Blood Debt

you." This time when Vicki let her go, she staggered sideways and collapsed into a chair. A heartbeat later, she was alone in the room, certain she'd always been alone, staring at the brown glass bottle in her hand and wondering if it was possible to dream, to nightmare, while awake.
    "I almost killed her." The Hunger raged against its restraints and Vicki determinedly ignored the almost painful feeling that she'd left something important unfinished.
    "I know."
    "Then why didn't you try to stop me?"
    "I didn't need to, did I?" Henry glanced over her shoulder as she flipped through the communication book she'd taken from the nurse's station. They were standing in the hall next to the operating room; safely far enough away from everyone else in the building. "I had to trust what I'd taught you, or there wasn't much point in teaching it."
    She twisted around far enough to see his face, "You ought to lay off the reruns of Kung Fu, Henry. You're sounding like a pompous ass—
    and I'm telling you this for your own good because we're friends."
    Before he could respond, before he'd figured out what to respond, she added, "Maybe you should've trusted your teaching all along."
    "All along?"
    Her lip curled. "All along—from the moment I arrived in Vancouver."
    "If you remember, I taught you we couldn't share a territory."
    "Which just proves what you know," she announced triumphantly and turned her attention back to the communication book. "Ah. Here it is." She tapped an entry with one finger. "5:09 a.m., two cops show up, so does a Dr. Mui—apparently one of her patients was dying—she shows the cops around, they leave. They must've moved him before the cops arrived. Son of a bitch."
    "I don't see how…"

    "Does it matter? Come on." She tossed the book into the operating room—let them wonder—and started down the hall. "I doubt there's a forwarding address, but they might've left something in that room we can use."
    Nothing, except the lingering scent of three men and a woman.
    Vicki stood by the empty bed, forcing herself to recognize other lives but Mike Celluci's. "Dr. Mui."
    Henry frowned, recognizing Death beneath the recent patina of life.
    "What about her?"
    "She's in on it. This…" Vicki waved a hand in the air, scooping it toward her nose. "This is the woman who gave Celluci that shot."
    "Are you sure?"
    "Trust me. I make it a point to remember the other women he smells like."
    I suspect I owe the detective an apology, Henry mused as he stepped back out of Vicki's way. He was definitely better acquainted with territorial imperatives than I assumed. "Now where?"
    "Dr. Mui's office."

    "… and he's safe at second! Can you believe that speed. From anyone else in this game that would've been a single!"
    His attention on the television in the other room, Sullivan crumpled the empty saline bag and shoved the IV stand aside. It hung, suspended for an instant at forty-five degrees and then crashed to the floor, the noise all but drowning out the enthusiasm of the sportscaster.
    Kicking the stainless steel pieces out of his way, Sullivan stomped out of the room and cranked up the volume until the sound began to distort.
    "What are you looking so happy about," he snarled as he returned to the bed. "You an Oakland fan?"
    "Not likely." Unaware that he'd been looking anything but pained—
    the needle had been roughly yanked from the back of his hand and the bandage applied with bruising pressure—Celluci winced as the crowd at the Kingdome responded to a double play and the television speakers squealed.
    "Then what?" Sullivan's eyes narrowed as a second of silence led into a commercial, the sales pitch almost deafening in comparison.
    Grumbling under his breath, he went back to the TV and turned the volume down. "You thought someone'd notice that, didn't you? Maybe complain about the noise." Callused fingers closed on the end of Celluci's nose and twisted. Cartilage cracked. "Don't ever think I'm stupid."

    Blinking away involuntary tears, Celluci snorted, "Hadn't occurred to me." If truth be told, nothing much had occurred to him for most of the evening. It might've been the blood loss, it might've been the residual effect of the sedatives but coherent thought took more effort than he seemed capable of.
    "So why're you smilin', shit for brains?"
    Except that he had to make the effort and he only had one source of information. If nothing else, he needed to find out more about his jailer. Celluci jerked his head toward