Blood Bank

by Tanya Huff

  "And now to Rajeet Singh with our new product report."

  Jabbing at the remote, Henry cut Rajeet off in the middle of an animated description of a battery- operated cappuccino frother. Plastic cracked as his fingers tightened. A man found with the life sucked out of him. He didn't want to believe....

  *

  As part of an ongoing criminal investigation, the body was at the City Morgue in the basement of Vancouver General Hospital. The previous time Henry'd made an after hours visit, he'd been searching for information to help identify the victim. This time, he needed to identify the murderer.

  He walked silently across the dark room to the drawer labeled TAYLOR JOHNSTON, pulled it open, and flipped back the sheet. LEDs on various pieces of machinery and the exit sign over the door provided more than enough light to see tendons and ligaments standing out in sharp relief under desiccated, parchment-colored skin. Hands and feet looked like claws and the features of the skull had overwhelmed the features of the face. The unnamed constable had made an accurate observation; the body did, indeed, look as if all the life had been sucked out of it.

  Henry snarled softly and closed the drawer.

  "You don't kill anymore, I don't kill anymore . ..."

  He found the dead man's personal effects in a manila envelope in the outer office. A Post-it note suggested that the police should have picked the envelope up by six pm. The watch was an imitation Rolex—but not a cheap one. There were eight keys on his key ring. The genuine cowhide wallet held four high end credit cards, eighty-seven dollars in cash, a picture of a golden retriever, and half a dozen receipts. Three were out of bank machines. Two were store receipts. The sixth was for a credit card transaction.

  Henry had faxed in both his personal ad and his credit information. It looked as though Taylor Johnston had dropped his off in person.

  "Blind dates never turn out the way you expect. Trust me, I've been on a million of them."

  *

  In a city the size of Vancouver, a phone number and a first name provided no identification at all. Had Lilah answered when he called, Henry thought he'd be able to control his anger enough to arrange another meeting but she didn't, and when he found himself snarling at her voice mail, he decided not to leave a message.

  "Although I can quite happily be into the bar scene ..."

  She'd told him she liked jazz. It was a place to start.

  *

  She wasn't at O'Doul's, although one of the waiters recognized her description. From the strength of his reaction, Henry assumed she'd fed—but not killed. Why kill Johnston and yet leave this victim with only pleasant memories? Henry added it to the list of questions he intended to have answered.

  A few moments later, he parked his BMW, illegally, on Abbot Street and walked around the corner to Water Street, heading for The Purple Onion Cabaret. There were very few people on the sidewalks—a couple, closely entwined, a small clump of older teens, and a familiar form just about to enter the club.

  Henry could move quickly when he needed to and he was in no mood for subtlety. He was in front of her before she knew he was behind her.

  An ebony brow rose, but that was the only movement she made. "What brings you here, hon? I seem to recall you saying that jazz made your head ache."

  He snarled softly, not amused.

  The brow lowered, slowly. "Are you Hunting me, Nightwalker? Should I scream? Maybe that nice young man down the block will disentangle himself from his lady long enough to save me."

  Henry's lips drew up off his teeth. "And who will save him as you add another death to your total?"

  Lilah blinked, and the formal cadences left her voice. "What the hell are you talking about?"

  Demons seldom bothered lying; the truth caused more trouble.

  She honestly didn't know what he meant.

  *

  "You actually saw this body?" When Henry nodded, Lilah took a long swallow of mocha latte, carefully put the cup down on its saucer, and said, "Why do you care? I mean, I know why you cared when you thought it was me," she added before he could speak. "You thought I'd lied to you and you didn't like feeling dicked around. I can understand that. But it's not me. So why do you care?"

  Henry let the final mask fall, the one he maintained even for the succubus. "Someone, something, is hunting in my territory."

  Across the cafe, a mug slid from nerveless fingers and hit the Italian tile floor, exploding into a hundred shards of primary-colored porcelain. There was nervous laughter, scattered applause, and all eyes thankfully left the golden-haired man with the night in his voice.

  Lilah shrugged. "There're millions of people in the Greater Vancouver area, hon. Enough for all of us."

  "It's the principle of the thing," he muttered, a little piqued by her lack of reaction.

  "It's not another vampire."

  It was almost a question so he answered it. "No. The condition of the corpse was classic succubus."

  "Or incubus," she pointed out. "You don't know for certain those men weren't gay, and I sincerely doubt that you and I alone were shopping from the personals."

  "I wasn't looking to feed," Henry ground out through clenched teeth.

  "That's right. You were looking for a victimless relationship and..." Lilah spread her hands, fingernails drawing glistening scarlet lines in the air. "...ta dah, you found me. And if I'm not what you were looking for, then you were clearly planning to feed—if not sooner, then later—so you can just stop being so 'more ethical than thou' about it." She half turned in her chair, turning her gesture into a wave at the counter staff. "Sweetie, could I have another of these and a chocolate croissant? Thanks."

  The cafe didn't actually have table service. Her smile created it.

  Henry's smile sent the young man scurrying back behind the counter.

  "Is there another succubus in the city?" He demanded.

  "How should I know? I've never run into one, but that just means I've never run into one." The pointed tip of a pink tongue slowly licked foam off her upper lip.

  Another mug shattered.

  "Incubus?"

  She sighed and stopped trying to provoke a reaction from the vampire. "I honestly don't know, Henry. We're not territorial like your lot, we pretty much keep racking up those frequent flyer miles—town to town, party to party..." Eyebrows flicked up then down. "...man to man. If this is your territory, can't you tell?"

  "No. I can recognize a demon if I see one, regardless of form, but you have no part in the lives I Hunt or the blood I feed from." He shrugged. "A large enough demon might cause some sort of dissonance, but..."

  "But you haven't felt any such disturbance in the Force."

  "What?"

  "You've got to get out to more movies without subtitles, hon." She pushed her chair out from the table and stood, lowering her voice dramatically. "Since you've been to the morgue, there's only one thing left for us to do."

  "Us?" Henry interrupted, glancing around with an expression designed to discourage eavesdroppers. "This isn't your problem."

  "Sweetie, it became my problem when you showed me your Prince of Darkness face."

  He stood as well; she had a point. Since he'd been responsible for involving her, he couldn't then tell her she wasn't involved. "All right, what's left for us to do?"

  Her smile suggested that a moonless romp on a deserted beach would be the perfect way to spend the heart of the night. "Why, visit the scene of the crime, of course."

  *

  Traffic on the bridge slowed them a little and it was almost two am by the time they got to Wreck Beach. Taylor Johnston's body had been found on the north side of the breakwater at Point Grey. Henry parked the car on one of the remaining sections of Old Marine Drive but didn't look too happy about it.

  "Campus security," he replied when Lilah inquired. "This whole area is part of the University of British Columbia's endowment lands and they've really been cracking down on people parking by the side of the road."

  "You're
worried about campus security?" The succubus shook her head in disbelief as they walked away from the car. "You know, hon, there are times when you're entirely too human for a vampire."

  He supposed he deserved that. "The police have been all over this area; what are we likely to find that they missed?"

  "Something they weren't looking for."

  "Ghoulies and ghosties and things that go bump in the night?"

  "Takes one to know one." She stepped around the tattered end of a piece of yellow police tape. "Or in this case, takes two."

  For a moment, Henry had the weirdest sense of déjà vu. It could have been Vicki he was following down to the sand, their partnership renewed. Then Lilah half turned, laughingly telling him to hurry, and she couldn't have been more different than his tall, blonde ex-lover.

  Single male, midtwenties, seeks someone to share the night.

  So what if it was a different someone....

  *

  He knew when he stood on the exact spot the body had been found; the stink of the dying man's terror was so distinct that it had clearly been neither a fast nor a painless death.

  "Not an incubus, then," Lilah declared dumping sand out of an expensive Italian pump. "We may like to take our time, but no one ever complains about the process."

  Henry frowned and turned his face into the breeze coming in off the Pacific. There was no moon and except for the white lines of breakers at the seawall, the waves were very dark. "Can you smell the rot?"

  "Sweetie, there's a great big dead fish not fifteen feet away. I'd have to be in the same shape as Mr. Johnston not to smell it."

  "Not the fish." It smelled of the crypt. Of bones left to lie in the dark and damp. "There." He pointed toward the seawall. "It's in there."

  Lilah looked up at Henry's pale face, then over at the massive mound of rock jutting out into the sea. "What is?"

  "I don't know yet." Half a dozen paces toward the rock, he turned back toward the succubus. "Are you coming?"

  "No, just breathing hard."

  "Pardon?"

  He looked so completely confused, she laughed as she caught up. "You really don't get out much, do you, hon?"

  The night was no impediment to either of them, but the entrance was well hidden. If it hadn't been for the smell, they'd never have found it.

  Dropping to her knees beside him, Lilah handed Henry a lighter. He stretched his arm to its full length under a massive block of stone, the tiny flame shifting all the shadows but one.

  "You can take the lighter with you." Lilah rocked back onto her heels, shaking her head. "I, personally, am not going in there."

  Henry understood. Succubi were only slightly harder to kill than the humans they resembled. "I don't think it's home," he muttered dropping onto his stomach and inching forward into the black line of the narrow crevice.

  Lilah's voice drifted down to him. "Not a problem, hon, but I'd absolutely ruin this dress. Not to mention my manicure."

  "Not to mention," Henry repeated, smiling in spite of the conditions. There was an innate honesty in the succubus he liked. A lot.

  Twice his body-length under the stone, after creeping through a puddle of saltwater at least an inch deep, the way opened up and, although he had to keep turning his shoulders, he could move forward in a crouch. The smell reminded him of the catacombs under St. Mark's Square in Venice where the sea had permeated both the rock and the ancient dead.

  Three or four minutes later, he straightened cautiously as the roof rose away and drew Lilah's lighter out of his pocket, expecting to see bones piled in every corner. He saw, instead, a large crab scuttling away, a filthy nest of clothing, and a dark corner where the sucking sound of water moving up and down in a confined space overlaid the omnipresent roar of the sea. A closer inspection showed an almost circular hole down into the rock and, about ten or twelve feet away, the moving water of the Pacific Ocean. A line of moisture showed the high tide mark and another large crab peered out of a crevice just below it. It was obvious where the drained bodies were dumped and what happened to them after dumping.

  The scent of death, or rot, hadn't come from the expected cache of corpses, so it had to have come from the creature who laired here.

  Which narrows it down considerably, Henry thought grimly as he closed the almost unbearably hot lighter with a snap.

  *

  Lilah and a young man were arranging their clothes as he crawled out from under the seawall. The succubus, almost luminescent by starlight, waved when she saw him.

  "Hey, sweetie, you might want to hear this."

  "Hear what?" The smell of sex and a familiar pungent smoke overlaid the smell of death.

  The young man smiled in what Henry could only describe as a satiated way and said, "Like you know the dead guy they found here this morning, eh? I sort of like saw it happen."

  Henry snarled. "Saw what?"

  "Whoa, like what big teeth you have, Grandma. Anyway, I've been crashing on the beach when the weather's good, you know, and like last night I'm asleep and I hear this whimpering sort of noise and I think it's a dog in trouble, eh? But it's not. It's like two guys. I can't see them too good but I think, 'hey, go for the gusto, guys,' but one of them seems really pissed 'cause like the tide's really high and I guess he can't go to his regular nooky place in the rocks and he sort of throws himself on the other guy so I stop looking, you know."

  "Why didn't you tell this to the police?"

  The young man giggled. "Well, some mornings you don't want to talk to the police, you know. And I was like gone before they arrived anyhow. So, like, is this your old lady, 'cause she's one prime piece of... OW!"

  Henry tightened his grip on the unshaven chin enough to dimple the flesh. He let the Hunter rise, and when the dilated pupils finally responded by dilating further, he growled, "Forget you ever saw us."

  "Dude..."

  *

  "It's a wight," Henry said when they were back in the car. "From the pile of clothing, it looks like it's been there for a while. It probably lives on small animals most of the time, but every now and then people like your friend go missing off the beach or students disappear from the campus, but since they never find a body, no one ever goes looking for a killer.

  "Last night, it went hunting a little farther from home only to get back and find the tide in and over the doorway. Which answers the question of why it left the body on the beach. It must've had to race the dawn to shelter."

  "Wait a minute." Lilah protested, pausing in her dusting of sand from crevices. "A wight wouldn't care about going through saltwater. Salted holy water, yes, but not just the sea."

  "If it tried to drag its victim the rest of the way, he'd drown."

  "And no more than the rest of us, wights don't feed from the dead," Lilah finished. "And all the pieces but one fall neatly into place. You don't honestly think a wight would pick its victim from the personal ads, do you, hon?"

  Unclean creature of darkness seeks life essence to suck.

  "I don't honestly think it can read," Henry admitted. "That whole personals thing had to have been a coincidence."

  "And now that we've answered that question, why don't we head for this great after-hours club I know?"

  "I don't have time for that, Lilah. I have a silver letter opener at home I can use for a weapon."

  "Against?"

  She sounded so honestly confused he turned to look at her. "Against the wight. I can't let it keep killing."

  "Why not? Why should you care? Curiosity is satisfied, move on."

  Traffic on Fourth Avenue turned his attention back to the road. "Is that the only reason you came tonight? Curiosity?"

  "Of course. When a life gets sucked and it's not me doing the sucking, I like to know what is. You're not really...?" He could feel the weight of her gaze as she studied him. "You're not seriously...? You are, aren't you?"

  "Yes, I am. It's getting careless."

  "Good. Someday, it'll get caught by the dawn, problem solved."
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  "And when some forensic pathologist does an autopsy on the remains, what then?"

  "I'm not a fortune-teller, hon. The only future I can predict is who's going to get lucky."

  "Modern forensics will find something that shouldn't exist. Most people will deny it, but some will start thinking."

  "You do know that they moved The X-Files out of Vancouver?"

  Henry kept his eyes locked on the taillights in front of him. The depth of his disappointment in her reaction surprised him. "Our best defense is that no one believes we exist so they don't look for us. If they start looking..." His voice trailed off into mobs with torches and laboratory dissection tables.

  They drove in silence until they crossed the Burrard Bridge, then Lilah reached over and laid her fingers on Henry's arm. "That's a nice, pragmatic reason you've got there," she murmured, "but I don't believe you for a moment. You're going to destroy this thing because it's killing in your territory. But it has nothing to do with the territorial imperatives of a vampire," she added before he could speak. "Your territory. Your people. Your responsibility." She dropped her hand back onto her lap. "Let me out here, hon. I try to keep my distance from the overly ethical."

  His fingers tightened on the steering wheel as he guided the BMW to the curb. "You weren't what I was looking for when I placed that ad," he said as she opened the door. "But I thought we..." Suddenly at a low for words, he fell back on the trite. "...had a connection."

  Leaning over she kissed his cheek. "We did." Stepping out onto the sidewalk, she smiled back in through the open door. "You'll find your Robin, Batman. It just isn't me."

  *

  Henry returned to the beach just before high tide, fairly certain the wight hadn't survived so long by making the same mistake twice. He blocked the entrance to the lair with a silver chain and waited.

  The fight didn't last long. Henry felt mildly embarrassed by taking his frustrations out on the pitiful creature, but he'd pretty much gotten over it by the time he fed the desiccated body to the crabs.