1 Blood Price

by Tanya Huff

  On the other end of the line, Brandon sighed. “Yes, yes, I know what happened and frankly, I have no more idea than you do. And I’ve been dealing with this sort of thing considerably longer than three years. To answer your original question, the newspaper story was essentially true; I don’t know if it was a vampire or a vacuum cleaner, but Neal and Jones were drained nearly dry.”

  “Drained?” Not just massive blood loss, then, of the kind to be expected with a throat injury that severe. “Oh my God.”

  She heard Brandon take another swallow.

  “Quite,” he agreed dryly. “This will, of course, go no further.”

  “Of course.”

  “Then if you have all the information you require. . . .”

  “Yes. Thank you, Brandon.”

  “My pleasure, Victoria.”

  She sat staring at nothing, considering implications until the phone began to beep, imperiously reminding her she hadn’t yet hung up, jerking her out of her daze.

  “Drained . . .” she repeated. “Shit.” She wondered what the official investigation made of that. No, be honest. You wonder what Mike Celluci made of it. Well, she wasn’t going to call and find out. Still, it was the sort of thing that friends might discuss if one of them was a cop and one of them used to be. Except he’s sure to say something cutting, especially if he thinks I’m using this whole incident as an excuse to hang around the fringes of the force.

  Was she?

  She thought about it while she listened to the three-year-old upstairs running back and forth, back and forth across the living room. It was a soothing, all-is-right-with-the-universe kind of sound and she used its staccato beat to keep her thoughts moving, to keep her from bogging down in the self-pity that had blurred a good part of the last eight months.

  No, she decided at last, she was not using these deaths as a way of trying to grab onto some of what she’d had to give up. She was curious, plain and simple. Curious the way anyone would be in a similar circumstance, the difference being that she had a way to satisfy her curiosity.

  “And if Celluci doesn’t understand that,” she muttered as she dialed, “he can fold it sideways and stick it up his. . . . Good morning. Mike Celluci, please. Yes, I’ll hold.” Someday, she tucked the phone under her chin and tried to peel the paper off a very old Life Saver, I’m going to say no, I won’t hold, and send somebody’s secretary into strong hysterics.

  “Celluci.”

  “Morning. It’s Vicki.”

  “Yeah. So?” He definitely didn’t sound thrilled. “You complicating my life with another body or is this a social call at . . .”

  Vicki checked her watch, during the pause while Celluci checked his.

  “. . . nine oh two . . .”

  “Eight fifty-eight.”

  He ignored her. “. . . on a Thursday morning?”

  “No body, Celluci. I just wondered what you’d come up with so far.”

  “That’s police information, Vicki, and in case you’ve forgotten, you’re not a cop anymore.”

  The crack hurt but not as much as she expected. Well, two could play at that game.

  “Come to a dead end, eh? A full stop?” She flipped over pages of the newspaper loud enough for him to hear the unmistakable rustle. “Paper seems to have come up with an answer.” Shaking her head, she held the receiver away from her ear in order not to be deafened by a forcefully expressed opinion of certain reporters, their ancestors, and their descendants. She grinned. She was definitely enjoying this.

  “Nice try, Mike, but I called the Coroner’s Offiee and that report was essentially correct.”

  “Well, why don’t I just read my report to you over the phone. Or I could send someone over with a copy of the file and no doubt you and your Nancy Drew detective kit can solve the case by lunch.”

  “Why don’t we discuss this like intelligent human beings over dinner?” Over dinner? Good God, was that my mouth?

  “Dinner?”

  Oh, well. In for a penny in for a pound as Granny used to say. “Yeah, dinner, you know, where you sit down in the evening and stuff food in your mouth.”

  “Oh, dinner. Why didn’t you say so?” Vicki could hear the smile in his voice and her mouth curved up in answer. Mike Celluci was the only man she’d ever met whose moods changed as quickly as hers. Maybe that was why. . . . “You buying?” He was also basically a cheap bastard.

  “Why not. I’ll deduct it as a business expense; consulting with the city’s finest.”

  He snorted. “Took you long enough to remember that. I’ll be by about seven.”

  “I’ll be here.”

  She hung up, pushed her glasses up her nose, and wondered just what she thought she was doing. It had seemed, while they talked—All right, while we indulged in the verbal sparring that serves us for conversation—almost like the last eight months and the fights before hadn’t happened. Or maybe it was just that their friendship was strong enough to pick up intact from where it had been dropped. Or maybe, just maybe, she’d managed to get a grip on her life.

  “And I hope I haven’t bitten off more than I can chew,” she muttered to the empty apartment.

  Three

  Stumbling to the right to avoid annihilation by a loaded backpack, Norman Birdwell careened into a stocky young man in a leather York University jacket and found himself back in the corridor outside the lecture hall. Shifting his grip on the plastic handle of his attaché, he squared his narrow shoulders and tried again. He often thought that exiting students should be forced to move in orderly rows through the left side of the double doors so that students arriving early for the next class could enter unopposed through the right.

  By sliding sideways between two young women, who, oblivious to Norman’s presence, continued discussing the sexist unfairness of birth control and blow-dryers, he made it into the room and headed for his seat.

  Norman liked to arrive early so he could sit in the exact center of the third row, his lucky seat ever since he’d written a perfect first year calculus paper in the spot. He was taking this evening sociology class because he’d overheard two jocks in the cafeteria mention it was a great way to meet girls. So far, he wasn’t having much luck. Straightening his new leather tie, he wondered if perhaps he shouldn’t ask for a jacket.

  As he slid into his seat, his attaché jammed between two chair backs in the second row and jerked out of his hand. Bending to free it, his mechanical pencil slid free of his pocket protector and rolled back into the darkness.

  “Oh, fuck,” he muttered, dropping to his knees. He’d been experimenting with profanity lately, hoping it would make him sound more macho. There’d been no noticeable success.

  There were legends about what lurked under the seats in York University lecture halls but all Norman found, beside his pencil—which he’d only had since Sunday night and didn’t want to lose—was a neatly rolled copy of Wednesday’s tabloid. Clipping the pencil back where it belonged, Norman spread the paper on his knee. The professor, he knew, would be up to fifteen minutes late; he’d have plenty of time to read the comics.

  “VAMPIRE STALKS CITY!”

  With trembling fingers, he opened it to the story.

  “Get a load of Birdwell.” The thick-necked young man elbowed his companion. “He’s gone white as a ghost.”

  Rubbing bruised ribs, the recipient of this tender confidence peered down at the solitary figure in the third row of the hall. “How can you tell?” he grunted. “Ghost, geek; it’s all the same.”

  “I never knew,” Norman whispered down at the black type. “I swear to God, I never knew. It wasn’t my fault.”

  He . . . no, it, had said it had to feed. Norman hadn’t asked where or how. Maybe, he admitted now, because he hadn’t wanted to know. Don’t let anyone see you, had been his only instruction.

  He peeled damp palms up off the newsprint and raised them, smudged and trembling, into the air as he vowed, “Never again, I promise, never again.”

  The gong
sounded for another order of Peking Duck and while it reverberated through the restaurant, a mellow undertone to the conversations occurring in at least three different languages, Vicki raised a spoonful of hot-andsour soup to her lips and stared speculatively at Mike Celluci. He’d been almost charming for this, the first half hour of the evening, and she’d had about as much of it as she could take.

  She swallowed and gave him her best don’t give me any bullshit, buddy, I’m on to you smile. “So. Still holding tight to that ridiculous angel dust and Freddy Kruger claws theory?”

  Celluci glanced down at his watch. “Thirty-two minutes and seventeen seconds.” He shook his head ruefully, a thick brown curl dropping down over his eyes. “And here I bet Dave you couldn’t last a half an hour. You just lost me five bucks, Vicki. Is that nice?”

  “Quit complaining.” She chased a bit of green onion around the edge of her bowl. “After all, I’m paying for dinner. Now, answer the question.”

  “And here I thought that you were after the pleasure of my company.”

  She really hated it when his voice picked up that sarcastic edge. Not having heard it for eight months hadn’t lessened her dislike. “I’m going to pleasure your company right into the kitchen if you don’t answer the question.”

  “Damn it, Vicki.” His spoon slammed into the saucer, “Do we have to discuss this while we eat?”

  Eating had nothing to do with it; they’d discussed every case they’d ever had, singly and collectively, over food. Vicki pushed her empty bowl to one side and laced her fingers together. It was possible that now she’d left the force he wouldn’t discuss the homicides with her. It was possible, but not very likely. At least, she prayed it wasn’t very likely. “If you can look me right in the eye,” she said quietly, “and tell me you don’t want to talk about this with me, I’ll lay off.”

  Technically, he knew he should do exactly that—look her in the eye and tell her he didn’t want to talk about it. The Criminal Investigations Bureau took a dim view of investigators who couldn’t keep their mouths shut. But Vicki had been one of the best, three accelerated promotions and two citations attested to that, and more importantly, her record of solved crimes had been almost the highest in the department. Honesty forced him to admit, although he admitted it silently, that statistically her record was as good as his, he’d just been at it three years longer. Do I throw away this resource? he wondered as the silence lengthened. Do I refuse to take advantage of talent and skill just because the possessor of those talents and skills has become a civilian? He tried to keep his personal feelings out of the decision.

  He looked her right in the eye and said quietly. “Okay. genius, you got a better idea than PCPs and claws?”

  “Difficult to come up with a worse one,” she snorted, leaning back to allow their waitress to replace the bowls with steaming platters of food. Grateful for the chance to regain her composure, Vicki toyed with a chopstick and hoped he didn’t realize how much this meant to her. She hadn’t realized it herself until her heart restarted with his answer and she felt a part of herself she thought had died when she il left the force slowly begin to come back to life. Her reaction, she knew, would have been invisible to a casual observer but Mike Celucci was anything but that.

  Please, God, just let him think he’s picking my brain. Don’t let him know how much I need this.

  For the first time in a long time, God appeared to be listening.

  “Your better idea?” Mike asked pointedly when they were alone with their meal.

  If he’d noticed her relief, he gave no sign and that was good enough for Vicki. “It’s a little hard to hypothesize without all the information,” she prodded.

  He smiled and she understood, not for the first time, why witnesses of either gender were willing to spill their guts to this man. “Hypothesize. Big word. You been doing crossword puzzles again?”

  “Yeah, between tracking down international jewel thieves. Spill it, Celluci.”

  If anything, there had been fewer clues at the second scene than at the first. No prints save the victim’s, no trail, no one who saw the killer enter or exit the underground garage. “And the scene was hours old by the time we arrived. . . .”

  “You said the trail at the subway led into a workman’s alcove?”

  He nodded, scowling at a snow pea. “Blood all over the back wall. The trail led into the alcove, but nothing led out.”

  “Behind the back wall?”

  “You thinking of secret passageways?”

  A little sheepishly, she nodded.

  “All things considered, that would be an answer I could live with.” He shook his head and the curl dropped forward again. “Nothing but dirt. We checked.”

  Although DeVerne Jones had been found with a scrap of torn leather clutched in his fist, dirt was pretty much all they’d found at the third. site. Dirt, and a derelict that babbled about the apocalypse.

  “Wait a minute . . .” Vicki frowned in concentration, then shoved her disturbed glasses back up her nose. “Didn’t the old man at the subway say something about the apocalypse?”

  “Nope. Armageddon.”

  “Same thing.”

  Celluci sighed with exaggerated force. “You trying to tell me that it’s not one guy, it’s four guys on horses? Thanks. You’ve been a lot of help.”

  “I suppose you’ve checked for some connection between the victims? Something to hang a motive on?”

  “Motive!” He slapped his forehead with the heel of his hand. “Now why didn’t I think of that?”

  Vicki stabbed at a mushroom and muttered, “Smart ass.”

  “No, no connections, no discernible motive. We’re still looking.” He shrugged, a succinct opinion of what the search would turn up.

  “Cults?”

  “Vicki, I’ve talked to more weirdos and space cases in the last few days than I have in the last few years.” He grinned. “Present company excepted, of course.”

  They were almost back to her apartment, her hand tucked in the crook of his arm to guide her through the darkness, when she asked, “Have you considered that there might be something in this vampire theory?”

  She dug her heels in at his shout of laughter. “I’m serious, Celucci!”

  “No, I’m Serious Celluci. You’re out of your mind.” He dragged her back into step beside him. “Vampires don’t exist.”

  “You’re sure of that? ‘There are more things . . .’ ”

  “Don’t,” he warned, “start quoting Shakespeare at me. I’ve had the line quoted at me so often lately, I’m beginning to think police brutality is a damned good idea.”

  They turned up the path to Vicki’s building.

  “You’ve got to admit that a vampire fits all the parameters.” Vicki no more believed it was a vampire than Celluci did, but it had always been so easy to rattle his cage. . . .

  He snorted. “Right. Something’s wandering around the city in a tuxedo muttering, ‘I vant to drink your blood.’ ”

  “You got a better suspect?”

  “Yeah. A big guy on PCPs with clip-on claws.”

  “You’re not back to that stupid theory again.”

  “Stupid!”

  “Yeah. Stupid.”

  “You wouldn’t recognize a logical progression of facts if they bit you on the butt!”

  “At least I’m not so caught up in my own cleverness that I’m blind to outside possibilities!”

  “Outside possibilities? You have no idea of what’s going on!”

  “Neither do you!”

  They stood and panted at each other for a few seconds then Vicki shoved her glasses up her nose and dug for her keys. “You staying the night?”

  It sounded like a challenge.

  “Yeah. I am.”

  So did the response.

  Sometime later, Vicki shifted to reach a particularly sensitive area and decided, as she got the anticipated inarticulate response, that there were times when you really didn’t need to see what
you were doing and night blindness mattered not in the least.

  Captain Raymond Roxborough looked down at the lithe and cowering form of his cabin boy and wondered how he could have been so blind. Granted. he had thought young Smith very pretty, what with his tousled blue-black curls and his sapphire eyes, but never for a moment had he suspected that the boy was not a boy at all. Although, the captain had to admit, it was a neat solution to the somewhat distressing feelings he’d been having lately. “I suppose you have an explanation for this,” he drawled, leaning back against his cabin door and crossing sun-bronzed arms across his muscular chest.

  The young lady—girl, really, for she could have been no more than seventeen—clutched her cotton shirt to the white swell of bosom that had betrayed her and with the other hand pushed damp curls, the other legacy of her interrupted wash, off her face.

  “I needed to get to Jamaica, ” she said proudly, although her low voice held the trace of a quaver, “and this was the only way I could think of.”

  “You could have paid for your passage,” the captain suggested dryly, his gaze traveling appreciatively along the delicate curve of her shoulders.

  “I had nothing to pay with.”

  He straightened and stepped forward, smiling. “I think you underestimate your charms.”

  “Come on, Smith, kick him right in his windswept desire.” Henry Fitzroy leaned back in his chair and rubbed at his temples. Just how much of a shit did he want the captain to be? Should the hero’s better nature overcome his wanton lust or did he even have a better nature? And how much of a hero would he be without one?

  “And frankly, my dear,” he sighed, “I don’t give a damn.” He saved the night’s work, then shut down the system. Usually he enjoyed the opening chapters of a new book, getting to know the characters, warping them to fit the demands of the plot, but this time. . . .

  Rolling his chair back from the desk, he stared out his office window at the sleeping city. Somewhere out there, hidden by the darkness, a hunter stalked—blinded, maddened, driven by blood lust and hunger. He’d sworn to stop it, but he hadn’t the slightest idea how to start. How could the location of random slaughter be anticipated?