3 Blood Lines (22 page)

“My life?” Henry asked, allowing the civilized mask to slip a little.

Tony wet his lips, but he didn’t back down. “Yeah,” he said huskily, “your life, too.”

Henry played with the Hunger a little, allowing it to rise as he traced the line of jaw, then forcing it back down again as he admitted he had no real desire to feed. “You should get some sleep,” he suggested over the wild pounding of Tony’s heart. “I think you’ve already had enough excitement for one night.”

“Wha . . . ?”

“I can smell him all over you.” Henry heard the blood rush up into Tony’s face, saw the smooth curve of cheek flush darkly. “It’s all right.” He smiled. “No one else can.”

“He wasn’t like you . . .”

“I should certainly hope not.”

“I mean, he wasn’t . . . it wasn’t . . . well, it was but . . . I mean . . .”

“I know what you mean.” He made the smile a promise and held it until he saw that Tony understood. “I’d walk you home, but I have an assignment to complete.”

“Yeah.” Tony sighed, tugged at his jeans, and began to walk away. A few paces down the road, he turned. “Hey, Henry. Those crazy ideas that Victory gets? Well, most times they turn out not to be so crazy after all.”

It was Henry’s turn to sigh as he spread his arms. “I’m still out here.”

 

“. . . leave a message after the tone.”

“Vicki? Celluci. It’s four o’clock, Wednesday afternoon. One of the uniforms just told me they saw you poking around the drains behind the museum this morning. What the fuck do you think you’re doing? You’re looking for a mummy, not a goddamned Ninja Turtle.

“By the way, if you find anything—and I mean anything—and you don’t immediately let me know, I’m going to kick your ass from here to Christmas.”

 

 

Vicki shoved her glasses at her face and peered at the clock. Two forty-six.

“I don’t have time for this,” she muttered, settling back against the pillows, heart still slamming against her ribs. In barely two hours she’d be heading over to Henry’s which made sleep the priority of the moment. Although that incident at the museum had obviously spooked her more than she’d thought, dream analysis would just have to wait. She dropped her glasses back where they belonged, stretched up a long arm, and switched off the light. “I’m going to blacken the next set of glowing red eyes that wakes me up,” she promised her subconscious.

A few moments later, lying awake in the dark, she frowned. She hadn’t thought of that jacket in years.

 

 

Although her head felt as if it had been slammed repeatedly between two large rocks, Vicki woke feeling smug.

 

She was giving him more of a fight than he’d anticipated. His lord would not be pleased. As she had no protecting gods, merely a strongly developed sense of self, the failure would be perceived as being his.

Akhekh did not tolerate failure and his punishments were such that anything became preferable to facing them.

He needed more power.

 

In spite of the the cold and the damp, a Friday afternoon spent in the park beat the hell out of a Friday afternoon spent with the Riel Rebellion and grade ten chemistry. Brian tightened his grip across Louise’s shoulders and turned her face up to meet his.

Now this is what I call getting an education!
he thought as her lips parted and she flicked at his tongue with hers.
I wonder if she’ll let me slip my hand up under her . . . ouch. Guess not.

He opened his eyes, just to see what another person looked like from that angle, and frowned as he saw a well-dressed man watching them from no more than five feet away.
Oh, great. A pervert. Or a cop. Maybe we should . . . we should . . .

“Brian?” Louise pulled back as he went limp. “Cut it out.” His head flopped forward onto her shoulder. “I mean it, Brian. You’re scaring me. Brian?

“Oh, my God.”

 

He settled back on the bed, throwing the bags of feathers to the floor. Someday soon he’d have a proper headrest made.

It was eleven forty-three—this culture’s preoccupation with the division of time into ridiculously small units never failed to amuse him—and she would be asleep by now, her ka at its most vulnerable. Tonight she would not be able to stand against him; he would throw all the power from the ka he had absorbed this afternoon at her defenses.

He closed his eyes and sent his ka forth, following the path his lord had laid out, entering through the image of his lord’s eyes.

 

 

He knew how she would suffer. It would take a while to arrange, even with some of the necessary influences already in place, but his lord could not help but be pleased with the result.

“You don’t look so good. Are you all right?”

Vicki shifted her grip on the aluminum baseball bat and managed a smile. “I’m okay. I’m just a little tired.”

“I’m sorry I haven’t turned up any leads these last couple of nights but, to be honest, I never expected to.”

“That’s all right. It was a long shot. Henry . . .” She sat down on the edge of the bed and with one finger stroked the patch of red gold hair in the center of his chest. “. . . are you still dreaming?”

Henry pulled the sheet aside to expose a ragged clutch of multiple holes in the mattress. “I drove my fingers through here this morning,” he said dryly. He flicked the sheet back, then covered her hand with his. “If I hadn’t caught a hint of your scent on the pillow, I don’t know how much more damage I might have done.” She looked away and he decided not to say the rest, not to tell her that she gave him reason to hold onto his sanity. Instead, he asked, “Why?”

“I just wondered if they were getting worse.”

“They haven’t changed. You getting tired of standing guard?”

“No. I just . . .” She couldn’t tell him. The dream had seemed so important while it was going on, but now, faced with Henry’s basic terror, it seemed stupidly abstract and meaningless.

“You just?” Henry prodded, knowing full well from her expression that she wasn’t going to tell him.

“Nothing.”

“Look at the bright side.” He brought her hand to his mouth and kissed the scars on the inside of her wrist. “Tonight’s the night of the party. One way or another, something’s bound to . . .”

“. . . happen.” Vicki drew her hand away and straightened Henry’s arm. Sliding her glasses back up her nose, she leaned the bat against the end of the bed. “One way or another.”

“Oh, my God.”

“What’s wrong?”

Vicki wet her lips. “Absolutely nothing. You look . . . uh, good.” Henry’s costume had been made traditional in a score of movies—tum-of-the-century formal wear with a broad scarlet ribbon cutting diagonally across the black and a full-length opera cloak falling in graceful folds to the floor. The effect was amazing. And it wasn’t the contrast between the black and the white and the sculptured pale planes of face and the sudden red/gold brilliance that was Henry’s hair. No, Vicki decided, the attraction was in the way he wore it. Few men would have the self-assurance, the well-bred arrogance to look comfortable in such an outfit; Henry looked like, well, like a vampire.
The kind you’d like to run into in a dark alley. Several times.
“In fact, you look better than good. You look amazing.”

“Thank you.” Henry smiled and smoothed the sleeve of his jacket down until only a quarter inch of white cuff showed. A heavy gold ring gleamed on his right hand. “I’m glad you approve.”

He could feel the years settling on him with the clothing, feel the Henry Fitzroy who wrote romance novels and was occasionally permitted to play detective submerge into the greater whole. Tonight, he would walk among mortals; a shadow amid their bright lights and gaiety, a hunter in the night.
Good lord, I’m beginning to sound as melodramatic as one of my own books.

“I still think you’ve got a lot of chutzpah going to this party as a vampire. Aren’t you taking a big chance?”

“And what chance is that? Discovery?” He draped the cloak over his arm and peered at her in the classic Hammer Films Dracula pose. “What you’re looking at here is the purloined letter trick; hiding in plain sight.” Dropping the pose, he smiled down at her. “And it isn’t the first time I’ve done it. Think of it as a smoke screen. Halloween calls for a disguise. If Henry Fitzroy is a vampire on Halloween, then obviously he isn’t the rest of the year.”

Vicki draped one leg over the arm of the chair and smothered a yawn. “I’m not sure about that logic,” she muttered. Early mornings and late nights were beginning to take their toll and a four-hour nap in the afternoon hadn’t done much beyond throwing her internal clock even further out of whack. Barely more than a year away from the twenty-four hour aspect of police work, she was amazed at how quickly she’d lost her ability to adapt. The evening spent with her weights had gotten the blood flowing a little, washing away some of the fatigue. Henry’s appearance had started things moving faster yet.

Henry’s nose twitched as he picked up the sudden intensifying of her scent and he lifted one eyebrow, murmuring softly, “I know what you’re thinking.”

She felt herself flush but managed to keep her voice tolerably casual even as she shifted position in the chair and crossed her legs. “Don’t start anything you can’t finish, Henry. You’ve already eaten.”

The Hunger had been blunted earlier, a necessity if he was to spend the evening in close proximity to mortals and be able to think of anything except the life that flowed beneath clothes and skin, but Vicki’s interest had resharpened an edge or two. “I haven’t started anything,” he pointed out, not bothering to hide his smile. “I’m not the one squirming in my . . .”

“Henry!”

“. . . seat,” he finished quietly as the phone rang. “Excuse me a moment. Good evening. Henry Fitzroy speaking. Oh, hello, Caroline. Yes, it
has
been a while. Working on my latest book for the most part.”