Blood Debt (19 page)

“There're almost three million people in this city, Henry. And Tony doesn't have your advantages.”

“I'm going with him.”

“Is that smart?”

“He shouldn't be alone.”

“Hey! I'm not alone now.” Exhaling forcefully, Tony got to his feet and glared at both of them. “And I really hate that arrogant I-know-best-because-I'm-an-undying-creature-of-the-night crap. You can both just fucking chill! I'm going back to my room to change into a look that's more street smart. If you,” he jabbed a finger toward Henry, “want to come with me to find the ghost's bud, fine. I can use your help. If not . . .”

“We were just concerned about you, Tony.”

He sighed and rolled his eyes. “Fine. Thank you. Did I say you weren't?” Shoulders hunched, hands shoved into the front pockets of his jeans, and still muttering, he left the condo.

An awkward silence followed the closing of the door.

“Well,” Vicki murmured after a long moment, “as one of my old sociology professors used to say, change is constant.”

“Except for us. We don't change.”

“That's bullshit, Henry, and melodramatic bullshit at that. You change, you adapt, or you die.”

Or you die.
Territorial imperatives broke through the surface civility they'd managed to maintain. Henry's eyes darkened and his voice grew cold. “Are you threatening me?”

Vicki could feel herself responding to his challenge. She didn't want to, she wanted to hold onto the tenuous truce that slaughter and sex had evoked; not only because it meant she'd been right all along and vampires could coexist, but because this was Henry, and she wanted him—them—back.
I don't give up easily
, she warned the world at large.
We are going to get along if I have to kill him!
Holding his gaze, she slammed an instinctive reaction back under conscious control. “No,” she said when she thought she could trust her voice. “I'm not threatening you.”

The phone rang.

“That'll be Celluci checking in. If you'll excuse me.” The pencil she still held in her right hand snapped, but she managed to break eye contact and turn to answer the phone. It'd been a close thing, and if Henry pushed, he could go right through the flimsy barriers that barely restrained her desire to attack, but this time, at least, she wasn't giving in to biology. She'd never surrendered to it during the day and she'd be damned if she let it rule now the sun had set. It was, as they said, time to take back the night. The receiver creaked in her grip but the plastic held. “What!”

Henry forced himself to turn and walk away, reminding himself with every step that he was not leaving to
another
the territory he'd claimed as his. To his surprise, it was easier than it had been other nights. Like most things in life, even in an immortal life, it seemed practice made a difference. By the time his heels rang against the Mexican slate in the entrance hall, reason had gained the upper hand.
This is Vicki
, he pointed out to his reflection in the gilt-edged mirror.
She doesn't want your territory
.

His reflection answered with a wry smile.
This is Vicki
, pretty much covered the situation. She'd been unique as a mortal—nothing she did now should surprise him. During the short time they'd had together, he'd done things he'd never have considered doing on his own.
Perhaps there's no need to throw the baby out with the bathwater
. It wasn't St. Paul on the road to Damascus, but it was an epiphany nevertheless.
Perhaps
, he repeated thoughtfully to himself.

“That wasn't Celluci. It was someone who didn't know Ms. Evans had died.”

Henry walked back to the archway that separated the living room from the entrance hall. In the interest of mutual nonaggression, he went no farther. “You're worried about him.”

“No shit, Sherlock.” Both hands splayed against the glass, she stood staring down at the city, not for that moment a predator looking down on prey.

“Why?”

“I don't know. I just . . .” She shrugged selfconsciously.

“Have a hunch?” Henry offered, wishing he could cross the room and stand by her side.

“Yeah. A hunch. Doesn't seem very vampiric, does it?”

“It is if
you
have one.”

Vicki turned to glare at him, one hand rising toward the glasses she no longer wore in a not-quite-forgotten gesture. “Are you making fun of me?”

“No. I'm not.” Although he could see how it might sound as if he was. “Vicki, no one ever told you how to be human, you were human just by being. Don't let anyone tell you how to be what you are now.”

“Not even you?”

“Not even me, not anymore. I taught you what you needed to know in the year after the change. The rest is . . .” It was his turn to shrug.

“Ego?”

His eyes narrowed, and his chin rose. “Tradition. But just because we've always responded in such a way, doesn't mean we have to.”

Had the window not been right behind her, she'd have stepped back in simulated shock. As it was, she raised both hands to shoulder height and exclaimed, “Good lord, Henry, you're evolving!”

“Don't push it.”

The words came shaded with a dark warning that would've brought an answering snarl had Vicki's sense of fair play not acknowledged it was no more than she deserved.
Ah, hell, that was worth one snarl.

Leaning back against the glass, she hooked her thumbs in her belt loops, the most nonaggressive posture she could manage. They still had the length of the living room between them, would probably always need a physical distance between them—except on those rare, intoxicating occasions of mass slaughter and mindless, blood-soaked sex—but now it looked as if other distances might not be insurmountable. “You'd better get going, Tony'll be waiting.”

Tony. Mutual awareness of a dissolving relationship hung in the air. Henry brushed it aside. “What about Michael?”

“I don't know. I guess I'll wait here for him to call; or something.”

“That's not the way it was supposed to be, is it? You waiting here, me out investigating.”

“Well, I can't do everything myself.”

Red-gold brows lifted. “Seems like I'm not the only one evolving.” The small fringed cushion very nearly smacked him square in the face. “You have my cell phone number? Remember conversations can be picked up on short wave,” he cautioned when she pulled his card from her pocket and waved it at him.

Vicki snorted, shoving the card away. “Do I look like a member of the royal family?”

The bastard son of Henry VIII threw the cushion at her head and was out of the condo by the time she caught it.

Although Vicki would have denied it had anyone brought it up, she was glad that he was gone. Within a certain proximity, the complicated stresses linking them dominated her thoughts, and right now that made her feel disloyal to Celluci.

You know how you wanted Henry and me to stop ripping at each other? Well, we went on a completely unpremeditated rampage together, killed I don't know how many people, and ended up screwing almost on top of a corpse. It seems to have helped.
She snorted.
I don't think so
.

His absence chewed at her, and she couldn't remain still. She had no reason to believe he might be in trouble but, equally, no reason to disbelieve. Finding herself in the master bedroom, she sank down onto the edge of the bed and gathered up his sleeping bag, wrapping herself in his scent.

Would I be as concerned
, she wondered,
without the guilt? Never mind. Stupid question
.

Returning to the living room, she sank back into the chair by the window and picked up her notebook. It had always helped to write things down—that hadn't changed, although she missed the balance of a coffee cup in her left hand. Scanning her scribbled description of the second ghost, she turned to a fresh page and glanced around for her pencil. Both pieces were over by the window.

“Oh, damn.”

She could see the end of a pencil sticking out of the Yellow Pages on the phone table. About to pull it free, she paused and opened the book instead. It wasn't her bookmark, so it had to be Mike's.

Her finger traced up and down the columns of private clinics. Vancouver either had one of the healthiest populations in the country or a thriving colony of hypochondriacs. Apparently Celluci'd done as she'd suggested and gone looking for the facility where the kidney had been removed. The East Hastings Clinic at East Hastings and Main had been circled and “start here” had been scribbled beside it in the margin.

Figuring he hauled ass out of bed by ten or eleven at the absolute latest, if he went there first thing, there's no way he's still there. She glanced down at her watch. It was past nine P.M. Michael Celluci has been a cop for fourteen years, he can take care of himself He probably met someone at one of these places and joined them for dinner.

“Oh, shit.” Tossing the pieces of the pencil aside, she called herself several kinds of an idiot.
He has to eat, Vicki. Just because you and Henry
 . . .
well, it doesn't mean he has
.

But he hadn't been there when she woke and he hadn't called in and he knew she'd want to know what, if anything, he'd found.

The East Hastings Clinic at East Hastings and Main.

She'd told Henry she'd wait until Mike called. Or something.

It looked like something had come up.

If nothing else, she had a place to start.

“Where to now?” Henry slowed the BMW to give a cyclist room to maneuver around a line of parked cars. They'd started their search for the ghost's companion at the video store and had searched a widening circle without any luck. None of the locals had seen anyone matching his description.

“The Eastside Youth Center. If he's not there, someone'll probably know him.”

“That's east of Gastown, isn't it?”

Tony's gaze remained aimed out the window of the car. “Yeah. So?”

“It's just that it's a bit of a distance away. If you saw him here, in this neighborhood . . .”

“The Center's a safe place, Henry. A guy'll go farther than that to find one.”

“Tony.”

Although he wasn't using his Prince of Darkness voice, something in the way Henry said his name, drew Tony's head around.

“You're still safe with me.”

“I know.” For a change, looking away would've been the easier course—the hazel eyes held no touch of darkness, nothing that compelled him to continue. Tony swallowed and found the strength to say, “Maybe too safe.” For a heartbeat, he thought he was being mocked, then he realized Henry's answering smile held as much sadness as humor.

“I assume you're speaking of life in general and not our immediate circumstances?”

“What circumstances? You mean you driving without watching the road!” His voice rose on the last word as he grabbed the dashboard and watched the world narrow to a corridor of moving metal. “Christ, Henry, that was a truck! That was two trucks!”

Henry deftly inserted the car back into the curb lane. “I know.”

“Look, man, if you didn't want to talk about it, you shouldn't have brought it up.”

Had he done it on purpose? Henry didn't think so; he'd seen a break in traffic and used it. Hadn't he? Whether he'd intended the result or not, the moment for shared confidences had passed.

Like any other city of its size, Vancouver had its share of rundown neighborhoods. The area east of Gastown, an area widely quoted in reports on crime and poverty, was one of the darkest. Theoretically, social assistance paid most of the bills, but the reality was considerably less benign.

The dividing line between the haves and have-nots was astonishingly abrupt. Leaving the lights and tourist attractions of Gastown on one side of the intersection, Henry began to drive past boarded-up and abandoned stone buildings—once the main Vancouver branches of the seven chartered banks—standing shoulder to shoulder with shabby hotels and rooming houses. Back in the forties and the fifties, this was the bustling center of town, but the core had moved west and left only the architecture behind.

As they drove down Cordova, where the hotels and equally shabby bars seemed to be the only thriving businesses, Tony glanced over at Henry and frowned at the vampire's expression. “Why are you looking worried? There's nothing here you can't handle.” “Actually,” Henry admitted dryly, “I'm a little concerned about parking the car.”

Tony snorted. “It's a BMW. I'd be a lot concerned.”

An unshaven man in a pajama top, dress pants, and rubber flip-flops stepped off the curb, ignored the squeal of tires, and wandered aimlessly across the street.

Watching the pedestrians a little more closely, Henry put his foot back on the gas. “Another six inches and I'd have hit him.”

“He probably wouldn't have noticed.”

As they approached the Youth Center, the sidewalks became more crowded. A group of First Nation teens, backs against the wire-covered window of a convenience store under siege, watched them pull to the curb, heads turning in unison.

“Don't lock it,” Henry advised as Tony reached in to depress the mechanism.

“Are you crazy?”

“No, I'd just prefer not to have the windows shattered. If anyone opens the door, I'll be back here before they take the car anywhere.”

The Youth Center was next to the Cordova Arms.

“People are actually living here?” Henry muttered as he glanced over the front of the building.

“Hey, this is an expensive city,” Tony replied, fighting to keep his shoulders from hunching forward in the old wary posture. “Where else can a person on welfare afford to live?”

Over the centuries, Henry had certainly seen worse. From a historical perspective, the area was neither particularly violent nor destitute. Problem was, this wasn't the fifteenth century. He'd never hunted this neighborhood and never would—unlike most four-legged predators, he preferred not to feed on the injured or the sick.