Title: CSI Denuo AU, snippet II
By: Macx
Pairing: gen
Fandom: CSI: Las Vegas
Rating: PG
Summary: This was me playing around with Nick's powers. I had this crazy idea and just went with it, writing just the scenes I had in mind. Sadly, I could never use it in the series. The rest of the Denuo stories can be found on the Gil/Nick - M authors page.

***

The wind had picked up and it was turning into a storm of tremedous proportions. Things were already being picked up and hurled through the air, but those were sticks and leaves and sand... it would get worse. The rain had started the moment Nick had run out onto the roof, and it was by now washing all evidence away.

Shit.

"Stokes!"

The voice sounded weak over the rain and the howl of the wind, but Nick heard it and turned. Ecklie was standing just inside the stairwell leading down, looking furious.

"Get your ass over here! We need to leave!"

"DB!" Nick yelled back and gestured toward the unmoving stranger.

Ecklie's face went through a sudden change and he jogged through the rain. "Hell," he whispered.

Nick dug out his camera and snapped pictures. All the evidence they could get... the rest was already washed away anyway.

The man lay on his stomach and there was no missing the execution style bullet wound at the neck. Two shots, actually. The hair was dark, plastered against his skull from the rain, and the pale skin looked even paler in the weird light of the approaching hurricane.

Nick pocketed the camera and knelt down, going through the man's clothes.

"We need to leave!" Ecklie insisted.

"This man was just killed here and the killer got away," Nick shot back. "The evidence is being washed away as we speak and the guy won't be here if we leave now and come back after the storm."

The rain was coming down in sheets and there was a puddle now where they stood. The sound was almost deafening. Wind tugged heavily at his clothes, but Nick resisted.

 

 

 

They had come about three feet when Nick saw it.

It was a tree. Coming right at them from behind the stairwell housing. Turning lazily on its axis, the roots crushed the metal and stone housing, sending the bricks flying. Nick cried out in surprise and raised his arms to protect himself, even though he knew he wouldn't survive this one way or the other.

 

 

[...]

 

It was like a bullet hitting glass and shattering it into a million pieces. The energy contained behind that glass burst free, now unhindered to make its way across the wide planes. It overwhelmed what it touched and created hundreds of tiny quakes, vibrating through the fabric of the spirit plane.

Nandi Kidja Kunene was sleeping when it hit and there was no waking up, jus the sudden jolt from a relaxed, deep sleep to startled awareness. No in-between. Just one, then the next.

Dark brown eyes flashed open and she sat up, body tense, breath expelling from her lungs.

"Oh no," she whispered.

With a fluid move she got out of bed, wide awake, all remnants of sleep already disappearing. Her mind vibrated in turn with the echoes of the spirit plane. She didn't have to really ask where the energy rush had come from; she would recognize the unique signature anywhere.

"Conrad," she murmured.

Standing in the middle of the room, completely naked, the shaman inhaled deeply, balancing herself, her body relaxing after a moment, and she sent out a probe.

Where are you?

Disjointed images answered her, followed by a few very clear pictures, and then nothingness.

Conrad had collapsed, was unconsicous, and after such an outbreak she hadn't expected otherwise.

What surprised her were the still so very active power echoes.

As if...

"By the Powers!" she whispered, thunderstruck.

Nandi whirled around and grabbed her clothes, rifling through a drawer for fresh underwear.

 

 

 

The moment Nandi appeared on the hurricane-swept roof she felt the dangerous spike in magic. It was like a furious hiss, coupled with fear and terror at something unknown, and there was the sheer desperation of keeping someone safe.

She warded off the 'attack' with ease. David was behind her, safe from the blast. She was surprised at the power behind the spurt, and the surprise turned into outright shock when she took in the scene before her.

Wide, brown eyes stared at her, reflecting all the emotions she had just felt, one hand out-stretched, fingers splayed as if pushing something away. Muscles trembled, clothes clung wetly to a slender frame that shook with the echoes of what had occurred, and a soft groan left the bloodless lips of Nick Stokes as his arm fell to his side and the tension drained from his frame.

"Nick?" Nandi heard herself exclaim before she reestablished control.

Nick was kneeling next to the limp form of Conrad Ecklie, who was just as water drenched as he was. The other shaman's eyes were closed, his features slack, skin pale.

"Nandi," he breathed, starting to shiver.

She took in the scene, the damage the hurricane had done. There was just a small space with no damage at all. A clear sign of a protective shield being raised.

"The body," Nick stammered as she came closer and knelt next to him, uncaring of the water puddle.

"What body?"

"Someone was killed up here," Nick said, voice trembling. "There's a body here... I tried to hold it.... I really tried..."

He... tried to hold it?

And then it struck Nandi. It wasn't just memory of who and what Nick was, but also the soft hum of power she felt from him. Shaman power.

By the Powers...

"Got it," a quiet voice announced and she looked around, seeing David not far away, gazing at a pile of rubble where the air conditioning vent had collapsed. Now that she looked at it, she could see a leg.

Nandi knew she had to make decisions based on priorities. She had a shaman, knocked out but stable from power overflow. She had a Mimic who was currently mimicking a shaman, shell-shocked, vibrating with shamanic powers. She had a dead body.

"David?"

Gray eyes, so eerily calm in the face of the destruction, of being displaced from Las Vegas to Miami, from a warm bed to the debris-laden hotel roof halfway across the continent, met hers.

"Take care of Nick," she instructed. "I'll handle Conrad."

He just nodded and turned to Nick, who was sliding deeper into shock. Nandi could only imagine what Nick was feeling, what he was going through. Her knowledge of Mimics was close to non-existent, but she had heard a little about Nick's abilities in the years she knew him now. With his adoption of someone else's abilities came also the knowledge how to handle them, which was good. She hated to think of a man with the power of a shaman and no idea how to control what he had at his disposal.

David led Nick to the collapsed stairwell and made him sit down, talking gently to him. Nandi turned to her unconscious friend and scanned him.

***