Blood Debt (13 page)

As a musical chime shattered the silence, he lifted his right foot, put it down, and almost miraculously followed the movement with his left—walking directly through their line of sight. “I hate to break up a Kodak moment, kids, but the elevator's here.”

For a heartbeat the power gained a new focus. He could feel it flaying his back, simultaneously hot and cold, and he had a brief vision of Vicki's pale fingers shredding that chair. A little amazed he was still able to move, he stepped over the threshold into the elevator and turned around. As expected, they were both staring at him. Vicki's mouth twisted up in a half smile; her sense of the ridiculous overwhelming the melodrama. Fitzroy had on his Prince of Darkness face. Celluci squared his shoulders, resisting the pull. No one survived a relationship with Vicki Nelson—alive or undead—without an equally strong sense of self and he was not going to bend the knee to Henry Fucking Fitzroy. “You coming, Vicki?”

When she nodded and stepped toward the elevator, he stepped back to give her room.

She paused, just inside, and her smile sharpened. “Coming, Henry?”

Even Celluci could hear the challenge. Hell, a deaf man in the next building could've heard the challenge. “Vicki . . .”

One pale hand rose. A prince indicating there was no need for the masses to get involved. “I don't think so. No.”

“Why not? Afraid of losing your vaunted control? Too old to cope?”

“Vicki!” He might as well have saved his breath. The words were thrown back with all the finesse of a schoolyard taunt and were just as impossible to ignore.

His back against the wall, with Vicki between him and the exit, Celluci watched Henry advance toward the elevator. He wanted to grab her and shake her and demand to know what the hell she thought she was doing. Except he knew.
Trust Vicki to drive her point home with a god-damned sledgehammer. I should've taken the fucking stairs.
 . . .

When the doors closed, the fabric of Henry's blazer whispered against it. “Parking level one, please.”

Head tilted slightly down, silvered eyes locked with shadow, Vicki pressed the button without looking at the panel.

It wasn't the elevator that lurched into motion, Celluci realized; it was his heart.

They shifted position simultaneously, too fast for a mere mortal to see them move. One moment they stood facing each other—Henry's back against the doors—the next Vicki stood to Celluci's left and Henry to his right. They continued to face each other but had gained what might be a survivable distance between them. A low, warning growl, felt not heard, vibrated through the enclosed space and lifted every hair on Celluci's body—not a pleasant sensation. Realizing how little it would take to tip the balance into bloody chaos, he resisted the urge to scratch.
Now if we can just make it to the lobby without anyone else getting
 . . .

The elevator stopped on the seventh floor.

The doors opened.

Both vampires whirled to face the intrusion.

Celluci didn't know exactly what the couple waiting at the seventh floor saw nor did he want to. Faces blanched of color and the spreading stain on the front of an expensive pair of silk pants gave his imagination information enough. Teeth clenched, he jerked forward and jabbed a finger at the panel.

The closing doors cut off a rising, mindless wail. All at once, he was no longer worried about either of his companions losing control. He lost it himself.

“That's it!” he snarled as he turned. “I've had it up to here . . .” The edge of his hand chopped at the air over his head. “. . . with the two of you. You can both stuff that creature-of-the-night shit back where it belongs! Did you see what you did to those two kids? Did you! Did either of you even notice they got in the way of your petty little power struggle?”

“Petty?” Vicki began, but he cut her off.

“Yeah. Petty. No one fucking cares which one of you's top ghoul
except
the two of you! And that'd be fine except there's a whole goddamned world around you and neither of you seems to give a fuck who gets hit with the shrapnel!”

“You're
still alive. . . .”

He whirled toward Henry. “Well, whoop de fucking do!” Too furious to consider the consequences, he dared the dark gaze to do its worst.

Henry's lips drew off his teeth.

Vicki moved to deny him.

Celluci threw out both arms. Muscles strained as he held them apart, one hand on each chest, the utter audacity of the attempt allowing him to succeed for one heartbeat. Two. Three. Teeth clenched, he refused to give in. His vision started to blur.

Impossibly held, memory rose to overwhelm Hunger.

The three of them had just laid Vicki's mother to rest for a second time. The two men were physically wounded and emotionally flayed—but Vicki had been dying. Henry had done what he could, but he hadn't been strong enough to finish; he needed more blood. Michael Celluci had offered his, even though he believed that it meant he'd lose everything.

In over four hundred and fifty years of living as an observer in humanity's midst, it had been the most amazing thing Henry Fitzroy had ever seen.

Until now.

Detective-Sergeant Michael Celluci was very large and very strong; but it wasn't his physical strength that stopped the Hunger. It was the attitude that dared to announce, “I will not allow this!” even knowing he didn't stand, as he himself might say, a snowflake's chance in hell of being listened to.

Once again, Henry was shown the quality of the man, and he was ashamed that he had to be reminded.

Eyes still locked with Henry's, Vicki remembered what he remembered and felt what he felt. For the first time in his presence she was forced to think about someone else. Tearing her gaze away, staring in horror at the pulse throbbing among the corded muscle of Mike's neck, she replaced Henry's shame with her own.

Celluci felt their surrender and allowed his arms to drop. He didn't have much choice. Without the pressure against them, he couldn't hold them up. The air still held a certain frisson, but strangely it didn't seem to be coming from either Vicki or Henry.

“I think we've forgotten,” said a quiet voice he almost didn't recognize, “that with great power comes great responsibility.”

“I think I forgot what mattered.” No mistaking Vicki's voice, but it had a ragged edge he didn't often hear.

“Same thing.” To his surprise, Henry, just Henry, a man Celluci suddenly remembered he'd come to respect and even like, held out a pale hand. “My apologies, Detective. I wish I could promise that it won't happen again, but I can't. I can promise that I'll do better in the future.”

His grip was cool, like Vicki's.

Then he was gone.

“Where . . .?”

“Parking level one. The van's on level two. I assume one of us is going to be using it?”

He blinked to clear the sweat from his eyes, and allowed her to slip her shoulder under his arm, taking most of his weight. “You can have it. I'll never find parking.”

“I'll drop you off.”

“Fine.” The parking level had the damp, unair-conditioned coolness that came from being deep underground. Celluci found himself thinking of graves. “Vicki. What did I just do?”

“You leaped a tall building in a single bound.”

“I don't mean the physical . . .”

She sighed. It wasn't something she did much any more; she'd lost the habit when she'd lost the need to breathe on a mortal scale. “You reminded us to be more, instead of less.”

He stopped and looked down at her. “Try again.”

“You told us to stop acting like idiots.”

“Yeah, I know, but you don't usually listen.”

“This time . . .” She paused, then reached up and pushed the curl of hair back off his face.

Henry listened
.

Wrapping her arms around him, she laid her cheek against his chest and found what comfort she could in the steady beat of his life. “I love you, Mike.”

“Hey, I believe you.” His chin resting on the top of her head, he wondered just what it was she hadn't said.

Seven

BY parking across an access alley, Vicki managed to find curb space only two blocks from the video store where Tony worked.

Celluci opened the passenger door, then closed it again. “Will you do something for me?”

“Anything.”

His snort was an eloquent testimony to his disbelief. “Just try to be careful. Don't expect anything as civilized as the
Godfather
 . . .”

“Not even the bit where Sonny gets offed or the brother-in-law gets strangled? Or where they dump Fredo in the lake?” Her brow furrowed dramatically. “And didn't they kill the Pope in part three?”

“Vicki . . .”

“Michael,” she mimicked. “Look, I was a cop. I helped bag the bodies. I
know
these aren't the good guys.”

“Yeah, well, organized crime has changed over the last few years.” He twisted in the seat until he faced her. “Most of the old school has been buried, one way or another, and the new lot's a group of vicious young punks who kill because they can. There used to be rules of a sort. The rules are gone.” Once, he might have thought he gripped her arm too tightly. Now, he didn't think he could hold her tightly enough. “Power is an end with these new guys, not just a means.”

She smiled, her teeth gleaming unnaturally white in the light from the passing traffic. “Power won't be a problem.”

“Maybe. Just keep two things in mind, will you? You're there to ask a few questions, not to clean up the streets.” He didn't like the way her brows lifted, but he ignored them because he didn't have a lot of choice. As little as he liked it, he had to trust her judgment. “And don't forget the difference between immortal and invulnerable.” He leaned forward and kissed her, then got out of the van before he could give in to the urge to ask her just what exactly she was going to do.

“I won't take any stupid risks, Mike.” The pale oval of her face seemed farther away than distance alone could account for. “At the risk of sounding like some whacked-out action hero, I'll be back.”

At least she hadn't told him not to worry. “Sunrise is at 4:16.”

“What the . . .?”

“What the what, Bynowski?”

“I don't know.” Brow furrowed, Frank Bynowski leaned closer to the monitor that showed a long shot of the front approach. “Something flickered . . .”

The front door alarm went off.

Two pairs of eyes locked on the screen linked to the camera over the front door. Instead of a solid barrier between the house and the world, the steel reinforced door swung lazily back and forth on its hinges.

Gary Haiden turned a flat, accusing stare on his companion. “The boss told you to lock up!”

‘I did!”

He jerked his head at the image. “That says different.” His tone suggested the lapse would be reported, that Bynowski would suffer for it, and that he, Haiden, wouldn't much mind.

“Yeah? Take a closer look, shit-for-brains.”

Both halves of the lock had been twisted into impossible angles.

The monitor showing the front hall—the only view of the inside of the house—flickered, but neither man noticed. They'd kicked in too many doors to miss the significance of the broken lock.

“Shit, shit, shit, fuck!” Bynowski reached for the intercom button. A leather-covered hand closed over his finger before it had quite covered the distance. He grunted as the bone snapped, too astounded to scream. When he looked up and fell into silvered eyes, he wished he'd taken the time because screaming might've helped. A backhanded blow he never saw coming flung him out of his chair to crash against the far wall and slide down a trickle of his own blood to the floor.

Haiden whirled around to watch the arc of the other man's flight and used the motion to propel himself to his feet. Instinct took over while reason protested, and his gun had cleared the holster by the time he was standing. His eyes saw a tall woman, dressed all in black. His brain did its best to convince him that this was the last thing he was going to see if he didn't leave immediately. Haiden ignored it. He hadn't gotten off the streets by giving in to fear, and he wasn't going to start now.

Her pale gaze flicked down to his gun, then back to his face. “No,” she said softly.

A lot of people had said no to him throughout the years. Some had begged. Some had shrieked. Some had repeated it, over and over, in stunned disbelief. In all its varying forms, the word had held fear, but it had never been a warning. So although it was definitely a warning this time, he didn't recognize it.

He'd been a predator all his life; this was his first time as prey. He still had a lot to learn.

A heartbeat later, he gibbered in terror while fingertips pressed white half-moons into his throat. Bones had been broken in both his hands, but the pain got lost behind the gleaming white smile he couldn't seem to take his eyes off of.

“Is the boss at home?” the smile said.

Up until this point, Gary Haiden had been positive he'd give his life to protect Sebastien Carl, that he'd look death in the face and say,
“Fuck you.”
Instead, he found himself saying, “Him and his wife are upstairs, in the big bedroom at the back, dressing for dinner.” He hoped it was enough.

Mr. Carl was alone in the bedroom pulling on a pair of black silk socks. A blow-dryer running in the en suite suggested the location of his wife.

Although Vicki knew she'd never seen him before, there was something familiar about Sebastien Carl. She was across the room with one hand clamped around his throat before she realized what it was. He had an awareness of his own power that was almost vampiric in intensity.
All this is mine
, it declared.
You are nothing unless I choose to make use of you
.

She almost killed him before she brought the sudden surge of rage under control. “I am nothing like you,” she snarled, ignoring the hands that clawed at her wrist. “I only want to ask you a few questions.” A silk-covered heel caught her just below the knee. “Stop it.”

Smarter than Haiden, he stopped. He glared at her through narrowed eyes, fingers wrapped around her wrist, chest rising and falling in short, shallow breaths, all the remains of his windpipe would allow.
Death is my weapon
, his expression said.
Not yours
.

She let more of the Hunger rise, barely stopping it from breaking free. “Organ-legging. Are you doing it?”

“No.” His answer was little more than a breath rasped out in denial. For all he might deny Death in the silvered eyes that held his, he couldn't lie to them. Nor could he look away.

“Do you know who is?”

“No.”

With her free hand, she pulled one of the copies Henry'd made of the photos in the autopsy report out of her back pocket, shook out the folds, and held it up. “Have you ever seen this guy before?”

“No.”
Go on
, his gaze dared.
Do your worst
.

Frustrated, she threw him to the bed. He bounced, rolled across the quilted red satin bedspread, and came up firing the .22-caliber pistol that had been laid out beside his clothes. By the time he'd squeezed the trigger the second time, he was dead.

Switching off the blow-dryer, Jenna Carl threw sun-streaked hair back off her face and frowned. “Sebastien?” she asked stepping out of the bathroom. “Did you just . . . oh, shit.”

No stranger to her husband's business, the body on the floor didn't surprise her much. It surprised her only a little more when it turned out to be her husband. It surprised her a great deal when she discovered he was not, as she'd supposed from his face, lying on his back. Someone . . .

Or something
, a whimpering little voice in the back of her head insisted as she bit back a scream.

. . . had turned his head completely around.

Leaping over the corpse, she crawled up the bed and fumbled open the safe built into the padded headboard. Everything was there. Breathing heavily, she clutched at the packets of bills and tried to think. She could still get out of this. All she had to do was get Sebastien's body to the foot of the stairs—thank God she'd squelched his plan to build a bungalow. A terrible accident. His lawyers would know what to do, who to pay. A quick funeral, and she'd take the money and . . .

“I'd never get away.” If the cops didn't hound her to death, her husband's business associates would as they ripped his empire to bloody shreds. “Well, screw them.”

Twenty minutes later, the safe emptied, her Porsche roared out of the garage and disappeared down Marine Drive.

Haiden and Bynowski stared empty-eyed at the monitors.

The part of Vancouver known as Kitsilano had become overtly yuppie as the tag end of the baby boomers—stockbrokers, system developers, securities analysts, crime lords—in the prime of their earning years had settled down with a mortgage and kids. For all of that, it was a nice neighborhood and not a place Henry'd expected to be Hunting in tonight.

Gabriel and Lori Constantine were having a barbecue. Standing motionless in the shadows, Henry sniffed the breeze and firmly squelched the desire to sneeze at the lingering scent of seared squid. As host, Gabriel Constantine would be among the six lives by the house.

Two cars, each containing a pair of gunmen, and two men who were definitely not a couple walking along the beach, convinced him that he'd best take an oblique approach. A few moments later, he stepped up onto the neighbor's composter, over the fence and into a pool of deep shadow cast by a clump of lilac, lip curled at the smell of dying blossoms.

Their yard could have been any of the yards he'd crossed. The house was only superficially different from the rest on the street. The gathering could have been happening anywhere up and down the block.

Except for the people involved.

Henry suspected the Constantines seldom entertained their immediate neighbors. After all, predators have only one reason to associate with prey.

Four large men wearing jackets over golf shirts patrolled the yard. Henry waited until one reached the edge of the shadows and came forward just enough to interrupt the constant sweeping movement of the enforcer's gaze. In the instant before awareness dawned, Henry grabbed onto the simple pattern of his thoughts and twisted them into new shapes. “Tell Mr. Constantine there's something he should see over by the fence. Tell him it isn't dangerous, but you thought he should take a look.”

Most people caught in the Hunt responded like a rabbit caught in headlights—conscious thought completely overwhelmed by their imminent and incontestable death. Those susceptible to more overt control were few and far between, but primed to follow orders and only follow orders, the enforcer nodded, turned, and made his way toward the pool. It wouldn't last long. But then, it didn't have to.

Henry, who could hear the heartbeat of the child sleeping in an upstairs bedroom, had no difficulty hearing the conversations at the other end of the yard. Private schools and music lessons and how hard it was to find a reliable housekeeper and imported cars versus domestic and how certain people never realized that expenses were going up all wrapped around each other like tangled yarn. It was all very innocent; a casual eavesdropper would never know how the bills were paid. Finally, he heard the thread that concerned his meeting with Gabriel Constantine.

Frowning, waving off a question from one of his guests, Constantine suggested that the enforcer should lead the way. There was something out there, he'd read that off the other man's face, but he had confidence in both his security and in the normality of the neighborhood.

What could hurt you here?
Henry asked himself as they approached.
Here, surrounded by satellite dishes, gas barbecues, and lawns all maintained by Mr. Weedman. What could touch you in the midst of all of that?
He smiled as the two men reached the lilac. It had been, after all, a rhetorical question.

Unaware that his enforcer's mind had less in it than usual, Constantine put him on guard and threw a skeptical glance into the shadows. To his horror, the shadows threw it back.

“If you move, I'll kill you.”

All the death he'd ever dealt returned to greet him. Had their night sight been good enough, his guests might have seen his shoulders stiffen and a spreading patch of sweat darken his T-shirt. Because he faced away from them, they couldn't see the expression of horror that drained the blood from his face.

A few
gentle
questions, voiced too low for listening ears, determined he knew nothing of selling organs for profit nor of the identity of the ghost. But he did know a great many other unpleasant things.

In spite of certain incidents that had occurred during the year Vicki had been his mortal lover, Henry had never considered himself a vampire Batman, a comic book hero out hunting down evil in the night. Although willing to destroy any that put itself in his way, much as he would a cockroach that did the same thing, he had no desire to spend immortality searching evil out and destroying it. There was just too damned much of it.

For the sake of the sleeping child, Henry let this cockroach live, merely suggesting that, in return, it go into another line of work.

“That was good food.” Celluci stepped to one side of the restaurant door and was almost run over by a trio of young women. Two of them spun off to either side, the third looked him over, grinned, and hurried to catch up to her friends—now giggling around the corner on Robeson Street. Definitely not working girls—over the years he'd booked enough hookers to recognize them in any situation—they didn't look old enough to be out so late.

“Feeling your age?”

Startled, he stared down at his companion. “Did I say that out loud?”

Tony shook his head. “No. You sighed.”

“Yeah, well, it's something old people do.” He took a deep breath to clear the atmosphere of the restaurant from his lungs. “At least I still have all my teeth. And I do enjoy a good meal.”