Blood Debt

in his waistband to support the injured arm. Now he poked a finger through the hole in his jacket. "By sunset tomorrow you won't be able to find the wound."
    "Why on earth did you run out into the open like that?"
    He shrugged and winced. "When I heard the gunfire, I thought you were in trouble."
    Vicki snorted. "Christ. You're as bad as Celluci. I can take care of myself."
    "I know, but you haven't lived in the night for very long."
    "Henry, I hate to break this to you, but it was the guy with the centuries of experience who jumped into the middle of a gang war."
    They stepped out onto the fourteenth floor and increased the distance between them to the width of the hall.
    "So what happened tonight?"
    "We'd both fed," Henry said thoughtfully but without much conviction.
    Vicki shook her head. "I think it's more than that. I think that once we let go of control, we let go of all the baggage that comes with it. It seems that as long as we're focused on wholesale destruction, we get along fine."
    "Then perhaps that's why we're solitary hunters. If what happened tonight is what happens when our kind join forces, we'd soon wipe out our food supply."
    Key in hand, she paused outside the door to the borrowed condo.
    "What happens tomorrow night?"
    "With you and me? I don't know." He smiled, and stroked the curve of her cheek into the air because they stood too far apart to touch.
    "But I have no doubt it will be an experience finding out."

    Celluci was sound asleep. Vicki stood just inside the master bedroom and watched him. Watched the rise and fall of his chest.
    Traced the curve of the arm he'd flung over his head. Listened to his heartbeat.
    He shifted position and a curl of hair fell down onto his face.
    She stepped forward, hand outstretched to brush it back but stopped as the movement pulled the saturated cuff of her sweater across her wrist, drawing a dark smear on the pale skin.

    All at once she didn't want Mike to see her like this.
    Her clothes, all her clothes including her sneakers, went into the washing machine—cold wash, cold rinse, more soap than necessary.
    Then she stepped into the shower and watched the water run red down the drain.
    Eight
    "4:09." Celluci shifted his barely focused gaze from the clock to Vicki. "Cutting it a little close, aren't you?"
    She'd stayed in the shower longer than she'd intended, stayed until the approaching dawn drove her out from under the pounding water.
    And then, wrapped in borrowed towels, she'd hesitated by the side of the bed, unwilling to wake him, afraid that he'd see… See what? The blood had swirled around her feet and down the drain. Nothing else showed. At least, she didn't think it showed.
    "Vicki?" When her head jerked up, he sighed and propped himself against the headboard, the gray suede soft and yielding against his back. Her diet may have changed, but her mannerisms hadn't, and right now she intended to hide something from him. "What's the matter?"
    "Nothing."
    Frowning slightly at her tone, he reached out and folded his hand around hers. To his surprise, it was almost warm. "Are you all right?"
    "If you mean, have I been injured, I'm fine." No one had touched her. Except for Henry. "We haven't got much time…" The sun waited just beyond the crest of the mountains. "… so I'll cut right to the chase. If someone's harvesting organs, it isn't organized crime. The people Henry and I spoke to knew nothing about it. They weren't doing it, and they hadn't heard rumors of anyone else doing it."
    "You sure they were telling the truth?"
    Slowly lifting her head, she stared directly at him. "I'm sure."
    She was sitting just beyond the limited light of the reading lamp that stood on the bedside table. A pair of silver sparks appeared within the shadowed oval of her face then disappeared again before Celluci felt their pull.

    "Okay. You're sure." He didn't know what the limitations were on this whole Prince-of-Darkness thing— though he suspected it wasn't as all-powerful as both Vicki and Henry wanted him to believe—but Vicki'd interviewed enough perps over the years that he had to trust her ability to know when one was lying. "Lets just hope you didn't give them any ideas," he added dryly.
    "Not about organ-legging."
    Her voice lifted the hair on the back of his neck and made asking what ideas she had given them unnecessary. "If organized crime isn't involved, then we lose our best support for selling organs as a motive.
    Henry's ghost could've been killed