Blood Price

distance as possible between her and the perceived threat.

    "Don't worry about it, Mrs. Hughes." Henry removed his hand and the door began to slide closed. "You can't expect Owen to like everybody." Just before the door shut completely, he smiled down at the dog. The mastiff recognized the baring of teeth for what it was and lunged.
    Henry managed a slightly more honest smile as the frantic barks faded down toward the lobby.

    Ten minutes alone with the dog and they could settle what stood between them. Pack law was simple, the strongest ruled. But Owen always traveled with Mrs. Hughes and Henry doubted Mrs. Hughes would understand. As he had no wish to alienate his neighbor, he put up with the mastiff's animosity. It was a pity. He liked dogs and it would take so little to put Owen in his place-Once in the condo, with the door safely closed behind him, he looked at the paper again and snarled.

    "VAMPIRE STALKS CITY."

    The bodies of Terri Neal and DeVerne Jones had been found drained of blood.

    The headline appeared to be accurate.

    And he knew he wasn't doing it.

    With a sudden snap of his wrist he flung the paper across the room and took a minor satisfaction in watching the pages flutter to the floor like wounded birds.

    "Damn. Damn. DAMN!"

    Crossing to the window, he shrugged out of his coat and tossed it on the couch, then yanked back the curtains that blocked the city from view. Vampires were a solitary breed, not seeking each other out nor keeping track of where their brothers and sisters roamed. Although he suspected he shared his territory with others of his kind, there could be a score moving, living, feeding among the patterns of light and shadow that made up the night and Henry would be no more aware of it than the people they moved among.

    And worse, if the killer was a vampire, it was a child, one of the newly changed, for only the newly changed needed blood in such amounts and would kill with such brutal abandon.

    "Not one of mine," he said to the night, his forehead resting against the cool glass. It was as much a prayer as a statement. Everyone of his kind feared that they would turn loose just such a monster, an accidental child, an accidental change. But he'd been careful; never feeding again until the blood had had a chance to renew, never taking the risk that his blood could be passed back. He would have a child someday, but it would change by choice as he had done and he would be there to guide it, to keep it safe.

    No, not one of his. But he could not let it continue to terrorize the city. Fear had not changed over the centuries, nor had people's reactions to it and a terrorized city could quickly bring out the torches and sharpened stakes . . . or the twentieth century laboratory equivalent.

    "And I no more want to be strapped to a table for the rest of my life than to have my head removed and my mouth stuffed with garlic," he told the night.

    He would have to find the child, before the police did and their answer raised more questions than it solved. Find the child and destroy it, for without a blood bond he could not control it.

    "And then," he raised his head and bared his teeth, "I will find the parent."

    * * *
    "Morning, Mrs. Kopolous."

    "Hello, darling, you're up early."

    "I couldn't sleep," Vicki told her, making her way to the back of the store where the refrigerators hummed, "and I was out of milk."

    "Get the bags, they're on sale."

    "I don't like the bags." Out of the corner of one eye she saw Mrs. Kopolous expressing a silent and not very favorable opinion of her unwillingness to save forty-nine cents. She grabbed a jug and brought it back to the counter. "Papers not out yet?"

    "Yeah, yeah, they're right here, dear." She bent over the bundles, her stocky body hiding the headlines. When she straightened, she slapped one copy of each morning paper down by the cash register.

    "SABERS DOWN LEAFS 10-2."

    Vicki let out a lungful of air she hadn't known she was holding. If the tabloid made no mention of another murder-besides the slaughter in the division play-offs-it looked like the city had made it safely through the night.

    "Those terrible things, you're mixed up in them, aren't you?"

    "What terrible things, Mrs. Kopolous?" She scooped up her change, then put it back and grabbed an Easter cream egg instead. What the hell, there was reason to celebrate.

    Mrs. Kopolous shook her head, but whether it was at the egg or life in general, Vicki couldn't tell. "You're