Blood Price

moment later, she wondered why she was standing in the middle of St. Lawrence Boulevard staring at a set of taillights driving onto the campus-and why she felt a vague sense of disappointment.

    Henry scanned the directory board and frowned. Only one office listed might have what he needed: The Office of Student Programs, S302. He sensed a scattering of lives in the building, but he would deal with them as he had to.

    11:22. He was running out of time.

    The dim lighting was a boon and had anyone been watching they'd have seen only a deeper shadow flickering down the length of the shadowed hall.

    The first flight of stairs he found only took him to the second floor. He found another, found the third floor, and began following the numbers stenciled on the doors.

    322, 313, 316 . . . 340? He turned and glared at the fire door he'd just passed through. Surely there had to be a pattern. No one, not even in the twentieth century, numbered a building completely at random.

    "I haven't got time for this," he growled.

    340, 342, 344, 375a. . . .

    A cross corridor carried the numbers off in two directions. Henry paused, there were voices and they were saying things he couldn't ignore.

    "Well, what do you expect when you call out the name of a Demon Lord in his consort's temple?"

    Temple? Consort? Were there now other groups involved in calling demons or had his assumption that only one person was involved been wrong from the beginning? He didn't have time to check this out. He couldn't afford not to.

    Down the cross corridor, around a corner, and the door at the end of the hall showed light behind it. There appeared to be several people talking at once.

    "I suppose this means the demon has Elias?"

    "Good guess. What are you going to do?"

    "What can we do? We wait."

    "You can wait," a third voice rose out of the tumult, "but Lexi boots the statue and screams,
    'Ashwarn, Ashwarn, Ashwarn, you give him back!' at the top of her lungs."

    Henry paused, hand on the door. There were six lives in the room and no feel of a demonic presence. What was going on?

    "Nothing happens."

    "What do you mean, nothing?"

    "Just what I said, nothing." The young woman sitting at the head of the table spotted Henry standing, blinking on the threshold and smiled. "Hi. You look lost."

    They were playing a game. That much was obvious from the piles of brightly colored dice.
    But a game that called on demons? "I'm looking for student records. . . ."

    "Boy are you in the wrong place." A tall young man scratched at dark stubble. "You need the WOB." At Henry's blank look, he grinned and continued. "The West Office Building, WOB, that's where all that shit is."

    "Yeah, but the WOB closes down at five." Carefully placing the little lead figure she'd been holding on the table, one of the other players checked her watch. "It's eight minutes after eleven.
    There won't be anyone there."

    Eight after eleven. More time wasted on fruitless searching.

    "Hey, don't look so upset, man, maybe we can help?"

    "Maybe we can play?" muttered one of the others. The rest ignored her.

    Why not? After all, he was looking for a man who called up demons. The connection was there, however tenuous. "I'm looking for Norman Birdwell."

    The young woman at the head of the table curled her lip. "Why?" she asked. "Does he owe you money."

    "You know him?"

    "Unfortunately." The group drawled out the word in unison.

    They would have laughed, but Henry was at the table before the first sound escaped. They looked at one another in nervous silence instead and Henry could see memories of nine bodies, throats ripped out, rising in their expressions. He couldn't compel a group this large, he could only hope they were still young enough to respond to authority.

    "I need his address."

    "We, uh, played at his place once. Grace, didn't you write it down?"

    They all watched while Grace, the young woman at the head of the table, searched through her papers. She appeared to have written everything down. Henry fought the urge to help her search.

    "Is Norman in trouble?"

    Henry kept his eyes on the papers, willing the one he needed to be found. "Yes."

    The players closest to him edged away, recognizing the hunter. A second later, with the arrogance of youth, they decided they couldn't possibly be the prey and edged back.

    "We, uh, stopped gaming with him 'cause he took the whole thing too seriously."

    "Yeah, he started acting like all this stuff was real. Like he was