Blood Debt

held in the silvered depths of Vicki's eyes, and mirrored her movement. She was almost as tall. "I don't know what the hell you're talking about."
    This was not the usual response. Somewhat taken aback, Vicki allowed a little more of the Hunter off the leash, dropped a little more of her mortal camouflage. "You've never noticed anything strange going on? Patients who don't quite match their records? Locked doors?"
    Breathing heavily, the nurse shook her head. "Whatever you are, you don't scare me. You want to know what scares me? Having two teenage kids and a husband who's been out of work for six months and losing this job, that scares me. I'm not telling you anything."
    "If you're dead," Vicki snarled, patience exhausted, "you won't be working."
    "You might be death for some people, I can see…" Fear finally showed, trapping her voice in her throat. She swallowed hard and continued.
    "… see that, but whatever you are, you aren't death for me."
    "She's right," Henry said softly, impressed by a strength of will that refused to be blinded by terror. "She knows you won't kill her without reason. She's called your bluff."
    Reaction split equally between irritation and embarrassment, Vicki held her position at the desk. "This does not make me weak," she warned him, fingers curling into fists.
    Amused, but careful not to let it show, he moved a little closer. "I meant it as a compliment to her, not an insult to you. Perhaps you'd best let me…"
    "No!" This mortal was hers. Whether or not Henry could convince her to speak was irrelevant. Eyes narrowed, Vicki muttered, "Must be a damned good job."
    "It is… mostly."
    Mostly. Vicki smiled. "If I had a job with good money in these times, I guess I'd be willing to ignore things that don't quite fit, too."
    "Hey, I take care of the patients, and I do what I do very well." She straighted and folded her arms across the broad shelf of her breasts.
    "What goes on in the back is none of my business."
    "Of course it isn't. Forget you ever saw us."
    Lips pressed into a thin, disapproving line. "You got that right."
    "Mike's in here."
    A sign on the door said Electrical Room.
    "Are you sure?"
    Vicki ignored him, rummaging in the depths of her shoulderbag for her lock picks.
    "I can feel a number of lives, Vicki; up, down, all around us. Most of them are drugged, all of them have been blended by their condition into one amorphous mass. How can you be sure one of those lives belongs to Michael Celluci?"
    She dropped to her knees and inserted her two heaviest picks. "I'm a lot closer to his life than you are."
    "And you want to find him very badly. I shouldn't be the one reminding you of this, but we don't know for certain he came out here. We don't know what the nurse thinks goes on in the back."
    "And we won't find out unless we take a look." The door opened onto another short hall. One door led to the electrical room.
    The other led to a room like most other hospital rooms except for the cinder block walls and the small, high window. Vicki stood in the doorway, staring at the body on the bed, feeling curiously light-headed as all the pieces of her world clicked back into place.
    His face was bruised. Blood had dried in the corner of his mouth.
    The skin had split across the knuckles of his right hand. His heart beat to a rhythm not quite the rhythm she knew. He smelled of drugs and there were leather restraints holding him to the bed.
    She wanted to rip him free, gather him into her arms, and carry him to safety, but they were in no immediate danger so, for his sake, she'd find out what they'd done to him first. Slowly, deliberately, she crossed to the bed and unbuckled the restrains. Later, she'd give in to the violence. Later, someone would pay.
    "Mike?"
    A quick inspection, hands stroking patterns on flesh as familiar as her own, determined nothing obvious had been removed.
    "Mike, come on. Snap out of it."
    His pulse was strong. She traced the line of his jaw, her finger rasping against dark stubble.
    Henry watched from the doorway, knowing he'd been forgotten, marveling at how much it hurt. Territorial imperatives, attacks, counterattacks, edged civility, barely maintained control, all disappeared under memories of loving her. At the moment he hated Michael Celluci more than he'd ever hated anyone in his life.
    But the moment passed.
    Celluci would never have the ultimate intimacy that he and Vicki had shared—her life recreated in his arms, her blood to him, his blood to