Victoria Nelson - Blood Lines Part 16

"Not exactly. I'm waiting for a series of incredible coincidences to occur so I can be a hero."

"This Victory's idea?"

Henry smiled at the younger man. "How could you tell?"

"Are you kidding?" Tony snickered. "It has Victory written all over it. You've got to watch her, Henry.

Give her a chance, give any cop a chance-or any ex-cop," he amended, "and they'll try to run your life."

"My life?" Henry asked, allowing the civilized mask to slip a little.

Tony wet his lips, but he didn't back down. "Yeah," he said huskily, "your life, too."

Henry played with the Hunger a little, allowing it to rise as he traced the line of jaw, then forcing it back down again as he admitted he had no real desire to feed. "You should get some sleep," he suggested over the wild pounding of Tony's heart. "I think you've already had enough excitement for one night."

"Wha...?"

"I can smell him all over you." Henry heard the blood rush up into Tony's face, saw the smooth curve of cheek flush darkly. "It's all right." He smiled. "No one else can."

"He wasn't like you..."

"I should certainly hope not." "I mean, he wasn't... it wasn't... well, it was but... I mean..."

"I know what you mean." He made the smile a promise and held it until he saw that Tony understood.

"I'd walk you home, but I have an a.s.signment to complete."

"Yeah." Tony sighed, tugged at his jeans, and began to walk away. A few paces down the road, he turned. "Hey, Henry. Those crazy ideas that Victory gets? Well, most times they turn out not to be so crazy after all."

It was Henry's turn to sigh as he spread his arms. "I'm still out here."

"... leave a message after the tone."

"Vicki? Celluci. It's four o'clock, Wednesday afternoon. One of the uniforms just told me they saw you poking around the drains behind the museum this morning. What the f.u.c.k do you think you're doing?

You're looking for a mummy, not a G.o.dd.a.m.ned Ninja Turtle.

"By the way, if you find anything-and I mean anything-and you don't immediately let me know, I'm going to kick your a.s.s from here to Christmas."

The house and garden looked vaguely familiar, like a childhood memory too far in the past to put a name or a place to. Remaining a cautious distance away, she walked around to the back, knowing before she saw them that there'd be hollyhocks by the kitchen door, that the patio would be made of irregular gray flagstones, that the roses would be in bloom. It was sunny and warm and the lawn smelled like it had just been mowed-in fact, there against the garage was the old push lawn mower that she'd used every Monday evening on their handkerchief-sized lawn in Kingston.

The baseball glove she'd inherited from an older cousin lay by the back step, the lacing she'd repaired standing out against the battered leather in a way she didn't think it really had. Her fringed denim jacket, the last thing her father bought her before he left, swayed from the clothesline.

The garden seemed to go on forever. She began to explore, moving slowly at first, then faster and faster, suddenly aware that something followed close behind. She circled the house, raced up the front path, leapt up onto the porch, and came to a full stop with her hand on the doork.n.o.b.

"No. "

It wanted her to go in.

The k.n.o.b began to turn and her hand turned with it. She could see her reflection in the door's window. It had to be her reflection, although for a moment she thought she saw herself inside the house looking out.

Whatever had been following her in the garden came up onto the porch. She could feel the worn boards move under its tread and in the window she saw the reflected gleam of glowing red eyes.

"No!" She dragged her fingers off the doork.n.o.b and, almost incapacitated by fear, forced herself to turn around.

Vicki shoved her gla.s.ses at her face and peered at the clock. Two forty-six.

"I don't have time for this," she muttered, settling back against the pillows, heart still slamming against her ribs. In barely two hours she'd be heading over to Henry's which made sleep the priority of the moment.

Although that incident at the museum had obviously spooked her more than she'd thought, dream a.n.a.lysis would just have to wait. She dropped her gla.s.ses back where they belonged, stretched up a long arm, and switched off the light. "I'm going to blacken the next set of glowing red eyes that wakes me up," she promised her subconscious.

A few moments later, lying awake in the dark, she frowned. She hadn't thought of that jacket in years.

Thursday night, the house stood alone on a gray plain and the dream began by the front door.

The compulsion to open it was too strong to resist and she walked in, closely followed. She caught just a glimpse of the contents of the first room when the light dimmed and she fought to hold it down.

It wanted to see what was in the house. Well, it could just take a flying f.u.c.k.

Although her head felt as if it had been slammed repeatedly between two large rocks, Vicki woke feeling smug.

She was giving him more of a fight than he'd antic.i.p.ated. His lord would not be pleased. As she had no protecting G.o.ds, merely a strongly developed sense of self, the failure would be perceived as being his.

Akhekh did not tolerate failure and his punishments were such that anything became preferable to facing them.

He needed more power.

In spite of the cold and the damp, a Friday afternoon spent in the park beat the h.e.l.l out of a Friday afternoon spent with the Riel Rebellion and grade ten chemistry. Brian tightened his grip across Louise's shoulders and turned her face up to meet his.

Now this is what I call getting an education! He thought as her lips parted and she flicked at his tongue with hers.I wonder if she'll let me slip my hand up under her... ouch. Guess not .

He opened his eyes, just to see what another person looked like from that angle, and frowned as he saw a well-dressed man watching them from no more than five feet away.Oh, great. A pervert. Or a cop.

Maybe we should... we should ...

"Brian?" Louise pulled back as he went limp. "Cut it out." His head flopped forward onto her shoulder.

"I mean it, Brian. You're scaring me. Brian? "Oh, my G.o.d."

He settled back on the bed, throwing the bags of feathers to the floor. Someday soon he'd have a proper headrest made.

It was eleven forty-three-this culture's preoccupation with the division of time into ridiculously small units never failed to amuse him-and she would be asleep by now, her ka at its most vulnerable. Tonight shewould not be able to stand against him; he would throw all the power from the ka he had absorbed this afternoon at her defenses.

He closed his eyes and sent his ka forth, following the path his lord had laid out, entering through the image of his lord's eyes.

It was as if something held her elbow and walked her through the house, observing, discarding, searching. She couldn't shake free. She couldn't dim the lights.

She couldn't let it find what it needed.

Except she had no idea of what that was.

They climbed a staircase and started down a long corridor with a mult.i.tude of doors off to either side. As they reached for the k.n.o.b of the second door, she saw the pencil lines and the dates, realized who waited within, and thought-or spoke, she wasn't sure-"Not the third door, anything but the third door, " and tried to push them forward.

It stopped her, turned her, walked her down the hall, and into the third room. When they came out, it moved her on. It never came back to the second room.

Obviously, it had never read Aesop's fables.

She managed to protect her mother, Celluci, and Henry. It found everything else.

Everything.

He knew how she would suffer. It would take a while to arrange, even with some of the necessary influences already in place, but his lord could not help but be pleased with the result.

"You don't look so good. Are you all right?"

Vicki s.h.i.+fted her grip on the aluminum baseball bat and managed a smile. "I'm okay. I'm just a little tired."

"I'm sorry I haven't turned up any leads these last couple of nights but, to be honest, I never expected to."

"That's all right. It was a long shot. Henry..." She sat down on the edge of the bed and with one finger stroked the patch of red gold hair in the center of his chest. "...are you still dreaming?"

Henry pulled the sheet aside to expose a ragged clutch of multiple holes in the mattress. "I drove my fingers through here this morning," he said dryly. He flicked the sheet back, then covered her hand with his. "If I hadn't caught a hint of your scent on the pillow, I don't know how much more damage I might have done." She looked away and he decided not to say the rest, not to tell her that she gave him reason to hold onto his sanity. Instead, he asked, "Why?"

"I just wondered if they were getting worse." "They haven't changed. You getting tired of standing guard?"

"No. I just..." She couldn't tell him. The dream had seemed so important while it was going on, but now, faced with Henry's basic terror, it seemed stupidly abstract and meaningless.

"You just?" Henry prodded, knowing full well from her expression that she wasn't going to tell him.

"Nothing."

"Look at the bright side." He brought her hand to his mouth and kissed the scars on the inside of her wrist. "Tonight's the night of the party. One way or another, something's bound to..."

"... happen." Vicki drew her hand away and straightened Henry's arm. Sliding her gla.s.ses back up her nose, she leaned the bat against the end of the bed. "One way or another."

Chapter Ten.

"Oh, my G.o.d."

"What's wrong?"

Vicki wet her lips. "Absolutely nothing. You look... uh, good." Henry's costume had been made traditional in a score of movies-turn-of-the-century formal wear with a broad scarlet ribbon cutting diagonally across the black and a full-length opera cloak falling in graceful folds to the floor. The effect was amazing. And it wasn't the contrast between the black and the white and the sculptured pale planes of face and the sudden red,'gold brilliance that was Henry's hair. No, Vicki decided, the attraction was in the way he wore it. Few men would have the self-a.s.surance, the well-bred arrogance to look comfortable in such an outfit; Henry looked like, well, like a vampire.The kind you'd like to run into in a dark alley. Several times . "In fact, you look better than good. You look amazing."

"Thank you." Henry smiled and smoothed the sleeve of his jacket down until only a quarter inch of white cuff showed. A heavy gold ring gleamed on his right hand. "I'm glad you approve."

He could feel the years settling on him with the clothing, feel the Henry Fitzroy who wrote romance novels and was occasionally permitted to play detective submerge into the greater whole. Tonight, he would walk among mortals; a shadow amid their bright lights and gaiety, a hunter in the night.Good lord, I'm beginning to sound as melodramatic as one of my own books .

"I still think you've got a lot of chutzpah going to this party as a vampire. Aren't you taking a big chance?"

"And what chance is that? Discovery?" He draped the cloak over his arm and peered at her in the cla.s.sic Hammer Films Dracula pose. "What you're looking at here is the purloined letter trick; hiding in plain sight." Dropping the pose, he smiled down at her. "And it isn't the first time I've done it. Think of it as a smoke screen. Halloween calls for a disguise. If Henry Fitzroy is a vampire on Halloween, then obviously he isn't the rest of the year."

Vicki draped one leg over the arm of the chair and smothered a yawn. "I'm not sure about that logic,"

she muttered. Early mornings and late nights were beginning to take their toll and a four-hour nap in the afternoon hadn't done much beyond throwing her internal clock even further out of whack. Barely morethan a year away from the twenty-four hour aspect of police work, she was amazed at how quickly she'd lost her ability to adapt. The evening spent with her weights had gotten the blood flowing a little, was.h.i.+ng away some of the fatigue. Henry's appearance had started things moving faster yet.

Henry's nose twitched as he picked up the sudden intensifying of her scent and he lifted one eyebrow, murmuring softly, "I know what you're thinking."

She felt herself flush but managed to keep her voice tolerably casual even as she s.h.i.+fted position in the chair and crossed her legs. "Don't start anything you can't finish, Henry. You've already eaten."

The Hunger had been blunted earlier, a necessity if he was to spend the evening in close proximity to mortals and be able to think of anything except the life that flowed beneath clothes and skin, but Vicki's interest had resharpened an edge or two. "I haven't started anything," he pointed out, not bothering to hide his smile. "I'm not the one squirming in my..."

"Henry!"

"... seat," he finished quietly as the phone rang. "Excuse me a moment. Good evening. Henry Fitzroy speaking. Oh, h.e.l.lo, Caroline. Yes, it has been a while. Working on my latest book for the most part."

Caroline. Vicki recognized the name. While Henry was no more her exclusive possession than she was his, she couldn't help but feel... well, smug. She not only shared Henry's bed, which the other woman no longer did, but she shared the mysteries of Henry's nature, which the other woman never had.

"Unfortunately, I have plans for tonight, but thank you for asking. Yes. Perhaps. No, I'll call you."

As he hung up the phone, Vicki shook her head. "You know, of course, that there's a special circle in h.e.l.l for those people who make promises to call, then don't."

"They'll probably run out of room long before my time." Henry's voice trailed off.And then again, maybe not . While he continued to dream of the sun, every dawn might be his last. For the first time, he looked beyond the possibility of his death to all the things it would leave undone. He stood quietly for a moment, hand resting lightly on the phone, then came to a decision.

Vicki watched him curiously as he came around and knelt, capturing her hands, opera cloak pooling around his legs. While she had no objection to having handsome men at her feet, she had an uneasy feeling that the situation was about to get uncomfortable.

"You're right, I'm not going to call," he began. "But I think you need to know why. I can feed from a chance encounter with a stranger and not feel I'm betraying anything, but when I feed from Caroline I feel I'm betraying you both. Her, because I can give her so little of what I am and you because I have given you all of me."

Suddenly more frightened than smug, Vicki tried to pull her hands free. "Don't..."

Henry let them go but stayed where he was. "Why not? Tomorrow's dawn might be the one I've been waiting for."

"Well, it isn't!"

"You don't know that." At this moment, his death had become less important than what he had to say."What will it change if I say it?"

"Everything. Nothing. I don't know." She took a deep breath and wished the light were dimmer, so she couldn't see his face so clearly. So he couldn't see hers. "Henry, I can sleep with you. I can feed you. I can be your friend and your guardian, but I can't..."

"Love me? Don't you?"

Did she?