by Tanya Huff
“Mi . . .”
“Vicki?” Henry forgotten in the sound of her voice, Celluci twisted around and cupped her face in his hands. The fire licked at the plywood over the windows. Celluci ignored it. The high ceiling drew the smoke up and away. The path to the door remained clear. As long as the fire posed no immediate danger, it could be ignored for more important concerns. The highly polished metal of the isolation box reflected the orange glow of the flames out into the room. In its light, Celluci saw Vicki’s eyelids flicker, once, twice. “Hang on, we’re going to get you to the hospital.”
The hospital? She wanted to tell him there wasn’t any point but couldn’t figure out how.
“Michael.” The pain in the detective’s voice damped Henry’s anger and drew his own grief to the fore. With one hand still foolishly, hopelessly holding pressure on Vicki’s leg, he gently grasped Celluci’s shoulder with the other. “There isn’t enough time.”
“No.”
“She’ll be dead even before you get her out of this building.”
“No!”
“I can feel her life ebbing.”
“I said, NO!”
Listen to him, Mike. He’s right. She thought she was still breathing but she couldn’t be certain. I’m still here, I must be breathing.
“Damn it, Vicki, don’t die!”
Oh, God, Mike, don’t cry. She’d thought it couldn’t hurt anymore. She’d been wrong.
“There has to be something we can do!”
Henry felt a vise close round his heart and squeeze. “No.” One word, two letters, somehow carried all he felt.
Pulled by the sound of suffering as great as his own, Celluci looked up and met hazel eyes washed almost gold by the firelight. They held a truth too bitter to deny. Vicki was dying.
I’m cold. And it’s dark. And it isn’t fair. I could tell you I love you now. Could tell both of you. Love was enough to bring my mother back. I guess I’m not as strong. Her body didn’t seem to be a part of her anymore. The flesh wrapped around her like a badly fitting suit of clothes. Oh, shit. I can’t feel anything. This sucks. This really sucks. I DON’T WANT TO DIE!
Her eyes snapped open. She could see a familiar shadow bending over her. Her fingers trembled, aching to brush the curl of hair back from his face.
“Vicki?”
She pulled enough strength from him to form a single word. “Hen . . . ry.”
The name pierced into Celluci’s soul and ripped it to shreds with barbed hooks. She wanted Henry. Not him. Wanted to die in Henry’s arms. He bit his lip to keep from crying out and tried to jerk his head away. He couldn’t. Something in her eyes held him. Something that insisted he understand.
She saw the sudden white slash of his smile and carried it with her into darkness. She’d done what she could. Now it was up to him.
Henry had heard his name and was bending forward when Celluci lifted his head. He froze. He’d expected to see on the other man’s face the pain of Vicki’s choice written over the pain of her dying. He hadn’t expected to see a wild and insane hope.
“Change her!”
Henry felt his jaw drop. “What?”
“You heard me!” Celluci reached across Vicki’s body and grabbed a fistful of leather coat. “Change her!”
Change her. He’d fed from her deeply only a short time before. And fed from her the night before that. His blood held enough of the elements of hers that her system might accept it, especially as she had so little blood of her own left to replace. But considering his condition, did he have enough for them both?
Change her. If he changed her, he’d lose her. They’d have a little over a year but no more before her new nature drove them apart.
“Do it,” Celluci begged. “It’s her only chance.”
Henry suddenly realized that Celluci had no idea of what the change would mean. That he, in fact, believed the exact opposite of the truth. Believed that if Vicki changed she was lost to him. Henry could read the knowledge of that loss in the other man’s face. Could read how he was willing to surrender everything to another for Vicki’s sake.
You think I’ve won, mortal. You’re so very wrong. If she dies, we both lose her. If she changes, I lose her alone.
“Henry. Please.”
And if you can give her up for love, wondered Henry Fitzroy, vampire, bastard son of Henry VIII, can I do any less? His heart would allow only one answer.
Lifting his own wrist to his mouth, Henry opened a vein. “It might not work,” he said as he pressed this smaller wound into the hole in her leg, forcing the flow of his blood to act as a barrier for hers. A moment later, he lifted his arm and threw Celluci back his shirt, the motion flinging a single crimson drop across the room like a discarded ruby. “Bind it. Tightly. This could still kill her in spite of everything I do.”
Celluci did as instructed, lifting his eyes in time to see Henry open a vein over his heart with Vicki’s Swiss army knife. Even with so prosaic a tool, it held the shadow of ancient ritual and he watched, unable to look away, as blood welled out of the cut, appearing almost black against the alabaster skin.
Sliding his arm behind Vicki’s shoulders, Henry lifted her and pressed her mouth to his breast. Her life had dropped away to a murmur in the distance; not dead, not yet, but very, very close.
“Drink, Vicki.” He made it a command, threw all he was into it, breathed it against the soft cap of her hair. “Drink to live.”
He was afraid for a moment that she could not obey him even if she wanted to; then her lips parted and she swallowed. The intensity of his reaction took him completely by surprise. He could vaguely remember how it had felt when Christina had fed from him. It was in no way comparable to the near ecstasy he felt now. He swayed, wrapped his other arm around her body, and closed his eyes. This rapture wasn’t enough to make up for the eventual loss of her, but, by God, it was close.
Celluci tied off the makeshift pressure bandage, his hands operating independently of conscious direction. There was something both so blatantly sensual and so extraordinarily innocent about the scene that he couldn’t have looked away had he wanted to. Not that he wanted to. He wanted every second of Vicki he could have before he had to face the rest of his life without her.
The firelight turned Vicki’s hair the color of spilled honey, danced orange highlights down the black leather enveloping her, and reflected crimson in the puddles of her blood spilled on the floor.
Jesus H. Christ! The fire! All at once, as though it had been waiting to be remembered, he could feel the heat licking against his back. He turned. The entire wall of boarded windows was aflame. The smoke had a greenish tinge and an unpleasant taste—spilled chemicals or burning plastic, it was irrelevent at the moment. They had to get out.
“Fitzroy!”
The voice seemed to come from a long way away, but it held an urgency difficult to ignore. Henry opened his eyes.
“We’ve got to get out of here before this whole place goes up! Can you move her?”
It took a moment for Henry’s eyes to clear, but gradually he, too, became aware of the danger. He glanced down at Vicki, still nuzzling like a blind kitten at his breast, and pulled free enough to find his voice. “I’ve never done this before, Detective.” He had no energy left for anything but the truth and the touch of her life was still so tenuous. “She’s dying slower than she was, but she’s still dying.”
“Christ! What more will it take!”
“More, I’m afraid, than I have right now to give.” He swayed, Vicki’s head rising and falling with the motion. “I told you it might not work.”
Fucking great. Vicki was still dying, Fitzroy looked like hell, and the building was burning down around them. He coughed and scrubbed his forearm across his face. God-damned cup’s not half empty if I say it’s half full. Grabbing jacket and holster and gun up off the floor, Celluci stood. “If she’s still dying, she’s not dead. Let’s try to keep it that way. Come on!”
Shifting his grip, crad
ling Vicki in his arms as though she were a child, Henry tried to stand. The room tilted.
Eyes streaming from the smoke, Celluci shoved his free hand into a leather-covered armpit and helped heave Henry and his burden off the floor. “Can you hold her?”
“Yes.” He didn’t actually think he could let her go but he didn’t have enough strength for the explanation. Henry leaned on the larger man’s strength as his knees threatened to buckle and, together, they staggered toward the door. Unable to see where he was placing his feet, he stumbled over a piece of something wet—he didn’t want to know what—and nearly fell.
“Oh, no, you don’t.” Muscles popping, sweat streaming down his chest, Celluci somehow kept all three of them up and moving. “After everything we’ve been through tonight, we aren’t fucking quitting yet.”
Arms locked around Vicki, holding her life with his own, Henry dredged up the ghost of a smile. “Never say die, Detective?”
Celluci tossed the curl of hair back off his face and led the way out of the lab. “Fucking right,” he growled.
As they disappeared down the hall, the door to the storeroom slowly swung open and, coughing, Dr. Burke stumbled out into the lab.
“Now that,” she declared, “was a most edi . . . fying evening. Who says eaves. . . droppers never hear anything good?” She wiped her streaming eyes and nose on her sleeve and picked her way carefully through the smoke and debris toward the door.
From the sound of it, Marjory Nelson’s daughter and her companions had problems of their own. Problems that could easily be used to convince them that Dr. Aline Burke might be better left alone, that her involvement in this whole sordid affair was nothing more than chance.
Donald was dead. She didn’t want Donald to be dead, but upon consideration there wasn’t anything she could do about it. Why should she suffer just because Donald was dead?
Catherine was dead, too, and therefore a convenient, nonprotesting scapegoat.
“I had no idea what was going on, your honor.” She started to giggle and gagged instead. Whatever chemicals were burning were undeniably toxic. “Go ahead, burn!” she commanded. “Let’s give Catherine and her friends a fine Viking send-off and in the proshess . . .” A fit of coughing doubled her over. She staggered to the isolation box and sagged against it, stomach heaving.
“And in the proshess,” she repeated when she’d caught her breath and swallowed a mouthful of bile, “destroy as much evidence as possible. A little vampiric blackmail, a little—what’s the word?—con . . . fla . . . gration and I’ll be out of this with no major career damage done.” Her flame-bordered reflection appeared smugly satisfied and she smiled down at it, patting herself on the cheek. The box was becoming warm to the touch and the skin of her face and hands was beginning to tighten in the growing heat. Time to go.
Head lowered to avoid the worst of the smoke now billowing down from the ceiling, coughing almost continually, she started for the door, lifting her feet with alcohol exaggerated caution over bodies and parts of bodies.
Then she spotted the disk. Spilled half out of Catherine’s lab coat pocket, very blue against the bloodstained white, it could contain only one thing: the copies of the tests made that afternoon on the vampire. What else would be important enough for Catherine to carry around with her?
Only this afternoon. Seems so long ago. With one hand resting against the end of the isolation box, her balance not being exactly stable, Dr. Burke bent to pick it up. It didn’t seem to be damaged. Having been sheltered in the curve of Catherine’s body, it didn’t even seem to be very hot. She shoved it into her own pocket, suddenly realizing that not only would she come out of this with her career essentially undamaged, but with information the scientific community would award high honors for.
A few simple experiments, she thought, grinning broadly, and that Nobel prize is . . .
One of the oxygen tanks had remained amazingly undamaged after the earlier explosion had flung it out into the lab. It had lain, partially under the far side of the isolation box, safely away from the main heat of the fire. But temperatures were rising. The plastic valve finally began to melt. The metal collar below it expanded a very, very small amount. It was enough.
The blast slammed Dr. Burke to the floor where she watched in horror as a giant, invisible hand lifted the isolation box and dropped it to fall, impossibly slowly, across her legs. She heard bones shatter, felt the pain a moment later, and slid into darkness.
When the light returned, it was the orange-red of the approaching fire and almost no time had passed. She couldn’t feel what was left of her legs.
“That’s all right. Don’t need legs.”
Catherine’s extended hand had begun to sizzle.
“Don’t need legs. Need to get out of here.” The isolation box was on its side. The curve would give her a little room. If she could just push against it, she could pull her legs free and crawl out of the room. Crawl away from the flames. She didn’t need legs.
Dragging herself up into a sitting position, she shoved at the box. Nestled on an uneven surface, it rocked. Something squelched beneath it but that didn’t matter.
The flames were licking at the sleeve of Catherine’s lab coat. Over the stink of chemical-laden smoke, came the smell of roasting pork.
Swallowing saliva, she pounded at the box.
It rocked again.
The latch that number nine had partially turned, gave way.
The lid fell open, knocking Dr. Burke back to the floor as it rose into the air on silent hinges, spilling the body thrown up against it by the explosion out onto her lap.
The naked, empty shell of Donald Li rolled once and came to rest in the circle of her arms, his head tucked back so that it seemed his face stared up into hers.
The flames stopped the screaming when they finally came.
“Christ on crutches!” Detective Fergusson ducked behind his car as the explosion flung pieces of burning wood and heated metal out into the street. “Next time I investigate drunken confessions in the fucking morning!” Snatching up his radio, he ignored the panicked shouts of the approaching security guards and called in the fire with a calm professionalism he was far from feeling.
“. . . and an ambulance!”
He thought he could hear screaming. He hoped like hell he was wrong.
“Now what.”
“It’s just after two. I need to feed. In about an hour, if she’s still alive, I need to feed her. And then I need to get her back to Toronto before dawn.”
“Why Toronto? Why can’t she just stay here?”
Henry sank down onto the end of the bed. His head felt almost too heavy to lift. “Because if she changes, I need to have her in a place I know is secure.” He waved a weary, bloodstained arm at the apartment. “This isn’t. And if she. . . if she . . .”
“Dies,” Celluci said emotionlessly, staring down at Vicki’s unconscious form. He felt as though the world had skewed a few degrees sideways and he had no choice but to try to keep his balance on the slope.
“Yes.” Henry matched the detective’s lack of expression. If the facade cracked now, it would sweep them all away. “If she dies, I’ll need to dispose of the body. I’ll need to be in a city I know in order to do that.”
“Dispose of the body?”
“Her death is going to be a little difficult to explain if I don’t, don’t you think? There’ll be an autopsy, an inquest, and questions you don’t have the answer to will be asked.”
“So she just disappears . . .”
“Yes. Yet another unsolved mystery.”
“And I’ll have to act as though I have no idea if she’s dead or alive.”
Henry lifted his head and allowed a hint of power to touch his voice. “Mourn her as dead, Detective.”
Celluci didn’t bother to pretend that he misunderstood. He jerked his gaze from Vicki and recklessly met the vampire’s eyes. “Mourn her regardless? Fuck you. You tell me what happens, Fitzroy. If she disappears be
cause she’s dead, I’ll mourn her. If she disappears into the night with you, I’ll . . .” A muscle jumped in his jaw. “I’ll miss her like I’d miss a part of myself but I won’t mourn her if she isn’t any more dead than you are.”
Since they’d found her dying in the lab, Henry had been measuring time by Vicki’s heartbeat. He let three go by while he studied Mike Celluci’s soul. “You really mean that,” he said at last. He found it difficult to believe. Found it impossible not to believe.
“Yeah.” The word caught in Celluci’s throat. “I really mean it.” He swallowed and fought for control. Then his eyes widened. “What do you mean, you have to feed?”
“You should know what means by now.”
“On who?”
“I could hunt.” Except that he was so incredibly tired. The night had already lasted longer than any night he could remember. It seemed a pity to hunt when there was. . . He allowed the power to rise a little more.
“Stop it. I know what you’re trying.” With an ef fort, Celluci wrenched his gaze away and back to the woman on the bed. She was still alive. All that really mattered was keeping her that way. He’d made that decision back in the lab. He’d stand by it now. “If it includes anything but sucking blood, you can fucking well order takeout.”
Astounded by the offer, Henry felt his brows rise. “It needn’t include anything but sucking blood, Detective. It’s not nourishment I need so much as refueling.”
“All right, then.” Celluci shrugged out of his jacket, dropping it carefully inside out so as not to stain the carpet, and began to roll up his sleeve. “Wrist, right?”
“Yes.” Henry shook his head, wonder and respect about equally mixed in his voice. “You know, in four and a half centuries, I’ve never met a man quite like you. In spite of everything, you offer me your blood?”
“Yeah. In spite of everything.” With one last look at Vicki, he turned and lowered himself onto the end of the bed. “At the risk of offending, after what went down tonight,” he sighed, “this doesn’t seem like much. Besides, I’m doing it for her. Right now, as far as I’m concerned, you’re just a primitive branch of the Red Cross. Get on with it.”
