by Tanya Huff
At twenty paces she stopped. Two heartbeats in front of her; four, maybe five metres away. Mike sounded drugged, his heartbeat slow, but steady. Van Helsing sounded excited, but not afraid.
“You may take off the blindfold, Ms. Nelson.” He sounded as calm up close and personal as he had over the phone.
The calm before the storm. Vicki stuffed the blindfold in her pocket and slowly opened her eyes, her vision sensitive enough that even the low light in the empty warehouse caused painful starbursts.
When she blinked them away, the first thing she saw was Mike. Arms, legs, and chest duct taped to a wheelchair, his eyes closed, his mouth slightly open, a glistening line of drool running down his chin, a small vapour cloud blooming with each breath.
Her would-be Van Helsing stood slightly to the left of the wheelchair, holding a gun to Mike’s head. He wasn’t particularly tall, had brown hair and brown eyes, was expensively dressed and vaguely attractive in an I’m confident enough to kidnap a decorated police officer in order to get the drop on a vampire sort of a way. Vicki had to admit she appreciated that kind of confidence—if only on an intellectual level.
She kept a tight grip on the Hunger. As much as she wanted to let it loose, allowing herself to give into blood lust would very likely add Mike to the body count, and that was the one thing she wanted to avoid.
“We meet at last, Ms. Nelson.” His words created a vapour cloud.
Hers didn’t. “You do know that it’s entirely possible I could kill you before you could pull the trigger?”
“I know.” He seemed impressed. “Which is why my men are also armed. If you begin to move toward me they will shoot.”
“They couldn’t hit me.”
“They won’t be aiming at you.”
Although she could smell the fear rising like smoke off the two men behind her, if she had to attach an emotion to this man, she’d say it was anticipation. He was studying her like she was the answer to the only riddle he’d never been able to solve. “You don’t want to kill me.”
His brows rose. “I beg your pardon?”
He knew what she was. He suspected she lived with Mike—knew about the connection between them at least. He got the keys to the house from Mike when he grabbed him, but finding her there had been incidental to his plan or he wouldn’t have waited until the end of Mike’s shift and the chance she’d wake. He took Mike because Mike’s life was the only thing that would allow him to control her. And if he wanted to control her…
“What is it that only I can do for you?”
He smiled then. “Make me like you.”
Vicki blinked. “Like me?”
“Yes. “
“You have no idea what I am.”
“Faster, stronger, immortal, nightwalker, vampire.” He gestured with his free hand. The hand holding the gun remained rock steady. “A piece of evidence here. A rumour there. A camera you weren’t aware of. Oh, don’t worry, it’s all been taken care of.”
“If you think this is a worried expression, you’re more delusional than I thought.”
“I was merely making it clear that you needn’t start ripping throats out to cover your tracks. It’s all been taken care of.” His brows lifted slightly. “I don’t want anyone else to put the pieces together, do I? I assigned Daniel and Steven to you exclusively, and I did what research was necessary myself. The only thing I haven’t discovered, is why.”
“Why what?”
“Why would you take the risks involved in tying yourself to a mortal life.”
She couldn’t stop her lips from lifting off her teeth. In all honesty, she didn’t try very hard. “There’s a lot of backstory.”
“I’m sure there must be.” He actually sounded bored. “And it’s not really important, here and now. The point is, I know exactly what you are, Ms. Nelson, and in return for the detective’s life, you will give that gift to me.”
Vicki hadn’t had a headache since she’d started walking the night, but the effort of holding herself back and trying to figure out what the fuck was going on had combined to wrap a band of pressure around her temples. “Okay, let’s leave what you think you know about me for a moment; who the hell are you?”
“You don’t know?”
If she had to bet, she’d say he honestly thought she should.
“My name is Damon Shea, and I am the CEO and majority stock holder of…”
“Shea Pharmaceuticals, a multinational, multimillion-dollar corporation run by a man too ambitious not to cut corners and too smart to get caught.”
A dimple flashed in one cheek. “See, you do know me.”
“And you want to become a vampire.”
“Think of what I could accomplish.”
Vicki snorted. “Yeah, I am. You kidnapped a police officer, drugged him, and are holding him at gunpoint—strangely enough, that doesn’t say using immortality to work for the greater good.” She spread her hands, carefully, aware of the weapons behind her. “But that could just be me.”
“Needs must, Ms. Nelson.” Shea shrugged. “As long as you co-operate, Detective Celluci will wake up with nothing worse than a dry mouth and a temporary craving for carbohydrates.”
“And you’ll release him when I agree to change you?”
“I will.”
She sighed. “The change isn’t instantaneous.”
“I said I did my research, Ms. Nelson. While I am changing, Daniel and Steven will keep an eye on your detective, as an insurance policy. You’ll have left him a note explaining enough to keep him from searching for you. After the change, you won’t be able to kill me because of the blood bond. Neither will I be able to kill you. You’ll be free to go, and I will then change Daniel and Steven as payment for services rendered.”
She wondered if Daniel and Steven believed that.
Didn’t matter.
“So,” he continued, “here’s what’s going to happen. You’re going to sign the note I’ve already written, then you will allow me to secure you. Daniel and Steven will take the detective home, and after they call to inform us that he’s awake and fine, we’ll get started. There is no way out of this, Ms. Nelson. I’ve covered every contingency.”
The bang of a fist against the warehouse door was so loud and unexpected the shouting wasn’t entirely required. “Open up! This is the police!”
One of them, she expected it was probably Daniel, kept his head and pulled the trigger as she began to move. The round caught her just under her left shoulder and the pain broke the last of the Hunger free.
Her hand around Shea’s hand and the gun, she crushed the bones against the metal.
He screamed.
“A gunshot. A scream. Police’ll be breaking the door down.” He smelled liked terror now. Vicki smiled and said, “Time to leave.”
Flicking the bloody remains of Shea’s trigger finger out of the way, she turned just far enough to put a bullet into both Daniel and Steven’s heads then threw the moaning man up over her good shoulder and ran for the other end of the warehouse, not caring that blood from his hand left a trail on the floor.
She could have broken the door down, but she shot the lock off and shoved it open carefully enough to keep from ripping it off the hinges. Scuffing her feet through the snow to keep from leaving a clear impression, rage keeping her moving at nearly full speed in spite of the wound and the struggling man, she stopped by a set of tire tracks then made an impossible jump across them to a bit of bare rock. Looked down, smiled again, and dropped down into the ravine. She’d thought they were by the waterfront, but given the terrain, it was more likely they were in one of the recession-hit warehouses on Riverside Drive.
When she figured she was far enough from the warehouse to delay discovery, she tossed Damon Shea down into the snow. He stared up at her, eyes wide and shocky, heart racing, cradling his ruined hand to his chest, not so much holding the gun as unable to release it.
“You… called…”
“The police? Yeah, before I l
eft my phone in the office.” One of the benefits of fighting to maintain some semblance of a life with Mike was that she still had friends on the force. She’d reported the threatening phone call and passed on the information about the car she’d seen lurking around the house.
“Research…”
“That whole vampires-are-lone-predators thing? That we never share our territory? That we’re top of the food chain? That we walk alone? You researched vampires, Mr. Shea.” Crouching in the snow beside him, she gave his shoulder a friendly pat. “You didn’t research me. And you know what you also missed considering? People in the process of breaking the law tend to overreact when the police show up.”
The banging on the door had caused one of the minions to panic, shooting the boss, who shot them both, and ran for it.
There were likely drops of her blood in the warehouse as well as Shea’s, but given the way budget cuts had created a massive backlog in the labs and given that the scene was pretty self-explanatory, the odds were good they’d never run the tests. In case the scene wasn’t self-explanatory enough, she’d have a talk with the uniforms on site before they wrote up their reports.
She thought about explaining all that to Shea, but the scent of his blood, steaming a little in the cold, loosened the last of her self-control.
*
“They lost Shea’s trail for a while, but they found his body later down in the ravine. Bastard slipped, cracked his head on a rock, and between that and the blood loss, well it was minus twenty-seven when they found him. And there wasn’t much left. A pack of feral dogs or maybe coyotes had torn the body apart, probably before it was even cold, but they found his weapon, three shots fired, two into his men and one into the lock on the rear door. Running ballistics is just a formality really.”
“Thank you, Constable.” Eyes silvered, she held his gaze with hers. He shivered as her voice whispered across his skin.
“Do you…”
“Shhhh.” She laid her finger against the swell of his lower lip. “I wasn’t here and you didn’t tell me any of this.”
When he nodded, she slipped past him and into Mike’s hospital room. Although he’d been essentially unharmed, the drugs had left him too out of it to protest a night under observation as vigorously as he could have.
He looked completely wiped, but he opened his eyes when she took his hand, obviously having been waiting for her to show up. After a moment, he closed his fingers around hers and squeezed. “What time is it?”
“Five fifty.”
“You’re cutting it close.”
She stayed to make sure that the police who found Damon Shea’s body found what she’d wanted them to find. “I’ve got time. You’ve got to love a February night.”
Mike’s mouth twisted into something that wasn’t quite a smile. “No, I don’t actually.”
“Well, maybe not this February night.”
“Vicki…” He paused and searched her face. Hospital rooms were never entirely dark and she had no idea how much he could see. He often saw more than she wanted him to. If he asked for her version of the story, she wondered what she’d tell him. Finally, he sighed, yawned, and said, “I’ve been lying here trying to figure out why Damon Shea of all people would grab me. I mean, there’s a lot of assholes out there who might want to get their own back, but Shea? It doesn’t make sense.” He met her gaze then, one of the very few who still could, and said, “You have blood on your sleeve.”
That was impossible, she’d changed her…
When Mike’s brows rose, she sighed.
“That’s what I thought.” And she was just as glad he didn’t say exactly what he thought, given the blood that wasn’t on her sleeve. “Shea was using me to get to you.”
“It didn’t work.”
“This time. But I’m a danger to you.”
“Given that you were the one grabbed and drugged…” Seemed reasonable to skip telling him about the gun to his head. “…I’d say I was a danger to you.”
“So…” He dragged her hand over onto his chest. “What are we going to do about it?”
She supposed she’d always known it would come to this. It wouldn’t be easy finding another territory, but she’d have to get out of the city entirely to put enough distance between them.
To her surprise, he laughed before she could say anything. “You’ve always thought too loud, Vic. And you’ve always been my weakness, from the moment I first met you, same way that I’ve been yours. And we’ve always lived the kind of lives where people could use that against us. So we’ll do what we’ve always done.”
His heart beat slow and steady under her hand. “We’ll watch each other’s backs.”
“We’ll watch each other’s backs,” he repeated. With that settled, his eyes drifted closed.
Vicki glanced over at the clock. If she stayed another twenty minutes, she’d still have time to get to her office before sunrise. As she watched Mike sleep, she realized that Shea had entirely missed the point. Mike was her weakness, but he was also her strength.
He kept her Human.
And should she ever be threatened the way he’d been tonight, he’d kill to keep her safe.
She just hoped he never had to.
Author’s Note
If Blood Ties had gone to a second season, this is one of the ideas I’d have pitched. (There were two others; they’ll probably be turned into stories in due course. Or, given that it’s been twelve years, in slightly later than due course.) It obviously would have been structured differently, Vicki’s part would have been played by Henry—since Blood Debt hadn’t happened in Blood Ties time—but the core of it wouldn’t have changed.
Until the notes came back…
SONGS SUNG RED
In a few short weeks, Millennium Ten, the latest club to spring up on Queen West’s transitional block between money and attitude, had become the place to be on a Friday night. It didn’t seem to matter that the bouncer guarding the entrance was an arbitrary ass, that the drinks were expensive, that the dance floor was too small; people still waited for hours in line, determined to get in.
Vicki didn’t like waiting.
As she made her way up the line, she let the Hunger rise. Not enough to give anything away, but enough that the people she passed knew. No one protested when the bouncer’s gaze skittered off her face and he stepped aside.
The stairs down to the lower level were lit with strips of neon, mounted low on the walls. Descending patrons could see their feet clearly while their features were already wrapped in a play of light and shadow that made everyone, if not more beautiful, more mysterious.
Vicki carried mystery with her.
A cluster of young women in brightly coloured, nearly-there dresses—high on thighs and low over breasts—shuffled aside on spike heels when she passed, instinctively giving way before the superior predator.
Making her way slowly around the room, Vicki ignored the crowd at the bar, her eyes locked on the moving bodies that filled the dance floor. It wasn’t easy, not with the combined scents of heated flesh and arousal, but she kept the Hunger damped down far enough it attracted only positive attention. Dangerous, but not deadly.
No one likely to approach her would believe the danger was real.
“You here alone?”
She’d known he was there before he’d spoken. Felt his eyes on her. Felt him move up behind her, close enough she could feel his clothing brush against her shoulder blades. He’d tipped his head forward to ask the question, warm breath lapping against her ear, his voice low, as intimate as possible given the ambient noise. He was tall, he had to be to pull off that maneuver when she was in heels, and he smelled like clean sweat and fabric softener.
Stepping back just a little, just enough for her ass to accidentally brush against him, she turned and smiled. “I am.”
He was in his mid-twenties, seven or eight years younger than she’d been when she changed. His eyes were a medium blue, flecked with gold. His hair was t
he same dark blond as hers, short enough to be military, but his beard, even though it was barely more than stubble, suggested otherwise. He wore a dark-blue button-down with the sleeves rolled up over muscular forearms, black jeans, and black boots. Fully aware she was checking him out, his eyes crinkled at the corners when he smiled, and his smile said he thought he controlled their interaction.
“Do you want to dance?” He nodded toward the dance floor as if reassuring her that he actually meant dance—although given the vertical foreplay happening out there, Vicki wasn’t sure why he thought drawing her attention to it would be reassuring.
“Love to.”
There were protocols for this type of hunt. As easy as it would be to lead this young man out into the alley behind the club and take what she wanted, part of the fun was allowing him to believe he was leading her.
That way, everyone was happy. And besides, no one wanted fast food every time they ate out.
The press of bodies kept them close. He kept his eyes on her face as they danced. He was good, Vicki gave him that—one Hunter to another. She had no idea what song was playing; as his heart began to beat in sync with the throbbing bass from the surrounding speakers, she danced to the pulsing of his blood. The thin fabric of his shirt began to stick to damp skin, outlining muscle, accentuating movement. As she breathed in his desire, a little more of the Hunger slipped free.
Outside, in the real world, people would have instinctively moved away. Down here, in the fantasy, they moved closer, flirting with fear, believing the same anonymity that allowed Vicki to Hunt would hide them. Like lambs to the slaughter.
Clubs like this were practically designed to become blood baths.
Vicki hurriedly damped it down at the look of terror on her partner’s face and, rather than make her move at the end of the song, kept them dancing until he regained his confidence. It didn’t take long. When she slid her leg between his, rubbing against the hard muscle of his thigh, showing him what she wanted, he closed his hands on her hips, fingers hot and strong, directing her movement.
She let him think so.