Blood Debt

building, learning to manipulate the world she was no longer a part of, was one of the few memories she had of her
    "childhood" in Vancouver not drenched in blood. She stood for a few moments in front of the building, remembering how Henry had taught her to survive, then she drew in a deep breath of night-scented air and walked the two blocks to Denman Street.
    Bisecting the West End, running vaguely southwest to northeast, Denman was a lovely walking street— and that made it prime hunting territory.
    The rain had stopped and well-lit sidewalk cafes, still glistening from the last shower, had filled. Vancouverites never let a little rain bother them—since it rained so frequently, there wasn't much point—
    and they were serious about their cafes. Scanning the crowds, Vicki noted certain similarities in the mix as the young and trendy rubbed elbows with the old and somehow still trendy, all dressed in what could only be called a sporty and health-conscious style—very unlike the Gothic punk so prevalent in trendy Toronto. In spite of the hour, everyone seemed to have a "I'm going roller blading/mountain biking/sea kayaking after I finish my cappuccino" look. In any other mood, Vicki might have found it amusing. Tonight, it pissed her off.

    Denman, she mused, glaring a pair of young men in chinos out of her way, might have been a mistake. She wanted something with an edge, something to definitively establish her presence in Henry's territory. There's never a motorcycle gang around when you need one.
    Then she saw him.
    He was sitting inside one of the cafes, alone, all his attention focused on the notebook in front of him. A slender shadow amid the surrounding proto-jocks, he looked disturbingly familiar.
    He looked remarkably like Henry.
    A closer examination proved the resemblance purely superficial.
    The clothes were black, the skin pale, but the blond hair was too long, and the face more angular than Tudor-curved. Were he standing, he'd probably be significantly taller.
    Still…
    When he glanced up, Vicki met his gaze through the glass, held it for a moment, then vanished into the night. Safely hidden in the darkness between two buildings, she watched the front of the cafe and smiled. She knew the kind of man he was. The kind who, against all urgings of common sense, wanted to believe there was something more. The kind who wanted to believe in mystery.
    Wanted to believe, but didn't quite.
    The door opened, and he stood on the sidewalk. Vicki could hear his heart pounding, and when he closed his eyes she knew he was searching for the moment they'd shared, searching for the mystery. An older man, with a strong Slavic accent and his arm across the back of a well-dressed woman, asked him to move away from the door. Visibly returning to reality, the young man apologized and started along Denman, a slightly rueful smile twisting his mouth, one hand trailing in the planters that separated the sidewalk cafe from the sidewalk proper.
    Vicki allowed the Hunger to rise.
    She followed the song of his blood at a safe distance until he started up the broad steps of a four-story, Victorian brownstone on Barclay Street. When he put his key in the lock, she moved out of the night, laid a hand on his shoulder, and turned him around. Somewhere, down in the depths of eyes almost as silver-gray as her own, he was expecting her.
    He wanted to believe in mystery.
    So she gave him a mystery to believe.

    "Who do you think'll be back first?"
    "Fitzroy." Celluci surfed a few more channels, wondering why someone with Fitzroy's money didn't buy a better TV—from the looks of it, he'd spent a fortune on the stereo system. "It's Monday night, won't be much traffic in from the mountains, so he'll make good time."
    "He'll probably want to feed before he gets here, though. So that he's not overreacting to things."
    "Things meaning Vicki? Well, my guess is she's taken that into account. He's going to expect her to be here when he arrives, so she's not going to be— not even if she has to hide across the street and wait for him to drive up." He flicked past three syndicated sitcoms, two of them from the seventies, an episode of classic Trek he'd seen a hundred times and the same football game on four channels. "Five hundred channels and four hundred and ninety-nine of them still show crap. What's this?"
    Tony stuck his head out of the kitchen where he was cleaning up the debris from their meal. "Local talk show," he said after watching