by Tanya Huff
Vicki blinked as the intricate stitching on his black cowboy boot came suddenly into focus. “Much. Thank you.” Up close, and considering the features without the expression, he wasn’t an unattractive young man. A bit on the thin and gawky side perhaps, but time would take care of both. Time that none of them had, thanks to Norman Birdwell.
“Good.” He patted her cheek and the touch, light as it was sent ripples of pain through her head. “I’ll tell you what I told her. If you scream, or make any loud noise, I’ll kill you both.”
“I’m going to go do my teeth now,” he continued, straightening up. “I brush after everything I eat.” He pulled what looked to be a thick pen out of the pocket protector and unscrewed the cap. It turned out to be a portable toothbrush, with paste in the handle. “You should get one of these,” he told her, demonstrating how it worked, his tone self-righteously smug. “I’ve never had a filling.”
Fortunately, he didn’t wait for a reply.
Some lucky providence had put Coreen directly across the small room, making it thankfully unnecessary for Vicki to move her head. She studied the younger woman for a few seconds, noting the red patch on one pale cheek. Even with her glasses, she seemed to be having trouble focusing. “Are you all right?” she called quietly.
“What do you think?” Coreen didn’t bother to modulate her voice. “I’m tied to one of Norman Birdwell’s kitchen chairs—with socks!”
Vicki dropped her gaze. At least six socks per leg tied Coreen to the chrome legs of the kitchen chair. Gray and black and brown nylon socks, stretched to their limit and impossible to break. Intrigued, in spite of everything, she gave her own bonds an experimental tug; they didn’t respond like socks. As it seemed safer than moving her head, she slid her arms up along the floor until she could see them. Ties. At least four, maybe five—the swirling leaps of paisley and the jarring clashes of color made it difficult to tell for sure—and while it might have had more to do with her own weakness than Norman’s skill, for she doubted he’d ever been a boy scout, he certainly seemed to know his knots.
“You were about to jump him, weren’t you?”
“What?” Vicki looked up and wished she hadn’t as her body protested with alternating waves of dizziness and nausea.
“When we came into the apartment and I . . . I mean. . . . Well, I’m sorry.”
It sounded more like a challenge than an apology. “Don’t worry about it now.” Vicki swallowed, trying not to add to the puddle of drool collecting under her cheek. “Let’s just try . . . to get out of this mess.”
“What do you think I’ve been trying to do?” Coreen gave a frantic heave that only resulted in bouncing the chair backward less than half an inch. “I don’t believe this! I really don’t believe this!”
Hearing the tones of incipient panic, Vicki, in the driest voice she was capable of, said, “It is a little like . . . Alfred Hitchcock does Revenge of the Nerds.”
Coreen stared at her in astonishment, sniffed, and grinned somewhat shakily. “Or David Cronneberg does I Dream of Genie,” she offered in return.
Good girl. It took all the energy Vicki had left to smile approvingly. While there were dangers in Coreen not taking Norman seriously, the dangers were greater if the girl fell apart.
Struggling did more damage to her than to the ties. She kept struggling anyway. If the world had to end, she’d be damned if she let it go down under the ridiculously high, cowboy booted heel of Norman Birdwell, adding insult to injury.
“Enough!” Henry spun away from the window and hurled himself toward the door. He had a name, he had a place, it was time he joined the hunt. “I should never have waited this long.”
At the door, he slowed, grabbed his coat, and managed to appear within the parameters of normality as he exited into the hall. He slid the key into the lock, then headed for the stairs, hating the charade that kept him to a mortal’s pace.
In the dim light of the stairwell, he let all pretense drop and moved as quickly as aching muscles would allow.
There were slightly less than two hours until midnight.
He completely forgot that the stairwell was part of the building’s random monitoring system.
Vicki drifted up into consciousness thinking, This has got to stop. Every time she tried to move, every time she tried to raise her head, she drifted back down into the pit. Occasionally, the blackness claimed her when she was doing nothing more than lying quietly, trying to conserve her strength for another attempt at getting free. I’m going to have to think of something else.
All her intermittent struggling had accomplished was to exacerbate her physical condition and to uncover her watch.
Seven minutes after ten. Henry’s probably throwing fits. Oh my God, Henry! Her involuntary jerk brought another flash of pain. She ignored it, lost it in sudden horror. I forgot to warn him about that security guard. . . .
Although he recognized the necessity of the surveillance cameras, Greg had never liked them. They always made him feel a bit like a peeping Tom. Two or three guards on constant patrol with one manning a central position at the desk, that’s the kind of job he’d prefer to work. A camera just couldn’t replace a trained man on the scene. But trained men had to be paid and cameras didn’t so he was stuck with them.
As the attractive young lady in the whirlpool stepped out and reached for her towel, he politely averted his eyes. Maybe he was just getting old, but those two scraps of fabric were not what he’d call a bathing suit. When he looked back again, that monitor showed only orderly rows of cars in the underground garage.
He sat back in his chair and adjusted the black armband he wore in honor of Mrs. Hughes and Owen. The building would be different without them. As the night went on, he kept expecting to see them heading out for their last walk before bed and had to keep reminding himself that he’d never see them again. The young man he’d relieved had raised an eyebrow at the armband and another at the explanation. Young people today had no real concept of respect; not for the dead, not for authority, not for themselves. Henry Fitzroy was one of the few young people he’d met in the last ten years who understood.
Henry Fitzroy. Greg pulled at his lower lip. Last night he’d done a very, very foolish thing. He was embarrassed by it and sorry for it, but not entirely certain he was wrong. As an old sergeant of his used to say, “If it walks like a duck, and it talks like a duck, and it acts like a duck, odds are good it’s a duck.” The sergeant had been referring to Nazis, but Greg figured it applied to vampires as well. While he had his doubts that a young man of Mr. Fitzroy’s quality could have committed such an insane murder—there’d been nothing crazy about the look Greg had seen in Mr. Fitzroy’s eyes so many weeks ago, it had, in fact, been frighteningly sane—he couldn’t believe that a man of Mr. Fitzroy’s quality would allow a young lady visiting him to answer the door a deshabille. He’d have gotten up and done it himself. When he’d calmed down enough to think about it, Greg realized that she had to be hiding something.
But what?
A movement in one of the monitors caught his eye and Greg turned toward it. He frowned. Something black had flickered past the fire door leading to the seventh floor too quickly for him to recognize it. He reached for the override and began activating the cameras in the stairwell.
Seconds later, the fifth floor camera picked up Henry Fitzroy running down the stairs two at a time and scowling. He looked like any other young man in reasonable shape—and a bad mood—who’d decided not to waste his time waiting for an elevator. While Greg himself wouldn’t have walked from the fourteenth floor, he realized there was nothing supernatural about Henry Fitzroy doing it. Nor in the way he was doing it.
Sighing, he turned the controls back to their random sequencing.
“And what if it doesn’t act like a duck all the time?” he wondered aloud.
Henry had reached the sixth floor when the abuse his body had taken the night before caught up with him and he had to slow to something more closely a
pproximating a mortal’s pace. He snarled as he swung his weight around on the banister, frustrated by the refusal of muscles to respond as they should. Rather than touching down only once on every half flight, he actually had to use every other step.
He was in a bad mood when he reached his car and he took the exit ramp from the underground garage much faster than he should have, his exhaust pipe screaming along concrete. The sound forced him to calm. He wouldn’t get there any faster if he destroyed his car or attracted the attention of the police.
At the curb, while he waited impatiently for the light to change, he caught a familiar scent.
“A BMW? You’ve got to be kidding.” Tony leaned his forearms through the open window and clicked his tongue. “If that watch is a Rolex,” he added softly, “I want my blood back.”
Henry knew he owed the boy a great deal, so he tried bury the rage he was feeling. He felt his lips pull back off his teeth and realized he hadn’t been significantly successful.
If Tony had doubted his memory of what had happened the night before, Henry’s expression would have convinced him for there was very little humanity in it. Had the anger been directed at him, he would’ve run and not stopped until sunrise and safety. As it was, he pulled his arms back outside the car, just in case. “I thought you might want to talk. . . .”
“Later.” If the world survived the night, they’d talk. It wasn’t of immediate concern.
“Yeah. Right. Later’s good. Say. . . .” Tony frowned. “Is Victory okay?”
“I don’t . . .” The light changed. He slammed the car into gear. “. . . know.”
Tony stood watching the car speed away, lips pursed, hands shoved deep in his pockets. He rolled a quarter over and over between his fingers.
“This is my home number.” Vicki handed him the card and turned it over so he could see the other number hand-written on the back. “And this is who you call if you’re in trouble and you can’t get to me.”
“Mike Celluci?” Tony shook his head. “He don’t like me much, Victory.”
“Tough.”
“I don’t like him much.”
“Do I look like I care? Call him anyway.”
He pulled the quarter from his pocket and headed to the pay phone on the corner. Four years in a variety of pockets had turned the card limp but the number on the back was still legible. He’d already called the number on the front and wasted a quarter on a stupid machine. Everybody knew Victory never turned the machine on if she was home.
“I gotta talk to Mike Celluci.”
“Speaking.”
“Victory’s in trouble.” He was as sure of it as he’d ever been sure of anything in his life.
“Who?”
Tony rolled his eyes at the receiver. And they called them the city’s finest. What a dork. “Vicki Nelson. You remember—tall, blonde, pushy, used to be a cop.”
“What kind of trouble?”
Good. Celluci sounded worried. “I don’t know.”
“Where?”
“I don’t know.” Tony could hear teeth grinding on the other end of the line. If this wasn’t so serious, he’d be enjoying himself. “You’re the cop, you figure it out.”
He hung up before the explosion. He’d done what he could.
Mike Celluci stared at the phone and swore long and loudly in Italian. Upon reflection, he’d recognized the voice as Vicki’s little street person and that lent just enough credibility to the message that it couldn’t be completely ignored. He dumped a pocket load of little pink slips on the kitchen table and began sorting through them.
“Norman Birdwell. York University.” He held it up to the light in a completely futile gesture then tossed it back with the others.
Vicki had never been a grandstander. She’d always played by the rules, made them work for her. She’d never go in to pick up a suspected mass murderer—a suspected psychotic mass murderer—without backup. But then, she doesn’t have backup anymore, does she? And she just might feel like she’s got something to prove. . . .
He’d hit the memory dial to headquarters before he finished the thought.
“This is Celluci. Darrel, I need the number for someone in Administration at York University. I know it’s the middle of the night, I want a home number. I know I’m off duty. You’re not paying my overtime, what the hell are you complaining about?” He balanced the phone under his chin and pulled his shoulder holster up off the back of the chair, shrugging into it as he waited. “So call me at home when you find it. And Darrel, give it top priority. I want that number yesterday.”
He reached for his jacket and laid it beside the pnone. He hated waiting. He’d always hated waiting. He dug the pink slip back out of the pile.
Norman Birdwell.
“I don’t know what hat you pulled this name out of, Nelson,” he growled. “But if I ride to the rescue and you’re not in deep shit, bad eyes and insecurity are going to be the least of your problems.”
Norman was talking to the grimoire and had been for some time. His low mumble had become a constant background noise as Vicki drifted in and out of consciousness. Occasionally she heard words, mostly having to do with how the world would now treat Norman the way he deserved. Vicki was all for that.
“Hey, Norman!”
The mumbling stopped. Vicki tried to focus on Coreen. The younger woman looked . . . embarrassed?
Grimoire clutched to his chest, Norman came into her line of sight. She shuddered at the thought of holding that book that closely. The one time she’d touched it back in Henry’s apartment had made her skin crawl and the memory still left an unpleasant feeling in her mind.
“Look, Norman, I have really got to go to the bathroom.” Coreen’s voice was low and intense and left no doubt as to her sincerity and Vicki suddenly found herself wishing she hadn’t said that.
“Uh. . . .” Norman obviously had no idea of how to deal with the problem.
Coreen sighed audibly. “Look, if you untie me, I’ll walk quietly to the bathroom and then come right back to my chair so you can tie me up again. You can keep me covered with your silly gun the entire time. I really have to go.”
“Uh. . . .”
“Your Demon Lord isn’t going to be too impressed if he shows up and I’ve peed on his pentagram.”
Norman stared at Coreen for a long moment, his hands stroking up and down the dark leather cover of the grimoire. “You wouldn’t,” he said at last.
“Try me.”
It might have been the smile, it might have been the tone of voice, but Norman decided not to risk it.
Vicki drifted off during the untying and came to again as Coreen, once more secured in her chair, said, “What about her?”
Norman shifted his grip slightly on the gun. “She doesn’t matter, she’ll be dead soon anyway.”
Vicki was beginning to be very afraid that he was right. She simply had no reserves left to call on and every time she fought her way up out of the blackness, the world seemed a little further away. Okay, if I’m dead anyway and I scream and he shoots me, the neighbors will call the police—that thing doesn’t have a silencer on it. Of course, he may just whack me on the head again. That was the last thing she needed. If I have Coreen scream as well, that may push him over the edge enough that he shoots one of us.
Coreen, for all the girl believed in vampires and demons and who knew what else, didn’t really understand what was about to happen. Mind you, that’s not her fault. I didn’t tell her.
She balanced Coreen’s life against the life of the city. It wasn’t a decision she had any right to make. She made it anyway. I’m sorry, Coreen.
She wet her lips and drew in as deep a breath as she was capable of. “Cor . . .” The butt of the rifle hit the floor inches from her nose, the metal plate slamming against the tiles. The noise and the vibration drove the remainder of her carefully hoarded breath out in an almost silent cry of pain. Thank God, he had the safety on. . . .
“Shut up,” Norman told h
er genially.
She didn’t really have much choice but to obey as darkness rolled over her once again.
Norman looked around his apartment, exceedingly pleased with himself. Soon all those people who thought him a nobody, a nothing, would pay. He reached out one hand to stroke the book. The book said so.
10:43. Time to start painting the pentagram. It was much more complicated than the form he usually used and he wanted to be sure he got it right.
This was going to be the greatest night of his life.
Fifteen
She knew better than to go near strange men in cars. She’d been raised on horror stories of abduction and rape and young women found weeks later decomposing in irrigation ditches. She answered the summons anyway, her mother’s warnings having lost their power from the moment she met the stranger’s eyes.
“The administration offices, where are they?”
She knew where the admin offices were, at least, she thought she knew—actually, she wasn’t sure what she thought anymore. She wet her lips and offered, “The Ross Building?” She’d seen an office in Ross, maybe more than one.
“Which is where?”
She half turned and pointed. A moment later, she wondered why she was standing in the middle of St. Lawrence Boulevard staring at a set of taillights driving onto the campus—and why she felt a vague sense of disappointment.
Henry scanned the directory board and frowned. Only one office listed might have what he needed: The Office of Student Programs, S302. He sensed a scattering of lives in the building, but he would deal with them as he had to.
11:22. He was running out of time.
The dim lighting was a boon and had anyone been watching they’d have seen only a deeper shadow flickering down the length of the shadowed hall.
The first flight of stairs he found only took him to the second floor. He found another, found the third floor, and began following the numbers stenciled on the doors. 322, 313, 316 . . . 340? He turned and glared at the fire door he’d just passed through. Surely there had to be a pattern. No one, not even in the twentieth century, numbered a building completely at random.