Blood Debt

vaguely soothing.
    All right. I'm not what I was, but I'm still who 1 was. I accepted the limitations of the RP—okay, not gracefully, honesty forced her to admit, but I accepted them. I didn't let it keep me from living my life exactly as I pleased. I am here to find a murderer, and I'm not going to let Henry Fitzroy change the way I operate. He's my friend, and we're going to act like friends if I have to rip him open and feed on his steaming entrails!
    The pen snapped between her fingers.
    "Shit!"
    Breathing heavily, Vicki barely kept herself from throwing the pieces aside and spraying a room full of very expensive upholstery in ink. Trembling with the effort, she set both halves of the pen gently in the middle of the desk then surged to her feet and viciously kicked the chair away.
    While a small voice in the back of her head wondered where the hell this was coming from, she headed for the door, the Hunger rising.
    Eyes gleaming silver in the mirror wall of the entry, she reached for the doorknob and realized another heart beat in unison with hers.
    Henry.
    In the corridor. Almost at the door.
    Vampire.
    Then memory added Celluci's opinion.
    Romance writer.
    Vicki grabbed onto that and used it to bludgeon her instinctive response back into the shadows. Her breathing slowed and the roaring in her ears dimmed to a gentle growl. Vampires did not share territories with other vampires, but there was nothing that said vampires could not share a territory with romance writers.
    As Tony had said. It was an attitude thing.
    And if there's one thing I excel at, it's attitude. Holding tightly to that thought, she opened the door and said, "What the hell took you so long?"
    Henry recoiled a step at her proximity, eyes darkening, a snarl pulling his lips back off his teeth. "Don't push it, Vicki."
    "Hey…" She spread her hands, the gesture serving a double function of emphasis and of readiness should she need to go for his throat. "I just asked you a question, you're the one who's overreacting." Somehow it came out sounding like a challenge which was not at all what she'd intended. It had been easier with the door between them; face-to-face, her visceral reaction to the threat he posed was harder to ignore. "Look, Henry, it was getting late, I was getting worried; okay?"
    "Why worried?"
    Because you're old and slowing down… Where the hell did that come from? Shaken, Vicki shoved the thought back into her subconscious. "Forget it. What did you find out?"
    Forgetting was safer for them both than responding.
    He'd seen the threat surface, seen her push it away. Considering the short time she'd spent in the night, her control was nothing short of incredible. A faint hint of jealousy, that she should so easily push aside the demands of her nature, added itself to the emotional maelstrom below his barely achieved surface calm. "The ghost has a body. As requested, I made a copy of the autopsy report and added a full description."
    "Thanks." Her fingers crumpled the yellow file folder and, stepping backward, she closed the door between them once again. Acutely aware of the moment he lingered, when she finally heard him walk away and go into his own condo, she sagged back against the carved cedar. "So much for the romance writer defense." Old instincts told her to follow and patch things up. New instincts told her to follow and destroy him.
    Leaning on the door, she breathed deeply until his scent had been thoroughly mixed with the nonthreatening, expensive potpourri scent of the apartment. "This is really starting to piss me off. Nothing runs my life like this. Nothing!" Returning to the desk, she slapped the creased file folder down on the polished wood. "I am going to beat this…"
    She trapped the tag behind her teeth. Under the circumstances, adding "if it kills me" seemed a little too much like tempting fate.

    Down the hall, Henry stood staring out at the West End, rubbing his throbbing temples. It could have been much worse—he'd expected it to have been much worse. Neither of them had actually attacked, and their conversation, while short, had been essentially civil. It was beginning to look as though Vicki had been right all along. Perhaps the old rules could be changed.
    After all, coyotes had been solitary hunters for centuries and they were learning to hunt in packs. One corner of his mouth quirked up as he remembered a recent news report of coyotes eating household pets in North Vancouver.
    "On second thought,