Blood Pact

in the lab.

    But she was losing the fight and she knew it.

    Henry Fitzroy's identification lay where she'd tossed it. Draping the jacket over one arm, she watched her free hand reach out and scoop the wallet and its contents up off a neatly folded pile of clothes. A jacket might be accidentally left behind but not jeans and a shirt, socks and underwear. These were Donald's clothes, no question of that, and beneath the chair, heels and toes precisely in line, were the black high-top basketball sneakers he'd been so absurdly proud of.

    ”But Donald, you don't play basketball.”

    Donald continued to vigorously pump the bright orange ball set into the tongues of his new shoes. "What does that have to do with anything ?" he asked, grinning broadly. "We're talking the cutting edge of footwear here. We're talking high tech. We're talking image.”

    Dr. Burke sighed and shook her head. ”The perception of athletics without the sweat?" she offered.

    The grin grew broader. ”The point exactly.”

    Still holding the jacket and the vampire's wallet, Dr. Burke slowly turned to face the isolation box. Numbers one through nine had been pulled from the medical school morgue already very dead. Marjory Nelson was dying. But Donald, Donald had been very alive.

    She took a step forward, feeling so removed from reality that she had to concentrate on placing her foot down on the floor.
    Walking no longer seemed to be a voluntary movement. She could see Donald, dark eyes sparkling, completely unrepentant, as he sat in her office and listened to the reasons why he should not only be thrown out of medical school but brought up on charges. When she'd asked him why he'd done it, he'd actually looked thoughtful for a moment before answering. "I wanted to see what would happen." She'd gotten him off. The particulars were buried when the professor who'd uncovered the incident had moved out west the next semester.

    She took another step. She could see Donald frowning over the neural net, clever fingers running along the gold strands, bottom lips caught between his teeth as he struggled with the design.

    Another step. She could see Donald lifting a confused Catherine's hand aloft for a high-five when number four finally responded to their combined genius.

    Another. She could see Donald joining her in a private toast to fame and fortune, barely touching the single malt to his lips for he never drank.

    Another. She could see Donald agreeing that Marjory Nelson was the inevitable next step.

    Her knee touched the box, the vibration burrowing into the bone. She flinched back, then froze.

    Staring down at her reflection, she saw it become a progression of gray faces, contorted, robbed of rest, bodies disfigured by gaping incisions hastily tacked together with knotted railway lines of black silk. What would she see when she lifted the lid? How far had Catherine gone?

    Forcing a deep breath past the constriction in her throat, she let Henry Fitzroy's wallet drop from her right hand to floor. It wasn't really important anymore. Anymore. Anymore . . .

    She reached out, unable to stop the trembling but refusing to give in, and wrapped her empty hand around the latch. Her fingers were so cold, the metal felt warm beneath them.

    "Knowledge is strength," she whispered.

    The latch clicked open.

    From inside the box came a sigh of oxygen rich air as the seal broke, then, following it, a noise that had nothing to do with electronics or machinery.

    Dr. Burke froze. The muscles in her arm, already given the command to lift, spasmed and shook.

    A moan.

    "Donald?”

    Vowels began to form. A tortured shaping. Still recognizable.

    There was nothing even remotely human in the sound.

    Sweat dribbled in icy tracks down her sides. Fingers fought to close the latch. Whatever was in there, wasn't getting out.

    "Doc . . . tor .. .”

    She jerked back; panting, whimpering. Then she turned and ran.

    Terror that couldn't be banished by intellect, or rationalizations, or strength of purpose ran beside her through the empty halls.
    The echoes mocked her. The shadows bulged with horror.

    "What if she's not there?”

    "She's not at home," Vicki replied through set teeth, they'd found Dr. Burke's address in the brown leather book beside her mother's phone. "She has to be somewhere.”

    "Not necessarily at the office.”

    Vicki turned to face him, even though the darkness left her blind. "You have a better idea?”

    She heard him sigh. "No. But if