1 Blood Price (24 page)

He could feel, not the pattern, but the anticipation of it. A current of evil waiting for its chance, waiting for the final death that would anchor it to the world. This feeling, which raised the hair on the back of his neck and made him snarl, was strong enough to convince him that he’d chosen correctly. This name would be the first to finish; this demon lord the first to break free of the darkness and begin the slaughter.

He must stop the lesser demon in the few seconds between its appearance and the killing blow, for once the blood struck the ground he’d have its demonic master to contend with. Unfortunately, the pattern allowed for a wider area than he could watch all at once, so he’d done the only thing he could—walking a pentagram well outside the boundaries the pattern demanded, leaving the last six inches unclosed. When the demon entered, to attack a life within it or carrying a life in from outside, he’d close it. Such an ephemeral prison wouldn’t last more than a few seconds but should give him control long enough to get to the demon and . . .

“. . . and stop it.” Henry sighed and turned up the collar of his coat. “Temporarily.” Trouble was, the lesser demons were pretty much interchangeable. If he stopped this one, there was nothing stopping its “master” from calling up another. Fortunately, these demons, like most bullies, weren’t fond of pain and he might be able to convince it to talk.

“If it
can
talk.” He shoved his hands in his pockets and sagged against the fence. Rumor had it that not all of them could.

There was an added complication he hadn’t mentioned to Vicki because he knew she’d scoff. Tonight, all over the world, millions of people were crying that Christ was dead. This century might have lost its ability to see the power in believing, but Henry hadn’t. Most religions had marked a day of darkness on the calendar and, given the spread of the Christian church, this was among the most potent. If the demon returned before Christ rose again, it would be stronger, more dangerous, harder to stop.

He checked his watch. 11:40. Bound by centuries of tradition, the demon would be called—if it was called at all tonight—at midnight. According to Vicki, all the previous deaths had occurred between midnight and one o’clock. He wondered how the police had missed such an obvious clue.

The wind snapped his coat around his knees and lifted bright strands of his hair. Like all large predators, he could remain motionless for as long as the hunt required, senses straining for the first sight or sound or scent of prey.

Midnight passed.

Henry felt the heart of darkness go by and the current of evil strengthened momentarily. He tensed. He would have to move between one heartbeat and the next.

Then the current began to fade.

When it had sighed away to a mere possibility, Henry checked his watch again. 1:20. For tonight, for whatever reason, the danger was past.

Relief caused him to sag against the fence, grinning foolishly. He hadn’t been looking forward to the battle. He was grateful for the reprieve. He’d head back downtown, maybe drop in on Caroline, get something to eat, spend the hours until sunrise not worrying about being ripped to pieces by the hordes of hell.

“Peaceful, isn’t it?”

The white-haired man never knew how close he came to dying. Only the returning surge of the pattern, sensing death, stopped Henry’s strike. He forced his lips back over his teeth and shoved his trembling hands in his pockets.

“Did I frighten you?”

“No.” The night hid the hunter while Henry struggled to resecure his civilized mask. “Startled me, that’s all.” The wind from the river had kept him from scenting the blood and the sound of the water had muffled the approach of crepe soled shoes. It was excusable that he’d been taken by surprise. It was also embarrassing.

“You don’t live around here?”

“No.” As he came closer, Henry revised his original impression of the man’s age. No more than fifty, and a trim, athletic fifty at that, with the weathered look of a man who worked outside.

“I thought not, I’d have remembered you.” His eyes were pale blue and just beyond the edge of a gray down jacket, a vein pulsed under tanned skin. “I often walk at night when I can’t sleep.”

Hands hanging loose beside his faded jeans, he waited for Henry’s explanation. Ridged knuckles testified to past fights and somehow Henry doubted he’d lost many of them.

“I was waiting for someone.” Remaining adrenaline kept him terse although amusement had begun to wash it away. “He didn’t show.” He answered the older man’s slow smile with one of his own, captured the pale blue gaze, and held it. Leading him into the shadows of the cemetery, allowing his hunger to rise, he considered this ending to the few last hours and, stifling slightly hysterical laughter, Henry realized there was truth in something he’d always believed;
The world is not only stranger than you imagine, it’s stranger than you can imagine—a vampire, waiting for a demon, gets cruised in a graveyard. Sometimes I love this century.

“Detective? I mean, Ms. Nelson?” The young constable blushed at his mistake and cleared his throat. “The, uh, sergeant says you might want to hear about the call I had this morning.”

Vicki glanced up from the stack of occurrence reports and pushed her glasses up her nose. She wondered when they’d started allowing children to join the force. Or when twenty had started looking so damned young.

Standing a little straighter, the constable began to read from his notes. “At 8:02 this morning, Saturday, 23rd of March, a Mr. John Rose of 42 Birchmont Avenue reported an item missing from his gun collection. Said collection, including the missing item, was kept in a locked case behind a false wall in Mr. Rose’s basement. Neither the wall nor the lock appeared to have been tampered with and Mr. Rose swore that only he and his wife knew the combination. The house itself showed no signs of forced entry. All papers and permits appeared to be in order and . . .”

“Constable?”

“Yes, ma’am?”

“What item was Mr. Rose missing?”

“Ma’am?”

Vicki sighed. She’d had a sleepless night and a long day. “What kind of gun?”

“Oh.” The constable blushed again and peered down at his handwriting. “The, uh, missing item was a Russian assault rifle, an AK-47. With ammunition. Ma’am.”

“Shit!”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“I don’t believe it!” Norman kicked the newspaper box, the toe of his running shoe thudding into the metal with a very satisfactory boom. He’d stopped to read the front page story about the seventh victim and discovered that the stupid demon had killed the wrong girl. What was worse, it had killed the wrong girl Thursday night and here it was Saturday before he found out.

Coreen had been walking around alive for two extra days!

The throbbing, which had not disappeared with the demon as it always had before, grew louder.

He dug his change purse out of his pants’ pocket, muttering, “A decent country would have a decent information service.” If he’d known about this yesterday, he’d have called the demon back last night instead of spending the time on the net, looking for someone who could tell him how to operate his new equalizer.
Too bad I couldn’t take that to class
.
They’d all notice me then
. What really made him angry was that the demon had come back on Thursday and then gone off and gotten him the rifle without ever letting on it had screwed up.

When he saw a Saturday paper cost a dollar twenty-five, he almost changed his mind, but the story was about him, in a way, so, grumbling, he fed coins into the slot. Besides, he needed to know what the demon had done so he could find a way to punish it tonight. As long as he had it trapped in the pentagram, there must be something he could do to hurt it.

Paper tucked under his arm—he’d have taken two, but a single weekend edition was bulky enough on its own—he continued into the small corner store for a bag of briquettes. He had only one left and he needed three for the ritual.

Unfortunately, he was seventy-six cents short.

“What!”

“The charcoal is three dollars and fifty-nine cents plus twenty-five cents tax which is coming to three dollars and eighty-four cents. You have only three dollars and eight cents.”

“Look, I’ll owe it to you.”

The old woman shook her head. “Sorry, no credit.”

Norman’s eyes narrowed. “I was born in this country. I’ve got rights.” He reached for the bag, but she swept it back behind the counter.

“No credit,” she repeated a little more firmly.

He was halfway around the counter after it, when the old woman picked up a broom and started toward him. Scooping up his money, he beat a hasty retreat.

She probably knows kung fu or something
. He shifted the paper under his arm and started back to his apartment. On the way past, he kicked the newspaper box again. The closest bank machine closed at six. He’d never make it. He’d have to head into the mall tomorrow to find an open one.

This was all that old lady’s fault. After he worked out a suitable punishment for the demon and made sure that Coreen got hers, maybe he’d do something about the immigrant problem.

The throbbing grew louder still.

“Look at this!”

Scrubbing at her face with her hands, Vicki answered without looking up. “I’ve seen it. I brought them over, remember?”

“Is the entire city out of its mind?”

“The entire city is scared, Henry.” She put her glasses back on and sighed. Although she had no intention of telling him, she’d slept last night with the bedroom light on and still kept waking, heart in her throat, drenched with sweat, sure that something was climbing up the fire escape toward her window. “You’ve had since 1536 to come to terms with violent death. The rest of us haven’t been so lucky.”

As if to make up for the lack of news over Good Friday, all three of the Saturday papers carried the seventh death as a front page story, emphasized that this body, too, had been drained of blood, and all three, the staid national paper finally jumping on the bandwagon, carried articles on vampires, columns on vampires, historical and scientific exploration of vampires—all the while claiming no such creature existed.

“Do you know what the result of all this will be?” Henry slapped the paper he held down on the couch where the pages separated and half of it slithered to the floor.

Vicki swiveled to face him as he moved out of her limited field of vision. “Increased circulation?” she asked, covering a yawn. Her eyes ached from a day spent reading occurrence reports and the news that their demon-caller had turned to more conventional weapons had been all she needed to hear.

Henry, unable to remain still, crossed the room in four angry strides, turned, and came back. Bracing his hands on the top of the couch, he leaned toward her. “You’re right, people are afraid. The papers, for whatever reasons, have given that fear a name. Vampire.” He straightened and ran one hand back through his hair. “The people writing these stories don’t believe in vampires, and most of the people reading these stories don’t believe in vampires, but we’re talking about a culture where more people know their astrological sign than their blood type. Somewhere out there, somebody is taking all this seriously and spending his spare time sharpening stakes.”