Blood Bank

by Tanya Huff

  Vicki sighed. "The Ghost of Christmas Presents, I presume?"

  "That's Ghost of Christmas Present," Mike told her, tugging down the ratty beard, "as in not past or future."

  "Then you might want to shuffle your playlist, because this song..." She paused just long enough to allow the music to rise to the foreground. "...is very 2001."

  "The music is not important." Tossing the beard over a sixty inch flat screen TV, Mike beckoned her forward. "Come in and know me better!"

  "If I knew you any better, we'd be breaking a few laws." But since she didn't seem to have a choice in the matter, she walked toward him. Away from the door, she could see that besides the workshop and the presents there were also tables laid out with roast turkey and torteire and mashed potatoes and roast squash with a maple sugar glaze and bear claws and a steaming carafe of coffee and, yes, the party-size box of assorted Tim Bits. It all looked great but her appreciation was aesthetic only—these days she had no visceral reaction to food she had loved for over thirty-four years. She remembered enjoying them but the desire was gone. Mostly gone, she amended silently with a last look at the coffee.

  "Just what exactly is a room full of food I can't eat supposed to be teaching me?" she asked as she turned toward the workshop.

  Mike stood and closed the remaining distance between them. When he was close enough that Vicki could feel the warmth coming off his body, he unbuttoned Santa's jacket and slipped it off his shoulders, standing before her in a tight white tank and the bottom of the costume. She could hear his heart beating, the blood moving through his veins. His scent threatened to overwhelm her.

  Ah, yes. There was desire.

  "The food is for me," he said, holding out one bare, muscular arm. "I need to keep up my strength."

  Vicki stared at the inside of his wrist, mesmerized by the pulse throbbing under the soft, pale skin. Between one heartbeat and the next her teeth could be in his flesh, his blood running warm and salty down her throat...

  "Vicki?"

  "No, thanks, I'm not hungry." As she spoke, she realized it was true. Taking a deep breath, more for emotional grounding than physical necessity, she lifted her head and met his eyes.

  He smiled. "You know that I am always here for you."

  "Yeah. I know."

  Given the theme of Henry's segment, she expected Mike to ask why she wasn't then there for him in turn, but all he said was, "Come on, there're some things you need to see."

  "Families celebrating..." The scene changed. "...Christmas?" The last word was a near growl as Vicki adjusted to being suddenly perched on a snowbank in a pair of pajamas. "You know that's really fucking annoying! Where are we?"

  "Don't you recognize this place?" Mike asked, buttoning the Santa jacket.

  They were standing on the edge of a farmyard looking in at a redbrick house and a long low barn. It looked familiar but...

  Just then the door to the house slammed open and a very large black dog charged outside followed by a pair of white, half-grown puppies.

  "It's the Heerkens farm." Vicki grinned as she watched the black dog allow himself to be caught and tumbled in the snow. "The big willow tree's gone but they..." She waved a hand at the two pups barking like crazy as they leaped around their companion. "...are unmistakable."

  The door opened again, a little less violently this time, and a very pregnant young woman with silver- blond hair leaned out into the yard. "Come on you three, back inside! Breakfast is ready!" When no one started toward the house, she shook her head and growled, "Shadow!"

  Black ears went up.

  "Shadow?" Vicki felt her jaw drop.

  "It's been a few years since you've been by," Mike pointed out. He sounded amused but Vicki decided she'd let that go for now. The last time she'd seen Shadow, he'd been a half-grown pup, not this dangerous looking animal whose head probably came higher than her hip. "The mother-to-be?"

  "Rose. The little ones are hers, too."

  "Impossible." Rose had been a teenager the last time Vicki'd seen her, all teasing and tossed hair.

  Two steps forward took Vicki inside the farmhouse kitchen—an impossible distance covered but then, nothing much about this night had been particularly possible. The shabby kitchen was comfortingly familiar, the same oversized furniture, the same drifts of dog hair, the same piles of clothing tossed haphazardly about. The man sitting at the end of the table buttering a huge pile of toast was obviously Stuart Heerkins-Wells, Rose's uncle and the old dominant male. A new scar ran from his throat along the top of his shoulder—new in that Vicki hadn't seen it before, but actually about six or seven years old.

  The outside door slammed back against the kitchen wall, and as Shadow herded the two younger animals in from outside, he changed to become a not-very-tall but heavily muscled dark-haired young man. Daniel. The fact that he was naked was less disconcerting than the undeniable fact he was no longer the cheerful ten- year-old she'd known. The pups charged across the room to leap up and down around Rose's legs, becoming, as they leaped, boys around six or eight years old with their mother's white-blond hair.

  "Hey!" Rose expertly smacked a reaching hand away from the large pan of sausages on the stove. "Why don't you two do something useful and go get your father. He's in the living room."

  "After breakfast can we take the toboggan Santa gave us out to the hill?"

  "Only if your father goes with you."

  "But, Mom...!"

  "Or your Uncle Daniel."

  From the whoops of glee and the clatter of eight sets of toenails against the worn linoleum as the two pups raced around Daniel before heading into the living room, they considered their uncle a soft touch. Or at least more likely to agree to a Christmas Day spent out in the snow than their father. It was as impossible not to smile as they passed as it had been not to smile at a much younger Shadow.

  As Rose slapped Daniel's hand away from the sausages in exactly the same way she'd discouraged her son, a full choral rendition of "Joy to the World" exploded out of the living room. "Oh, no, if they start singing I'll never get them to eat!"

  "I'll go." Stuart pushed the plate of toast into the center of the table and stood, smiling fondly at his niece. "Get my lazy son to help you with that pan. You need to start being careful about heavy lifting or we're going to end up with a Christmas baby." He kissed the top of her head as he passed.

  "I have done this before, you know," she muttered as Daniel took the pan and started transferring the sausages to a platter. "Why don't I..."

  "Answer the phone," Daniel suggested with a grin as the old black plastic phone still hanging on the wall by the ratty sofa started to ring.

  She rolled her eyes but she went to answer it anyway. "Good morning and Merry Christmas! Peter? Where are you? Of course I expected you to call, but it's early." With one hand cupping the curve of her belly, she leaned against the wall and smiled as she listened to her twin.

  Shoving a basket of oranges to one side, Daniel set the sausages on the table, then bent and took a pan of home fries from the oven where they'd been keeping warm. As he worked, he hummed a baseline to the multipart harmonies pouring out of the living room.

  Vicki felt a hand close over her shoulder.

  "Although they live separately from a society that would fear and destroy them, although their lives are often violent and the space they need grows less with every passing year, still they celebrate Christmas."

  Vicki frowned as the music changed. "They're singing 'Don't Cry for me Argentina.'"

  "So werewolves are fans of Andrew Lloyd Webber, that's not the point." Celluci's fingers tightened. "The point is..."

  She turned inside his grip and looked up at him. "The point is that they manage to celebrate Christmas, so why can't I? Right?" when he nodded, she smiled. "Subtlety has never been your strong point and whoever is arranging this..." She patted him gently on the Santa suit. "...is playing to your strengths. So let's go."

  "Go?"

  "Unless this is it?"
/>
  Shaking his head, he took her hand. "You're taking this better then I expected."

  "I'm bowing to the inevitable." His fingers were warm around hers and she took a moment to enjoy it before nudging him with her free hand and saying, "Well?"

  The kitchen, Daniel, the sausages disappeared.

  Another kitchen reappeared around them.

  "You know, I'm not really a big kitchen person anymore," Vicki sighed, looking around and recognizing Mike's parents' huge Mississauga kitchen. "Actually, I never was. You might have more success it you took me someplace I enjoyed."

  "Like the roof of police headquarters?"

  "That is not what I meant by took," Vicki muttered. "And your mother is sitting right over there."

  "She can't hear us. We are but shadows." His voice faded as his mother's rose. A little overly dramatic as far as Vicki was concerned but it did make for a faster segue. Just because she was the next thing to immortal didn't mean she wanted to hang around indefinitely.

  "He says he'll come without her, but if she makes him choose...." Mrs. Celluci shook her head, curls tumbling much as her son's did.

  Another woman, who looked so much like Mike she had to be his sister, set her mug on the counter and patted their mother on the arm. "He loves us. He'll always come."

  "He loves her and if she says stay... Another Christmas, Marie, and we may not see him here..."

  Vicki stared up at Mike in disbelief. "Oh, give me a break; you're also playing the part of Tiny Tim?"

  His cheeks flushed.

  "She used to come here with him sometimes, when they were both in the police, I don't know why she stopped..."

  Marie shrugged philosophically. "People change."

  That was an understatement.

  "But to separate a man from his family... What kind of a change does that?"

  With any luck, she'd never know.

  "She is the kind of woman who wants everything her way."

  "Selfish," agreed Marie.

  "I am not," Vicki snapped. "You don't understand."

  "They can't hear you," Mike reminded her quietly.

  "She wants him to live with her wrapped in a cocoon. Like a bug."

  "Like a spider," Mike's sister declared with relish. "Wrapping him in her web."

  Mrs. Celluci rolled her eyes. "She doesn't want to eat him, Marie. She just wants to keep him with only her. I wonder..." A long swallow of coffee. "I wonder what she is afraid of."

  "Okay." Vicki's eyes silvered as she turned away from the conversation. "That's enough pop psychology for one day. Wrap it up, Santa."

  "There's more you should hear."

  "Wrap it up now!"

  "Or?"

  Her answer was a low, warning growl.

  Mike's gaze flicked over to the two women leaning on the counter. "We're shadows here, remember? You can't hurt them."

  Vicki wrapped her fingers around his throat, resting them gently against the heated skin, feeling his life pulse past. "You're flesh and blood."

  "Yes."

  The sorrow in his response stopped the Hunter cold. Unable to look away, Vicki watched as he faded within her grip, growing fainter and fainter until she held only the memory of his warmth. Her heart pounded faster than it had since the night Mike had cradled her in his arms while Henry pressed a bleeding wrist to her lips. She swallowed with a mouth gone dry.

  Then she frowned, pivoted on one heel, and grabbed a double handful of black fabric draped over the figure that had appeared suddenly behind her. "Fuck that," she snarled. "It stops right here." A vicious yank dragged the fabric clear of whoever gave it shape. Vicki tossed it aside, expected to see the elf from the mall, and saw instead...

  Nothing.

  The fabric she'd tossed aside stood beside her now, a hint of features under the drape.

  "Well, nice to see the Nazgul are getting work. Missed the casting call for Dementors, did you?" She kept her tone flip, but power recognized power. Whatever had plunged her into this insane tour of reworked Victorian cliche was under that fabric. Vampires didn't dream, but that hadn't stopped it. It had plundered her memories, exposed her feelings, and...

  Shown her things she hadn't known which, if true, proved it was operating outside of her psyche. Whatever it was, it wasn't all in her head. Something had gone to a lot of trouble to get her to celebrate Christmas.

  So what? She really hated being manipulated.

  "All right." Her lips drew up off her teeth. "Now you show me that no one cares when I die."

  Under the fabric, power shifted so that it seemed to be pointing into the fog.

  Fog? "Interesting weather patterns." Vicki took a step forward and the fog cleared. She blinked as lightning flashed. "That's um..." Another look. "That's a mob with torches and stakes attacking Cinderella's castle."

  When she turned to face the fabric again, she sensed it was waiting expectantly.

  "I get staked at Disney World?"

  The fabric had no eyes to roll no arms to fold but Vicki still had the unmistakable feeling that time was running out.

  "Okay. Fine." She folded her arms, since it seemed someone had to. "Torches and stakes are historic ways of dealing with a vampire. Historically, vampires kept to themselves, creating fear and distrust in the general population. If I don't learn from history, I'm doomed to repeat it." To sum up, she added sound effects to a mimed rim-shot.

  Another power shift and the fabric pointed into a new section of fog.

  Under the circumstances, the misty outline of gravestones wasn't unexpected.

  "If there was enough to bury, I guess that kills the vampires turn to dust theory," she muttered, walking forward. "I'm not afraid of dying," she added in a slightly louder voice, "so I doubt we're going to have any major breakthrough here."

  But it wasn't her name on the stone. The grave hadn't been filled in. The coffin hadn't been closed.

  She stared down at Mike, watched silently as he slowly rotted, ignoring the pain from the half moon cuts her fingernails gouged into her palms. When bone finally turned to dust, her eyes flashed silver and with bloody hands she ripped the fabric into so many pieces they fell into the open grave like black snow.

  The sun set.

  Vicki fumbled her cell phone up from the blankets beside her, flipped it open and blinked at the display. Four forty-eight pm, December 25. In the faint blue light, she could see four semicircular cuts on each palm, the deepest still seeping blood.

  Vampires didn't dream.

  Nothing she could do would keep Michael Celluci from dying. If she left now, if she dressed and threw everything she had in her van and drove until sunrise and made sure he never found her and if she stopped seeing age overtaking him, he'd still die.

  And rot.

  People died. But before they died, they should get a chance to spend time with people they loved.

  "You didn't tell me anything I didn't already know," she snarled at the darkness.

  The darkness felt smug.

  "Bite me."

  As it happened, it wasn't about Christmas at all.

  *

  She was wrapping the last 500 gram package of organic free-trade Mexican coffee when Mike got home from work. He stared at the presents on the table, at the ceramic candy canes dangling from Vicki's ears, and shook his head.

  "What the hell is going on here?"

  "I could hardly go to your parents' on Christmas Day without presents."

  "You're going to my parents'?"

  "We're going to your parents'."

  "Yeah, that's sweet. I repeat, what the hell is going on?"

  She sighed and stuck a bow down over the mess she'd made of one end of the package. Considering what she'd paid for the wrapping paper, it was crap. "I want to be with you, you want to be with your family—you're the detective, connect the dots."

  His smile almost wiped out the memory of teeth in a crumbling skull. "Where did you get all this stuff?"

  "Toronto's a big, multicultural city
, Mike. Not everyone celebrates Christmas. You'd be amazed at what's open."

  "I thought you'd stopped celebrating Christmas?"

  She snorted. "Not likely."

  "And the vampire thing?"

  "Isn't going away. But neither is the human thing." She stood and pulled him toward her. "Just keep me away from your cousin Jeffrey."

  "I don't have a cousin named Jeffrey."

  Mouth pressed to the warm column of his throat, she felt his confusion and smiled. "Good."