by Tanya Huff
Vicki waited until the hymn ended, then tapped the minister on the shoulder and asked if she could have a quiet word. She used only enough power to get the information she wanted—when he assumed she was with the police, she encouraged him to think it.
The communion wafers had been kept in a locked cupboard in the church office. Time and use had erased any scent Vicki might have recognized.
"No, nothing else," the minister said confidently when she asked if anything else had been taken.
"What about holy water?"
He glanced up at her in some surprise. "Funny you should mention that." Relocking the cupboard, he led the way out of the office. "We had a baptism on Thursday evening—three families, two babies and an adult—or I might never have noticed. When I took the lid off the font, just before the service, the water level was lower than it should have been—I knew because I'd been the one to fill it, you see—and I found a cuff button caught on the lip." Opening the door to his own office, he crossed to the desk. "It's a heavy lid and anyone trying to scoop the water out, for heaven only knows what reason, would have to hold it up one-handed. Easy enough to get your shirt caught, I imagine. Ah, here it is."
Plucking a white button out of an empty ashtray, he turned and dropped it in Vicki's palm. "The sad thing is, you know, this probably makes the thief one of ours."
"Why?"
"Well, the Catholics keep holy water by the door; it's a whole lot easier to get to. If he went to all this trouble, he was probably on familiar ground. Will that button help you catch him, do you think?"
Vicki smiled, forgetting for a moment the effect it was likely to have. "Oh, yes, I think it will."
*
She had the cab wait out front while she ran into her apartment for the pair of lists, then had it drop her off in front of Madame Luminitsa's.
Which was closed.
Fortunately, there were lights on upstairs and there could be no mistaking the unique signature of the fortune teller's life. Fully aware she was not likely to be welcomed with open arms and not really caring, Vicki went around back.
She'd never seen so many large cars in so many states of disrepair as were parked in the alley that theoretically provided delivery access for the stores. Squeezing between an old blue delivery van and a cream-colored caddy, she stood at the door and listened: eight heartbeats, upstairs and down, three of them children, one of them the woman she was looking for. There were a number of ways she could gain an audience—Stoker had been wrong about that, she no more needed to be invited in than an encyclopedia salesman—but, deciding it might be best to cause the least amount of offense, she merely knocked on the door.
The man who opened it was large. Not tall exactly, nor exactly fat—large. A drooping mustache, almost too black to be real, covered his upper lip and he stroked it with the little finger of his right hand as he looked her up and down, waiting for her to speak.
"I'm looking for Madame Luminitsa," Vicki told him, masks carefully in place. "It's very important."
"Madame Luminitsa is not available. The shop is closed."
She could feel the Hunger beginning to rise, remembered she'd intended to feed and hadn't. "I saw her last night; she sent for me."
"Ah. You." His expression became frankly speculative, and Vicki wondered just how much Madame Luminitsa had told her family. Without turning his head, he raised his voice. "One of you, fetch your grandmother."
Vicki heard a chair pushed out and the sound of small feet running up a flight of stairs. "Thank you."
He shrugged. "She may not come. In the meantime, do you own a car?"
"Uh, no."
"Then I can sell you one of these." An expansive gesture and a broad smile reserved for prospective customers indicated the vehicles crowding the alley. "You won't find a better price in all of Toronto, and I will personally vouch for the quality of each and every one." A huge hand reached out and slapped the hood of the blue van. "Brand new engine, eight cylinders, more power than..."
"Look, I'm not interested." Not unless that tall, dark stranger gave her a chance to run him over.
"Later then, after the cards have been played out."
A small, familiar hand covered in rings reached out into the doorway and shoved the big man aside. He glanced down at the woman Vicki knew as Madame Luminitsa and hurriedly stepped back into the building, closing the door behind him.
"You haven't stopped him," the fortune teller said bluntly.
"Give me a break," Vicki snorted. "I have to find him first. And I think you can help me with that."
"The cards..."
"Not the cards." She pulled the lists from her shoulder bag and fished the button out of a pocket. "This was his. If his name's here, shouldn't it help you find him?"
The dark brows rose. "You watch too much television, Nightwalker." But she took the pile of fanfold and the button. "Has he made his first attempt?"
"Yeah. He has."
"Then there's a need to hurry."
"No shit, Sherlock," Vicki muttered as the fortune teller slipped back inside.
She acted as though she hadn't heard, declaring imperiously as the door closed, "I'll let you know what I find."
*
The door was unlocked, but since Vicki could hear Celluci's heartbeat inside her apartment, she wasn't concerned. She was surprised to hear another life besides his, both hearts beating hard and fast. They'd obviously been arguing; not an unusual occurrence around the detective.
He'd probably pulled a late duty and, when she hadn't answered his calls, had thought she was in trouble and brought his partner in with him for backup, just in case. It wasn't hard for Vicki to follow his logic. If they were too late to save her, explanations wouldn't matter. If they were in time, she could easily clear up the confusion he'd caused poor Detective- Sergeant Graham.
Stepping into the apartment, she froze just over the threshold, eyes widening in disbelief. "You've got to be kidding."
"Snuck up on me in the parking lot," Celluci growled, glaring up at the man holding his own gun to his head. "Shoved a pad of chloroform under my nose and jabbed me with a pin so I'd inhale." Muscles strained as he fought to free his hands from the frame of the chair. "Used my own goddamed handcuffs, too."
"Shut up! Both of you!" He was probably in his midforties, with short black hair and a beard lightly dusted with gray, tall enough from the fortune teller's point of view. White showed all around the brown eyes locked on Vicki's face. His free hand pointed toward the door, trembling slightly with the effect of strong emotions. "Close it."
Without turning, she pushed it shut, gently so that the latch didn't quite catch; then she let the Hunger rise. He'd made a big mistake not attacking her in the day when she was vulnerable. Her eyes grew paler than his, and her voice went past command to compulsion. "Let him go."
Celluci shuddered, but the man with the gun only laughed shrilly. "You have no power over me! You never have! You never will!" He met her gaze and, even through the Hunger, she saw that he was right. Like the woman she'd used to gain access to Queen Street, he had no levels of darkness or desire she could touch. Everything inside his head had been locked tightly away, and she didn't have the key. She couldn't command him, so in spite of Madame Luminitsa's belief that she couldn't reason with him, she reined in the Hunger and let the silver fade from her eyes.
"Let him go," she said again. "You have me."
"But I can't keep you without him." The muzzle of the gun dug a circle into Celluci's cheek. "You can't leave, or I'll blow his freakin' head off."
She'd forgotten that she had another vulnerability besides the day. "If you kill him, I'll rip your living heart out of your chest, and I'll make you eat it while you..."
"Vicki."
He laughed again as Celluci protested. "You can't get to me, before I can pull the trigger. As long as I have him, I have you."
"So we have a standoff," she said. The silver rose unbidden to her eyes. "Do you think you can out- wait
me?"
His teeth flashed in the shadow of his beard. "I know I can. I only have to wait until dawn."
And he would, too. It was the one certainty Vicki could read in his eyes. She took an involuntary step forward.
He lifted a bright green water pistol. "Hold it right there, or I'll shoot."
"I don't think so." She took another step.
The holy water hit her full in the face. He was a good shot, she had to give him that—although under the circumstances, there wasn't much chance of him missing the target that mattered. Wiping the water from her eyes, she growled, "If this is how you plan to kill me, there's a flaw in the plan."
Appalled that the water hadn't had its intended effect, he recovered quickly. Throwing the plastic pistol onto the sofa, he reached down beside him and brought up a rough-hewn wooden stake. "The water was only intended to slow you down. This is what I'll kill you with."
Celluci cursed and began to struggle again.
The man with the gun ignored him, merely keeping the muzzle pressed tight into his face.
Vicki had no idea of how much damage she could take and survive but a stake through the heart had to count as a mortal wound, especially since he seemed to be the type to finish the job with a beheading and a mouthful of garlic. "What happens after I'm dead?"
"After?" He looked confused. "Then you'll be dead. And it'll be over." He checked his watch. "Less than five hours."
Desperately trying to remember everything she'd ever learned about defusing a hostage situation, Vicki took a deep breath and spread her arms, trying to appear as nonthreatening as possible. "Since we're going to be together for those five hours," she said quietly, forcing her lips down over her teeth, "why don't you explain why you've decided to kill me? I've never hurt you."
"You don't remember me, do you?"
"Not remember as such, no." She could tell that she'd fed from him and how long ago, but that was all.
"Do you spread your evil over so many?"
"What evil?" Vicki asked, trying to keep her tone level. It wasn't easy when all she could think of was rushing forward and ripping the hand holding the gun right off the end of his arm.
"You are evil by existing!" Tears glimmered against his lower lids and spilled over to vanish in his beard. "You mock their deaths by not dying."
"The Three of Swords sets an atmosphere of loss."
"Whose deaths?"
"My Angela, my Sandi."
Vicki exchanged a puzzled look with Celluci. "Whoever they are, I'm sorry for your loss, but I didn't kill them."
"Of course you didn't kill them." He had to swallow sobs before he could go on. In spite of his anguish, the hand holding the gun never wavered. "It was a car accident. They died and were buried, and now the worms devour their flesh. But you!" His voice rose to a shriek. "You live on, mocking their death with infinity. You will never die." Drawing in a long shuddering breath, he checked his watch again. "God sent you to me and gave me the power to resist you, so I could kill you and set things right."
"God doesn't work that way," Celluci objected.
His smile was almost beatific. "Mine does."
Uncertain of where to go next, Vicki was astonished to hear footsteps stop outside her door. A soft touch eased it open just enough for a breath to pass through.
"Nightwalker, his name is James Wause."
Then the footsteps went away again.
There was power in a name. Power enough to reach through the madness? Vicki didn't know, but it was their only chance. She let the Hunger rise again, this time let it push away the masks of civilization, and when she spoke, her voice had all the primal cadences of a storm.
"James Wause."
He jerked and shook his head. "No."
She caught his gaze with hers, saw the silver reflected in the dilated pupils as his madness kept her out, then saw it abruptly vanish as she called his name again, and it gave her the key to the locked places inside. The cards had said she couldn't reason with him, so she stopped trying. She called his name a third and final time. When he crumpled forward, she caught him. When he lifted his chin, she brought her teeth down to his throat.
"Vicki."
There was power in a name.
But his blood throbbed warm and red beneath his skin, and sobbing in a combination of sorrow and ecstasy, he was begging her to take him.
"Vicki, no."
More importantly, he had threatened one of hers.
"Vicki! Hey!" Celluci head-butted her in the elbow, about all the contact the handcuffs allowed. "Stop it! Now."
There was also power in the sheer pigheaded unwillingness that refused to allow her to lose the humanity she had remaining. Forcing the Hunger back under fingertip control, she dropped the man she held and turned to the one beside her. The cards hadn't counted on Detective-Sergeant Michael Celluci.
Ignoring the Hunger still in her expression, he snorted. "Nice you remembered I'm here. Now do you think you could do something about the nine millimeter automatic—with, I'd like to add, the safety off— that Mr. Wause dropped into my lap?"
*
Later, after Celluci had been released and James Wause laid out on the sofa, put to sleep by a surprisingly gentle command, Vicki leaned against the loft support and tried not think of how close it had all come to ending.
When Celluci picked up the phone, she reached out and closed her hand around his wrist. "What are you doing?"
He looked at her, sighed, and set the receiver back in its cfadle. "No police, right?"
"Would the courts understand what I am any better than he did?" She nodded toward Wause who stirred in his sleep as though aware of her regard.
Celluci sighed again and gathered her into the circle of his arms. "All right," he said, resting his cheek against her hair. "What do we do with him?"
"I've got an idea."
*
This time the back door was locked, but Vicki quickly picked the lock, slung James Wause over her shoulder, and carried him into the church. Celluci had wanted to come, but she'd made him wait in the car.
Laying him out in a front pew, she tucked the box of unused communion wafers under his hands and stepped back. His confession would be short a few details— this time she'd successfully removed all memory of her existence from his mind—but she hoped she'd opened the way for him to get the help he needed to cope with his grief.
"The vampire as therapist," she sighed. She nodded toward the altar as she passed. "If he's one of yours, you deal with him."
*
It didn't surprise her to see the beat-up old Camaro out in the church parking lot when she emerged. Lifting a hand to let Celluci know he should stay where he was, she walked over to the passenger side door.
"Did the cards tell you I'd be here?"
Madame Luminitsa nodded toward the church. "You gave him to God?"
"Seems like it."
"Alive."
"Didn't the cards say?"
"The cards weren't sure."
On the other side of the car, the grandson snorted.
Both women ignored him.
"Did the cards tell you where I lived?" Vicki asked.
"If they did, are you complaining?"
Without his name, she'd have never stopped him. "No. I guess I'm not."
"Good. You've less blood on your hands than I feared," the fortune teller murmured, taking Vicki's hands in hers and turning them. "Someday, I'll have to read your palms."
Vicki glanced over at Celluci, who was making it plain he wasn't going to wait patiently much longer. "I'll bet I have a really long life line."
An ebony brow rose as, across the parking lot, the car door opened. "How much?"
The Vengeful Spirit of Lake Nepeakea
*
"Camping?"
"Why sound so amazed?" Dragging the old turquoise cooler behind her, Vicki Nelson, once one of Toronto's finest and currently the city's most successful paranormal investigator, backed out of Mike Celluci's crawl
space.
"Why? Maybe because you've never been camping in your life. Maybe because your idea of roughing it is a hotel without room service. Maybe" — he moved just far enough for Vicki to get by then followed her out into the rec room — "because you're a…"
"A?" Setting the cooler down beside two sleeping bags and a pair of ancient swim fins, she turned to face him. "A what, Mike?" Grey eyes silvered.
"Stop it."
Grinning, she turned her attention back to the cooler. "Besides, I won't be on vacation, I'll be working. You'll be the one enjoying the great outdoors."
"Vicki, my idea of the great outdoors is going to the Sky dome for a Jays game."
"No one's forcing you to come." Setting the lid to one side, she curled her nose at the smell coming out of the cooler's depths. "When was the last time you used this thing?"
"Police picnic, 1992. Why?"
She turned it up on its end. The desiccated body of a mouse rolled out, bounced twice and came to rest with its sightless little eyes staring up at Celluci. "I think you need to buy a new cooler."
"I think I need a better explanation than 'I've got a great way for you to use up your long weekend,'" he sighed, kicking the tiny corpse under the rec room couch.
*
"So this developer from Toronto, Stuart Gordon, bought an old lodge on the shores of Lake Nepeakea and he wants to build a rustic, time-share resort so junior executives can relax in the woods. Unfortunately, one of the surveyors disappeared and local opinion seems to be that he's pissed off the lake's protective spirit—"
"The what?"
Vicki pulled out to pass a transport and deftly reinserted the van back into her own lane before replying. "The protective spirit. You know, the sort of thing that rises out of the lake to vanquish evil." A quick glance towards the passenger seat brought her brows in. "Mike, are you all right? You're going to leave permanent finger marks in the dashboard."
He shook his head. The truck-load of logs coming down from Northern Ontario had missed them by inches. Feet at the very most. All right, maybe yards but not very many of them. When they'd left the city, just after sunset, it had seemed logical that Vicki, with her better night sight, should drive. He was regretting that logic now but, realizing he didn't have a hope in hell of gaining control of the vehicle, he tried to force himself to relax. "The speed limit isn't just a good idea," he growled through clenched teeth, "it's the law."
