Blood Debt (28 page)

They heard the life approaching the office in the same instant. Leather soles slapped against tile, coming closer, cutting off their escape.

“What about heaving the desk through the window?”

Henry shook his head. “It'd attract too much attention. They'd see us leave and trace the plates, so we'd do it only if we wanted to abandon the car, and we don't.”

The office door opened into the hall. Vicki moved to the right and waved Henry to the left.

Sensitive eyes turned away from the fluorescent glare streaming in from the hall, Vicki grabbed the hand that reached in for the light switch and yanked the stranger into the room.

Henry closed the door.

Dr. Wallace believed there was very little he hadn't seen. He'd joined the Navy at seventeen, gone to Korea, came home in one piece unlike so many others, gone to university on his military benefits, spent time in Africa with the flying doctors, and finally settled into a comfortable family practice in North Vancouver. He'd seen death arrive without warning, and he'd seen death settle in for a long, intimate final journey, but he'd never seen it wear the face that bent over him in Dr. Mui's office.

The diffuse illumination from the parking lot defined only shadow features around a pair of silvered eyes. Cold silver, like polished metal or moonlight, and they drew him in to depths much darker than logic insisted they should have been.

He'd always hoped he'd face death calmly when it finally came for him, but now he realized that given any encouragement at all, he'd do whatever he had to to stay alive.

“What do you know about Ronald Swanson?”

Not what he'd expected. Too mundane, too human.

“Did you hear me?”

No mistaking the danger. “He's rich, very rich, but he's willing to spend money on causes he considers worthy.” Maintaining a clinical detachment, a lecturing tone, helped keep the panic from ripping free. “After his wife died of kidney failure, he began supporting transplant programs. He buys them advertising, pays for educational programs—many doctors haven't a clue of how to deal with the whole donor issue. Swanson paid for this hospice.”

“That's it?”

Impossible not to tell more even if there was nothing more to tell. “I don't actually know him. Dr. Mui . . .”

“What about Dr. Mui?”

Wallace had a sudden vision of companions thrown to the wolves to lighten the sleigh in a wild race to safety. “Swanson handpicked her to run this place. Before that she was a transplant surgeon, a good one, too, but there was an allegation of carelessness. It turned out to be completely unfounded. Hardly anyone even heard about it outside the hospital.”

“Would Swanson have heard?”

“I don't know, but it happened around the same time his wife died.” Had his heartbeat always been that loud? That fast? It shouldn't be that fast. A dribble of sweat rolled into one eye and burned. “It might have been why he offered her this job.”

“An unjust accusation turned her against the medical establishment.”

“I wouldn't go so far as to say that.” He was babbling now; he knew it, but he couldn't stop. “Dr. Mui told me, that is, we spoke after one of my patients came here—that's why I'm here tonight, to check on a patient—that she wanted to work more with people and less with hospital administrators and their legal bully boys. Hello?”

The eyes were gone, the darkness lifted, and he was sitting alone in an empty office, talking to himself. It was over. Best not think too long or too hard on what
it
had been. He was alive. He wiped damp palms on his thighs, stood, and walked quickly to the light switch by the door.

The room was full of shadows. The shadows, in turn, were full. He suspected they'd never be empty again.

“You handled that very well.”

“Don't patronize me, Henry.”

“I wasn't.” He shifted the BMW into reverse and backed carefully out of the parking spot. The last thing he wanted was to attract attention, license plates could be traced. “You gave him nothing to remember but fear. I was impressed.”

“Impressed?”

“Try to remember that you're still very young to this life. You show a remarkable aptitude.”

Vicki snorted. “
Now
you're patronizing me.”

“I was trying to compliment you.”

“Do vampires do that? Compliment other vampires? It's not against the rules?”

Henry turned the car onto Mt. Seymour and sped up, swinging almost immediately into the passing lane and around two trucks in a maneuver a mortal would not have been able to complete. “I know you fight with Michael Celluci to relieve tension,” he growled through clenched teeth. “I understand that. But I'm not him, and if you pick a fight with me, you'll find the results are regrettably different—surely it's become apparent that neither of us will be able to stop a disagreement from escalating beyond mere words.”

“
I
can control
myself
.”

“Vicki!”

“Sorry.” She strained against the limit of the seat belt, one hand on the dash, the other clenching and unclenching in her lap, her eyes locked on the road between the twin blurs of streetlights. “Jesus H. Christ, Henry, can't you go any faster?”

He had a sudden memory of the guilty relief he'd felt when she'd finally returned to Toronto after her year of learning to live a new and alien life. When she left this time, he strongly suspected there'd be no guilt mixed in with the relief.

That is, if they found Michael Celluci alive.

Thirteen

“FUCKING Oakland.”

Through half-closed eyes, Celluci watched Sullivan walk toward the bed.
This is it Now or never.
He'd lined up a few more clichés that seemed appropriate but had no time to voice them before the big man grabbed his shoulder and shook him, hard. He let his head whip back and forth on the pillow, hoping it looked like he didn't have strength enough to fight the motion. As far as acting went, it wasn't much of a stretch. His head felt as though it were connected to his body by a not very thick elastic band.

“I'm gonna unbuckle you, so don't give me any shit 'cause I'm not in the mood. Damn Mariners finished three fucking runs behind and I had fifty fucking bucks ridin' on the game.”

Celluci grunted as a thumb ground between the muscles of his left forearm and into the bone.

“Felt that, did you? Good.”

The leather strap fell away. He flung his arm up off the bed and tried to close his fingers around Sullivan's throat.

A vicious backhand snapped his head back. His mouth filled with blood from lips caught between knuckles and teeth.
Well, you
wanted
him angry
, he reminded himself, trying to swallow without choking.
All part of the pl
 . . . A sudden, agonizing pain in his left wrist cut off the rest of the thought and brought involuntary tears.

“Weren't you listening when I said I wasn't in the mood for this kind of crap?”

The pain painted red starbursts on the inside of Celluci's eyes. He didn't think the wrist was broken, but at the moment, that belief gave him very little actual comfort.
Only the left I won't need the left. Christ, couldn't I have come up with a plan that hurt a little less?
If it had only meant the loss of a kidney, he'd have been tempted to just lie there and let it happen. Preventing loss of life however—his life—had to be worth a bit of discomfort.

As the last restraint fell away, he tried to lunge off the bed. This time, he rocked back with the blow so that Sullivan's hand impacted against his cheek with slightly less force than previously. Slightly.
What was that plan again. Let him beat you senseless, then escape in the confusion?
With any luck, the pounding in his temple was his pulse, not pieces breaking off the inside of his skull.
Oh, good plan
.

The room spun as Sullivan dragged him up onto his feet, muttering, “I should just leave you there to piss yourself.”

Breathing heavily, the dizziness as much from the earlier blood loss as from the double contact with Sullivan's fist, Celluci managed to twist his split lip into a close approximation of a sneer. “You'd have . . . to clean it up, but maybe . . . you'd like that.”

Sullivan blinked mild eyes and smiled. The smile held all the petty cruelty the eyes did not. “Yeah? Well, I'm gonna enjoy this.”

The first punch drove all the air out of Celluci's lungs. He'd have fallen had Sullivan not maintained a grip on his shirt. Seams cut into his armpits as the fabric stretched to its limit and beyond. He took a wild swing while he tried to get his feet back under him but had no success at either.

He didn't feel the second punch connect, only the result. One minute he was more-or-less standing, the next, he was flat on his face on the floor. Which was where he wanted to be. Unfortunately, he'd intended to be just a bit more functional.

“You know what I keep forgetting?”

The words seemed to come from a very long way away.

“That you're a cop.”

Oh, shit.

The sudden flurry of kicks that followed pounded out a rhythm along hip and thigh. They hurt, but nowhere near as much as they would've had Sullivan not been in sneakers or had he been able to reach more delicate targets. Or, for that matter, had the doctor not wanted his kidneys intact. Exaggerating the effect, Celluci tried to rise and fell, only partially faking as he'd forgotten that his left wrist was essentially unusable. Whimpering—and ignoring how good it felt to let some of it out—he squirmed frantically forward on his belly until his shoulder slammed into one leg of the dresser hard enough to rock the heavy furniture.

“Bet that hurt.” Sullivan was breathing as heavily, but not from exertion.

Lying with his right arm stretched out under the dresser, Celluci walked his fingers over the floor. Just when he thought he'd made an unsurvivable mistake, they closed around metal. He didn't have strength to spare for a smile.

“I got the other guys when the doctor was done, but since you're not gonna survive the operation, I'm glad we had this time together.” Sullivan bent over and grabbed the waistband of Celluci's jeans, jerking the heavy cotton up into the air. “Now, get back on your fucking feet.”

Celluci went limp, neither hindering nor helping, conserving his strength. He kept his right arm stretched out, out of sight for as long as possible. The moment his hand cleared the edge of the dresser, he spent all his hoarded strength on one blow, swinging up and around and slamming the length of stainless steel pipe from the fallen IV tower between Sullivan's legs.

The mild eyes widened. Mouth opening and closing like a fish out of water, Sullivan sank slowly to his knees, both hands clutching his crotch.

Hauling himself to his feet on the edge of the bed, Celluci half turned, intending to smash the pipe against the back of Sullivan's head. To his astonishment, the big man got a hand up and intercepted the blow. The pipe spun off across the room.

All things being equal, the two men were about evenly matched but, as it was—as they were—Celluci didn't stand a chance without a weapon and he knew it.

Injured arm cradled tightly against his chest, he staggered out of the bedroom and through the room beyond. As he fought with the outside door, he could hear Sullivan getting to his feet, yelling a mixture of profanity and threat.

Then he managed to lift the latch, and he staggered out into the night.

“Son of a bitch! He's not there.”

Screened from the view of curious neighbors by double rows of cypress, Henry turned off his headlights and sped down the winding drive toward the low rectangle of Swanson's house nestled within its cocoon of security lights. “He could be in bed. We won't know until we're out of the car.”

“He's not there,” Vicki repeated, her voice rising in frustration. She didn't know why she was so certain, but the blank stare of the dark windows said empty—not asleep, not sitting with the lights off; not home. The instant Henry stopped the car, she leaped out onto the concrete, senses extended. “I told you we should have gone to Dr. Mui,” she snarled after a moment.

“We agreed that the doctor is probably with . . .” Half out of the car, Henry paused, head lifted to catch the breeze. “Vicki! Do you . . .” He didn't bother finishing because she was already racing toward the back of the house.

The way Celluci saw it, he had two choices; he could try to outrun Sullivan on unfamiliar paths, hoping to reach a road and witnesses if not safety, or he could dive into the semi-wild growth the paths cut through and hope to lose him in the underbrush. Ten feet from the cottage, swaying like a sailor with every step, he realized he had no hope in hell of outrunning anyone, not even a man with his balls in a sling. Teeth clenched against the protests of his abused body, he pushed into the darkness.

The trees blocked the little moonlight that flittered through the cloud cover—he couldn't see as far as his feet, and higher obstacles like trees and bushes were patterns of shadows on shadow.
Big mistake. I'm no woodsman.
But it was too late to turn back.

A crashing in the shrubbery behind him flung him forward. Since he had to believe Sullivan could see no more than he could, he had to hope that the sound of his escape was drowned out by the sound of pursuit. It was pretty much the only hope he had.

He stumbled over something that poked sharp edges through his sock and into his ankle, caught himself before he fell, and realized that he was moving across a forty-five-degree slope.
Up or down?
Since he had no idea of where he was and no idea of where he was going, down seemed as good a choice as any.
Fuck it. Might as well have gravity work for me
.

A branch end slapped him in the face, hard enough to raise a welt. Thorns he couldn't see snagged his jeans and dragged bleeding scratches across bare arms. The slope got steeper. He began to pick up speed.

He flung out his left arm to block a sudden shadow and nearly cried out when his wrist slammed into the unforgiving trunk of a tree. The pain brought back the dizziness. Shadows whirled. He missed his footing, and the night tilted sideways.

Rocks and trees slammed into him as he passed, hard enough to hurt, never hard enough to stop him. He crashed through some kind of bush—it had no thorns, that was all he either knew or cared about—picked up speed across an open clearing, and slammed into a concrete retaining wall on the far side.

The world went away for a while . . .

“You better not have damaged anything, asshole!”

. . . and came back in a rush.

Celluci drew in a deep breath—moderately relieved to find it didn't hurt as much as he thought it should—and, as the moon broke through the cloud cover, tried to focus on the man squatting beside him. In spite of the poor visibility, Sullivan's bovine features looked scared. “Doctor won't be pleased . . . if I'm not good . . . as a donor. Bet you got kidneys . . . she could use.”

“Shut up. Just shut the fuck up.”

The open-handed blow rocked Celluci's head back, but everything hurt so much he felt the motion more than the actual pain.

“All right. You're goin' back to the fucking cottage and I'm going to tie you down so tightly you're gonna need my permission to fucking breathe.”

“You're going to have to . . . carry me.”

“I'll fucking drag you if I have to.”

“Better not damage . . . the merchandise.” As he finished speaking, he threw himself at Sullivan's feet, trying to knock the big man off balance. With them both on the ground and a little luck . . .

Beefy fingers grabbed the front of his shirt and heaved his torso up off the ground. He saw the fist raised, a club-shaped shadow against the sky, then Sullivan disappeared, and he dropped flat on his back again.

“Are you all right?”

“Fitzroy?” Swallowing a mouthful of blood, Celluci propped himself up on his good arm, Henry's hand steadying him as he swayed.

Vicki had Sullivan on his knees in the middle of the small clearing, one hand dimpling the scalp under the short hair, dragging his head back so far the corded muscles of his throat cast lines of shadow. Her eyes were pale points of light in a face of terrible, inhuman beauty that Celluci almost didn't recognize.

“Vicki?” When she turned her burning gaze on him, he knew what she was about to do, and although the night was warm, he was suddenly very, very cold. “Vicki, no. Don't kill him.”

“Why not?” Her voice had changed to match her face; seductive, irresistible, deadly.

There was no need, not even for emphasis, to shout his reply. She could hear his heart beating, his blood moving under his skin; he only hoped she could understand. “Because I'm asking you not to. Let him go.”

Vicki straightened, the quiet plea reaching her in a way anger or fear would not have been able. She released her captive, ignoring him as he collapsed sobbing to the ground, and took a step toward Celluci. “Let him go,” she repeated, her voice becoming more human with every word. “Are you out of your mind? He is mine!”

“Why?”

“Why? For what he did to you.”

“Wouldn't that make him mine?”

Confusion replaced some of the terrifying beauty.

“Vicki, please. Don't do this.”

“
This is where I draw my line in the sand.
 . . .”

The scent of terror drew her back around to face her prey. Without her hand to hold him, he whimpered when her eyes met his and flung himself backward toward the edge of the clearing.

The Hunger sang the song of the Hunt, of the blood.

It was all she could hear.

She tensed to spring, and it was over.

Henry let Sullivan fall to the ground, head lolling on a broken neck. Calmly, as though he hadn't just killed a man, he met Vicki's gaze across the clearing.

When he nodded, she turned to face Celluci, the Hunger fading now that the terror had stopped and the blood was cooling. She should have felt rage at the theft of her prey by another, but all she felt was grateful. She'd stood on the edge of a precipice and had just barely escaped plunging over. Her fingers curled into fists to stop their sudden trembling.

“Is he dead?”

“Yes.”

Celluci looked from Henry to Vicki and realized he'd received exactly what he'd asked for. Vicki had not done it, Henry had. But he'd seen Henry kill before in a barn outside London, Ontario. He'd known for a long time what Henry was. Vampire. Night-walker. Immortal death. Henry. Not Vicki. He closed his eyes. The lids had barely fallen when a familiar arm went around his shoulders and a familiar voice brushed warm breath against his ear.

“Are you all right?”

He shrugged, as well as he was able all things considered. “I've been better.”

“Do you need a doctor?”

From somewhere, he found half a smile. “No.”

“Then let's get you out of here. Henry's car is at the front of the house.” She hesitated, ready to slide the other arm beneath his legs. “May I?”

“Just don't make a habit of it.” Her lips pressed briefly against his face, then she carefully lifted him into her arms. He kept his eyes closed. Sometimes, love needed a little help being blind.

Swanson sighed as he turned onto Nisga's Drive, thankful to be almost home. The black-tie fund-raiser for the Transplant Society had been a depressing affair, most conversations either beginning or ending with the recent death of Lisa Evans and how much both she and her open checkbook would be missed.