Blood Bank

by Tanya Huff

  "What's your name?"

  "Ph... Phil."

  She caught his gaze with hers and held it. "You saw something last night."

  "Yes." Stretched almost to the breaking point, he began to tremble.

  "Do you live around here?"

  "Yes."

  Vicki stood and pulled him to his feet, her tone half command half caress. "Take me there. We have to talk."

  Phil stared at her. "Talk?"

  She could barely hear the question over the call of his blood. "Well, talk first."

  *

  "It was a woman. Dressed all in black. Hair like a thousand strands of shadow, skin like snow, eyes like black ice. She chuckled, deep in her throat, when she saw me and licked her lips. They were painfully red. Then she vanished, so quickly that she left an image on the night."

  "Did you see what she was doing?"

  "No. But then, she didn't have to be doing anything to be terrifying. I've spent the last twenty-four hours feeling like I met my death."

  Phil had turned out to be a bit of a poet. And a bit of an athlete. All in all, Vicki considered their time together well spent. Working carefully after he fell asleep, she took away his memory of her and muted the meeting in the alley. It was the least she could do for him.

  Description sounds like someone escaped from a Hammer film: The Bride of Dracula Kills a Pimp.

  She paused, key in the lock, and cocked her head. Celluci was home, she could feel his life and if she listened very hard, she could hear the regular rhythm of breathing that told her he was asleep. Hardly surprising as it was only three hours to dawn.

  There was no reason to wake him as she had no intention of sharing what she'd discovered and no need to feed but, after a long, hot shower, she found herself standing at the door of his room. And then at the side of his bed.

  Mike Celluci was thirty-seven. There were strands of grey in his hair and although sleep had smoothed out many of the lines, the deeper creases around his eyes remained. He would grow older. In time, he would die. What would she do then?

  She lifted the sheet and tucked herself up close to his side. He sighed and without completely waking scooped her closer still.

  "Hair's wet," he muttered.

  Vicki twisted, reached up, and brushed the long curl back off his forehead. "I had a shower."

  "Where'd you leave the towel?"

  "In a sopping pile on the floor."

  Celluci grunted inarticulately and surrendered to sleep again.

  Vicki smiled and kissed his eyelids. "I love you too."

  She stayed beside him until the threat of sunrise drove her away.

  *

  "Irene Macdonald."

  Vicki lay in the darkness and stared unseeing up at the plywood. The sun was down and she was free to leave her sanctuary but she remained a moment longer, turning over the name that had been on her tongue when she woke. She remembered facetiously wondering if the deaths of Irene Macdonald and her pimp were connected.

  Irene had been found beaten nearly to death in the bathroom of her apartment. She'd died two hours later in the hospital.

  Celluci said that he was personally certain Mac Eisler was responsible. That was good enough for Vicki.

  Eisler could've been unlucky enough to run into a vampire who fed on terror as well as blood—Vicki had tasted terror once or twice during her first year when the Hunger occasionally slipped from her control and she knew how addictive it could be—or he could've been killed in revenge for Irene.

  Vicki could think of one sure way to find out.

  *

  "Brandon? It's Vicki Nelson."

  "Victoria?" Surprise lifted most of the Oxford accent off Dr. Brandon Singh's voice. "I thought you'd relocated to British Columbia."

  "Yeah, well, I came back."

  "I suppose that might account for the improvement over the last month or so in a certain detective we both know."

  She couldn't resist asking. "Was he really bad while I was gone?"

  Brandon laughed. "He was unbearable and, as you know, I am able to bear a great deal. So, are you still in the same line of work?"

  "Yes, I am." Yes, she was. God, it felt good. "Are you still the Assistant Coroner?"

  "Yes, I am. As I think I can safely assume you didn't call me, at home, long after office hours, just to inform me that you're back on the job, what do you want?"

  Vicki winced. "I was wondering if you'd had a look at Mac Eisler."

  "Yes, Victoria, I have. And I'm wondering why you can't call me during regular business hours. You must know how much I enjoy discussing autopsies in front of my children."

  "Oh God, I'm sorry Brandon, but it's important."

  "Yes. It always is." His tone was so dry it crumbled. "But since you've already interrupted my evening, try to keep my part of the conversation to a simple yes or no."

  "Did you do a blood volume check on Eisler?"

  "Yes."

  "Was there any missing?"

  "No. Fortunately, in spite of the trauma to the neck the integrity of the blood vessels had not been breached."

  So much for yes or no; she knew he couldn't keep to it. "You've been a big help, Brandon, thanks."

  "I'd say any time, but you'd likely hold me to it." He hung up abruptly.

  Vicki replaced the receiver and frowned. She—the other—hadn't fed. The odds moved in favor of Eisler killed because he murdered Irene.

  *

  "Well, if it isn't Andrew P." Vicki leaned back against the black Trans Am and adjusted the pair of nonprescription glasses she'd picked up just after sunset. With her hair brushed off her face and the window-glass lenses in front of her eyes, she didn't look much different than she had a year ago. Until she smiled.

  The pimp stopped dead in his tracks, bluster fading before he could get the first obscenity out. He swallowed, audibly. "Nelson. I heard you were gone."

  Listening to his heart race, Vicki's smile broadened. "I came back. I need some information. I need the name of one of Eisler's other girls."

  "I don't know." Unable to look away, he started to shake. "I didn't have anything to do with him. I don't remember."

  Vicki straightened and took a slow step towards him. "Try, Andrew."

  There was a sudden smell of urine and a darkening stain down the front of the pimp's cotton drawstring pants. "Uh, D... D... Debbie Ho. That's all I can remember. Really."

  "And she works?"

  "Middle of the track." His tongue tripped over the words in the rush to spit them at her. "Jarvis and Carlton."

  "Thank you." Sweeping a hand towards his car, Vicki stepped aside.

  He dove past her and into the driver's seat, jabbing the key into the ignition. The powerful engine roared to life and with one last panicked look into the shadows, he screamed out of the driveway, ground his way through three gear changes, and hit eighty before he reached the corner.

  The two cops, quietly sitting in the parking lot of the donut shop on that same corner, hit their siren and took off after him.

  Vicki slipped the glasses into the inner pocket of the tweed jacket she'd borrowed from Celluci's closet and grinned. "To paraphrase a certain adolescent crime-fighting amphibian, I love being a vampire."

  *

  "I need to talk to you, Debbie."

  The young woman started and whirled around, glaring suspiciously at Vicki. "You a cop?"

  Vicki sighed. "Not any more." Apparently, it was easier to hide the vampire than the detective. "I'm a private investigator and I want to ask you some questions about Irene Macdonald."

  "If you're looking for the shithead who killed her, you're too late. Someone already found him."

  "And that's who I'm looking for."

  "Why?" Debbie shifted her weight to one hip.

  "Maybe I want to give them a medal."

  The hooker's laugh held little humor. "You got that right. Mac got everything he deserved."

  "Did Irene ever do women?"

  Debbie snorted. "
Not for free," she said pointedly.

  Vicki handed her a twenty.

  "Yeah, sometimes. It's safer, medically, you know?"

  Editing out Phil's more ornate phrases, Vicki repeated his description of the woman in the alley.

  Debbie snorted again. "Who the hell looks at their faces?"

  "You'd remember this one if you saw her. She's..." Vicki weighed and discarded several possibilities and finally settled on, ". . . powerful."

  "Powerful." Debbie hesitated, frowned, and continued in a rush. "There was this person Irene was seeing a lot but she wasn't charging. That's one of the things that set Mac off, not that the shithead needed much encouragement. We knew it was gonna happen, I mean we've all felt Mac's temper, but Irene wouldn't stop. She said that just being with this person was a high better than drugs. I guess it could've been a woman. And since she was sort of the reason Irene died, well, I know they used to meet in this bar on Queen West. Why are you hissing?"

  "Hissing?" Vicki quickly yanked a mask of composure down over her rage. The other hadn't come into her territory only to kill Eisler—she was definitely hunting it. "I'm not hissing. I'm just having a little trouble breathing."

  "Yeah, tell me about it." Debbie waved a hand ending in three-inch scarlet nails at the traffic on Jarvis. "You should try standing here sucking carbon monoxide all night."

  In another mood, Vicki might have reapplied the verb to a different object but she was still too angry. "Do you know which bar?"

  "What, now I'm her social director? No, I don't know which bar." Apparently they'd come to the end of the information twenty dollars could buy as Debbie turned her attention to a prospective client in a grey sedan. The interview was clearly over.

  Vicki sucked the humid air past her teeth. There weren't that many bars on Queen West. Last night she'd found Phil in one. Tonight; who knew.

  *

  Now that she knew enough to search for it, minute traces of the other predator hung in the air—diffused and scattered by the paths of prey. With so many lives masking the trail, it would be impossible to track her. Vicki snarled. A pair of teenagers, noses pierced, heads shaved, and Doc Martens laced to the knee, decided against asking for change and hastily crossed the street.

  It was Saturday night, minutes to Sunday. The bars would be closing soon. If the other was hunting, she would have already chosen her prey.

  I wish Henry had called back. Maybe over the centuries they've—we've—evolved ways to deal with this. Maybe we're supposed to talk first. Maybe it's considered bad manners to rip her face off and feed it to her if she doesn't agree to leave.

  Standing in the shadow of a recessed storefront, just beyond the edge of the artificial safety the streetlight offered to the children of the sun, she extended her senses the way she'd been taught and touched death within the maelstrom of life.

  She found Phil, moments later, lying in yet another of the alleys that serviced the business of the day and provided a safe haven for the darker business of the night. His body was still warm but his heart had stopped beating and his blood no longer sang. Vicki touched the tiny, nearly closed wound she'd made in his wrist the night before and then the fresh wound in the bend of his elbow. She didn't know how he had died but she knew who had done it. He stank of the other.

  Vicki no longer cared what was traditionally "done" in these instances. There would be no talking. No negotiating. It had gone one life beyond that.

  "I rather thought that if I killed him you'd come and save me the trouble of tracking you down. And here you are, charging in without taking the slightest of precautions." Her voice was low, not so much threatening as in itself a threat. "You're hunting in my territory, child."

  Still kneeling by Phil's side, Vicki lifted her head. Ten feet away, only her face and hands clearly visible, the other vampire stood. Without thinking—unable to think clearly through the red rage that shrieked for release—Vicki launched herself at the snow-white column of throat, finger hooked to talons, teeth bared.

  The Beast Henry had spent a year teaching her to control, was loose. She felt herself lost in its raw power and she reveled in it.

  The other made no move until the last possible second then she lithely twisted and slammed Vicki to one side.

  Pain eventually brought reason back. Vicki lay panting in the fetid damp at the base of a dumpster, one eye swollen shut, a gash across her forehead still sluggishly bleeding. Her right arm was broken.

  "You're strong," the other told her, a contemptuous gaze pinning her to the ground. "In another hundred years you might have stood a chance. But you're an infant. A child. You haven't the experience to control what you are. This will be your only warning. Get out of my territory. If we meet again, I will kill you."

  *

  Vicki sagged against the inside of the door and tried to lift her arm. During the two and a half hours it had taken her to get back to Celluci's house, the bone had begun to set. By tomorrow night, provided she fed in the hours remaining until dawn, she should be able use it.

  "Vicki?"

  She started. Although she'd known he was home, she'd assumed—without checking—that because of the hour he'd be asleep. She squinted as the hall light came on and wondered, listening to him pad down the stairs in bare feet, whether she had the energy to make it into the basement bathroom before he saw her.

  He came into the kitchen, tying his bathrobe belt around him, and flicked on the overhead light. "We need to talk," he said grimly as the shadows that might have hidden her fled. "Jesus H. Christ. What the hell happened to you?"

  "Nothing much." Eyes squinted nearly shut, Vicki gingerly probed the swelling on her forehead. "You should see the other guy."

  Without speaking, Celluci reached over and hit the play button on the telephone answering machine.

  "Vicki? Henry. If someone's hunting your territory, whatever you do, don't challenge. Do you hear me? Don't challenge. You can't win. They're going to be older, able to overcome the instinctive rage and remain in full command of their power. If you won't surrender the territory..." The sigh the tape played back gave a clear opinion of how likely he thought that was to occur. ". . . you're going to have to negotiate. If you can agree on boundaries there's no reason why you can't share the city." His voice suddenly belonged again to the lover she'd lost with the change. "Call me, please, before you do anything."

  It was the only message on the tape.

  "Why," Celluci asked as it rewound, his gaze taking in the cuts and the bruising and the filth, "do I get the impression that it's 'the other guy' Fitzroy's talking about?"

  Vicki tried to shrug. Her shoulders refused to cooperate. "It's my city, Mike. It always has been. I'm going to take it back."

  He stared at her for a long moment then he shook his head. "You heard what Henry said. You can't win. You haven't been... what you are, long enough. It's only been fourteen months."

  "I know." The rich scent of his life prodded the Hunger and she moved to put a little distance between them.

  He closed it up again. "Come on." Laying his hand in the center of her back, he steered her towards the stairs. Put it aside for now, his tone told her. We'll argue about it later. "You need a bath."

  "I need..."

  "I know. But you need a bath first. I just changed the sheets."

  *

  The darkness wakes us all in different ways, Henry had told her. We were all human once and we carried our differences through the change.

  For Vicki, it was like the flicking of a switch; one moment she wasn't, the next she was. This time, when she returned from the little death of the day, an idea returned with her.

  Four hundred and fifty-odd years a vampire, Henry had been seventeen when he changed. The other had walked the night for perhaps as long—her gaze had carried the weight of several lifetimes—but her physical appearance suggested that her mortal life had lasted even less time than Henry's had. Vicki allowed that it made sense. Disaster may have precipitated her change but
passion was the usual cause.

  And no one does that kind of never-say-die passion like a teenager.

  It would be difficult for either Henry or the other to imagine a response that came out of a mortal not a vampiric experience. They'd both had centuries of the latter and not enough of the former to count. Vicki had been only fourteen months a vampire but she'd been human thirty-two years when Henry'd saved her by drawing her to his blood to feed. During those thirty-two years, she'd been nine years a cop—two accelerated promotions, three citations, and the best arrest record on the force.

  There was no chance of negotiation.

  She couldn't win if she fought.

  She'd be damned if she'd flee.

  "Besides..." For all she realized where her strength had to lie, Vicki's expression held no humanity. "...she owes me for Phil."

  *

  Celluci had left her a note on the fridge.

  Does this have anything to do with Mac Eisler?

  Vicki stared at it for a moment then scribbled her answer underneath.

  Not anymore.

  It took three weeks to find where the other spent her days. Vicki used old contacts where she could and made new ones where she had to. Any modern Van Helsing could have done the same.

  For the next three weeks, Vicki hired someone to watch the other come and go, giving reinforced instructions to stay in the car with the windows closed and the air conditioning running. Life had an infinite number of variations but one piece of machinery smelled pretty much like any other. It irritated her that she couldn't sit stakeout herself but the information she needed would've kept her out after sunrise.

  *

  "How the hell did you burn your hand?"

  Vicki continued to smear ointment over the blister. Unlike the injuries she'd taken in the alley, this would heal slowly and painfully. "Accident in a tanning salon."

  "That's not funny."

  She picked the roll of gauze up off the counter. "You're losing your sense of humor, Mike."

  Celluci snorted and handed her the scissors. "I never had one."

  *

  "Mike, I wanted to warn you, I won't be back by sunrise."

  Celluci turned slowly, the TV dinner he'd just taken from the microwave held in both hands. "What do you mean?"