Blood Bank (35 page)

"Wrap it up now!"

"Or?"

Her answer was a low, warning growl.

Mike's gaze flicked over to the two women leaning on the counter. "We're shadows here, remember? You can't hurt them."

Vicki wrapped her fingers around his throat, resting them gently against the heated skin, feeling his life pulse past. "You're flesh and blood."

"Yes."

The sorrow in his response stopped the Hunter cold. Unable to look away, Vicki watched as he faded within her grip, growing fainter and fainter until she held only the memory of his warmth. Her heart pounded faster than it had since the night Mike had cradled her in his arms while Henry pressed a bleeding wrist to her lips. She swallowed with a mouth gone dry.

Then she frowned, pivoted on one heel, and grabbed a double handful of black fabric draped over the figure that had appeared suddenly behind her. "Fuck that," she snarled. "It stops right here." A vicious yank dragged the fabric clear of whoever gave it shape. Vicki tossed it aside, expected to see the elf from the mall, and saw instead...

Nothing.

The fabric she'd tossed aside stood beside her now, a hint of features under the drape.

"Well, nice to see the Nazgul are getting work. Missed the casting call for Dementors, did you?" She kept her tone flip, but power recognized power. Whatever had plunged her into this insane tour of reworked Victorian cliche was under that fabric. Vampires didn't dream, but that hadn't stopped it. It had plundered her memories, exposed her feelings, and...

Shown her things she hadn't known which, if true, proved it was operating outside of her psyche. Whatever it was, it wasn't all in her head. Something had gone to a lot of trouble to get her to celebrate Christmas.

So what? She really hated being manipulated.

"All right." Her lips drew up off her teeth. "Now you show me that no one cares when I die."

Under the fabric, power shifted so that it seemed to be pointing into the fog.

Fog? "Interesting weather patterns." Vicki took a step forward and the fog cleared. She blinked as lightning flashed. "That's um..." Another look. "That's a mob with torches and stakes attacking Cinderella's castle."

When she turned to face the fabric again, she sensed it was waiting expectantly.

"I get staked at Disney World?"

The fabric had no eyes to roll no arms to fold but Vicki still had the unmistakable feeling that time was running out.

"Okay. Fine." She folded her arms, since it seemed someone had to. "Torches and stakes are historic ways of dealing with a vampire. Historically, vampires kept to themselves, creating fear and distrust in the general population. If I don't learn from history, I'm doomed to repeat it." To sum up, she added sound effects to a mimed rim-shot.

Another power shift and the fabric pointed into a new section of fog.

Under the circumstances, the misty outline of gravestones wasn't unexpected.

"If there was enough to bury, I guess that kills the vampires turn to dust theory," she muttered, walking forward. "I'm not afraid of dying," she added in a slightly louder voice, "so I doubt we're going to have any major breakthrough here."

But it wasn't her name on the stone. The grave hadn't been filled in. The coffin hadn't been closed.

She stared down at Mike, watched silently as he slowly rotted, ignoring the pain from the half moon cuts her fingernails gouged into her palms. When bone finally turned to dust, her eyes flashed silver and with bloody hands she ripped the fabric into so many pieces they fell into the open grave like black snow.

The sun set.

Vicki fumbled her cell phone up from the blankets beside her, flipped it open and blinked at the display. Four forty-eight pm, December 25. In the faint blue light, she could see four semicircular cuts on each palm, the deepest still seeping blood.

Vampires didn't dream.

Nothing she could do would keep Michael Celluci from dying. If she left now, if she dressed and threw everything she had in her van and drove until sunrise and made sure he never found her and if she stopped seeing age overtaking him, he'd still die.

And rot.

People died. But before they died, they should get a chance to spend time with people they loved.

"You didn't tell me anything I didn't already know," she snarled at the darkness.

The darkness felt smug.

"Bite me."

As it happened, it wasn't about Christmas at all.

*

She was wrapping the last 500 gram package of organic free-trade Mexican coffee when Mike got home from work. He stared at the presents on the table, at the ceramic candy canes dangling from Vicki's ears, and shook his head.

"What the hell is going on here?"

"I could hardly go to your parents' on Christmas Day without presents."

"You're going to my parents'?"

"We're going to your parents'."

"Yeah, that's sweet. I repeat, what the hell is going on?"

She sighed and stuck a bow down over the mess she'd made of one end of the package. Considering what she'd paid for the wrapping paper, it was crap. "I want to be with you, you want to be with your family—you're the detective, connect the dots."

His smile almost wiped out the memory of teeth in a crumbling skull. "Where did you get all this stuff?"

"Toronto's a big, multicultural city, Mike. Not everyone celebrates Christmas. You'd be amazed at what's open."

"I thought you'd stopped celebrating Christmas?"

She snorted. "Not likely."

"And the vampire thing?"

"Isn't going away. But neither is the human thing." She stood and pulled him toward her. "Just keep me away from your cousin Jeffrey."

"I don't have a cousin named Jeffrey."

Mouth pressed to the warm column of his throat, she felt his confusion and smiled. "Good."