Blood Pact

the paper bisected with a black ink trail of spikes and valleys.

    "How the hell do you know that?”

    She snorted. "They're labeled.”

    "Stop it!”

    All three of them jerked around.

    "Stop it this instant!”

    Vicki's flashlight just barely managed to pick out a pale circle of face and hair over a paler rectangle of lab coat in the doorway at the far end of the long room.

    "Stop it! Stop it! Stop it!" Fury and madness were stridently obvious in her voice.

    "Catherine." Leaping the wreckage at his feet, Henry charged forward.

    The figure in the doorway disappeared.

    "Fitzroy!”

    "Henry!”

    He ignored them, intent on the hunt. This madwoman had imprisoned him, tortured him, left him alone in the darkness; she was his. Knowing what she was, he would avoid sinking into the emptiness of her eyes. He would take her down. Her blood was not tainted even if her mind was. And she owed him blood.

    In spite of his speed, not yet fully returned but still greater than mortal, she was out of sight when he reached the hall. Her scent lay buried under the clinging stench of death perverted, which not only filled the air but covered the inside of his mouth and nose like a noxious film of oil. He could hear her life so he sped after it.

    But sound became a twisting and uncertain trail, easy to lose track of in the maze of rooms and passageways and, so long used to hunting by sight or scent, Henry found it more difficult than he'd believed possible to close the distance. Her life grew closer, but embarrassingly slowly.

    Madness gives strength of limb even while it destroys strength of mind. He couldn't remember who had said that to him, so many years ago, but it appeared that madness gave fleetness of foot as well as strength for Catherine continued to elude him, using the peculiarities of the building to her advantage.

    Around a corner and through a lecture hall and out a small door only someone with intimate knowledge of the building would know existed, her heartbeat led him on. The emergency lighting provided patches of too bright light alternating with bands of shadow much easier on his eyes. He was beginning to grow tired, his body protesting the demands he was making on it so soon after the punishment it had endured. Vicki's blood could only do so much.

    In the instant before flight, Catherine had recognized the vampire and it hadn't taken her long to realize that she couldn't outrun him. Her knowledge of the building was her only advantage and while it prevented an immediate confrontation, she soon saw it wasn't enough to throw him off her trail.

    She had no idea what he would do when he finally caught her, nor did she care. Her only thoughts were for number nine and how she'd been forced to leave him alone and outnumbered in the lab. She had to get back to him.

    Rounding a corner, the angle of the emergency light caught her eye and she skidded to a stop. The heavy battery contained in the base had proved too much for the antique plaster and lath expected to hold the screws and the unit had sagged away from the wall.
    Chest heaving, she jumped for it and hooked her fingertips over a narrow metal lip.

    Henry followed Catherine's life around another corner and down a corridor much darker than the rest had been. Her heartbeat grew louder. Then he saw her outlined against the institutional gray of the wall; cowering, cornered.

    His lips drew off his teeth and the Hunter closed in on his prey.

    She straightened, her body no longer blocking the object cradled in her arms.

    Brilliant white light drove spikes of hot metal into night-sensitive eyes. Crying out in pain, Henry fell back, hands raised, an ineffectual barrier now that the damage had been done. He heard her go by, recoiled as her life brushed its shattered edges over him, and could not follow.

    * * *
    Celluci had taken three quick steps after the running vampire, saw he was fast being left behind and stopped. "God damn him!"
    He flung the disk he was holding at the wall, as hard as he was able, and found his feelings were not in the least relieved by its shattering. "After all we went through to haul his ass out of danger, that god-damned undead bastard runs off on us!”

    Vicki merely shook her head, hand clutched tightly around the barrel of her flashlight. Although the sound of her own heartbeat nearly deafened her, she felt surprisingly calm. "It's not," she said softly, "like he's a tame lion.”

    Celluci turned on her, both hands driving up