4 Blood Pact (4 page)

“Get out of my apartment! NOW!”

Trembling with the need to hold himself in check, he pushed past her and grabbed his coat off the hook by the door. Jabbing his arms into the sleeves, he turned. His own anger made it impossible for him to read her expression. “Just one more thing, Vicki. I am
not
your fucking father.”

The door closed behind him with enough force to shake the building.

A heartbeat later it opened again.

“And don’t forget to call your mother!”

The coffee mug exploded into a thousand pieces against the wood.

 

“And did you?”

“Did I what?” Vicki snapped. Giving Henry the gist of the fight had put her in nearly as bad a mood as the fight had. It didn’t help that she
knew
she should’ve kept her mouth shut but when Henry had asked what was bothering her, she couldn’t seem to stop a repeat of the whole infuriating conversation from pouring out.

“Did you call your mother?”

“No. I didn’t.” She turned to face the window, jabbed at her glasses, and glared out at the darkness. “I wasn’t exactly in the mood to talk to my mother. I went down to Missing Persons and nailed Mr. Simmons/O’Conner to the wall instead.”

“Did that make you feel better?”

“No. Although it might have if they’d let me use real nails.”

A facetious comment spoken with complete and utter sincerity. Even from across the room Henry could feel pulsing waves of anger radiating off of her. He wished now that he hadn’t asked, that he’d ignored her mood and never been subjected to Detective-Sergeant Michael Celluci’s all-too-accurate analysis of Vicki’s inability to commit. But now that he’d heard it, he couldn’t let it rest. Vicki would continue to think about what Celluci had said, had obviously been thinking of little else since Celluci had slammed out of her apartment, and, now that her nose had been rubbed in it, would in time see it for the truth. At which point she would have to choose.

He wouldn’t lose her. If that meant taking the day as well as the night, his love gave him a right equal to Celluci’s to assert a claim.

You raised the stakes, mortal,
he told the other man silently.
Remember that.

He stood and crossed the carpet to stand at her side, glorying for a moment in her heartbeat, savoring her heat, her scent, her life.

“He was right,” he said at last.

“About what?” The words were forced out through clenched teeth. No need to ask which he was meant.

“We can’t, any of us, go on the way we have.”

“Why not?” The final consonant carried the weight of a potential explosion.

“Because, like Mike Celluci, I want to be the most important person in your life.”

She snorted. “And what about what I want?”

He could see the muscles working beneath the velvet surface of her skin, tensing around her eyes and the comers of her mouth and so he chose his next words with care. “I think that’s what we’re trying to discover.”

“And what if I decide I want him?”

Her tone held a bitter, mocking edge. Henry couldn’t help but respond.

“Could you give
me
up?”

The power in his voice pulled her around to face him. He heard her swallow hard as she met his gaze, heard her heartbeat quicken, saw her pupils dilate, tasted the change in her scent on the air. Then he released her.

Vicki jerked back, furious at Henry, furious at herself. “Don’t ever do that again!” she panted, fighting to get enough air into her lungs. “I give nobody power over my life. Not you. Not him. Nobody!” Barely in control of her movements, she whirled and stomped across the living room. “I am
out
of here.” She snatched her coat and bag up off the end of the couch, “And you can just play Prince of fucking Darkness with somebody else.”

He hadn’t moved from the window. He knew he could call her back, so he had no need to make the attempt. “Where are you going?”

“I’m going for a long walk in the sleaziest neighborhood I can find in the hope that some dickweed will try something stupid and I can break his fucking arms!
Don’t
follow me!”

Even a security door can be slammed if enough force is applied.

 

“Vicki? It’s your mother. Didn’t Mike Celluci give you my message? Well, never mind, dear, I’m sure he has a lot on his mind. While I’m thinking of it though, I
did
wonder why he was in your apartment while you were out. Have you two been getting more serious? Call me when you get a chance. There’s something I have to tell you.”

Vicki sighed and rubbed at her temples as the answering machine rewound. It was ten after twelve and she was just not up to a heart-to-heart with her mother, not after the day she’d had. “Have you two been getting more serious?” Jesus H. Christ.

First Celluci.

Then Henry.

The powers-that-be had really decided to mess up her life.

“Whatever happened to men who just want to get laid on a regular basis?” she muttered, flicking off the light and making her way to the bedroom.

The pitcher of draft she’d downed in the gay bar on Church Street—the one place in the city safe from testosterone cases—churned uneasily in her stomach. All she wanted to do was go to sleep. Alone.

She’d call her mother in the morning.

 

The night had been filled with dreams, or more specifically, dream—the same images occurring over and over. People kept coming into her apartment and she couldn’t get them to leave. The new staircase to the third floor bisected her kitchen and a steady stream of real estate agents moved up it, dragging potential tenants. The back of her closet opened into Maple Leaf Gardens and the post-hockey crowds decided to leave through her bedroom. First she tried the voice of reason. Then she yelled. Then she physically picked up the intruders and threw them out the door. But the door never stayed closed and they wouldn’t, any of them, leave her alone.

She woke up late with a splitting headache and an aching jaw, her mood not significantly better than when she’d gone to sleep. An antacid and an aspirin might have helped, but as she’d run out of both she settled for a mug of coffee so strong her tongue curled in protest.

“And why did I
know
it would be raining,” she growled, squinting out through the blinds at a gray and uninviting world. The sky looked low enough to touch.

The phone rang.

Vicki turned and scowled across the room at it. She didn’t have to answer to know it was her mother. She could feel mother vibes from where she stood.

“Not this morning, Mom. I’m just not up to it.”

Her head continued ringing long after the bell fell silent.

An hour later, it rang again.

An hour of conscious thought had done nothing to improve Vicki’s mood.

“I said
no
, Mom!” She slammed her fist down on the kitchen table. The phone rocked but continued to ring. “I don’t want to hear about your problems right now and I sure as shit don’t want to tell you about mine!” Her voice rose. “My personal life has suddenly collapsed. I don’t know what’s going on. Everything is falling apart. I can stand on my own. I can work as part of a team. I’ve proved that, haven’t I? Why isn’t that
enough!”

It became a contest in volume and duration and Vicki had no intention of letting the phone win.

“Odds are good Celluci’s about to propose and this vampire I’m sleeping with—Oh, didn’t I tell you about Henry, Mom?—well he wants me as his . . . his . . . I don’t
know
what Henry wants. Can you deal with that, Mom? ’Cause I sure as shit can’t!”

She could feel herself trembling on the edge of hysteria, but she wouldn’t quit until the phone did.

“Celluci thinks I’m angry about the way dear old Dad walked out on you. Henry thinks he’s right. How about that, Mom? I’m being fucking double-teamed. You never warned me about something like this, did you, Mom? And we never, ever discuss Daddy!”

The last word echoed around a silent apartment and seemed to take a very long time to fade.

With a trembling finger, Vicki slid her glasses back up her nose. “I’ll talk to you tomorrow, Mom. I promise.”

An hour later, the phone rang again.

Vicki turned on the answering machine and went for a walk in the rain.

When she got back, late that evening, there were seven messages waiting. She wiped the tape without listening to any of them.

 

The phone rang.

Vicki paused, one foot into the shower, sighed, and got back into her robe. Welcome to Monday.

“Coming, Mom.” No point putting it off. She’d have to face the music sooner or later and it might as well be sooner.

Today things didn’t seem so bad. Yesterday was an embarrassing memory of self-indulgence. Tomorrow, well, she’d deal with tomorrow when it arrived.

She dropped into one of the kitchen chairs and scooped up the receiver. “Hi, Mom. Sorry about yesterday.”

“Is this Victoria Nelson?”

Her ears grew hot. It was an elderly woman’s voice, strained and tight and most definitely not her mother.
Let’s make a great impression on a potential client there, Vicki.
“Uh, yes.”

“This is Mrs. Shaw. Mrs. Elsa Shaw. I work with your mother. We met last September . . . ?”

“I remember.” Vicki winced.
Mom must really be pissed if she’s getting coworkers to call. This is going to cost me at least a visit.

“I’m afraid I have some bad news for you.”

“Bad news?”
Oh, God, don’t let her have caught the early train to Toronto. That’s all I need right now.

“Your mother hasn’t been feeling well lately, and, well, she came into work this morning, said how she’d been trying to get in touch with you, made the coffee like she always does, came out of Dr. Burke’s office and . . . and, well, died.”

The world stopped.

“Ms. Nelson?”

“What happened?” Vicki heard herself ask the question, marveled at how calm her voice sounded, wondered why she felt so numb.

“Dr. Burke, the head of the Life Sciences Department—well, you know who Dr. Burke is, of course—said it was her heart. A massive coronary, she said. One minute there, the next . . .” Mrs. Shaw blew her nose. “It happened about twenty minutes ago. If there’s anything I can do . . .”

“No. Thank you. Thank you for calling.”

If Mrs. Shaw had further sympathy or information to offer, Vicki didn’t hear it. She set the receiver gently back in its cradle and stared down at the silent phone.

Her mother was dead.

“Dr. Burke? It’s about number seven . . .”

“And?” Receiver tucked under her chin, Dr. Aline Burke scrawled her signature across the bottom of a memo and tossed it into the out basket. Although Marjory Nelson had been dead for only a couple of hours, the paperwork had already begun to get out of hand. With any luck the university would get off its collective butt and get her a temporary secretary before academic trivia completely buried her.

“I think you’ll want to see this for yourself.”

“For heaven’s sake, Catherine, I haven’t got the time for you to be obscure.” She rolled her eyes. Grad students. “Are we losing it?”

“Yes, Doctor.”

“I’ll be right over.”

 

“Damn.” The surgical glove hit the wastebasket with enough force to rock the container from side to side. “Tissue decomposition again. Just like the others.” The second glove followed and Dr. Burke turned to glare at the body of an elderly man lying on the stainless steel table, thoracic cavity open, skull cap resting against one ear. “Didn’t even last as long as number six.”

“Well, he was old to start with, Doctor. And not in very good physical condition.”

Dr. Burke snorted. “I should say not. I suppose I’m moderately surprised it lasted as long as it did.” She sighed as the young woman standing by the head of the cadaver looked crushed. “That was
not
a criticism, Catherine. You did your usual excellent job and were certainly in no way responsible for the subject’s deplorable habits when alive. That said, retrieve the rest of the mechanicals, salvage as much of the net as you can, be very sure
all
of the bacteria are dead, and begin the usual disposal procedures.”

“The medical school . . .”

“Of
course
the medical school. We’re hardly going to weight it with rocks and drop it into Lake Ontario—although I have to admit that has a certain simplicity that appeals and would involve a lot less additional work for me. Let me know when it’s ready, I should be in my office for the next couple of hours.” Hand on the door, she paused. “What’s that banging noise?”

Catherine looked up, pale blue eyes wide, fingers continuing to delve into the old man’s skull cavity. “Oh, it’s number nine. I don’t think he likes the box.”

“It doesn’t
like
anything, Catherine. It’s dead.”

The younger woman shrugged apologetically, accepting the correction but unwilling to be convinced. “He keeps banging.”

“Well, when you finish with number seven, decrease the power again. The last thing we need is accelerated tissue damage due to unauthorized motion.”

“Yes, Doctor.” She gently slid the brain out onto a plastic tray. The bank of fluorescent lights directly over the table picked up glints of gold threaded throughout the grayish-green mass. “It’ll be nice to finally work with a subject we’ve been able to do preliminary setup on. I mean, the delay while we attempt to tailor the bacteria can’t be good for them.”

“Probably not,” Dr. Burke agreed caustically and, with a last disapproving look in the direction of number nine’s isolation box, strode out of the lab.

The pounding continued.