1 Blood Price

by Tanya Huff

  Three drops of blood onto the coals and as each drop fell, a word of calling.

  The words he’d found in one of the texts used in his Comparative Religions class. He’d created the ritual himself, made it up out of equal parts research and common sense. Anyone could do it, he thought smugly. But only I have.

  The air over the center of the pentagram shivered and changed as though something were forcing it aside from within. Norman stood and waited, scowling, as the smell of the burning spices gave way to a fetid odor of rot and the beat of his neighbor’s stereo gave way to a sound that throbbed inaudibly in brain and bone.

  The demon, when it came, was man-sized and vaguely man-shaped and all the more hideous for the slight resemblance.

  Norman, breathing shallowly through his mouth, stepped to the edge of the pentagram. “I have called you,” he declared. “I am your master.”

  The demon inclined its head and its features shifted with the movement as if it had no skull beneath the moist covering of skin. “You are master,” it agreed, although the fleshy hole of a mouth didn’t adapt its constant motion to utter the words.

  “You must do as I command.”

  The huge and lidless yellow eyes scanned the perimeters of its prison. “Yes,” it admitted at last.

  “Someone laughed at me tonight. I don’t want her to ever laugh at me again.”

  The demon waited silently, awaiting further instruction, its color changing from muddy-black to greenishbrown and back again.

  “Kill her!” There, he’d said it. He clenched his hands to stop their trembling. He felt ten feet tall, invincible. He’d taken charge at last and accepted the power that was his by right! The throbbing grew more powerful until his whole body vibrated with it.

  “Kill who?” the demon asked.

  The mildly amused tone dragged him back to earth, shaking with fury. “DON’T LAUGH AT ME!” He stepped forward and, remembering just in time, twisted his foot at an awkward angle to avoid crossing the pentagram.

  The demon’s answering lunge brought them almost nose to nose.

  “Hah!” Norman spat the word forward even as he retreated back. “You’re just like them! You think you’re so great and you think I’m shit! Well, just remember you’re in there and I’m out here. I called you! I control you! I AM THE MASTER!”

  Unmoved by the stream of vitriol, the demon settled back in the center of the pentagram. “You are master,” it said placidly. “Kill who?”

  The amusement remained in the creature’s voice, driving Norman almost incoherent with anger. Through the red haze, he realized that screaming Kill Coreen! at the demon would accomplish nothing. He had to think. How to find one person in a city of over three million? He stomped to the far wall and back, caught the heel of his right boot and almost fell. When, after much tottering, he’d regained his balance, he bent and picked up the bit of scarlet leather that had nearly brought him down.

  “Here!”

  The demon speared the glove out of the air with a six inch talon, the loose folds of skin hanging between its arm and body snapping taut with the motion.

  Norman smiled. “Find the glove that matches this one and kill the person who has it. Don’t let anyone else see you. Return to the pentagram when you’ve finished.”

  The odor of decay lingered in the air after the demon had disappeared, a disgusting aftereffect that only time would remove. Sucking the finger he’d pricked, Norman strutted to the window and looked out at the night.

  “No one,” he vowed, “is ever going to laugh at me again.” No more toys, no more clothes, no more computers; he’d taken up his power tonight and when the demon returned, well-fed on Coreen’s blood, he’d send it out after a symbol of that power. Something the world would be forced to respect.

  The throbbing beat grew more powerful and Norman rubbed against the windowsill, hips jerking to its rhythm.

  Still seething, Coreen pulled into the MacDonald’s parking lot. Norman Birdwell. She couldn’t believe she’d even spoken to Norman Birdwell let alone gone back to his apartment with him. He’d sounded so damned believable back in the pub. She shook her head at her own credulity. Of course, she hadn’t realized who he was back at the pub, but still. . . .

  “I hope you appreciate this, Ian,” she said to the night, slamming the car door and locking it. “When I vowed to find your killer, I never counted on having to deal with geek lust.” It had gotten colder and she’d reached in her pocket for her gloves before she remembered that she now possessed only glove, singular. Grinding her teeth, she headed inside. Some moods only a large order of fries could deal with.

  On her way to the counter, she spotted a familiar face and detoured.

  “Hey, Janet. I thought you were all going over to Alison’s?”

  Janet looked up and shook her head. “Long story,” she muttered around a mouthful of burger.

  Coreen snorted and tossed her remaining glove down on top of the junk piled on a neighboring seat. Under the fluorescents it looked almost obscenely bright. “Yeah? Well, I’ve got a longer one. Don’t go away.”

  Sometime later, Janet was staring at Coreen in astonishment, an apple pie poised forgotten halfway to her open mouth.

  “. . . so I kneed him in the balls and split.” She took a long swallow of diet cola. “And I bet I’m never going to see my other glove again either,” she added sadly.

  Janet closed her mouth with an audible snap. “Norman Birdwell?” she sputtered.

  “Yeah, I know.” Coreen sighed. She should never have told Janet. Thank God they were heading into a long weekend; it might slow the spread of the story. “Like majorly stupid. It must’ve been the beer.”

  “There isn’t enough beer in the world—no, in the universe—to make me go anywhere with that creep,” Janet declared, rolling her eyes.

  Coreen mashed the onions she’d scraped off her burger into a pureed mess. “He said he knew something about the creature that killed Ian,” she muttered sheepishly. She really shouldn’t have told Janet. What could she have been thinking of?

  “Right,” Janet snorted, “another fearless vampire hunter and you fell for it.”

  Coreen’s eyes narrowed. “Don’t make fun of it.”

  “Fun of it? You’re just as likely to find Norman’s demon killed Ian as some stupid vampire.” She knew the words were a mistake the moment they left her mouth, but by then it was too late.

  “Vampires have been documented historically and all the facts fit. . . . ”

  Twenty-three minutes later—Janet had been timing the lecture with barely concealed glances at her watch—Coreen stopped suddenly and stood. “I have to go to the bathroom,” she said. “Wait for me. I’ll be right back.”

  “Not bloody likely,” Janet muttered the second Coreen disappeared down the stairs to the basement. Digging her gear free of the pile, she headed for the door, shrugging into her jacket as she went. She liked Coreen, but if she heard one more word about vampires she was going to bite somebody herself. Any vampire Coreen ran into was going to be able to claim self-defense.

  At the door, she discovered she’d picked up Coreen’s remaining red glove. Damn! I take it back and it’s more of the Count Dracula power hour. She stood there for a moment, slapping the leather fingers into her palm, torn between doing the right thing and running to save her sanity.

  Sanity won.

  As the bright lighting turned the top of Coreen’s ascending head to flame, Janet shoved the glove into her pocket, spun on her heel, and escaped into the night. If I run, she thought and matched the action to it, I could be clear of the parking lot lights before Coreen looks out the window. In the darkness beyond, she’d be safe.

  It came up through the ground. It preferred to travel that way, for then it need waste no energy on remaining unseen. And until it fed, it had little energy to waste. It sensed the prey above it, but it waited, following, until no other lives could be felt.

  Then it emerged.

  The urge to kill
was strong, nearly overpowering. It had been so commanded by its “master” and its nature called it to feed. Only fear of what failure would bring managed to deflect the killing stroke that instinct had begun so that it struck bone and not soft tissue.

  The prey cried out and crumpled, silent now but sill alive.

  It longed to lap at the warm blood that filled the night with the scent of food but it knew that feeding, once begun, could not be stopped and that this was not the place marked for death. Gathering the prey up, it turned its face to the wind and began to run, using all three of its free limbs. It could not take the prey to the earth, nor could it take to the sky with so heavy a burden. It must trust to speed to keep it unseen.

  The prey would die. It would obey its “master” in that, but it would obey an older master as well and the prey would die in the pattern.

  Unnoticed, the crushed red glove lay just beyond the edge of the parking lot lights. Beside it was a splash of darker red, already freezing.

  Nine

  “And repeating our top story, the strange deaths in the Toronto area continue with the seventh body, found early this morning by police on Foxrun Avenue, just south of the Oakdale Golf and Country Club. Homicide investigators at the site have confirmed only that death occurred after a violent blow to the throat and will not say if this victim had also been drained of blood. Police are withholding the victim’s name pending notification of the next of kin.

  “Weather for southern Ontario will be colder than the seasonal norm and. . . . ”

  Vicki stretched out an arm and switched off the radio then lay for a moment on the weight bench, listening to the sounds of the city, convincing herself that the rumble of a distant truck was not the tread of a thousand clawed feet and that a high-pitched keening to the east was only a siren.

  “So far, no demonic hordes.” She reached down and pressed her palm against the parquet floor. “Touch wood.” It looked like she still had time to find the bastard dealing out these deaths and break every bone in. . . .

  Cutting off the thought, she stood and went into the living room where she’d taped the map of the city to the wall. Vengeance was all very well, but dwelling on it obscured the more pressing problem: finding the scum.

  The first six deaths had occurred on Sunday, Monday and Tuesday nights, a week apart. This Thursday night killing broke the pattern. Squinting at the map, Vicki circled Foxrun Avenue. She had no idea how this fit geographically or if it fit geographically or if it broke that pattern to pieces as well.

  She pushed her glasses up her nose and forced her teeth to unclench.

  Henry could play connect the dots this evening when he woke; she had other leads to follow.

  If Henry was right, and the person calling the demon was receiving stolen goods for each life, those goods had to have been reported missing. Find the goods, find the demon-caller. Find the demon-caller, stop the killing. It was all very simple; she only had to check every occurrence report in the city for the last three weeks and pull out unusual and unexplained thefts.

  “Which,” she sighed, “should only take me about two years.” And at that, two years of searching was infinitely better than another second sitting on her ass, helpless. Trouble was, with eighteen divisions in Metro, where did she start?

  She tapped the map with her pencil. The morning reports at 31 Division would have details on the death the radio hadn’t released. Details Henry might need to pin down the next site, the next killing. Also, the two lines from the previous six deaths intersected in 31 Division. That might be meaningless now, but it was still a place to begin.

  Clutching the bag containing the four doughnuts—two strawberry jelly and two chocolate glazed—in one hand and the bag with the accompanying coffees in the other, Vicki lowered her head and rounded the corner onto Nor-finch Drive. With the York-Finch hospital at her back, nothing stood between her and a vicious northwest wind but the police station and a few square miles of industrial wasteland. Squat and solid, 31 Division made a lousy windbreak.

  A patrol car rolled out of the station parking lot as she approached and she paused to watch it turn east on Finch Avenue. At 9:20 on Good Friday morning, traffic was sparse and it would be easy to get the mistaken impression that the city had taken this opportunity—a religious holiday observed by only about a third of its population— to sleep in. The city, as Vicki well knew, never did anything that restful. If traffic complaints were down, then domestic complaints would be up as loving families spent the entire day together. And in the Jane-Finch corridor, the direction the car had been heading, where there were few jobs to take a holiday from and tempers teetered on the edge on the best of days. . . .

  Back when she was in uniform, she’d spent almost a year working out of 31. Remembering certain highlights as she continued toward the station, she found she didn’t miss police work at all.

  “Well, if it isn’t ”Victory“ Nelson, gone but not forgotten. What brings you out to the ass-end of the city?”

  “Just the thought of seeing your smiling face, Jimmy.” Vicki set the two bags on the counter and pushed her glasses up her nose with frozen fingers. “It’s spring and, like the swallows, I’m returning to Capistrano. Is the Sarge around?”

  “Yeah, he’s in the . . .”

  “None of her damned business what he’s in!” The bellow would have shaken a less solidly constructed building and following close behind it, Staff-Sergeant Stanley Iljohn rolled into the duty area, past Jimmy, and up to the counter. “You said you’d be here by nine,” he accused. “You’re late.”

  Silently, Vicki held up the bag of doughnuts.

  “Bribes,” the sergeant snorted, the ends of his beautifully curled mustache quivering with the force of the exhalation. “Well, stop standing around with your thumb up your ass. Get in here and sit. And you,” he glared down at Jimmy, “get back to work.”

  Jimmy, who was working, grinned and ignored him. Vicki did as she was told, and as Sergeant Iljohn settled himself at the duty sergeant’s desk, she pulled up a chair and sat across from him.

  A few moments later, the sergeant meticulously brushed a spray of powdered sugar off his starched shirt front. “Now then, you know and I know that allowing you to read the occurrence reports is strictly against department regs.”

  “Yes, Sarge.” If anyone else had been on duty, she probably wouldn’t have been able to manage it without pulling in favors from higher up.

  “And we both know that you’re blatantly trading on the reputation you built as a hotshot miracle worker to get around those regs.”

  “Yes, Sarge.” Iljohn had been the first to recommend her for an advanced promotion and had seen her arrest record as proof of his assessment. When she’d left the force, he’d called her, grilled her on her plans, and practically commanded her to make something of her life. He hadn’t exactly been supportive, but his brusque goodwill had been something to lean on when Mike Celluci had accused her of running away.

  “And if I catch shit over this, I’m going to tell them you used the unarmed combat you private investigators are supposed to be so damned good at to overpower me and you read the reports over my bleeding body.”

  “Should I slap you around a little?” Although he stood barely over minimum height for the force, rumor had it that Stanley Iljohn had never lost a fight. With anything.

  “Don’t be a smart ass.”

  “Sorry, Sarge.”

  He tapped one square finger against the clipboard lying on his desk and his face grew solemn. “Do you really think you can do something about this?” he asked.

  Vicki nodded. “Right now,” she told him levelly, “I have a better chance than anyone in the city.”

  Iljohn stared at her for a long moment. “I can draw lines on a map, too,” he said at last. “And when you line up the first six deaths, x marks the spot just north of here. Every cop at this station is watching for something strange, something that’ll mark the killer, and you can bet these reports,” a sho
rt, choppy wave indicated the occurrence reports of the last couple of weeks which were hanging on the wall by the desk, “have been gone through with several fine toothed combs. Gone through by everyone here and by the boys and girls from your old playground.”

  “But not by me.”

  He nodded acknowledgment. “Not by you.” His palm slapped down on the papers on his desk. “This last death, this was in my territory and I’m taking it personally. If you know something you’re not telling, spit it out now.”

  There’s a demon writing a name in blood across the city. If we don’t stop it, it will be only the beginning.

  How do you know?

  A vampire told me.

  She looked him right in the eye, and lied.

  “Everything I know, I’ve told Mike Celluci. He’s in charge of the case. I just think it’ll help if I look myself.”

  Iljohn’s eyes narrowed. She could tell he didn’t believe her. Not completely.

  Slowly, after a moment that stretched into all the time they’d ever worked together, he pushed the clipboard across the desk. “I want this to be the last death,” he growled.

  Not as much as I do, Vicki thought.

  How many deaths in a demon’s name?

  She bent her head to read.

  “Victims one and seven were both students at York University. Not much of a connection to base an investigation on.”

  Celluci sighed. “Vicki, at this point I’d base an investigation on ties a lot more tenuous. Did you call to give me a hard time or did you have something constructive to say?”

  Vicki twisted the phone cord around her fingers. Late in the afternoon, arriving at 52 Division, her search had actually turned something up. One of the uniforms coming in off shift change had overheard her talking to the duty sergeant about unusual cases and had filled her in on one he’d taken the call for. Trouble was, she couldn’t figure out how to present the information to Celluci. “So you’ll be concentrating the search at York?” she asked instead.