Blood Debt (22 page)

“Yeah. I'm sure.” He swallowed heavily and shifted his weight back and forth, from one foot to the other. “I'm sorry, Victory. I just can't.”

She drew in a deep breath and let it out slowly. When she spoke, her voice was as gentle as Henry'd heard it since the change. “I understand. And there's no reason you should risk your safety because we can't act like civilized people.” Rounding the car between one heartbeat and the next, she cupped Tony's face in her hands. “Will you be okay if we leave you here? Should we take you home first?”

He lightly touched the backs of her wrists and her hands fell away. “You have to get to Detective Celluci.”

“I won't trade you for him.”

His eyes filled with tears as he realized she meant it. Acknowledging only that he was more tired than he thought, he scrubbed them away. “I'll be okay. I can get a cab by one of the restaurants in Chinatown.”

“Do you have enough money?”

“Goddamn it, Henry!” Ears burning, he backed to the far edge of the sidewalk. “Would you guys just get going!”

They left the windows open and kept their faces in the breeze. It was enough. But only just.

“Do you think he's there?” Henry asked as they sped around an erratic, albeit fast-moving, old caddie and headed for the bridge.

“I know he
went
there. I know how he thinks. There aren't any coincidences in police work; once Ronald Swanson turned into a recurring character in this little drama, Mike'd check him out. He'd find out about Project Hope, and then he'd check it out.”

“Do you think he's in trouble?”

When she considered the possibility, she felt as though someone were stroking her exposed skin with a wire brush.

“I'm certain of it.”

Ten

“THERE'S nowhere to hide the car.”

“Don't hide it. Pull into the parking lot, and park.”

“It's after one,” Henry pointed out as he passed the sign for Project Hope, turned between the gateposts, and started up the long drive. “While normally I wouldn't consider arguing with your expertise in skulking about, don't you think we'll be noticed? There'll be a night nurse on at the very least.”

“So?”

“So, you're going to walk in and ask her if they've got Detective Celluci strapped to a bed in one of the rooms?”

“Why not?” Her voice had very little of the police officer, of the private investigator, or the mortal left in it. Henry fought to suppress his reaction as she continued. “It's not like I'm going to be lied to. Besides, if he's in there, I'll know.”

“And if he isn't?”

The ivory gleam of teeth made her smile a threat. “I go looking for a big guy with cow eyes and ask
him
a few questions.”

Beyond the edges of her control, edges sharply enough defined to draw blood, Henry could hear the purging violence surging back and forth. She sounded close to letting go. Hardly surprising given the proximity they'd been in since leaving the clinic—the tension between them sat like a third presence in the car. He could feel his own barriers weakening and trying to convince himself that this was a continuation of the year they spent in a parent/child, teacher/student relationship helped not at all. If the anticipated mayhem didn't materialize inside Project Hope, they'd be at each other's throats before he got the keys back into the ignition.

Vicki leaped from the car the instant it stopped moving and sucked in a lungful of air untainted by
another's
breathing. If it came to it, she decided, dragging her bag up onto her shoulder, she'd walk back to the condo before she let Henry drive her anywhere, ever again. He slowed for yellow lights. He didn't pass when he could. He took corners too slowly. It had been the most frustrating fifty minutes she'd ever spent. Only iron control had kept her from dragging him out from behind the wheel and taking over herself.
I have
got
to get my driver's license again
. Lips pressed into a thin line, she strode toward the building. “Remember, Vicki, not being noticed is infinitely better than having to correct a dangerous impression.”

“Christ, Henry. You sound like an old
Kung Fu
episode.”

He locked the car and hurried to catch up. “I'm speaking from experience. . .”

“I know, I know, over four hundred and fifty years. No wonder you drive like an old woman,” she added under her breath as she yanked open the clinic's cedar slab door.

Half a dozen battling scents almost knocked her back outside—a bouquet of roses in a large glass vase, a chemical air freshener designed to mimic the ocean breezes kept out by hermetically sealed windows, and over, under, and through it all, the eau d' disinfectant worn by every medical establishment in the world.

She could sense perhaps a dozen lives, the delineations between them removed by sleep—natural or drug-induced, Vicki hadn't the experience to tell the difference. Somewhere in the mix, she thought she felt the unmistakable flavor of Celluci's life. But why can't I tell for sure?
She'd been so certain she'd know if he was in the clinic that this sudden ambivalence was unsettling.
Do I just think he's here because I want him to be here so badly? Would I have known for certain before last night's horizontal dance down memory lane with Henry? A
heartbeat later, she found an answer she could live with.
Christ, Vicki, don't be such a goddamned idiot
.

The lingering despair—despair with very little hope in it, she noted, in spite of the name of the clinic—made it difficult to get a clear fix on anyone's life. Since that also included Henry's life, she supposed she just had to take the bad with the good.

The only nonsleeper glared a question at them from behind the glass walls of the nurse's station.

“I was right,” Henry murmured. “We've been noticed.”

“Good,” Vicki declared a little too emphatically. Unable to blush, she winced. Ever since she could remember, women in nurses' uniforms had made her feel inadequate. Maybe because they seemed so competent. Maybe it was all that white. She had no idea. Feeling less like an all-powerful creature of the night and more like she was somewhere she shouldn't be, she skirted the lounge and stepped into the dimly lit office.

“Yes? Can I help you?” While civil enough, the nurse's tone clearly indicated that the only help she intended to give them involved showing them the exit.

“I'm looking for a friend.”

“This is a private treatment center, not the local emergency ward. You won't find your friend here.”

“He would have been admitted this afternoon.”

“There was no one admitted this afternoon.”

“Would you like me to do this?” Henry asked quietly, not entirely able to keep the amusement from his voice. He'd seen Vicki face demons, werewolves, mummies, and a multitude of murderous mortals with more elan.

She growled a wordless reply, caught the night nurse's gaze, and held it, overcoming old programming for pride's sake. “Are you alone here?”

Dilated pupils reflecting a faint silver gleam below an annoyed frown, the other woman shook her head. “There's an orderly.”

“Where is he?”

“Asleep on a cot in the staff room.”

“Why is he here?”

“He stays sometimes, in case there's trouble.”

“Trouble with what?” Vicki rested her hands on the desk and leaned forward. “Trouble with the
donors
of purchased body parts?”

The night nurse stood, still held in the silvered depths of Vicki's eyes, and mirrored her movement. She was almost as tall. “I don't know what the hell you're talking about.”

This was not the usual response. Somewhat taken aback, Vicki allowed a little more of the Hunter off the leash, dropped a little more of her mortal camouflage. “You've never noticed anything strange going on? Patients who don't quite match their records? Locked doors?”

Breathing heavily, the nurse shook her head. “Whatever you are, you don't scare me. You want to know what scares me? Having two teenage kids and a husband who's been out of work for six months and losing this job, that scares me. I'm not telling you anything.”

“If you're dead,” Vicki snarled, patience exhausted, “you
won't
be working.”

“You might be death for some people, I can see . . .” Fear finally showed, trapping her voice in her throat. She swallowed hard and continued. “. . . see that, but whatever you are, you aren't death for me.”

“She's right,” Henry said softly, impressed by a strength of will that refused to be blinded by terror. “She knows you won't kill her without reason. She's called your bluff.”

Reaction split equally between irritation and embarrassment, Vicki held her position at the desk. “This does not make me weak,” she warned him, fingers curling into fists.

Amused, but careful not to let it show, he moved a little closer. “I meant it as a compliment to her, not an insult to you. Perhaps you'd best let me . . .”

“No!” This mortal was hers. Whether or not Henry could convince her to speak was irrelevant. Eyes narrowed, Vicki muttered, “Must be a damned good job.”

“It is . . . mostly.”

Mostly. Vicki smiled. “If I had a job with good money in these times, I guess I'd be willing to ignore things that don't quite fit, too.”

“Hey, I take care of the patients, and I do what I do very well.” She straighted and folded her arms across the broad shelf of her breasts. “What goes on in the back is none of my business.”

“Of course it isn't. Forget you ever saw us.”

Lips pressed into a thin, disapproving line. “You got that right.”

“Mike's in here.”

A sign on the door said Electrical Room.

“Are you sure?”

Vicki ignored him, rummaging in the depths of her shoulderbag for her lock picks.

“I can feel a number of lives, Vicki; up, down, all around us. Most of them are drugged, all of them have been blended by their condition into one amorphous mass. How can you be sure one of those lives belongs to Michael Celluci?”

She dropped to her knees and inserted her two heaviest picks. “I'm a lot closer to his life than you are.”

“And you want to find him very badly. I shouldn't be the one reminding you of this, but we don't know for certain he came out here. We don't know what the nurse thinks goes on in the back.”

“And we won't find out unless we take a look.” The door opened onto another short hall. One door led to the electrical room.

The other led to a room like most other hospital rooms except for the cinder block walls and the small, high window. Vicki stood in the doorway, staring at the body on the bed, feeling curiously light-headed as all the pieces of her world clicked back into place.

His face was bruised. Blood had dried in the corner of his mouth. The skin had split across the knuckles of his right hand. His heart beat to a rhythm not quite the rhythm she knew. He smelled of drugs and there were leather restraints holding him to the bed.

She wanted to rip him free, gather him into her arms, and carry him to safety, but they were in no immediate danger so, for his sake, she'd find out what they'd done to him first. Slowly, deliberately, she crossed to the bed and unbuckled the restrains. Later, she'd give in to the violence. Later, someone would pay.

“Mike?”

A quick inspection, hands stroking patterns on flesh as familiar as her own, determined nothing obvious had been removed.

“Mike, come on. Snap out of it.”

His pulse was strong. She traced the line of his jaw, her finger rasping against dark stubble.

Henry watched from the doorway, knowing he'd been forgotten, marveling at how much it hurt. Territorial imperatives, attacks, counterattacks, edged civility, barely maintained control, all disappeared under memories of loving her. At the moment he hated Michael Celluci more than he'd ever hated anyone in his life.

But the moment passed.

Celluci would never have the ultimate intimacy that he and Vicki had shared—her life recreated in his arms, her blood to him, his blood to her. Everything after that . . .

He smiled, unable to stop himself. Everything after was a breaking of traditions he'd held unbreakable, a slaughter-induced passion, a blood-soaked truce, and something that had a chance of becoming a reclaimed friendship in spite of the odds.

He couldn't hate Celluci when he'd gotten back more of Vicki than should have been possible.

“It smells like a sedative. Try and wake him.”

Vicki jerked toward the door, moving to put herself between the threat and the body on the bed. It took her a moment to realize it was Henry who'd spoken and a moment after that to remember, in this instant at least, he was no threat. “A sedative? How can you tell?”

“Experience.”

“I really don't want to know how you got that experience, Henry.” She turned back to Celluci, tugged off one running shoe, grabbed the softer flesh in the arch of his foot between thumb and forefinger, and pinched.

His leg twitched.

“What are you doing?”

“It's an acupressure technique. I'm working a pressure point in his foot that'll help him shake off the drugs.”

“How . . .?”

“I don't know how!” she snapped. “An old staff sergeant showed it to me. We used to use it on barbituate ODs; if it didn't work, they were probably dead. Come on, Mike. Shake it off.” She pinched him again.

This time he grunted and tried to yank his foot away. By the time his eyes fluttered open, Vicki had both hands clasped around his face. He blinked Wearily up at her, then the lids began to sink and the irises to roll up.

“Michael Frances Celluci, don't you dare close your eyes while I'm talking to you.”

“Christ, Vicki . . . you sound like . . . my grandmother.”

“Do I?” His lips were dry, so she moistened them with her tongue, licking the blood from the corner of his mouth.

“That wasn't . . . a challenge,” he pointed out when she pulled away. His gaze flicked past her. “Where am . . . oh, shit.”

“I wanted to make sure there were no broken bones before we moved you.”

“Considerate.” Then he frowned. “We?” He turned his head until he could see Henry, still in the doorway. “What is this . . . truce?”

The two men locked eyes for an instant, then Henry said softly, “The van disappeared with you. Someone had to drive.”

“You could've let her borrow . . . your car.”

“I don't think so. The last time she borrowed my car, she got broadsided by a truck.”

“Yeah . . . but the werewolf was . . . driving.”

“Enough with the male bonding. It's a truce. Okay?” Vicki gently pulled Mike's jaw around until he faced her again. “And since the nice people who cut out kidneys are sure to come back, are you all right? Can we move you?”

“No.”

“No? No, what?”

“No, you can't move me.”

“What's wrong? What have they done?” Her voice promised an eye for an eye at the very least.

“So far, only kidnapping.” His thoughts were clearing, but his body remained weak. He tried to sit up and didn't have the energy to protest when Vicki lifted him, tucked a pillow between his shoulders and the wall, and lowered him gently back down again. “You've got to leave me here.” He struggled to find the words that would convince Vicki to do as he said—never an easy proposition even at full mental strength. “You take me out of here and we're never going to find out what's going on.”