1 Blood Price

by Tanya Huff

  Henry stared at her in astonishment. “The Inquisition? But you’ve done nothing. . . .”

  Both her eyebrows rose. “I am lying with you and for some, even not knowing what you are, that would be enough. If they knew that I willingly give myself to an Angel of Darkness . . . ” She turned her wrist so that the small puncture wound became visible. “. . . burning would be too good for me.” A finger laid against his lips stopped him when he tried to speak. “Yes, yes, no one knows but I am also a woman who dares to use her mind and that is enough for these times. If my husband had died and left me rich or if I had borne a son to carry on his name. . . .” Her shoulder’s lifted and fell. “Unfortunately . . .”

  He caught up her hand. “You have another choice.”

  “No.” She sighed. The breath quavered as she released it. “I have thought long and hard on this, Enrico, and I cannot take your path. It is my need to live as I am that places me in danger now, I simply could not exist behind the masks you must wear to survive.”

  It was the truth and he knew it, but that made it no easier to bear. “When I was changed . . .”

  “When you were changed,” she interrupted, “from what you have told me, the passion was so great it left no room for rational thought, no room to consider what would happen after. Although I am fond of passion,” her hand slid down between his legs, “I cannot lose myself in it.”

  He pushed her back onto the pillow, trapping her beneath him. “This doesn’t have to end.”

  She laughed. “I know you. Enrico.” Her eyes half closed and she thrust her hips up against him. “Could you do this with a nun?”

  After a moment of shock, he laughed as well and bent his mouth to hers. “If you are sure,” he murmured against her lips.

  “I am. If I must give up my freedom, better to God than to man.”

  All he could do was respect her decision.

  It hurt to lose her, but in the months that followed the hurt eased and it was enough to know that the Sisters kept her safe. Although he thought of leaving, Henry lingered in Venice, not wanting to cut the final tie.

  Chance alone brought him news that the Sisters had not been able to keep her safe enough. Hushed whispers overheard in a dark café said the Hounds had come for Ginevra Treschi, taken her right from the convent, said she had been consorting with the devil, said they were going to make an example of her. She had been with them three weeks.

  Three weeks with fire and iron and pain.

  He wanted to storm their citadel like Christ at the gates of hell, but he forced himself to contain his rage. He could not save her if he threw himself into the Inquisitor’s embrace.

  If anything remained of her to be saved.

  They had taken over a wing of the Doge’s palace—the Doge being more than willing to cooperate with Rome. The smell of death rolled through the halls like fog and the blood scent left a trail so thick a mortal could have followed it.

  He found her hanging as they’d left her. Her wrists had been tightly bound behind her back, a coarse rope threaded through the lashing and used to hoist her into the air. Heavy iron weights hung from her burned ankles. They had obviously begun with flogging and had added greater and more painful persuasions over time. She had been dead only a few hours.

  “. . . confessed to having relations with the devil, was forgiven, and gave her soul up to God.” He rubbed his fingers in his beard. “Very satisfactory all around. Shall we return the body to the Sisters or to her family?”

  The older Dominican shrugged. “I cannot see that it makes any difference, she. . . . Who are you?”

  Henry smiled. “I am vengeance,” he said, closing the door behind him and bolting it.

  “Vengeance.” Henry sighed and wiped damp palms on his jeans. The Papal Hounds had died in terror, begging for their lives, but it hadn’t brought Ginevra back. Nothing hac., until Vicki had prodded at the memories. She was as real in her own world as Ginevra had been and unless he was very careful, she was about to become as real in his.

  He’d wanted this, hadn’t he? Someone to trust. Someone who could see beneath the masks.

  He turned again to face his reflection in the mirror. The others, men and women whose lives he’d entered over the years since Ginevra, had never touched him like this.

  “Keep her at a distance,” he warned himself. “At least until the demon is defeated.” His reflection looked dubious and he sighed. “I only hope I’m up to it.”

  The girl darted behind the heavy table, sapphire eyes flashing. “I thought you were a gentleman, sir!”

  “You are exactly right, Smith.” The captain bowed with a feline grace, never taking his mocking gaze from his quarry. “Or should that be Miss Smith? Never mind. As you pointed out, I was a gentleman. You’ll find I surrendered the title some time ago. ” He lunged, but she twisted lithely out of his way.

  “If you make one more move toward me, I shall scream.”

  “Scream away.” Roxborough settled one slim hip against the table. “I shan’t stop you. Although it would pain me to have to share such a lovely prize with my crew.”

  “Fitzroy, what is this shit?”

  “Henry, please, not Fitzroy.” He saved the file and shut off the computer. “And this shit,” he told her, straightening, “is my new book.”

  “Your what?” Vicki asked, pushing her glasses up her nose. She’d followed him from the door of the condo into the tiny office even though he’d requested that she wait a minute in the living room. If he was going back to close his coffin, she had to see it. “You actually read this stuff?”

  Henry sighed, pulled a paperback off the shelf above the desk, and handed it to her. “No. I actually write the stuff. ”

  “Oh.” Across the cover of the book, a partially unclothed young woman was being passionately yet discreetly embraced by an entirely unclothed young man. The cover copy announced the date of the romance as “the late 1800s” but both characters had distinctly out of period hair and makeup. Cursive lavender script delineated both the title and the author’s name; Destiny’s Master by Elizabeth Fitzroy.

  “Elizabeth Fitzroy?” Vicki asked, returning the book.

  Henry slid it back on the shelf, rolled the chair out from the desk, and stood, smiling sardonically. “Why not Elizabeth Fitzroy? She certainly had as much right to the name as I do.”

  The prefix “Fitz” was a bastard’s name and was given to acknowledged accidental children. The “roy” identified the father as the king. “You didn’t agree with the divorce?”

  The smile twisted further. “I was always a loyal subject of the king, my father.” He paused and frowned as though trying to remember. He sounded less mocking when he started speaking again. “I liked her Gracious Majesty Queen Catherine. She was kind to a very confused little boy who’d been dumped into a situation he didn’t understand and he didn’t ever much care for. Mary, the Princess Royal, who could have ignored me or done worse, accepted me as her brother.” His voice picked up an edge. “I did not like Elizabeth’s mother and the feeling was most definitely mutual. Given that all parties concerned have now passed to their eternal reward; no, I did not agree with the divorce.”

  Vicki glanced back at the shelf of paperbacks as Henry politely but inexorably ushered her out of his office. “I suppose you’ve got a lot of material to use for plots,” she muttered dubiously.

  “I do,” Henry agreed, wondering why some people had less trouble handling the idea of a vampire than they did a romance writer.

  “I suppose you can get even with any number of people in your past this way.” Of all the strange scenarios Vicki had imagined occurring during this evening’s conference with the over four century old, vampiric, bastard son of Henry VIII, none had included discovering that he was a writer of—What was the term ?— bodice rippers.

  He grinned and shook his head. “If you’re thinking of my relatives, I got even with most of them. I’m still alive. But that’s not why I write. I’m good at it, I make a
very good living doing it, and most of the time I enjoy it.” He waved her to the couch and sat down at the opposite end. “I could exist from feeding to feeding—and I have—but I infinitely prefer living in comfort than in some rat-infested mausoleum.”

  “But if you’ve been around for so long,” Vicki wondered, settling down into the same corner she’d vacated early that morning, “why aren’t you rich?”

  “Rich?”

  Vicki found his throaty chuckle very attractive and also found herself speculating about. . . . A mental smack brought her wandering mind back to the business at hand.

  “Oh, sure,” he continued, “I could’ve bought IBM for pennies in nineteen-oh-whenever, but who knew? I’m a vampire, I’m not clairvoyant. Now,” he picked a piece of lint off his jeans, “may I ask you a question?”

  “Be my guest.”

  “Why did you believe what I told you?”

  “Because I saw the demon and you had no logical reason to lie to me.” There was no need to tell him about the dream—or vision—in the church. It hadn’t had much to do with her decision anyway.

  “That’s it?”

  “I’m an uncomplicated sort of a person. Now,” she mimicked his tone, “enough about us. How do we catch a demon?”

  Very well, Henry agreed silently. If that’s how you want it, enough about us.

  “We don’t. I do.” He inclined his head toward her end of the couch. “You catch the man or woman calling it up.”

  “Fine.” Tackling the source made perfect sense to Vicki and the farther she could stay from that repulsive bit of darkness the happier she’d be. She perched her right foot on her left knee and clasped both hands around the ankle. “How come you’re so sure we’re dealing with a single person, not a coven or a cult?”

  “Focused desire is a large part of what pulls the demon through and most groups just can’t achieve the necessary single-mindedness.” He shrugged. “Given the success rate, the odds are good it’s just one person.”

  She mirrored his shrug. “Then we go with the odds. Any distinguishing characteristics I should look for?”

  Henry stretched his arm out and drummed his fingers against the upholstery. “If you’re asking does a certain type of person call up demons, no. Well,” he frowned as he reconsidered, “in a way, yes. Without exception, they’re people looking for an easy answer, a way to get what they want without working for it.”

  “You just described a way of life for millions of people,” Vicki told him dryly. “Could you be a little more specific?”

  “The demon is being asked for material goods; it wouldn’t need to kill if it remained trapped in the pentagram answering questions. Look for someone who’s suddenly acquired great wealth, money, cars. And demons can’t create so all that has to come from somewhere.”

  “We could catch him for possession of stolen goods?” They couldn’t mark every bit of cash in existence, but luxury cars, jewels, and stocks all were traceable. Vicki’s pulse began to quicken as she ran over the possibilities now open to investigation. Yes! Her hands curled into fists and punched the air triumphantly. It was only a matter of time. They had him. Or her.

  “One more thing,” Henry warned, trying not to smile at her-What did they call it? Shadow boxing? “The more contact this person has with demonkind, the more unstable he or she is going to get. ”

  “Yeah? Well, it’s another trait to look for, but you’ve got to tie pretty damned unstable to stand out these days. What about the demon?”

  “The: demon isn’t very powerful. ”

  Vicki snorted. “You might be able to rip a person’s throat cut with a single blow . . .” She paused and Henry nodded. answering the not-quite-asked question. “. . . but no one else I know could. This demon is plenty powerful enough .”

  Henry shook his head. “Not as demons go. It has to feed every time it’s called in order to have an effect on things in this world.”

  “So the deaths were it feeding? Completely random?”

  “They didn’t mean anything to the person controlling the demon if that’s what you’re asking. If the demon had been killing business or personal rivals of a single person, the police would have found him or her by now. No, the demon chose where and whom to feed on.”

  Vicki frowned. “But there was a definite external pattern.”

  “My guess is that the demon being called is under the control of another, more powerful demon and has been attempting to form that demon’s name on the city.”

  “Oh.”

  Henry waited patiently while Vicki absorbed this new bit of information.

  “Why?” Actually, she wasn’t sure she wanted to know. Or that she needed to ask.

  “Access; uncontrolled access for the more powerful demon and however many more of its kind it might want to bring through.”

  “And how many more deaths until the name is completed?”

  “No way of knowing.”

  “One? Two? You must have some idea,” she snapped. With on hand he gave her hope, with the other he took it away. The son of a bitch. “How many deaths in a demon’s name?”

  “It depends on the demon.” As Vicki scowled, he rose, walked to the bookcase, and slid open one of the glass doors. The book he removed was about the size of a dictiorary, bound in leather that might have once been red before years of handling had darkened it to a worn and greasy black. He sat back down, closer this time, twisted the darkly patinaed clasp, and opened the book to a double page spread.

  “It’s hand-written,” Vicki marveled, touching the corner of a page. She withdrew her finger quickly. The parchment had felt warm, like she’d just touched something obscenely alive.

  “It’s very old.” Henry ignored her reaction; his had been much the same the first time he’d touched the book. “These are the demonic names. There’re twenty-seven of them and no way of knowing if the author discovered them all . ”

  The names, written in thick black ink in an unpleasantly angular script, were for the most part seven or eight letters long. “The demon can’t be anywhere near finished,” she said thankfully. She still had time to find the bastard behind this.

  Henry shook his head, hating to dampen her enthusiasm. “It wouldn’t be laying out the entire name, just the symbol for it.” He flipped ahead a few pages. The list of names was repeated and beside each was a corresponding geometrical sign. Some were very simple. “Literacy is a fairly recent phenomenon,” Henry murmured. “The signs are all that are really needed.”

  Vicki swallowed. Her mouth had gone suddenly dry. Some of the signs were very simple.

  Silently, Henry closed the book and replaced it on the shelf. When he turned to face her again, he spread his arms in a helpless gesture. “Unfortunately,” he said, “I can’t stop the demon until after it kills again.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I have to be there ready for it. And last night it completed the second part of the pattern.”

  “Then it could have completed . . .”

  “No. We’d know if it had.”

  “But the next death, the death that starts the pattern again, it could complete . . .”

  “No, not yet. Not even the least complicated of the names could be finished so quickly. ”

  “You were ready for it last night.” He’d been there, just as she had. “Why didn’t you stop it, then?” But then, why didn’t she?

  “Stop it?” The laugh had little humor in it. “It moved so fast I barely saw it. But the time after next, now that I know what I’m facing, I’ll be waiting for it. I can trap it and destroy it.”

  That funded encouraging, if there was a time after next. “You’ve done this before?”

  She needed reassurance but Henry, who knew he could make her believe anything he chose to tell her, found he couldn’t lie. “Well, no.” He’d never been able to lie to Ginevra either, another similarity between the two women he’d just as soon not have found.

  Vicki took a deep breath and picked at th
e edge of her sweater. “Henry, how bad will it get if the named demon gets free?”

  “How bad?” He sighed and sagged back against the bookcase,. “At the risk of being considered facetious, all hell will break loose.”

  Eight

  Norman glanced around the Cock and Bull and frowned. Thursday, Friday, and Saturday nights, the nights he’d set aside for seriously trying to pick up chicks, he arrived early to be sure of getting a table. So far, this had meant by 9:30 or 10:00, someone would have to share with him. Tonight, the Thursday before the long Easter weekend, the student pub was so empty it looked as if he’d have no company all night.

  It isn ’t cool to go home for Easter, he thought smugly, running a finger up and down the condensation on his glass of diet ginger ale. His parents had been disappointed, but he’d been adamant. The really cool guys hung out around the university all weekend and Norman Birdwell was now really cool.

  He sighed. They didn’t, however, apparently hang out at the Cock and Bull. He’d have given up and gone home long ago except for the redhead who held court at the table in the corner. She was absolutely beautiful, everything Norman had ever wanted in a woman, and he had long adored her from across the room in their Comparative Religions class. She wasn’t very tall, but her flaming hair gave her a presence and inches in other areas made up for her lack of height. Norman could imagine ripping off her shirt and just gazing at the softly mounded flesh beneath. She’d smile at him in rapt adoration and he’d gently reach out to touch. His imagination wasn’t up to much beyond that, so he replayed the scene over and over as he stared across the room.

  A beer or two later and voices at the corner table began to rise.

  “But I’m telling you there’s evidence,” the redhead exclaimed, “for the killer being a creature of the night.”