Blood Price

making his way to the kitchen/bar, brushing past discussions of the recent killings and the creatures they had been attributed to. I will not find the child up here. . . . But the child hadn't fed since Tuesday night and so perhaps had passed through the frenzy and moved to the next part of its metamorphosis. But the parent. . . . His hands clenched into fists, the right pulling painfully against the bandage and the blisters beneath it. The parent must still be found. That he could do up here. Twice before in Alex's loft he had tasted another predator in the air. Then, he had let it go, the blood scent of so many people made tracking a competitor a waste of time. Tonight, if it happened again, he would waste the time.

    Suddenly, he noticed that a path was opening before him as he made his way across the crowded room and he hastily schooled his expression. The men and women gathered here, with faces painted and precious metals dangling, were still close enough to their primitive beginnings to recognize a hunter walking among them.

    That's three times now; the guard, the sun, and this. You'll bring the stakes down on yourself if you're not more careful, you fool. What was the matter with him lately?

    "Hey, Henry, long time since you bin by." Alex, the owner of the loft wrapped a long, bare arm around Henry's shoulders, shoved an open bottle of water into his hand, and steered him deftly away from the bar. "I got someone who needs to see you, mon."

    "Someone who needs to see me?" Henry allowed himself to be steered. It was the way most people dealt with Alex, resistance just took too much energy. "Who?"

    Alex grinned down from his six-foot-four vantage point and winked broadly. "Ah, now, that would be tellin'. Whach you do to your hand?"

    Henry glanced down at the bandage. Even in the dim light of the studio it seemed to glow against the black leather of his cuff. "Burned myself."

    "Burns is bad stuff, mon. Were you cookin'?"

    "You could say that." His lips twitched although he sternly told himself it wasn't funny.

    "What's the joke?"

    "It'd take too long to explain. How about you explaining something to me?"

    "You ahsk, mon. I answer."

    "Why the fake Jamaican accent?"

    "Fake?" Alex's voice rose above the music and a half a dozen people ducked as he windmilled his free arm. "Fake? There's nothing fake about this accent, mon. I'm gettin' back to my roots."

    "Alex, you're from Halifax."

    "I got deeper roots than that, you betcha." He gave the shorter man a push forward and, dropping the accent, added, "Here you go, shrimp, delivered as ordered."

    The woman sitting on the steps to Alex's locked studio stood considerably shorter even than Henry's five six. Her lack of height, combined with baggy jeans and an oversized sweater, gave her a waiflike quality completely at odds with the cropped platinum hair and the intensity of her expression.

    Sliding out from Alex's arm, Henry executed a perfect sixteenth century court bow-not that anyone in the room could identify it as such. "Isabelle," he intoned gravely.

    Isabelle snorted, reached out, grabbed his lapels, and yanked his mouth against hers.

    Henry returned the kiss enthusiastically, skillfully parrying her tongue away from the sharp points of his teeth. He hadn't been certain he was going to feed tonight. He was certain now.

    "Well, if you two are going to indulge in such rampant heterosexuality, in my house yet, I'm going." With an exaggerated limp-wristed wave, Alex sashayed off into the crowd.

    "He'll change personalities again before he gets to the door," Henry observed settling himself on the step. The length of their thighs touched and he could feel his hunger growing.

    "Alex has more masks than anyone I know," Isabelle agreed, retrieving her beer bottle and picking at the label.

    Henry stroked one finger along the curve of her brow. It had been bleached near white to match her hair. "We all wear masks."

    Isabelle raised the brow out from under his finger. "How profound. And do we all unmask at midnight?"

    "No." He couldn't stop the melancholy from sounding in his voice as he realized the source of his recent discontent. It had been so long, so very long, since he'd been able to trust someone with the reality of what he was and all that meant. So long since he'd been able to find a mortal he could build a bond with based on more than sex and blood. And that a child could be created out of the deepest bond that vampire and mortal could share,