Blood Debt (2 page)

When he repeated his thoughts aloud for Tony's benefit, he added, “One thing she did teach me is that I'm not a detective. I'm a writer, and, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go write.” Not entirely certain why memories of Vicki Nelson always made him so defensive, he headed for his computer, waving at the television on his way through the living room. “Your rain delay seems to be over.”

Half an hour later, having realized that the expected staccato clicking of keys hadn't yet begun, Tony pushed open the door to Henry's office. Standing on the threshold, he noted that nothing showed on the monitor but a chapter heading and a lot of blank screen.

“This spook really has you spooked, doesn't it?”

“Why do you say that?” Henry asked without turning.

“You're just sitting there, staring at your hands.”

“Maybe I was deep in thought.”

“Henry, you write bodice rippers. There's a limit to how much deep thought is allowed.”

Seventeen years a royal duke, over four hundred and fifty years a vampire, it had taken Henry a while to recognize when he was being teased. Once or twice, Tony had come close to not surviving the adjustment. Lifting his gaze from his hands, he sighed. “All I can think of is, why me.” He laughed, but the sound held no humor. “Which seems a little self-centered since I'm merely being haunted and was not the one killed and mutilated.” Pushing his ergonomic chair away from the desk, he spun it around and stood. “I need to get out. Be distracted.”

“Great.” Tony grinned. “Bram Stoker's
Dracula
is playing at midnight at the Caprice.”

“Why not.” Enjoying Tony's poleaxed expression, Henry turned the young man about and pushed him gently out of the doorway. “I hear Gary Oldman is terrific.”

“
You
hear?” Tony sputtered as Henry's inarguable touch moved him down the hall. “You heard it from me! And when I told you, you told me that you never go to vampire movies—
that's
why not.”

“I changed my mind.” Unable to resist, he added, “Maybe we can get a bite while we're downtown.”

The elevators in the Pacific Place towers were as fast and as quiet as money could make them. With his fingertips resting lightly on the brushed steel doors, Henry cocked his head and smiled. “It sounds like Lisa's shredding the character of another cabbie.”

Tony winced. “Man, I'm glad she likes
us
.”

As the chime announced the arrival of the elevator, the two men stepped away from the doors.

“Hello, boys.” One gloved hand clutching the arm of her paid companion, Lisa Evans grinned a very expensive and perfect grin as she shuffled into the corridor. The gleaming white teeth between glistening red lips added a ghastly emphasis to the skull-like effect created when age finally triumphed over years of cosmetic surgery. “Heading out for a late night on the town?”

“Just a midnight movie,” Henry told her as Tony stopped the doors from closing. He scooped up her free hand and raised it to his lips. “And you, I expect, have been out breaking hearts?”

“At my age? Don't be ridiculous.” She pulled her hand free and smacked him lightly on the cheek, then turned on her companion. “And what are you smiling about, Munro?”

Not the least bit chastised, Mrs. Munro continued to smile down at her elderly employer. “I was just thinking about Mr. Swanson.”

“Swanson's interested in my money, not these old bones.” But she preened a little and patted the head of the mink stole she wore over a raw silk suit. Once the mistress of a Vancouver lumber baron, she'd made a number of shrewd investments and parlayed a comfortable nest egg into a tidy fortune. “And besides, I'm not interested in him. All the good men are dead.” Sweeping a twinkling gaze over Henry and Tony, she added, “Or gay.”

“Miss Evans!”

“Chill out, Munro. I'm not telling them anything they don't know.” Companion chastised, she turned her attention back to the two men. “We've just come from one of those tedious fund-raising things they expect you to attend when you have money. Organs, I think it was tonight.”

“Organs?” Henry repeated with a smile, fully aware that Lisa Evans enjoyed those tedious fund-raising things where her checkbook ensured she'd be stroked and flattered. He also knew that if she was vague, it was deliberate—no one made the kind of money she had without knowing exactly where every dollar ended up. “Musical or medical?”

“Medical.” Heavily shadowed eyes narrowed into a look that had been known to send a variety of CEOs running for cover. “Have you signed an organ donor card?”

“I'm afraid they wouldn't want my organs.”

The look softened slightly as she leaped to the conclusion he'd intended. “Oh. I'm sorry. Still, while there's life, there's hope, and medical science is doing wonders these days.” She grinned. “I mean, it's a wonder I'm still alive.” Pulling her companion down the hall, rather in the manner of a pilot boat guiding a tanker into harbor, she threw a cheery, “Don't do anything I wouldn't do,” back over her shoulder.

“Well, that leaves us a lot of leeway,” Henry murmured as the elevator door closed on Mrs. Munro's continuing shocked protests.

Tony sagged against the back wall, hands shoved in his pockets. “Until I met Miss Evans, I always thought old ladies were kind of vague and smelly. Maybe you should send your ghost over to her.”

“Why?”

“If all the good men are dead . . .”

“Or gay,” Henry reminded him. “Suppose he turned out to be both? I'd hate to get on Lisa's bad side.”

The thought of Lisa Evans' bad side brought an exaggerated shudder. “Actually, I've been meaning to ask you; how come you're so friendly with everybody in the building? You're always talking to people. I'd have thought it would be safer to be a little more . . .”

“Reclusive?”

“Big word. I was going to say private, but I guess that'll do.”

“People are afraid of what they don't know.” Exiting into the underground garage, they walked in step to Henry's BMW. “If people think they know me, they aren't afraid of me. If a rumor begins that I am not what I seem, they'll match it against what they think they know and discount it. If they have nothing to match it against, then they're more likely to believe it.”

“So you make friends with people as a kind of camouflage?”

Frowning slightly, Henry watched Tony circle around to the passenger door. “Not always.”

“But sometimes?”

“Yes.”

With the car between them, Tony lifted his head and locked his eyes on Henry's face. “And what about me?”

“You?”

“What am I? Am I camouflage?”

“Tony . . .” Then he saw the expression in Tony's eyes and realized that it hadn't been a facetious question. “Tony, I trust you with everything I am. There're only two other people in the world I can say that about, and one of them doesn't exactly count.”

“Because Vicki's become a vampire?”

“Because Michael Celluci would never admit to knowing a . . . romance writer.”

Tony laughed, as he was meant to, but Henry heard the artificial resonance. For the rest of the night, he worked hard at erasing it.

She'd seen the article too late to do anything about it that night, and the wait had not improved her temper.

“Is Richard Sullivan on duty?”

Startled, the edge on the words having cut her memory to shreds, the nurse checked the duty sheet. “Yes, Doctor. He . . .”

“I want to see him in my office. Immediately.”

“Yes, Doctor.” No point in protesting that he was cleaning up an unfortunate bedpan accident. Immediately meant immediately and no later. As she paged him, the nurse hoped that whatever Sullivan had done, it wasn't enough to get him fired. Orderlies willing to do the shit work without bitching and complaining were few and far between. Besides, it was difficult not to like the big man; those puppy dog eyes were hard to resist.

“What do you know about this?”

Sullivan looked down at the article and then up at the doctor. Denial died unspoken as she read his answer off his face.

“This
is
one of ours?”

He nodded.

“Then what part of my instructions did you not understand?”

“It's not that I . . .”

“Or do you not enjoy your job? Is it not everything I told you it would be?”

“Yes. I mean, I do. And it is, but . . .”

“You are
not
supposed to be showing initiative, Mr. Sullivan.”

Their relative sizes made it ridiculous that he should cower before her temper, but he did anyway.

The ghost was wearing a Cult and Jackyl T-shirt, a local band that recorded in North Vancouver. Henry was a little surprised it wasn't a Grateful Dead T-shirt. He'd often suspected the universe had a really macabre, and pretty basic, sense of humor. Its arms still ended just above the wrist. Again, it seemed to be waiting.

Tony believed it wanted vengeance.

I suppose that's as good a theory as any
, Henry reflected. He sighed. “
Do
you want revenge on the person who took your hands?”

Impatience adding a first hint of personality to translucent features, the ghost slowly faded away.

Henry sighed again. “I take it that's a qualified yes.”

The apartment was empty when he emerged from his room. After a moment, he remembered it was Saturday and Tony would be working late.

“Which is probably a good thing,” he announced to the lights of the city. He wondered if the ghost expected him to begin by finding the hands, and if he should be looking for the remains of flesh and bone or an ethereal pair quite possibly haunting someone else.

When Tony returned home after midnight, he was in his office with the door closed, deep in the complicated court politics of 1813 and more than a little concerned with his heroine's refusal to follow the plot as outlined. Dawn nearly caught him still trying to decide whether Wellington would promote her betrothed to full colonel and he raced for the sanctuary of his bed having forgotten his spectral visitor in the night's work.

“This is becoming irritating; do you at least know who has your hands?”

The ghost threw back its head and screamed. No sound emerged from the gaping black hole of a mouth, but Henry felt the hair lift off the back of his neck and a cold dread wrap around his heart. While the scream endured, he thought he sensed a multitude of spirits within the scream; all shrieking in unison, all lamenting the injustice of their deaths. His lips drew off his teeth in an involuntary snarl.

“Henry? Henry! Are you okay?”

The ghost's face, distended by the continuing scream, faded last.

“Henry!”

It took him a moment to realize that the pounding wasn't his heart—it was Tony, banging frantically on the bedroom door. He shook himself free of the lingering uneasiness and padded across the room, the carpet cold and damp against his bare feet. Releasing the bolts, he called, “I'm all right.”

When he opened the door, Tony nearly fell into his arms.

Eyes wide, panting as though he'd just run a race, Tony pulled back far enough to see for himself that Henry was unharmed. “I heard . . . no, I felt . . . it was . . .” His fingers tightened around Henry's bare shoulders. “What happened? Was it the ghost?”

“I'm only guessing, but I think I asked it a question with a negative answer.”

“Negative?” Tony's voice rose to an incredulous squeak and he let his arms drop to his side. “I'll say it was
negative.
It was bottom of the pit, soul-sucking, annihilation!”

“It wasn't that bad . . .”

“Maybe not for you!”

Concerned, Henry studied Tony's face. “Are
you
all right?”

“I guess.” He drew in a deep breath, released it slowly, and nodded. “Yeah. I'm okay. But I'm gonna stay right here and watch you dress.” Propped up on one shoulder, he sagged against the doorframe, too frightened to be tough, or independent, or even interested in Henry's nakedness. “I don't want to be alone.”

“Do you want to know what happened?” From Tony's expression, it was clear that he hadn't needed to ask. While he pulled on his clothes, Henry described what had occurred when he'd tried to get more information from the ghost.

“So, you can only ask one question and if the answer's yes, it disappears quietly, and if the answer's no, it lets you know how disappointed it is with you.”

“Not only how disappointed
it
is,” Henry told him. “When it screamed, I sensed a multitude of the dead.”

“Yeah? How many dead in a multitude, Henry?”

“This is nothing to joke about.”

“Trust me, I'm not laughin' inside.” Tony followed Henry into the living room, dropping gracelessly onto one end of the heavy leather sofa. “Man, game shows from beyond the grave. You mind if I turn on some lights? That thing's still got me kind of spooked.” When Henry indicated he should go ahead, he stretched back, flicked on the track lighting, and centered himself in a circle of illumination. “At least we know two things. It
does
want revenge, and it
doesn't
know where its hands are.”

“What of the others?”

“Can we maybe deal with this one ghost at a time? I mean, why borrow trouble.”

Tucked into a pocket of shadow on the other side of the room, Henry sighed. “I'd still like to know, why me?”

“Like attracts like.”

Brows drawn in, Henry leaned forward, bringing his face into the light. “I beg your pardon.”

“You're a vampire.” Tony shrugged and stroked the tiny, nearly healed wound barely visible against the tanned skin of his left wrist. “Even if you're not a supernatural creature, even if all you are is biologically different . . .”