Blood Pact

say they'll still be that way in the morning.”

    "You shouldn't have left her alone." I left her alone and look what happened. They both heard the corollary. They both ignored it.

    "I'm listening to her heartbeat, Detective. I can be at her side in seconds. And this is as far as I'll go until you're ready to take over.”

    Celluci snorted and wished he could think of something to say.

    Henry lifted his face and breathed deeply of the night. "It's going to rain. I'd best not linger.”

    "Yeah." Hands shoved into his jacket pockets, Celluci pushed himself up off his car. All right, so he hadn't walked far. He hadn't said he was going to. He wanted to believe that Fitzroy had left her no choice but he knew better; he wouldn't have left if that had been even a possibility.

    "Michael.”

    Pulled around by his name, he tried not to let any of what he was feeling show on his face. It wasn't hard. He didn't know exactly what he was feeling.

    "Thank you.”

    Celluci started to ask, For what?, but he bit it back. Something in Henry's tone, he'd call it honesty if forced to put a name to it, denied a facetious response. Instead, he nodded, once, and asked, "What would you have done if she'd said no?" Even before the last word left his mouth, he wondered why he was asking.

    Henry's gesture seemed to move past the overlapping yellow-white of the streetlights. "We're in the middle of a small city, Detective. I'd have managed.”

    "You'd have gone to a stranger?”

    Red-gold brows, darkened by shadow, rose. "Well, I wouldn't have had time to make friends.”

    Sure, take the cheap shot. "Don't you know there's a fucking epidemic on?”

    "It's a disease of the blood, Detective. I know when someone is infected and am therefore able to avoid it.”

    Celluci tossed the curl of hair back off his forehead. "Lucky you," he grunted. "I still don't think that you should . . . I mean . . ."
    He kicked at the gravel and swore when a rock propelled by his foot clanged off the undercarriage of his car. Why the hell was he worrying about Fitzroy anyway? The son of a bitch had lasted centuries, he could take care of himself. Trusting him is one thing. And I'm not sure I do. I am certainly not beginning to like him. Uh-uh. No way. Forget it. "Look, even if you can sense it, you shouldn't be . . ." Be what? Jesus, normal vocabulary is not up to this. ". . . doing it with strangers," he finished in a hurry.

    Henry's lips curled up into a speculative smile. "That could be difficult," he said softly, "if we stay here for very long. Even if she were willing, I can't feed off Vicki every time the Hunger rises.”

    The night air suddenly got hard to breathe. Celluci yanked at his collar.

    "And after all," Henry continued, the corners of his eyes crinkling with amusement, "there's only one other person in this city who I can't consider a stranger.”

    It took Celluci the same moment it had taken Vicki. "You wish," he snarled, whirled on one heel, and stomped toward the apartment building.

    Smile broadening, Henry watched him go, listening to the angry pounding of Celluci's heart as he charged around the corner and out of sight. It had been less than kind to tease the mortal when he'd been honestly concerned but the opportunity had been impossible to resist.

    "And if I wished," he reminded the night when he had it to himself again. "I would.”

Nine
    The night held countless different kinds of darkness, from the wine-dark sky arching over the Mediterranean, to the desert cut into sharp relief by edged moonlight, to cities that broke it into secret pieces with a kaleidoscope of bright lights. Henry knew them all.
    He was never certain whether the night had more faces than the day or if he'd merely had more time to find them, four hundred and fifty years rather overshadowed barely seventeen. Were those faces each, in its own way, truly beautiful, or was he finding beauty in inevitability?

    Walking south along Division Street, toward the university, he drank in yet another night. The return of a sun he would never see had warmed the earth and the scent of new growth nearly overwhelmed asphalt and concrete and several thousand moving bits of flesh and blood. Infant leaves, still soft and fragile, danced tentatively on the wind, the whispers of their movement a counterpoint to the hum of electrical wires and the growl of automobiles and the never-ending sounds of humanity. He knew if he took the time to look in the shadowed places of the