Blood Lines

hockey practice or I'd have suggested he tell you all this firsthand."
    'That would have been a fun evening."
    Vicki grinned. Celluci's reaction would have been louder and more profane but essentially similar.
    Henry sat down at his desk and turned on his computer. Over the hum of the fan he could hear deep, slow breathing coming from the living room and, under that, the measured beat of a heart at rest.
    ' Don't expect me to stay around every night, " Vicki had warned him, yawning. "I expect most of the time I'll show up just before dawn to tuck you in. But, as long as I'm here, you might as well do some writing and I might as well get some sleep . " She'd led the way out of the bedroom, pillow tucked under one arm, blanket under the other. " I'll sack out on the couch. The airflow's better out there and you won't have to sleep surrounded by blood scent ."
    It was a plausible, even a considerate reason, but Henry didn't believe it. He'd seen the lines of tension smooth out of her back as they'd left the room. He listened to her sleep for a moment longer, then shook his head and turned his attention to the monitor. The book was due the first of December and he figured he was still a chapter away from happily ever after.
    Veronica paced the length of her room in the Governor's mansion, silk skirts whipping around her shapely ankles.
    Captain Roxborough would hang on the morrow unless she could find some way to prevent it. She knew he wasn't a pirate but, even though the Governor had been more than kind, would her word mean anything once everyone discovered that she'd made her way to the islands disguised as a cabin boy? That Captain Roxborough had discovered her and that he'd…
    She stopped pacing and raised slender fingers to cover her heated cheeks. None of that mattered now. "He must not die," she vowed .
    'I can't seem to get away from dying at dawn," Henry muttered, pushing back from the desk.
    Last spring, the dawn had caught him away from safety and he'd raced the sun for his life. He still bore the puckered scar on the back of his hand where the day had marked him.
    Would it happen as quickly as that had, he wondered, or more slowly? Would it be instantaneous as his flesh ignited and turned to ash, or would he burn slowly in agony, screaming his way to the final death?
    He forced his mind away from the thought, listening to the even tempo of Vicki's breathing until he calmed. There had to be something else he could think about.
    ' Celluci seriously believes that an ancient Egyptian has risen from his coffin and killed two people at the museum ."
    He'd been to Egypt once; just after the turn of the century; just after the death of Dr. O'Mara when England had seemed tainted and he'd had to get away. He hadn't stayed long.
    He'd met Lady Wellington on the terrace at Shepheard's. She'd been sitting alone, drinking tea and watching the crowds of Egyptians making their way up Ibrahim Pasha Street when she'd felt his gaze and called him over. A recent widow in her early forties, she had no objection to keeping company with an attractive, well-bred young man. Henry, for his part, had found her candor refreshing. " Don't be ridiculous ," she'd told him, when he'd expressed his sympathy on her loss, " the nicest thing his Lordship ever did for me was to drop dead before I was too old to enjoy my freedom .
    " And then she'd stroked the inside of his thigh under the cover of the damask tablecloth.

    Publicly, they were as discreet as the society of 1903 demanded. Privately, she was just what Henry needed after the incident with the grimoire. He never told her what he was and she accepted the time he spent away from her with the same aplomb as the time he spent with her. He rather suspected she had another lover for the daylight hours and found himself admiring her stamina.
    On the nights he had to feed from others, he stayed away from the English and American tourists and slipped into the dark and twisting streets of old Cairo where sloe-eyed young men never knew they paid for their pleasure with blood.
    And then he began to feel watched. Although he could identify no obvious threat-dark eyes watched all the visitors and certainly seemed to watch him no more than the rest-the skin between his shoulder blades continued to crawl. He began to take more care moving to and from his sanctuary.
    A moonlight climb to the top of the Great Pyramid had become "the thing to do" and it took little pleading for Henry to agree to