Blood Pact

fire! All at once, as though it had been waiting to be remembered, he could feel the heat licking against his back. He turned. The entire wall of boarded windows was aflame. The smoke had a greenish tinge and an unpleasant taste, spilled chemicals or burning plastic, it was irrelevant at the moment. They had to get out.

    "Fitzroy!”

    The voice seemed to come from a long way away, but it held an urgency difficult to ignore. Henry opened his eyes.

    ”We've got to get out of here before this whole place goes up! Can you move her?”

    It took a moment for Henry's eyes to clear, but gradually he, too, became aware of the danger. He glanced down at Vicki, still nuzzling like a blind kitten at his breast, and pulled free enough to find his voice. "I've never done this before, Detective." He had no energy left for anything but the truth and the touch of her life was still so tenuous. "She's dying slower than she was, but she's still dying.”

    "Christ! What more will it take!”

    "More, I'm afraid, than I have right now to give." He swayed, Vicki's head rising and falling with the motion. "I told you it might not work.”

    Fucking great. Vicki was still dying, Fitzroy looked like hell, and the building was burning down around them. He coughed and scrubbed his forearm across his face. God-damned cup's not half empty if I say it's half full. Grabbing jacket and holster and gun up off the floor, Celluci stood. "If she's still dying, she's not dead. Let's try to keep it that way. Come on!”

    Shifting his grip, cradling Vicki in his arms as though she were a child, Henry tried to stand. The room tilted.

    Eyes streaming from the smoke, Celluci shoved his free hand into a leather-covered armpit and helped heave Henry and his burden off the floor. "Can you hold her?”

    "Yes." He didn't actually think he could let her go but he didn't have enough strength for the explanation. Henry leaned on the larger man's strength as his knees threatened to buckle and, together, they staggered toward the door. Unable to see where he was placing his feet, he stumbled over a piece of something wet he didn't want to know what, and nearly fell.

    "Oh, no, you don't." Muscles popping, sweat streaming down his chest, Celluci somehow kept all three of them up and moving.
    "After everything we've been through tonight, we aren't fucking quitting yet.”

    Arms locked around Vicki, holding her life with his own, Henry dredged up the ghost of a smile. "Never say die, Detective?”

    Celluci tossed the curl of hair back off his face and led the way out of the lab. "Fucking right," he growled.

    As they disappeared down the hall, the door to the storeroom slowly swung open and, coughing, Dr. Burke stumbled out into the lab.

    "Now that," she declared, "was a most edi . . . fying evening. Who says eaves . . . droppers never hear anything good?" She wiped her streaming eyes and nose on her sleeve and picked her way carefully through the smoke and debris toward the door.

    From the sound of it, Marjory Nelson's daughter and her companions had problems of their own. Problems that could easily be used to convince them that Dr. Aline Burke might be better left alone, that her involvement in this whole sordid affair was nothing more than chance.

    Donald was dead. She didn't want Donald to be dead, but upon consideration there wasn't anything she could do about it. Why should she suffer just because Donald was dead?

    Catherine was dead, too, and therefore a convenient, nonprotesting scapegoat.

    "I had no idea what was going on, your honor." She started to giggle and gagged instead. Whatever chemicals were burning were undeniably toxic. "Go ahead, burn!" she commanded. "Let's give Catherine and her friends a fine Viking send-off and in the pro-shess . . ." A fit of coughing doubled her over. She staggered to the isolation box and sagged against it, stomach heaving.

    "And in the proshess," she repeated when she'd caught her breath and swallowed a mouthful of bile, "destroy as much evidence as possible. A little vampiric blackmail, a little-what's the word?-con . . . fla . . . gration and I'll be out of this with no major career damage done." Her flame-bordered reflection appeared smugly satisfied and she smiled down at it, patting herself on the cheek. The box was becoming warm to the touch and the skin of her face and hands was beginning to tighten in the growing heat. Time to go.

    Head lowered to avoid the worst of the smoke now billowing down from