by Unknown
Winter driving in Toronto was never fun. Winter driving at rush hour, Downsview to her office on King Street East, barely maintaining a grip on her temper was less fun by an order of magnitude.
As the door to her office closed behind her, Vicki exhaled what felt like the first actual breath she’d taken since sunset and admitted that just maybe the break-in — not to mention the possibility of true death that came with it — had left her a little tense.
Any lock could be picked but the two heavy steel bolts and the two-by-four slid through steel brackets that secured the office door required an entirely different skill set. And tools. And would likely attract unwanted attention from the other tenants in the building, three quarters of whom ignored the clause in their lease that stipulated studios in the renovated warehouse were not live-in.
She was safer here in the day than she was at Mike’s.
She’d given up that safety for Mike.
But then Mike had given up normal for her so if someone, somewhere was keeping score, the game was tied as far as Vicki was concerned.
“By sunrise,” she muttered crossing the room to her desk, “I’d like that to be completely irrelevant.” Find the car. Find out who owned it. Neutralize the threat. A few months ago, she’d had dinner with a man who designed data bases for the Ministry of Transport. He didn’t know it but after she’d fed, he’d built her a back door into the system and set up the search protocols that allowed her to make the best use of it.
With the day denied her, it was nothing more than a way of evening the odds. That said, she hadn’t mentioned it to Mike. It wasn’t like he shared all the little details of his job.
Model and license information had just been entered when her office phone rang. The caller ID showed Mike’s cell number.
Speak of the devil.
“Hey. In case you didn’t get my message, we have a situation.”
“You have more than that, Ms. Nelson. You have one chance to save Detective Celluci’s life.”
She didn’t recognize the voice.
Or her own when she answered, but then her lips were pulled so far back off her teeth that was hardly surprising. “You’re a dead man.”
“One chance,” he repeated. He didn’t sound particularly worried about her reaction. “My people will meet you in front of your building and bring you to me.”
It didn’t seem like she had much of a choice. “When?”
“As soon as you can get out there. Leave your cell phone behind.”
He’d hung up without waiting for a response, but she called him a few choice names anyhow as she shrugged back into her coat and pulled her phone out of her pocket.
The black Jetta. Big surprise.
Smart-guy was still driving. Steve sat in the back and held up a phone as she closed the door. “Boss can hear every word. Try anything and the cop dies.”
Vicki twisted around and smiled at him, giving the Hunger free reign. They thought they knew what she was. They weren’t even close.
There was a sudden, sharp smell of urine and Steve whimpered. He hung onto the phone though.
“Stop terrifying my people, Ms. Nelson.” The speaker crackled as they pulled out into traffic, passing under a triple layer of overhead wires. “I can see you, I can hear you, and only your full co-operation will keep Detective Celluci alive.”
“If you kill him…” The small webcam had been mounted on the rear view mirror. She turned to stare directly into it. “…I will make you scream.”
“I don’t doubt it. I am, however, banking on the fact that you will do nothing to endanger Detective Celluci’s life. Your phone?”
“In the office.”
“Excellent.”
“You’re going to take my word for it?”
“If I find out you’ve been lying, you won’t be the one to suffer for it. Put the blindfold on. You’ll find it on the seat beside you.”
She found it on the seat between her and Smart-guy, almost covered by the spread of his grey wool winter coat.
Smart-guy hadn’t looked at her once, his eyes locked on the road. At the speed they were traveling along the snow-covered city streets, she could kill him and take control of the car without endangering anyone else on the road. From the trickle of sweat running down his temple to disappear behind his fleece scarf, it seemed he knew that.
“Ms. Nelson?”
The threat was implicit in the question.
“Fine. I’m putting it on.”
It wasn’t just a strip of black cloth, it was a strip of black cloth that had clearly been designed as a blindfold — thicker where it passed over the eyes, the ends thin enough to tie securely. Whoever this guy was, he probably knew if anal retentive had a hyphen.
“Good. Now, since your hearing is undoubtedly good enough to pick up environmental sounds that may give my position away, Daniel, if you would.”
Smart-guy had a name.
Vicki heard the shush as the fabric of his coat brushed against itself, felt the air currents in the car shift, heard the click of switch, the whirr of a CD, and the dulcet tones of Céline Dion at a decibel level that had to be causing as much pain to the other occupants of the car as it was to her.
Unless, of course, her 21st Century Van Helsing had recruited his minions from gay-men-trapped-in-the-nineties.com.
“Couldn’t you just distract me by telling me your evil plan?” she muttered, hands up over her ears. A whimper of agreement from Steve in the back but no reply from the big man. “Whatever he’s paying you guys, it isn’t enough.”
It might still have been possible to separate out distinct traffic sounds but Vicki didn’t bother trying. She didn’t memorize the turns or try to time the sections of the trip. Wherever they were headed, she’d never need to find it again. The moment they’d laid their hands on Mike, everyone involved had died. Steve had died. Daniel had died. And their boss had died. Oh, they were still up and walking around, still apparently breathing, but it was only a matter of time. The only actual question remaining was just exactly how long their deaths would take. And that depended on the shape Mike was in.
Céline slid into My Heart Will Go On.
Vicki sang along. No reason they shouldn’t start suffering now.
Fourteen and a half songs later, they turned onto what felt like unplowed ruts. Before the fifteenth song finished, Daniel turned the car off and Céline fell silent.
All three of them breathed a simultaneous sigh of relief.
“Stay in the car, Ms. Nelson, until Daniel comes around and opens your door.”
By having Daniel do it, both minions were on the same side of the car as she was. Easier for one to react if she killed the other. Van Helsing was wasting his redundancies since no one was dying until Mike was safe.
She stretched as Daniel closed the door behind her.
“Turn to your right, Ms. Nelson.”
Vicki turned.
“Now walk twenty paces.”
Four paces took her through a doorway and inside an unheated building. Her heels made no sound against the concrete floor. Approximately two meters behind her on the left, Daniel matched his pace to hers while on the right Steve’s boots thumped out an arrhythmic beat, the echoes defining a large, empty space. The air reeked of cloves but, sixteen paces in, she caught a whiff of a familiar scent under the spice.
Mike.
He wasn’t bleeding.
There weren’t spices enough in the city to cover that.
At twenty paces she stopped. Two heartbeats in front of her, four, maybe five meters 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 was enough to cause painful star
bursts.
When she blinked them away, the first things 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 vapor 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, with brown hair and brown eyes, expensively dressed and vaguely attractive in a 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 vapor 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 off the two men behind her like smoke, 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 rumor 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.”
“Fine. Don’t feel you need to start ripping throats out to cover your tracks, it’s all been taken care of. The point is, I don’t want anyone else to put the pieces together. 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?”
“Why you would 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 back story.”
“I’m sure there must be. 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 your ideas 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 know.
“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 actually believed that.
Didn’t matter.
“So,” he continued, “here’s what’s going to happen: you are going to sign the note I’ve already written, you will allow me to secure you. Daniel and Steven will take the detective home and we will 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 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 like terror now. Vicki smiled. “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 down 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 left 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. And if the scene wasn’t self explanatory enough, she’d have a talk with the officers at the scene 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 27 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.”