Blood Debt (15 page)

A 9-mm round from a burst of machine gun fire caught him in the right shoulder and spun him around. The rest of the burst killed the man behind him. He hit the floor and rolled under the table as all hell broke loose.

Crouched beside the man who'd been shot in the back, Henry flinched away from the sudden roar of gunfire. By the time answering shots had been fired, he was on his feet and racing toward the sound.
Vicki
 . . .

Vicki watched in amazement as Henry exploded out into the light, face and hair a pale blur above the moving shadow of his body. The gunman on the nearest rack muttered something that sounded like “Police!” as she realized he had Henry in his sights.

He got the shot off just as she knocked him into the air. Henry's howl of pain drowned out the ripe melon sound of the gunman's head making contact with the concrete floor, nine meters down.

The scent of Henry's blood rose to obliterate the singed sulfur smell of the gunpowder, the hot metal smell of the spent casings, and the warm, meaty smell of the men below. Henry's blood. The blood that had made her.

The Hunger ripped aside all controls.

Time slowed as Henry stared from the red stain across the fingers of his right glove to the hole in his left arm. It didn't seem to hurt.
I'm in shock
, he thought. When he lifted his head, he saw a cold-eyed young man swing a submachine gun around until it pointed in his direction—each movement deliberate and distinct. Feeling as though he were moving underwater, Henry reached out, grabbed the muzzle, and smashed the weapon into the gunman's face.

As the body fell, the wound throbbed once, sending a ripple of pain racing through Henry's body, and time took up its normal pace again.

He felt, rather than heard, Vicki's scream of rage, and he didn't have strength enough to stop himself from responding.

Clutching his shoulder, Dyshino stared out from under the table in horror as another of his men hit the floor. This one was dead before impact.

Shots ricocheted off the metal rafters.

Head buzzing from the adrenaline, one of Eng's people leaned around a forklift and, grinning widely, sprayed bullets in the general direction of Dyshino's bodyguard. Some of the guys thought he was crazy, but he loved this kind of stuff—the noise, the chaos, the way death was so completely impersonal. It was like being inside a video game. What fun in quiet stalking and a single shot?

All at once his grin twisted into a grimace of pain as an unbreakable grip locked onto his shoulder and yanked him up into the cab of the machine.

He screamed.

His finger tightened on the trigger.

He sent Death on an impersonal visit to two of his companions.

Both sides realized they had a common enemy at about the same time. Unfortunately, by then it was too late.

The last sniper scrambled down off the racks, desperately trying to outrun his own death. He slipped, managed to stop his fall, and hit the floor running. One step, two . . .

Vicki reached out a hand and grabbed the back of his head, slamming him to his knees and exposing his throat in one motion.

This was not the slaughter David Eng had planned. Crouched behind a roll of no-wax vinyl flooring, he grabbed his second's shoulder and waved his Ingram toward the distant doors. “Let's get the fuck out of here!”

The other man nodded, and they began to make their way down the corridor, back to back, each guarding the other's retreat. They were almost at the door when a pale face appeared out of the darkness.

“I don't think so,” Henry snarled. His hand around the barrel of the Ingram, he pushed it toward the floor. When the magazine had emptied in a spray of concrete chips, he yanked it out of Eng's hands and hurled it away.

Howling with fear, the second started back the way they'd come and ran into Vicki's outstretched arm.

A few moments later, she dropped the body and wiped her mouth on the sleeve of her sweater. When she saw Henry watching her, Eng lying lifeless at his feet, she smiled, eyes glittering silver. “There're a few left.”

He half turned toward the interior of the warehouse, then shook his head. “No. Not worth the risk.”

“They've seen us . . .”

“They saw something, but not us. They don't want to see us when we Hunt; it reminds them of why children are afraid of the dark.”

“Then what's the risk?” She stepped toward him, drawing in deep breaths of the rich, meaty, blood-scented air. Another step and her palm lay flat against his chest. “They can't stand against us.” Leaning forward, she licked a bit of blood from the corner of his mouth. Not since the earliest days after the change when the world had been a kaleidoscope of new sensations had she felt so alive.

He caught her tongue between his teeth, carefully so as not to break the skin.

Her arms went around him. His good hand tangled in her hair.

She moaned against his mouth and pushed David Eng's body out of their way with the side of her foot.

It was over very quickly.

The darkness began to lift from Henry's eyes as he held out a hand to help Vicki to her feet. “We'd better get out of here before someone reports the gunfire.”

“But . . .”

He could see the deaths not dealt glittering in her eyes. “No.” When she took a step back toward the light, he caught her arm. “Vicki. Listen to me. We have to leave before the police arrive.”

This was the voice that had guided her through the year of chaos that followed the change. The silver faded. Reluctantly, she allowed him to guide her out of the warehouse.

An ocean breeze tattered the bloodscent that shrouded them.

Vicki snarled softly at Henry's touch, but when he released her, she stood where she was, staring at his face.

“What?”

“Just remembering.” Her tone clearly stated she wouldn't identify the memory. “It's almost dawn. Wait for me in the parking garage, and we'll ride up together. I think we should talk.” Then she was gone.

Peeling off gloves that were already beginning to stiffen, Henry shook his head. “She thinks we should talk,” he said to the night. Once, before Vicki, he'd thought that nothing remained to astonish him. He'd been wrong.

Those still alive inside the warehouse, two of Eng's men and Adan Dyshino, gathered together in the light and waited, without knowing exactly why, for the dawn.

She was waiting for him at his parking spot, showing no outward signs of either the slaughter or the aftermath.

“Handi-wipes and hairbrush,” she explained when Henry raised a red-gold brow at her clean face and slicked-back hair. “And I think I've discovered why we wear black.”

They stayed a careful ten feet apart on the way to the elevator. Once inside, in opposite corners, Henry studied her carefully. “Are you all right?”

“I think I have a bruise on my butt.” She rubbed it and snorted. “Next time, you're on the bottom.”

“Next time.” From the moment they'd met, Vicki Nelson had delighted in overturning his world, but this, this he hadn't expected. “There shouldn't have been a this time. It went against everything . . .”

“What? In the manual? Give it a rest, Henry. One . . .” She raised a finger. “. . . sex is a well documented response to violence, and two . . .” A second finger lifted. “. . . obviously the blood scent was overwhelming, so maybe if we wear nose plugs, we can get along, and three . . .” Her eyes began to glitter again. “. . . it was so glorious finally being able to let go.”

“You enjoyed it?” When she started to grin, he raised his hand. “No. I mean the letting go.”

“Yeah, I did. And what's the harm in that? These were bad men, Henry. Leaving aside what they've done previously, tonight they were planning on killing each other.”

“Suppose there aren't any bad men around the next time you want to experience that feeling?”

“I wouldn't . . .”

“Are you sure?”

The silver faded. “I could've controlled myself if you hadn't been shot.” Had she still been able, she'd have blushed as she suddenly realized what she'd just said. “Uh, speaking of, are you okay?”

“The bullet merely grazed me.” He'd tucked his left hand in his waistband to support the injured arm. Now he poked a finger through the hole in his jacket. “By sunset tomorrow you won't be able to find the wound.”

“Why on earth did you run out into the open like that?”

He shrugged and winced. “When I heard the gunfire, I thought you were in trouble.”

Vicki snorted. “Christ. You're as bad as Celluci. I can take care of myself.”

“I know, but you haven't lived in the night for very long.”

“Henry, I hate to break this to you, but it was the guy with the centuries of experience who jumped into the middle of a gang war.”

They stepped out onto the fourteenth floor and increased the distance between them to the width of the hall.

“So what happened tonight?”

“We'd both fed,” Henry said thoughtfully but without much conviction.

Vicki shook her head. “I think it's more than that. I think that once we let go of control, we let go of all the baggage that comes with it. It seems that as long as we're focused on wholesale destruction, we get along fine.”

“Then perhaps that's why we're solitary hunters. If what happened tonight is what happens when our kind join forces, we'd soon wipe out our food supply.”

Key in hand, she paused outside the door to the borrowed condo. “What happens tomorrow night?”

“With you and me? I don't know.” He smiled, and stroked the curve of her cheek into the air because they stood too far apart to touch. “But I have no doubt it will be an
experience
finding out.”

Celluci was sound asleep. Vicki stood just inside the master bedroom and watched him. Watched the rise and fall of his chest. Traced the curve of the arm he'd flung over his head. Listened to his heartbeat.

He shifted position and a curl of hair fell down onto his face.

She stepped forward, hand outstretched to brush it back but stopped as the movement pulled the saturated cuff of her sweater across her wrist, drawing a dark smear on the pale skin.

All at once she didn't want Mike to see her like this.

Her clothes, all her clothes including her sneakers, went into the washing machine—cold wash, cold rinse, more soap than necessary.

Then she stepped into the shower and watched the water run red down the drain.

Eight

“4:09.” Celluci shifted his barely focused gaze from the clock to Vicki. “Cutting it a little close, aren't you?”

She'd stayed in the shower longer than she'd intended, stayed until the approaching dawn drove her out from under the pounding water. And then, wrapped in borrowed towels, she'd hesitated by the side of the bed, unwilling to wake him, afraid that he'd see . . . See what? The blood had swirled around her feet and down the drain. Nothing else showed. At least, she didn't think it showed.

“Vicki?” When her head jerked up, he sighed and propped himself against the headboard, the gray suede soft and yielding against his back. Her diet may have changed, but her mannerisms hadn't, and right now she intended to hide something from him. “What's the matter?”

“Nothing.”

Frowning slightly at her tone, he reached out and folded his hand around hers. To his surprise, it was almost warm. “Are you all right?”

“If you mean, have I been injured, I'm fine.” No one had touched her. Except for Henry. “We haven't got much time . . .” The sun waited just beyond the crest of the mountains. “. . . so I'll cut right to the chase. If someone's harvesting organs, it isn't organized crime. The people Henry and I spoke to knew nothing about it. They weren't doing it, and they hadn't heard rumors of anyone else doing it.”

“You sure they were telling the truth?”

Slowly lifting her head, she stared directly at him. “I'm sure.”

She was sitting just beyond the limited light of the reading lamp that stood on the bedside table. A pair of silver sparks appeared within the shadowed oval of her face then disappeared again before Celluci felt their pull.

“Okay. You're sure.” He didn't know what the limitations were on this whole Prince-of-Darkness thing—though he suspected it wasn't as all-powerful as both Vicki and Henry wanted him to believe—but Vicki'd interviewed enough perps over the years that he had to trust her ability to know when one was lying. “Lets just hope you didn't give them any ideas,” he added dryly.

“Not about organ-legging.”

Her voice lifted the hair on the back of his neck and made asking what ideas she
had
given them unnecessary. “If organized crime isn't involved, then we lose our best support for selling organs as a motive. Henry's ghost could've been killed for any number of reasons.”

“Granted. But as he's still missing a kidney, let's follow this hypothesis for a while. Maybe your Patricia Chou's right about Ronald Swanson.”

“She's not my anything, and Swanson has a completely spotless life as far as the law is concerned.”

“So, he has to start somewhere.”

“Killing people for their kidneys seems a little far up the ladder to me.” She shrugged noncommittally, but it was clear she wasn't going to let it go. Cops got that way occasionally, clinging to a theory based on nothing better than a hunch, often in the face of opposition. When it turned out they were right, they were said to have intuitive abilities beyond the norm. When it turned out they were wrong, as was more often the case, they were said to be pigheaded, self-absorbed, and unwilling to do the grunt work needed to break the case. That Vicki had been right more often than she was wrong made her no less pigheaded. “Now what?”

“I think we should stop working on who and take a look at where.” Impossible now to ignore the sun. Her shoulders hunched up as though expecting a blow from behind. “Mike, I've got to go.”

He lifted a hand to touch his cheek where a strand of wet hair had brushed against him. That, the lingering pressure of her mouth, and the faint taste of toothpaste, were all that remained to show she'd ever been in the room. The clock read 4:15. Sixty seconds to sunrise.

Lying on her back in the pink bedroom, a hastily folded towel under her head to keep the pillow dry, Vicki wondered why she felt no guilt at all for the . . . for the . . . She frowned, realizing she had no clear idea of how many men she'd actually killed in the warehouse. The number had been washed away in blood.

It didn't matter. Because they didn't matter. Not to her. Not their lives. Not their deaths.

But Henry . . .

“So the violence is fine, but the sex is a problem.” She sighed and swiped at a drop of water dribbling from temple to ear. “Well, doesn't that just sum up the ni . . .”

4:16.

Sunrise.

Celluci stretched out an arm and switched off the lamp. He'd be glad when midsummer arrived and the nights started getting longer. Not that more time would make Vicki more forthcoming, but it would give him more opportunity to get the truth out of her.

“Good morning, Dr. Mui. You're here early.”

She glanced at her watch. “It is almost 6:45. Not exactly early. Did that blood work come back from the lab?”

The night nurse passed over a manila envelope. “Everyone had a quiet night.”

“I didn't ask.” Envelope tucked under one arm, the doctor stepped into the lounge and let the door to the nurse's office swing shut behind her.

Bitch.
But none of the sentiment showed through her smile just in case Dr. Mui glanced back through the open blinds on the windows that were the top half of the office walls—the clinic's attempt to simultaneously create both a feeling of security in its patients and to prevent the place from looking too much like a hospital. In a time of drastic health care cutbacks, the job paid too well to jeopardize. For what they were paying her, faking friendly with the dragon lady was the least of what she'd be willing to do.

Averting her gaze from the ferns and Laura Ashley prints that adorned the lounge, Dr. Mui crossed to the closer of the two consultation offices, pulling the lab work out of the envelope as she walked. By the time she reached the desk, she was distinctly unhappy.

“Stupid, stupid boy. How could he be such a stupid boy?”

She sank into the chair and let the paper fall to the desktop. This changed everything.

The phone rang just as he was pouring the tea. Although he drank coffee at the office, he drank tea at the house because Rebecca had always preferred tea to coffee—except when they were traveling in the States. “Where,” she'd remarked, “they started out making it in Boston Harbor with cold salt water and hadn't ever quite gotten the hang of doing it differently.”

He pulled the receiver out of its base, tucked it under his ear, and barked a terse “Hello” while he went to the refrigerator for milk.

“It's Dr. Mui. We have a problem with the donor. The blood test I had run last night shows him as HIV positive.”

“I thought he was clean?”

“He was. I expect that when he heard the good news, he went out and celebrated.”

“This is going to be very awkward.” He took the milk from the fridge and quickly closed the door. It would only cost a few pennies to leave it open, but he hadn't made a fortune by giving money to BC Hydro. “The recipient and his father will be getting on a plane in less than two hours.”

“It would be a lot more awkward if we infect him.”

They both considered the consequences for a moment.

“All right.” He took a swallow of the tea and then set the cup down on the table beside the bowl of fresh flowers Rebecca had always insisted on having in the kitchen. “I'll call. As long as he's not actually on the plane, I can get through to his father's cell phone. And the donor?”

“We don't want him to talk . . .”

“No. Of course not. All right, no difference between him and the others, then. Just get him out of the clinic as soon as possible.”

When the doctor had hung up and the milk had been returned to the fridge, he pressed the power button and dialed the buyer's number from memory. The conversation was, as he had anticipated, very awkward. However, in order to make a sizable fortune in real estate—even in the fast-selling Vancouver market—it was necessary to be a damned good salesman. Although he hadn't personally sold a property for some time, the old skills were still sharp, and it certainly didn't hurt that he was still the son's best chance.

By the time he returned to his tea, it was cold. He drank it anyway. Rebecca had never minded cold tea and had often shared it with the cat. The cat had died for no apparent reason three months after Rebecca. The vet had shrugged and implied it might have been due to a broken heart.

He envied the cat; its mourning had ended.

“And in city news, violence connected with organized crime hit a new high last night with death tolls up into double digits.”

Fork full of scrambled eggs halfway to his mouth, Celluci stared at the radio.

“Eleven men, including crime boss David Eng, were found dead in a Richmond floor-covering warehouse when employees of the warehouse arrived for work this morning. Some had been shot, but some appeared to have been savaged by an animal. As a number of the men are known to belong to the organization run by Adan Dyshino, police are assuming that negotiations of some sort erupted into violence. They are not yet certain that the death of Sebastien Carl in East Vancouver is connected and are now attempting to find his wife. Anyone with information about these or other crimes is invited to contact Crime Stoppers or your local police.”

“Yeah. Right.” He snorted and continued eating. No one ever came forward with information about gang violence; the thing about organized crime was that it was
organized.
Witnesses were efficiently dealt with.

So Vicki was safe.

And then it hit him. Eleven men. Maybe twelve. Maybe more; unreported, made to look like accidents or like natural causes.

All at once, he wasn't hungry. He stared down at the eggs, searching for answers in the pattern the salsa made against the yellow. Eleven men. Maybe twelve. All members of a criminal organization and, the odds were good, probably all killers. All men the world was a lot better off without.

But still . . .

The law had to apply to everyone, or it applied to no one. Whoever killed these men, no matter how much removing them might have improved things, had broken the law. Probably several laws. If it was Vicki . . .

“You're jumping to conclusions,” he snarled, shoving his chair away from the table. “Henry was out there, too. It wasn't necessarily Vicki.”

If it was Henry, did that make it any better?

It didn't
have
to be either of them. “Two gangs together in an enclosed space, that sort of stuff happens. Probably had dogs with them.” Opening and closing the kitchen cupboards, trying not to slam them lest he smash the etched glass set into the doors, he found three complete sets of dishes but no garbage bags. Vague memories of a laundry room sent him down the hall. It was behind the second door he opened and had obviously been used that morning.

The washing machine was a European model. It loaded from the front like some of the big commercial machines and was supposed to use half the water. They were still incredibly expensive in North America and Celluci, who'd had to listen to one of his aunts extolling their virtues, wondered what happened in five years when the seal went and they flooded the laundry room. Vicki's clothes—jeans, shirt, sweater, underwear, sock, high tops; everything she'd worn the night before—were lying in a damp heap, cradled in the bottom curve.

Eleven men. Maybe twelve.

Maybe mud. Maybe a hundred other things.

He put the clothes in the dryer, grabbed a garbage bag from the utility closet in the corner and was on his way back to the kitchen when he heard a quiet tap at the apartment door.

The woman standing in the hall looked as if she were about to cry. “I'm sorry,” she declared, waving one hand in the general direction of the open door as she dug in her purse for a tissue with the other. “It's just coming here has brought it all back.”

“Mrs. Munro?” Celluci hazarded.

Mrs. Munro blew her nose and nodded. “That's right. I'm sorry to be such a watering pot, but it just sort of hit me looking in the door like this, that Miss Evans is really gone.”

Celluci knew he should move out of the way. That there wasn't any good reason now for her not to come in.
I've got a vampire asleep in here, so could you come back after sunset
just didn't cut it.

“I've just come by for a few things I forgot to take with me the night Miss Evans passed on.” She looked up at him expectantly. “I won't take long, my daughter's waiting in the car.”

There didn't seem to be anything else he could do so he stepped aside.

“So you're a friend of Mr. Fitzroy's.” Sighing deeply, she walked purposefully through the entrance hall, her gaze darting from side to side like she was afraid to let it rest for long on any one object. “Miss Evans thought the world of Mr. Fitzroy. He flirted with her, you know, and that made her feel young. I don't mind letting friends of his stay here. And you're a police detective, aren't you? Just like on television. Are you and your lady friend having a nice visit to Vancouver?”

Wondering exactly what Henry had told her, Celluci said they were and then, as she headed straight for the pink bedroom, lengthened his stride to get ahead of her, hurriedly adding in a voice calculated to disarm middle-aged women, “Uh, Mrs. Munro, we have a bit of a problem.”

She paused, her hand actually cupping the doorknob, and frowned slightly. “A problem, Detective?”

“My, uh, lady friend is asleep in there.”

“Still?” Her watch had large black numbers on a plain white face. “It's almost ten. She isn't sick, is she?”

“No, she's not sick.” And then, because there was nothing like the truth for that ring of sincerity: “She has an eating disorder.”

“Oh, dear.”

“And she had a bad night.” He met her gaze and smiled hopefully down at her, an expression that had caused innumerable witnesses to suddenly remember a wealth of detail. “I was hoping she could get a couple more hours' sleep.”