Blood Price

suckled the blood of eternal life.

    * * *
    "Let me get this straight; you're the bastard son of Henry VIII?"

    "That's right." Henry Fitzroy, once Duke of Richmond and Somerset, Earl of Nottingham, and Knight of the Garter, leaned his forehead against the cool glass of the window and looked down at the lights of Toronto. It had been a long time since he'd told the story; he'd forgotten how drained it left him.

    Vicki looked down at the book of the Tudor age, spread open on her lap, and tapped a paragraph. "It says here you died at seventeen."

    Shaking off his lethargy, Henry turned to face her. "Yes, well, I got better."

    "You don't look seventeen." She frowned. "Mid-twenties I'd say, no younger."

    He shrugged. "We age, but we age slowly."

    "It doesn't say so here, but wasn't there some mystery about your funeral?" One corner of her mouth quirked up at his surprised expression, the best she could manage considering the condition of her jaw. "I have a BA in History."

    "Isn't that an unusual degree for a person in your line of work?"

    He meant for a private investigator, she realized, but it had been just as unusual for a cop. If she had a nickel for every time someone, usually a superior officer, had dragged out that hoary old chestnut, those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it, she'd be a rich woman.
    "It hasn't slowed me down," she told him a little pointedly. "The funeral?"

    "Yes, well, it wasn't what I'd been expecting, that's for certain." He clasped his hands together to still their shaking and although he fought it, the memories caught him up again. . . .

    * * *
    Waking-confused and disoriented. Slowly, he became aware of his heartbeat and allowed it to pull him back to full consciousness. He'd never been in a darkness so complete and, in spite of Christina's remembered reassurance, he began to panic. The panic grew when he tried to push the lid off the crypt and found he couldn't move. Not stone above him, but rough wood embracing him so closely that the rise and fall of his chest brushed against the boards. All around, the smell of earth.

    Not a noble's tomb but a common grave.

    Screaming until his throat was raw, he twisted and thrashed through the little movement he had but, although the wood creaked once or twice, the weight of earth was absolute.

    He stopped then, for he realized that to destroy the coffin and lie covered only in the earth would be infinitely worse. That was when the hunger began. He had no idea how long he lay, paralyzed with terror, frenzied need clawing at his gut, but his sanity hung by a thread when he heard a shovel blade bite into the dirt above him.

    * * *
    "You know," he said, scrubbing a hand across his face, terror still echoing faintly behind the words, "there's a very good reason most vampires come from the nobility; a crypt is a great deal easier to get out of. I'd been buried good and deep and it took Christina three days to find me and dig me free." Sometimes, even four centuries later, when he woke in the evening, he was back there. Alone. In the dark. Facing eternity.

    "So your father," Vicki paused, she had trouble with this next bit, "Henry VIII, really did suspect?"

    Henry laughed, but the sound had little humor. "Oh, he more than suspected. I discovered later that he'd ordered a stake driven through my heart, my mouth stuffed with garlic and the lips sewn shut, then my head removed and buried separately. Thank God, Norfolk remained a true friend until the end."

    "You saw him again?"

    "A couple of times. He understood better than I thought."

    "What happened to Christina?"

    "She guided me through the frenzy that follows the change. She guarded me during the year I slept as my body adapted to its new condition. She taught me how to feed without killing. And then she left."

    "She left?" Vicki's brows flew almost to her hairline. "After all that, she left?"

    Henry turned again to look out at the lights of the city. She could be out there, he'd never know. Nor, he had to admit a little sadly, would he care. "When the parent/child link is over, we prefer to hunt alone. Our closest bonds are formed when we feed and we can't feed from each other." He rested his hand against the glass. "The emotional bond, the love if you will, that causes us to offer our blood to a mortal never survives the change."

    "But you could still. . . ."

    "Yes, but it isn't the same." He shook himself free of the melancholy and faced her again.
    "That also is