Many Bloody Returns

by Charlaine Harris

  Blood Wrapped

  Tanya Huff

  Tanya Huff lives and writes in the wilds of Southern Ontario. Her twenty-two books run the gamut from heroic fantasy to space opera although she is probably best known for the Vicki Nelson Blood books—recently adapted for television as Blood Ties and showing on Lifetime in the United States and a CHUM affiliate in Canada. Her twenty-third book, The Heart of Valor, was a July 2007 release, and the sequel, Valor’s Trial, will be out in the spring of 2008. The following story is in the world of the Smoke books—Smoke and Shadows, Smoke and Mirrors, and Smoke and Ashes.

  “What do you think of that?”

  “The window display?”

  “The shawl!”

  Henry stepped closer to the Treasures of Thailand window and examined the lime green silk shawl draped more-or-less artistically over a papier-mâché mountain. “Nice,” he said after a moment, “but not your color. If I were you, I’d wear the turquoise.” A wave of his hand indicated a similar shawl hanging in the window’s “sky.”

  “It’s not for me!” Tony Foster shot a scathing look at his companion.

  “Ah, for Lee then. In that case, you need a deeper green.”

  “It’s for Vicki!”

  “Vicki?” Henry turned, frowning slightly, to see Tony staring at him with an expression of horrified disbelief.

  “You didn’t forget. Don’t tell me you forgot. You must have gotten Celluci’s e-mail.”

  “E-mails.” Over the last few weeks there had been a series of messages from Detective Sergeant Michael Celluci. Each of them had been as direct and to the point as the detective himself tended to be, falling somewhere between terse and rude, and each of them had been read and promptly deleted. “About Vicki’s birthday.”

  “Right. So”—looking relieved, Tony nodded toward the shawl—“what do you think?”

  “I think you’re unnecessarily concerned,” Henry told him. “It’s just a birthday.”

  Tony stepped out into the middle of the sidewalk and stared at the bastard son of Henry VIII, once Duke of Richmond and Somerset, Marshal of the North, now vampire and romance writer, like he’d just grown another head. “Are you insane?”

  Tony took a long drink of his latte, set the mug carefully back on the artfully distressed surface of the coffee shop’s round wooden table, leaned forward, and looked Henry right in the eye. It was something not many people could or would do and not something he dared on a regular basis, but he needed to make sure Henry understood the seriousness of the situation. “She’s turning forty.”

  “She’s essentially immortal,” Henry pointed out, keeping the Hunter carefully masked despite the other man’s provocation.

  “What difference does that make?”

  He spread his hands. “An infinite number of birthdays.”

  “So?” Taking the opportunity to look away without backing down, Tony rolled his eyes. “She’s still only going to turn forty once.”

  “And someday, God willing, she’ll turn a hundred and forty, two hundred and forty…”

  “You just don’t get it, do you?”

  “Apparently not.” Taking a swallow from his bottle of water, a modern conceit he appreciated since it granted him an accepted public behavior—and there were many in Vancouver who drank neither caffeine nor alcohol—Henry studied Tony’s reaction and shook his head. “Apparently not,” he repeated. That Vicki Nelson, who had been the first child of his kind he’d created in almost four hundred and seventy years, would care about something so meaningless as a birthday was hard for him to believe. Granted, she’d been definitely human before the change: strong willed, opinionated, with a terrier-like determination…. No, not terrier. That implied something small and yappy and Vicki was neither. Pit bull then. Aggressive, yes, but more often badly handled and misunderstood. He grinned at the thought of anyone attempting to put a muzzle on Vicki Nelson.

  “What? You’re wearing one of your I’m so clever smiles,” Tony told him as his thoughts returned to the coffee shop. “Have you thought of something to get her?”

  Best not to mention the muzzle. Toronto, and Vicki, were three thousand odd miles away but the idea of that getting back to her gave him chills the way nothing had in the last four centuries.

  “I’ve know her for years and I’ve never given her a birthday present.”

  “Forty, Henry.”

  “And why is that so different from thirty-nine?”

  Tony sighed. “You write bodice rippers, Henry. I can’t believe you know so little about women!”

  “No woman in my books has ever approached forty.” Grocery bills might be negligible but he still had condo fees and car insurance to pay and middle-aged heroines didn’t sell books.

  “Yeah, and your fans?”

  From the mail he got, his fans were definitely closer to middle age. Given that they thought he was a thirty-five-year-old redhead named Elizabeth Fitzroy, he declined all invitations to romance conventions. “We don’t exactly converse, Tony.”

  “Maybe you should. Look”—elbows planted on the table, he leaned forward—“forty is a big deal for women. It’s either the age where they have to stop pretending or have to start pretending a lot harder.”

  “Pretending what?”

  “Youth, Henry.”

  “Vicki will be forever young.”

  “No.” Tony shook his head. “You’ll be forever young; you were changed at seventeen. Vicki was thirty-four when you drew her over to the dark side—you know, dark? Literally.” As Henry frowned, Tony waved a hand at the coffee shop’s window and the night sky just barely visible behind the lights of Davies Street. “Never mind. The point is, she was human twice as long as you were. And she was in her thirties. And she’s a woman. Trust me, forty counts. And if you can’t trust me, trust Celluci; he’s living with her.”

  Vampires did not share territory. By changing her, Henry had lost her to his mortal rival. And that sounded like a line from a bad romance. He rubbed his forehead and wondered what had happened to make his life so complicated. Stupid question. Vicki Nelson, ex–Wonder Woman of the Metropolitan Toronto Police, had happened. Vicki had seen past the masks and gotten him involved in life in a way he hadn’t been for hundreds of years. Vicki had pushed Tony into his life and had, with her change, been at least indirectly responsible for the two of them ending up in Vancouver. Forty years to such a woman should mean nothing.

  “Look at it this way, Henry.” Tony’s voice interrupted his musing. “Vicki’s essentially immortal; that’s a long time for her to be pissed at you.”

  On the other hand, who was he to say what forty years should mean to such a woman? He moved his water bottle, creating concentric rings with the condensation. “What are you getting her?”

  Tony, ex–street hustler, ex–police informant, third assistant director on the most popular vampire detective series on syndicated television and the only practicing wizard in the lower mainland, sagged against the wrought iron back of his chair. “I have no fucking idea.”

  There were two messages in Henry’s voice mail when he woke the next evening. Both were from Tony. The first was, predictably, about Vicki’s birthday. According to the script supervisor working on Darkest Night, women of her age appreciated gifts that made them feel young without reminding them of their advancing years. Given that Vicki’s years weren’t exactly advancing, Henry had no idea of what that meant.

  Assuming it contained more of the same, Henry intended to delete the second message without listening to it but he hesitated a moment too long.

  “Henry, there’s a little girl missing from up by Lytton and someone called Kevin Groves about her.”

  Kevin Groves, who worked as a reporter for the Western Star, one of the local tabloids, had the uncomfortable ability of recognizing the truth. Given that his byline had once run under the headline OLYMPIC ORGANIZERS RELOCATE FAMILY OF SASQUATCH, this was occasionally more uncomfortable for those who knew about his skill than it was for him. Ove
r the last year he’d become an indispensable way of keeping tabs on the growing metaphysical activity in Vancouver and the lower mainland.

  Like attracted like. Henry had experienced this phenomenon over his long life, and as Tony gained more control over his considerable power, he was discovering it in spades. The difference was that while Henry would move heaven and earth for those he claimed as his own, he was generally willing to let the rest of humanity go its own way. But Tony had bought into the belief that with great power came great responsibility and become something of a local guardian for the entire lower mainland. A policeman, as it were, for the metaphysical.

  Henry, because he considered Tony his, very often found himself acting as the young wizard’s muscle. Vicki referred to them alternately as Batman and Robin or the new Jedi Knights, and for that alone deserved to have her birthday forgotten.

  Occasionally, Henry wondered if he wasn’t using Tony as an excuse to become involved. Celluci had called him a vampire vigilante once. He’d meant it as an insult, but when Henry thought of little girls gone missing, he also thought that the detective had been more perceptive than he’d been given credit for.

  Moving quickly into the living room, Henry picked up the remote and turned on the TV.

  “…while playing in the backyard with her mother working in the garden only meters away. There is rising fear in this traumatized community that a bear or cougar or other large predator has come out of the mountains and is feeding upon their children.”

  Henry suspected the reporter had taken advantage of a live feed to get that last line on the air.

  The young woman stared at the camera with wide-eyed intensity and the certain knowledge that this was her time in the spotlight. “Julie Martin’s distraught father has declared his intention of ‘taking care’ of who or whatever has made off with his precious little girl. A spokes-person from the Ministry of Natural Resources has suggested that it would be dangerous for search parties to head into the wood unless accompanied by trained personnel but admits that their office is unable to provide trained personnel at this time.”

  She makes it sound like the Ministry should have grizzled trackers standing by. Henry waited until they cut back to the news anchor who solemnly reiterated that four-year-old Julie Martin had disappeared without a trace in broad daylight, then, as the screen filled with a crowd of angry and near-hysterical townspeople standing outside the RCMP office, berating two harassed-looking constables for not having found the child, he turned off the set.

  If Kevin Groves had gotten a call about Julie Martin’s disappearance and felt it had validity enough for him to call Tony, then the odds were good it wasn’t a police matter. Or a matter for the Ministry of Natural Resources, as it was currently mandated.

  At 6:47 p.m. Tony would likely still be on the sound stage, so rather than leave him a message Henry went straight to the source.

  “Western Star; Kevin Groves.”

  “It’s Henry.”

  Very faintly, Henry heard the reporter’s heartbeat speed up. Everyone had a hindbrain reaction to vampires, the most primal part of them gibbering in terror in the presence of an equally primal predator. Kevin Groves knew why.

  “So, are you…That is, I mean…You’re calling about the missing Martin kid?”

  “I am.”

  “Werewolves.”

  “I beg your pardon.”

  “I had a tip that there’s werewolves in the mountains.”

  There was, in fact, a pack working an old mining claim just outside of Ashcroft. “And you believe that a werewolf took Julie Martin?” It wasn’t unheard of for a were to go rogue; they were more or less human after all.

  “No. Just that there’s werewolves in the mountains, but if that’s the case then…”

  “Then?” Henry prodded when Kevin’s voice trailed off.

  “Well, you know. Werewolves!”

  “Is that it?”

  “One of the Martins’ neighbors saw something large and hairy carrying a small body.”

  “In its mouth?”

  “No, but…”

  “Werewolves don’t have an intermediate state. They look like wolves or they look human.” Essentially like wolves and essentially like humans but close enough. “It’s not werewolves.”

  “The old lady seemed pretty sure it wasn’t a Sasquatch.”

  Even six months ago Henry would have believed it wasn’t a Sasquatch went without saying. “Large and hairy?”

  “That’s what she said.”

  They couldn’t save every child who went missing in British Columbia but large and hairy pointed toward something the police might not be able to handle. “Give me the witness’s name and we’ll check it out.”

  “So”—just past the Spuzzum exit, Henry pulled out and passed an empty logging truck then tucked his 1976 BMW back into the right lane—“where’s Lee?”

  “He’s down in L.A. for a couple of days, auditioning for a movie of the week.”

  “He’s leaving Darkest Night?” Lee Nicholas, Tony’s partner, was one of the leads in the popular syndicated vampire detective show.

  “What? No.” That pulled Tony’s attention off the screen of his PDA. “They’ll be shooting in Vancouver; he figures he can do both. C.B.’s willing to adjust our shooting schedule if necessary.”

  “That doesn’t sound like him.” Chester Bane was notoriously inflexible when it came to situations that might cost him money.

  “He’s hoping he can scam some free publicity.”

  Henry snorted. “That does. What,” he asked a few kilometers later when it became obvious Tony wasn’t going to pick up the conversational ball, “are you finding so fascinating on that thing?”

  “Sorry, I was just going over the list of possible…um, things.”

  “Things.”

  “Suspects who might have taken the kid. But they’re not exactly people.”

  Eyes nearly closed in the glare of oncoming headlights, Henry sighed. “Let’s hear the list.”

  “Well, there’s Bugbears, a kind of a hairy giant goblin. Or Chimeras, because the lion and goat parts are hairy and that might have been all they saw. It could be any one of a number of different demons but then we need to find out who’s calling them. Uh…” He squinted at the screen as he scrolled down. “Displacer Beasts look like cougars except they’re black and have tentacles so it wouldn’t necessarily be carrying the kid in its mouth. Ettins are two-headed giants that live in remote areas and—”

  “Tony, where did you get this list?”

  “Sort of from Kevin Groves.”

  “Sort of?”

  “He lent me an RPG monster index. RPG: role playing game,” Tony expanded when Henry’s silence made it obvious he had no idea what that meant. “Like Dungeons and Dragons.”

  “I’ve never heard of it.”

  “Really? Because it’s old. Well, oldish.” When Henry replied with more silence, he sighed. “I wanted to go in with more information than hairy thing that eats children and hopefully isn’t a werewolf.”

  “So you went to a game?”

  It was Tony’s turn to snort as he powered down and twisted around to slip the PDA into a side pocket on his backpack. “Yeah, well believe it or not, Googling big hairy eats children doesn’t pull up anything useful.”

  “But imaginary…”

  “Henry, whatever this is, I guarantee it’ll be considered imaginary by most of the world. Hell, we’re considered imaginary by most of the world.”

  “I’m sure more people than you expect believe in third assistant directors.”

  “You’d be surprised.” Slouching down as far as the seat belt would allow, he propped his knees up on the dashboard. “Ninety-nine percent of the world’s population is in denial about something. Take you, for instance.”

  That drew Henry’s attention off the road. “Me?”

  “You’re still in denial about Vicki’s birthday.”

  “I said I’d get her something.”
/>   “Yeah, but it has to be something good and I don’t think you’re giving it much thought.”

  “There’s a child missing….”

  “You want to talk about that all the way to Lytton? Because I don’t.”

  “Fine.” Henry pulled out and passed a pair of trucks. “What about a gift certificate?”

  “Dude, it’s a good thing you’re hard to kill.”

  The village of Lytton was about a two-hour drive from Vancouver. Henry had picked Tony up at his apartment in Burnaby at twenty to eight, and it was a quarter to ten when Henry left the highway and steered the BMW down Main Street.

  “You think they usually roll the sidewalks up this early,” Tony wondered, staring out at the dark windows, “or is this a reaction to the Martin kid getting grabbed?”

  “Bit of both, I expect.”

  “I feel like we’re being watched from behind lace curtains.”

  “Why lace?” Henry asked.

  “I don’t know.” Tony waggled the fingers of his left hand in front of his face, sketching in the air lacy lines of power that dissipated almost instantly. “It’s creepier I guess.”

  “I don’t know about the lace, but we’re definitely being watched.” Henry could feel the fear and anger roiling through the town. Could feel some it directed toward them. With a child missing in a village of only three hundred and eight souls, any and all strangers would be suspect. “It might be best if we were…unnoticed.”

  “Do you have to use such cheesy setup lines?” Tony muttered, laying two fingers against the metal strip between the front and back windows. In the last few months, he’d gotten enough practice in with the Notice-me-not spell that he no longer needed to consult the instructions on the laptop. Of course, there were still one hell of a lot of spells he wasn’t as adept at, so the laptop remained close at hand.

  From their perspective within the car, nothing changed but Henry felt the watcher’s attention drift away.