew about the Gua, the better chance we had to defeat them. "You know why I need help," I said. "I figure - as owner of a bar - you see lots of people - vampires and Gua. Consider it ‘community service,’" I said, winging it.
Nick finally looked up at me, and then went right back to whatever it was he was working on.
"Listen. I know you wanted to regain your humanity. I still think about that too. If the Gua ever find out what I am, they will find out everything, including you. And if Katy ever meant anything to you..."
I knew I was playing dirty, and that was where I stopped talking and turned, intending to leave the pub. I had no idea if the Gua would actually seek out Nick and Katy and the rest of the vampire community if they found out what I was. But it was enough.
"Ok," Nick growled behind me. I turned back.
"What do you need me to do?" he asked.
~*~
"Well? What did he say?" Katy pounced the moment I returned to the trailer.
I stalked into the trailer, sat down on Eddie’s comfy couch, and took off my steel-toed work boots and wriggled my toes. Katy came over to me and sat next to me, curled up like a cat, and leaned on me. She kissed my ear. Then she playfully slapped my shoulder.
"Tell me!" she said, teasing.
"He said yes."
"I knew he would," she revealed.
"How did you know that?"
As if on cue, Eddie came in the trailer with a computer printout.
"What’s that Nick guy’s last name?" he asked.
"Girard," Katy said, but I shook my head.
"He goes by Knight now."
"Again," a new voice said in the door way. It was Jordan. "I, uh, met him in Toronto many years back. He was a homicide detective then. It was before…everything," she explained.
Eddie handed me the computer sheet he held:Century 12, quatrain 28:
Seek the creature of the night
That can sense the foul plague;
The raven and the chevalier
Prove valuable allies in the fight ahead.
Some days, I really hated Nostradamus.
~*~
The story continues in " Stalemate: First Wave Alternate Reality/Forever Knight Crossover Fantasy"
***
Forever Knight/First Wave Crossover Fantasy Fan Fiction
For entertainment only
© 2000 by Caren Franco
Title by J. K. Haynes and S. Miller. Only Katy Johannson, Brad, the Night Shift and NK’s Pub are original. Nick "Girard" Knight, Janette DuCharme, and Lacroix were created by James Parriott, Sony Corporation, and TriStar Television. Cade Foster, Eddie Nambulous, the Paranoid Times, Jordan Radcliffe, Raven Nation, Hannah Foster, and the Gua were created by Chris Brancato, Francis Ford Coppola, Larry Sugar, and Pearson Television.
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Night Waves 5: Cade's new army -- the Raven Nation -- is developing a weapon that will kill only Gua. But how will the Alien Hunters know who the Gua are? Cade has the answer, and hopes Nick Knight will be willing to help him out.
I didn’t want to be here.
Of all the places to be, this was not at the top of my list. When you’re Cade Foster, twice-blessed alien hunter and vampire, life - or death - leaves you no choice.
I made the painful decision to leave Katy behind this time as I searched for someone I was certain she wouldn’t want to see again - Nick Girard. In her past life, Katy Johannson was a vampire hunter, until she got bit by one and it was Nick who brought her across the rest of the way.
And now, I was outside NK’s Pub, the place Katy and Nick owned together at one time. Katy told me she’d written to Nick to tell him to either keep it or sell it. Gutsy move, if you’d asked me.
I came in search of Nick because I knew he could prove an invaluable ally in my fight against the Gua.
There was another reason I was at NK’s. I felt a familiar, powerful pull, that of my Mistress. The woman who brought me across finally had a name, thanks to Katy. She was Nick’s vampire "sister" and lover; her name was Janette DuCharme. It seemed very strange that this was all intertwined somehow, like I was caught up in an eternal soap opera.
I sensed dawn was only a few hours away, and while Nick had apartments below the pub, I had a feeling I wouldn’t be invited to stay over.
Although I’d first heard of NK’s Pub from an email to the Paranoid Times maybe eight months ago, it felt like another lifetime ago.
A case of vampires getting sick because they were feeding on the Gua led me to the pub, and to Katy. And for the first time since Hannah was killed, I’d truly fallen in love. I hadn’t even told Katy that, as it was a recent revelation even to me. Katy began my transformation, and Janette finished it.
Janette had known who I was - she’d known Nostradamus - and told me I had another mission to fulfill. I was Nostradamus’ Twice-Blessed Man.
And now, confined to the darkness, I had to rely on my human partner more than ever - Crazy Eddie Nambulous, publisher of the Paranoid Times.
It appeared, however, that I now had an army to fight with me. They called themselves the Raven Nation, and their leader was a strong-willed woman named Jordan Radcliffe. She said she was on my side, and I know she’s not Gua. But could I trust Jordan to guard the fort with Eddie? Even more importantly, could I trust Katy with Jordan?
Knowing that Katy was probably furious with me already, I gathered my wits, and entered the pub.
~*~
Nick was behind the bar at one end, at the other end was Brad. It was Brad who had told be where I could find Katy those many months ago. And it was on that search that I’d first met Janette, at a place called the Night Shift.
I knew she was the elegant woman sitting at the bar, and I heard her say,
"Ah, Nichola, I believe we have some company."
And when Nick looked up and saw me, his eyes immediately glowed with anger.
"What do you want?" he seethed through his fangs.
"I need your help," I said.
I knew that was the last thing Nick expected me to say, and his face showed it. His eyes and teeth returned to normal, but he made no friendly invitational gesture.
"Who made you?" was what he did ask.
"Nichola!" Janette chided. "You do not know?"
Nick seemed to ignore Janette’s question, and I approached the bar.
"Look, Girard," I started.
Janette looked from me to Nick, and raised her eyebrows questioningly.
"It’s Knight," Nick retorted.
"As in, ‘in shining armor’?" I asked casually. Nick didn’t reply, so I took that as a yes. It only took a moment for its importance to hit me. I vaulted the bar and aimed to grab Nick’s neck.
"Why you - " I said. Nick saw me coming and pushed me away. Since vampires have unnatural strength, it was as if I flew into the wall where he’d pushed me. I hit the wall near the ceiling and fell to the floor.
"I don’t know what you’re talking about!" he hissed. His fangs were showing once more. I stood up and walked back to the patrons’ side of the bar.
"The name of the bar," I said. "NK’s. Nick Knight’s."
"She gave me her half," Nick defended.
"You didn’t even have to change the name!" I was angry now, and I felt my fangs full in my mouth.
"Nichola has always thought of himself as the proverbial knight," Janette said, sipping her drink. I looked at it. It was blood, straight up, and it made me very hungry. Janette offered me the goblet, which I took, and drained eagerly, the blood dripping down the sides of my mouth.
"Thank you, m’lady," I said, returning the goblet with a slight bow. Janette smiled.
"Perhaps if Nichola took lessons from you, he and Lacroix might not be so… estranged," Janette told me, but was watching Nick as she said it. Then she turned to me.
"You need Nichola’s help, or mine?" she asked, seductively. I watched her mouth as she spoke to me, and I thought about kissing those soft red lips. I even licked my lips as if preparing for a kiss.
"Both," I said, suddenly remembering what I was doing there in the first place. "You can sense them. I can too. All vampires can," I said, and explained. The Raven Nation was developing a weapon that would kill only the Gua. The trick was to find out a way to figure out who was an alien and who wasn’t.
"Human blood smells sweet, intoxicating, like wine," I said. "Gua blood smells like rotting, decaying fruit." I shuddered, having had that privilege before.
"I thought they just didn’t know what a bath was," Janette said slowly, playing with the stem of a new goblet of blood. I didn’t know when she’d gotten the refill, but it was making me ravenous again, and I knew Nick wouldn’t serve me, a paying customer or not. Let’s just say it was a very sore topic when Katy left Nick for me.
Nick stared at me blankly.
"Look," I said watching Nick, but smelling the heady scent of the blood, "I got shot on national television to prove a point. The world thinks I’m dead!"
"Cade," Janette said, offering me the goblet. She waited until I drank the whole thing - like a man who’d been stranded in the desert drinks water - before finishing her thought: "You are dead."
"I know that. But my believers don’t. And we do have a way to tell who’s human and who’s Gua. But I can’t do it on my own." I hoped I didn’t sound like I was begging.
Janette came over to me, and offered me a seat on the stool that I’d been standing next to. She stood next to me, almost leaning in my lap, and played with my ear and the hair at the base of my neck with her fingernails. They too, like her lips, were blood red.
I looked up and glanced at Nick. He was drying some wine glasses - a nervous gesture I figured - and he caught my eye. He stared, and in that split second, he knew. He crushed the glass in his hand as the realization dawned.
"How could you, Janette?" he said with obvious disapproval.
"Why Nichola, mon cherie, you are jealous. Tsk. This does not become you."
"Jealous? Of what?" Nick demanded. Janette continued playing with my hair, and running her fingernails along my neck. Then she kissed me, and I was lost. It was sensual, practiced, and very addicting. Her lips were soft, and they nipped mine with an expertise that I didn’t want to question.
When she ended the kiss that left me stunned, she addressed Nick’s question.
"’Twould seem that our fair Cade has something you desire, Nichola." Fair Cade? I thought. That was new to me. But Janette was right. She knew nothing of the triangle that she had complicated by bringing me across.
"It’s an hour until dawn," Nick said, ignoring Janette’s baiting comment. I knew Nick wasn’t going to talk about it, so it would be up to me to fill in the pieces.
"Are you throwing me out, Nichola?" Janette sounded like an innocent young girl, but I knew she was far from both. She even fluttered her eye lashes at Nick.
Nick looked up from where he was cleaning the bar.
"Yes, Janette, I am." And he went back to his busywork.
"I booked a hotel room before I came," I said. "No windows."
Janette stood, and allowed me to take her arm to escort her from the pub.
"Some people still have manners, Nichola," she called over her shoulder as we left the pub. I saw Brad and waved. He waved back and gave a thumbs-up sign. At least he didn’t hate me.
~*~
"There is still some time before the dawn, why don’t you tell me what has happened?" Janette said, sitting on the edge of the bed, motioning me to sit beside her. I declined, and remained standing, leaning against the dresser.
I started with Brad’s email to the Paranoid Times, and finished with our joint quests, and that mine had brought me to the Night Shift in the first place.
"She told me that Nick let her go to me, and that he’d be waiting if she returned. But she was happy with me. I guess Nick is jealous," I concluded. "I have Katy."
"That does sound like Nichola, going after things he can never have. Years ago, he wanted mortality. Something, or someone, changed that, I am pleased to say," she said.
I was silent. It was not my business to pry into Nick’s past.
I could sense that the sun was just about up, and I offered the bed to Janette while I sat in the chair at the table that every hotel room has. I did not want to sleep before she did, and I had to wake before she did. It’s not that I didn’t trust her.
Ok, I didn’t.
She stretched out on the bed much the way a cat would stretch out after a long catnap. I knew she was trying to seduce me. But the moment I felt the sun hit the horizon, it was as if I was falling into an abyss.
~*~
I woke with a start, and slowly sat up. I was assailed by two senses at once. The first was that Janette was awake and watching me. The second one was Katy.
I jumped out of the chair and grabbed my jacket and was out the door. Janette started to call me back, but I resisted her pull. Why did I sense Katy when she was with Eddie and Jordan…
Jordan had to have known by now that Katy and I were vampires, didn’t she? I hoped she didn’t do anything to provoke Katy.
"Man, am I glad to see you!" Eddie said when I poked my head in the trailer once I’d arrived. I could still sense Katy, but I couldn’t pinpoint her location.
"What the hell is going on?" I demanded of Eddie.
"They’re in the bunker. Man, Foster, Katy was a wreck when she awoke last night, and Jordan said you weren’t coming back. Katy went to look for you, but came back just at dawn. She curled up in the trunk of the Caddy - in the trunk, Foster! - and at dusk she found Jordan and took her down into the bunker. That was a half an hour ago. No one’s heard anything."
I turned and was out the door. I heard Eddie calling me, but ignored it and headed down to the bunker.
"Katy," I called, both aloud and mentally.
Cade! I heard her relieved reply in my mind. She said you’d gone. Said you went in search of - ahh, hell, I don’t know. It sounded good. She sounded like she’d actually believed whatever Jordan had told her.
From our mental conversation, I was able to find her in a room, Katy sitting on the bed, Jordan propped up against the wall like a rag doll.
"What did you do to her?" I demanded.
"I’m sorry. I guess I don’t know my own strength," she said. "But she’ll live."
I sat down on the bed next to her and took her hands in mine.
"Listen, Katy, we’ve only known Jordan what - a few weeks? And you’re ready to take her word over mine? I told you I was searching for allies and I’d be back. You know I’d never leave you Katy," I said. "I love you."
She was silent, mulling over what I’d told her, and I didn’t know how she’d react, but then I saw her eyes turn gold and her fangs parted her lips slightly. Not breaking contact with my eyes, she brought the hand that held hers up to her lips and kissed it. She leaned over and kissed my wrist then, and trailed kisses up my arm, my shoulder, neck, and finally kissed me full on the lips.
My fangs were already full-length, and I moved my mouth away from hers and kissed down to the soft part of her neck by her shoulders. I felt her lips at the same place on me, then I felt her fangs sink in as I did the same. We were both ravenous and the blood was so sweet.
We stopped within moment of each other, and I kissed her lips again.
"You disgust me," we both heard from the floor. We looked over at Jordan who was holding the back of her head as she stood.
I watched as she stalked out of the room to her own quarters. I followed her, knowing that Katy would be listening in. I had no idea what I was even going to tell Jordan.
Jordan Radcliffe was an heiress who’s brother had been Subject 23 in the same experiment that had killed Hannah. Jordan put her money and all she had into fighting the Gua. And in their secret bunkers, Raven Nation was working on their secret weapon.
"Jordan," I said when I found her. She was sitting on her bed in her quarters. In her hands, she held a bound book of the pages of the Paranoid Times. My journal entries.
"Are you the same man who wrote these?" she asked.
That was tough, I thought. I was - and I wasn’t. Maybe she didn’t know. But if I lied, I was certain she would know that. I tried to make eye contact with her, but I was drawn to her pulsating neck, my fangs growing with hunger. I felt my eyes change, and I did turn my gaze to Jordan.
"No, I’m not," I said, answering her question.
She reached for the gun in the holster she always wore and aimed it at me.
"What are you?" she demanded, cocking the gun. "Are you Gua?"
"I had the same reaction when I met Katy," I explained.
"She’s one too?"
"Jordan," I said, capturing her stare with mine. "You didn’t see me like this. I am the same person as I have always been. But I can tell who is human and who is Gua." My eyes and teeth returned to normal, and Jordan shook her head clear of the trance.
"Cade? How did I get back here?" she questioned, holstering her gun. "I have to go apologize to Katy - I said a few things - " She left her quarters as she was talking. I smiled.
At least that had gone right.
~*~
I had to return to NK’s, but I didn’t want to tell Katy where I was going. I didn’t exactly want to return there, but Nick and the Community could be very helpful to me. I hoped in the time I had patched things up with Katy and Jordan, Janette had spoken with Nick.
"Careful, buddy," Eddie warned me. But my glowing eyes put him at ease. And I’d sensed Katy behind me, so my fangs started to grow.
"You’re off again?" she asked. "You can’t tell me where you’re going, can you?"
"Now you know how I feel," Eddie interjected.
"I don’t think you’d want to know," I said honestly.
"So you are going to see Nick," she said, catching me off guard. That’s not easy to do to vampires. But I couldn’t lie to Katy. I nodded.
"I’m coming with you," she said.
"I don’t think that’s a good idea," I cautioned.
"He kept the bar," she said. It was not a question.
"Yeah," I confessed.
"Oh," she sounded lost, confused, hurt. I held her close to me, embracing her in my arms. She wrapped her arms around me too.
"Excuse me," I heard Eddie say, and then heard him go back into the trailer. She looked up at me, and I kissed her.
"You know I’ll be back," I reassured her. She nodded, and I took off.
~*~
This time, I entered the pub with no hesitation, and I could see that unnerved Nick. Janette had been there earlier, but I couldn’t sense her when I entered. Nick didn’t even look up when I came in.
"Janette isn’t here," he said.
"I was looking for you," I explained.
"Why me?"
"Good question." I said. I had no idea why. Other than that the more vampires knew about the Gua, the better chance we had to defeat them. "You know why I need help," I said. "I figure - as owner of a bar - you see lots of people - vampires and Gua. Consider it ‘community service,’" I said, winging it.
Nick finally looked up at me, and then went right back to whatever it was he was working on.
"Listen. I know you wanted to regain your humanity. I still think about that too. If the Gua ever find out what I am, they will find out everything, including you. And if Katy ever meant anything to you..."
I knew I was playing dirty, and that was where I stopped talking and turned, intending to leave the pub. I had no idea if the Gua would actually seek out Nick and Katy and the rest of the vampire community if they found out what I was. But it was enough.
"Ok," Nick growled behind me. I turned back.
"What do you need me to do?" he asked.
~*~
"Well? What did he say?" Katy pounced the moment I returned to the trailer.
I stalked into the trailer, sat down on Eddie’s comfy couch, and took off my steel-toed work boots and wriggled my toes. Katy came over to me and sat next to me, curled up like a cat, and leaned on me. She kissed my ear. Then she playfully slapped my shoulder.
"Tell me!" she said, teasing.
"He said yes."
"I knew he would," she revealed.
"How did you know that?"
As if on cue, Eddie came in the trailer with a computer printout.
"What’s that Nick guy’s last name?" he asked.
"Girard," Katy said, but I shook my head.
"He goes by Knight now."
"Again," a new voice said in the door way. It was Jordan. "I, uh, met him in Toronto many years back. He was a homicide detective then. It was before…everything," she explained.
Eddie handed me the computer sheet he held:Century 12, quatrain 28:
Seek the creature of the night
That can sense the foul plague;
The raven and the chevalier
Prove valuable allies in the fight ahead.
Some days, I really hated Nostradamus.
~*~
The story continues in " Stalemate: First Wave Alternate Reality/Forever Knight Crossover Fantasy"
***
Forever Knight/First Wave Crossover Fantasy Fan Fiction
For entertainment only
© 2000 by Caren Franco
Title by J. K. Haynes and S. Miller. Only Katy Johannson, Brad, the Night Shift and NK’s Pub are original. Nick "Girard" Knight, Janette DuCharme, and Lacroix were created by James Parriott, Sony Corporation, and TriStar Television. Cade Foster, Eddie Nambulous, the Paranoid Times, Jordan Radcliffe, Raven Nation, Hannah Foster, and the Gua were created by Chris Brancato, Francis Ford Coppola, Larry Sugar, and Pearson Television.
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