Blood Bank (21 page)

Lilah blinked, and the formal cadences left her voice. "What the hell are you talking about?"

Demons seldom bothered lying; the truth caused more trouble.

She honestly didn't know what he meant.

*

"You actually saw this body?" When Henry nodded, Lilah took a long swallow of mocha latte, carefully put the cup down on its saucer, and said, "Why do you care? I mean, I know why you cared when you thought it was me," she added before he could speak. "You thought I'd lied to you and you didn't like feeling dicked around. I can understand that. But it's not me. So why do you care?"

Henry let the final mask fall, the one he maintained even for the succubus. "Someone, something, is hunting in my territory."

Across the cafe, a mug slid from nerveless fingers and hit the Italian tile floor, exploding into a hundred shards of primary-colored porcelain. There was nervous laughter, scattered applause, and all eyes thankfully left the golden-haired man with the night in his voice.

Lilah shrugged. "There're millions of people in the Greater Vancouver area, hon. Enough for all of us."

"It's the principle of the thing," he muttered, a little piqued by her lack of reaction.

"It's not another vampire."

It was almost a question so he answered it. "No. The condition of the corpse was classic succubus."

"Or incubus," she pointed out. "You don't know for certain those men weren't gay, and I sincerely doubt that you and I alone were shopping from the personals."

"I wasn't looking to feed," Henry ground out through clenched teeth.

"That's right. You were looking for a victimless relationship and..." Lilah spread her hands, fingernails drawing glistening scarlet lines in the air. "...ta dah, you found me. And if I'm not what you were looking for, then you were clearly planning to feed—if not sooner, then later—so you can just stop being so 'more ethical than thou' about it." She half turned in her chair, turning her gesture into a wave at the counter staff. "Sweetie, could I have another of these and a chocolate croissant? Thanks."

The cafe didn't actually have table service. Her smile created it.

Henry's smile sent the young man scurrying back behind the counter.

"Is there another succubus in the city?" He demanded.

"How should I know? I've never run into one, but that just means I've never run into one." The pointed tip of a pink tongue slowly licked foam off her upper lip.

Another mug shattered.

"Incubus?"

She sighed and stopped trying to provoke a reaction from the vampire. "I honestly don't know, Henry. We're not territorial like your lot, we pretty much keep racking up those frequent flyer miles—town to town, party to party..." Eyebrows flicked up then down. "...man to man. If this is your territory, can't
you
tell?"

"No. I can recognize a demon if I see one, regardless of form, but you have no part in the lives I Hunt or the blood I feed from." He shrugged. "A large enough demon might cause some sort of dissonance, but..."

"But you haven't felt any such disturbance in the Force."

"What?"

"You've got to get out to more movies without subtitles, hon." She pushed her chair out from the table and stood, lowering her voice dramatically. "Since you've been to the morgue, there's only one thing left for us to do."

"Us?" Henry interrupted, glancing around with an expression designed to discourage eavesdroppers. "This isn't your problem."

"Sweetie, it became my problem when you showed me your Prince of Darkness face."

He stood as well; she had a point. Since he'd been responsible for involving her, he couldn't then tell her she wasn't involved. "All right, what's left for us to do?"

Her smile suggested that a moonless romp on a deserted beach would be the perfect way to spend the heart of the night. "Why, visit the scene of the crime, of course."

*

Traffic on the bridge slowed them a little and it was almost two am by the time they got to Wreck Beach. Taylor Johnston's body had been found on the north side of the breakwater at Point Grey. Henry parked the car on one of the remaining sections of Old Marine Drive but didn't look too happy about it.

"Campus security," he replied when Lilah inquired. "This whole area is part of the University of British Columbia's endowment lands and they've really been cracking down on people parking by the side of the road."

"You're
worried about campus security?" The succubus shook her head in disbelief as they walked away from the car. "You know, hon, there are times when you're entirely too human for a vampire."

He supposed he deserved that. "The police have been all over this area; what are we likely to find that they missed?"

"Something they weren't looking for."

"Ghoulies and ghosties and things that go bump in the night?"

"Takes one to know one." She stepped around the tattered end of a piece of yellow police tape. "Or in this case, takes two."

For a moment, Henry had the weirdest sense of
déjà
vu. It could have been Vicki he was following down to the sand, their partnership renewed. Then Lilah half turned, laughingly telling him to hurry, and she couldn't have been more different than his tall, blonde ex-lover.

Single male, midtwenties, seeks someone to share the night.

So what if it was a different someone....

*

He knew when he stood on the exact spot the body had been found; the stink of the dying man's terror was so distinct that it had clearly been neither a fast nor a painless death.

"Not an incubus, then," Lilah declared dumping sand out of an expensive Italian pump. "We may like to take our time, but no one ever complains about the process."

Henry frowned and turned his face into the breeze coming in off the Pacific. There was no moon and except for the white lines of breakers at the seawall, the waves were very dark. "Can you smell the rot?"

"Sweetie, there's a great big dead fish not fifteen feet away. I'd have to be in the same shape as Mr. Johnston not to smell it."

"Not the fish." It smelled of the crypt. Of bones left to lie in the dark and damp. "There." He pointed toward the seawall. "It's in there."

Lilah looked up at Henry's pale face, then over at the massive mound of rock jutting out into the sea. "What is?"

"I don't know yet." Half a dozen paces toward the rock, he turned back toward the succubus. "Are you coming?"

"No, just breathing hard."

"Pardon?"

He looked so completely confused, she laughed as she caught up. "You really don't get out much, do you, hon?"

The night was no impediment to either of them, but the entrance was well hidden. If it hadn't been for the smell, they'd never have found it.

Dropping to her knees beside him, Lilah handed Henry a lighter. He stretched his arm to its full length under a massive block of stone, the tiny flame shifting all the shadows but one.

"You can take the lighter with you." Lilah rocked back onto her heels, shaking her head. "I, personally, am not going in there."

Henry understood. Succubi were only slightly harder to kill than the humans they resembled. "I don't think it's home," he muttered dropping onto his stomach and inching forward into the black line of the narrow crevice.

Lilah's voice drifted down to him. "Not a problem, hon, but I'd absolutely ruin this dress. Not to mention my manicure."

"Not to mention," Henry repeated, smiling in spite of the conditions. There was an innate honesty in the succubus he liked. A lot.

Twice his body-length under the stone, after creeping through a puddle of saltwater at least an inch deep, the way opened up and, although he had to keep turning his shoulders, he could move forward in a crouch. The smell reminded him of the catacombs under St. Mark's Square in Venice where the sea had permeated both the rock and the ancient dead.

Three or four minutes later, he straightened cautiously as the roof rose away and drew Lilah's lighter out of his pocket, expecting to see bones piled in every corner. He saw, instead, a large crab scuttling away, a filthy nest of clothing, and a dark corner where the sucking sound of water moving up and down in a confined space overlaid the omnipresent roar of the sea. A closer inspection showed an almost circular hole down into the rock and, about ten or twelve feet away, the moving water of the Pacific Ocean. A line of moisture showed the high tide mark and another large crab peered out of a crevice just below it. It was obvious where the drained bodies were dumped and what happened to them after dumping.

The scent of death, or rot, hadn't come from the expected cache of corpses, so it had to have come from the creature who laired here.

Which narrows it down considerably,
Henry thought grimly as he closed the almost unbearably hot lighter with a snap.

*

Lilah and a young man were arranging their clothes as he crawled out from under the seawall. The succubus, almost luminescent by starlight, waved when she saw him.

"Hey, sweetie, you might want to hear this."

"Hear what?" The smell of sex and a familiar pungent smoke overlaid the smell of death.

The young man smiled in what Henry could only describe as a satiated way and said, "Like you know the dead guy they found here this morning, eh? I sort of like saw it happen."

Henry snarled. "Saw what?"

"Whoa, like what big teeth you have, Grandma. Anyway, I've been crashing on the beach when the weather's good, you know, and like last night I'm asleep and I hear this whimpering sort of noise and I think it's a dog in trouble, eh? But it's not. It's like two guys. I can't see them too good but I think, 'hey, go for the gusto, guys,' but one of them seems really pissed 'cause like the tide's really high and I guess he can't go to his regular nooky place in the rocks and he sort of throws himself on the other guy so I stop looking, you know."

"Why didn't you tell this to the police?"

The young man giggled. "Well, some mornings you don't want to talk to the police, you know. And I was like gone before they arrived anyhow. So, like, is this your old lady, 'cause she's one prime piece of... OW!"

Henry tightened his grip on the unshaven chin enough to dimple the flesh. He let the Hunter rise, and when the dilated pupils finally responded by dilating further, he growled, "Forget you ever saw us."

"Dude..."

*

"It's a wight," Henry said when they were back in the car. "From the pile of clothing, it looks like it's been there for a while. It probably lives on small animals most of the time, but every now and then people like your friend go missing off the beach or students disappear from the campus, but since they never find a body, no one ever goes looking for a killer.

"Last night, it went hunting a little farther from home only to get back and find the tide in and over the doorway. Which answers the question of why it left the body on the beach. It must've had to race the dawn to shelter."

"Wait a minute." Lilah protested, pausing in her dusting of sand from crevices. "A wight wouldn't care about going through saltwater. Salted holy water, yes, but not just the sea."

"If it tried to drag its victim the rest of the way, he'd drown."