Blood Pact

arm.

    Celluci's snarled challenge broke off as he finally recognized the vampire. "Where the hell were you?" he demanded.

    "Finding my way back," Henry answered coldly. ”What were you doing in there?”

    "Trying to get out." The tone matched exactly. "I heard Vicki scream.”

    "So did I.”

    Together they turned and ran toward the lab.

    As they raced through the doorway, the bloodscent hit Henry an almost solid blow, too close now to be masked by either decay or the alcohol vapor still seeping into the air. Far from replete, the Hunger rose. For Vicki's sake Henry held it, and forced it back; he couldn't help her if he lost control. While he struggled to maintain reason, Celluci pulled ahead.

    It seemed there were bodies all over the room, but Celluci only saw one that mattered. Sprawled on her back to one side of the isolation box, Vicki lay motionless except for the purely kinetic jerk that occurred when a blow landed. He saw the steel bar go up and come down, then, howling in inarticulate rage, he grabbed the pale-haired woman by the shoulders and flung her behind him.

    "Your fault, too!" Catherine screamed, launching herself back, the jagged end of the bar dripping crimson.

    There was no time for Celluci to prepare himself for the attack. Then, all at once, there was no attack.

    His arm darting out faster than mortal eye could follow, Henry caught Catherine by the back of the neck, wrapped his other hand around the top of her head, and twisted.

    The pale eyes rolled up. For the second time that night the metal strut rang against the tile as it fell from fingers suddenly slack.

    Tossing the body aside, Henry threw himself to his knees, his hands joining Celluci's as they frantically searched for the wounds below Vicki's blood-soaked clothing.

    The iron bar had torn a chunk of flesh from her left shoulder and had scored the right side of her ribs in two places. Ugly wounds, all three, but hardly fatal.

    Then they lifted her fingers out of the puddle between hip and thigh.

    "Jesus!" Henry pressed his hand down on the spot and met Celluci's wild gaze. "Arterial," he said quietly and strained to hear her heart above the painful pounding of his own.

    The blood spattered across the flashlight lens made Rorschach patterns on the ceiling.

    * * *
    Number nine lay, head to one side as she had left him, waiting for her to come back.

    And then she was there.

    But she didn't see him and she didn't smile.

    "Fifteen minutes. It takes fifteen minutes to bleed to death from that kind of wound.”

    "I know that!" Henry snapped. He had her heartbeat now, but it was frighteningly faint.

    "Of course you do." His ringers trembling, Celluci looped the arm of her glasses back over the curve of her ear. "You're a fucking vampire. You know bleeding. So do something about it!”

    Henry glared at him. There was no way to do a tourniquet in the joining of torso and leg. No way but direct pressure to stop the bleeding and he was already doing that, even if he did it too late. "Do what?" he demanded, sure there was nothing else he could do.

    "How the fuck should I know! You're the fucking . . . Jesus!”

    Pulled by the intensity of Celluci's terrified stare, Henry twisted around. Across the lab, by the wall of boarded up windows, one of the bodies rose slowly to its feet.

    One of them had killed her.

    Killed her dead.

    The anger number nine had known before was less than nothing in comparison to what he felt now.

    My gun? Where the hell is my gun? Swatting aside panic, Celluci scanned the floor and finally spotted it almost under the cavader's feet. Fucking great. . .

    Scrambling to his feet, he launched himself forward, dove, got both hands around the weapon, rolled, and pulled the trigger at almost point-blank range.

    The bullet plowed through the putrefying tissue with almost no loss of velocity and rang against the brass casing of the oxygen tank directly behind. It ricocheted up the curve, hit the next tank, and sprayed bits of the valve across the room. Oxygen began to hiss free.

    "Jesus H. Christ!" Still on the floor, Celluci crabbed back. Although pus and fluid and God-knew-what poured from the hole, the dead man continued to shuffle forward. "What the fuck do you think this is? A fucking James Cameron movie?" His hands were shaking too hard to try a head shot. He watched his second round blow a chunk from the outside curve of the thing's thigh without any noticeable effect. "God-damnit, stay