Blood Debt

hasn't crumbled. Well, except for that Jerry Lewis thing, and you can hardly blame that on transplants."
    As Swanson continued his familiar diatribe, Dr. Mui worked out a timetable for the next forty-eight hours. Attention to detail had brought them this far undetected, and although the odds of their unwilling donor causing any trouble were slim, he was a detail that had to be carefully considered. Live transplants had a ninety-seven percent initial success rate over ninety-two percent for cadavers, and, since the very rich could not only afford the best immunosuppressant drugs but tended to be paranoid about post-op infections, all of their buyers had, thus far, beaten the odds. Perhaps in this particular instance she should forgo that five percent…

    Celluci jerked awake out of a dream that involved a great deal of blood and not much else he could remember. He lay quietly for a moment, listening to the pounding of his heart, feeling the sweat pool beneath the restraints, a little surprised that he'd slept at all. From the change in the pattern of shadow on the opposite wall, he figured it had to be close to four, maybe five in the afternoon. Sunset was at 7:48. By nine at the absolute latest, Vicki would be riding to the rescue.
    She'd tear the clinic, and anything that got in her way, apart looking for him. Almost a pity Sullivan won't be there, he thought, amusing himself for a moment or two with a vision of Vicki and Sullivan face-to-face.
    If the clinic came up empty, Vicki'd go after Swanson. If Swanson was involved, the calvary would arrive before midnight, and at this point, he'd worry about bringing the police in after his butt was safe and sound. But if Swanson wasn't involved—and there was still no sure indication that he was—Vicki'd have no quick way of finding him.
    And she'd only have until dawn.
    He had an unpleasant feeling that dawn would be the deadline in more than one respect. The bandage over the puncture in the crease of his elbow itched, suggesting he not wait around to be rescued. If they were taking his blood, what else would they take? Could surgery be far behind? And after surgery…
    "Oh, Christ, that's just what I need—an eternity haunting Henry-fucking-Fitzroy.''
    Twelve
    THEY were still there. Henry knew it before he opened his eyes. As the day's weight lifted off him, the certainty of their presence settled down to replace it. One of two things had to have happened; either the people who'd grabbed Celluci had evaded arrest, or there were other people involved the police investigation hadn't yet uncovered.
    There is, of course, the third possibility. He lay silently listening to the lives around him, senses skimming past the absence of life that waited at the end of his bed. Perhaps due process wasn't good enough.
    They want a vengeance more evisceral and less… Unfortunately, the only word he could think of to finish the thought, was legal. Which leaves Detective Celluci, up until now the most involved, no part of the end result.
    But he'd known from the beginning if it came to that evisceral vengeance, it would be in spite of Detective Celluci. For honor's sake, he'd attempted to stay within the parameters of the law; it hadn't worked. And what about Vicki?
    Even before the change she'd been willing to acknowledge that law and 'justice were not necessarily the same thing. While she couldn't strike the final blow, not without crossing the line Celluci had drawn in the sand, Henry doubted that she'd try and stop his hand. His lips drew off his teeth in an involuntary snarl at the thought.
    Finally, because he could put it off no longer, he opened his eyes.
    They stood where they had for the past six nights. Doug. The companion he'd acquired in death. And wrapped in shadows too dark for even Henry to pierce, the unseen chorus; an added emphasis from the damned.
    Henry sighed. "You guys still here?"
    An inferior question at best and not the one he'd intended to ask.
    Although the spirits clearly didn't like it, it was enough.
    Celluci was not in the condo.
    Vicki was as certain of that as she was of anything. Teeth bared, she glared around the darkness as though she might scare up an answer or two. Celluci knew when sunset was. If he could be here, he would.
    Since he wasn't, he couldn't.
    And that meant someone, somewhere, was going to pay.
    As she yanked on her clothes, muttering threats, a saner voice in the back of her head suggested that perhaps he'd merely been held up by