Blood Price

tied too closely to feeding."

    "Oh. Then the stories about vampiric . . . uh . . . ."

    "Prowess?" Henry supplied with a grin. "Are true. But then, we get a lot of time to practice."

    Vicki felt the heat rise in her face and she had to drop her gaze. Four hundred and fifty years of practice. . . . Involuntarily, she clenched her teeth and the sudden sharp pain from her jaw came as a welcome distraction. Not tonight, I've got a headache. She closed the book on her lap and carefully set it aside, glancing down at her watch as she did. 4:43. I've heard some interesting confessions in my time, but this one. . . . The option, of course, existed to disbelieve everything she'd heard. To get out of the apartment and away from a certified nut case and call for the people in the white coats to lock Mr. Fitzroy, bastard son of Henry VIII, etcetera, etcetera, away where he belonged. Except, she did believe and trying to convince herself she didn't would be trying to convince herself of a lie.

    "Why did you tell me all this?" she asked at last.

    Henry shrugged. "The way I saw it, I had two options. I could trust you or I could kill you. If I trusted you first," he spread his hands, "and discovered it was a bad idea, I could still kill you before you could do me any harm."

    "Now wait a minute," Vicki bridled. "I'm not that easy to kill!" He was standing at the window; ten, maybe twelve feet away. Less than a heartbeat later he sat beside her on the couch, both hands resting lightly around her neck. She couldn't have stopped him. She hadn't even seen him move. "Oh," she said.

    He removed his hands and continued as though she hadn't interrupted. "But if I killed you first, well, that would be that. And I think we can help each other."

    "How?" Up close, he became a little overwhelming and she had to fight the desire to move away. Or move closer. Four hundred and fifty years develops a forceful personality, she observed, shifting her gaze to the white velvet upholstery.

    "The demon hunts at might. So do I. But the one who calls the demon is mortal and must live his life during the day."

    "You're suggesting that we team up?"

    "Until the demon is captured, yes."

    She brushed the nap of the velvet back and forth, back and forth, and then looked up at him again. Light hazel eyes. I was right. "Why do you care?"

    "About catching the demon?" Henry stood and paced back to the window. "I don't, not specifically, but the papers are blaming the killings on vampires and are putting us all in danger."
    Down below, the headlights of a lone car sped up Jarvis Street. "Until just recently, even I thought it was one of my kind; a child, abandoned, untrained."

    "What, purposefully left to fend for itself?"

    "Perhaps. Perhaps the parent had no idea there was a child at all."

    "I thought you said there had to be an emotional bond."

    "No, I said the emotional bond did not survive past the change, I didn't say that it had to exist. My kind can create children for as many bad or accidental reasons as yours. Technically, all that is needed is for the vampire to feed too deeply and for the mortal to feed in return."

    "For the mortal to feed in return? How the hell would that happen?"

    He turned to face her. "I take it," he said dryly, "you don't bite."

    Vicki felt her cheeks burn and hurriedly changed the subject. "You were looking for the child?"

    "Tonight?" Henry shook his head. "No, tonight I knew and I was looking for the demon." He walked to the couch and leaned over it toward her, hands braced against the pale wood inlaid in the arm. "When the killings stop, the stories will stop and vampires will retreat back into myth and race memory. We prefer it that way. In fact, we work very hard to keep it that way. If the papers convince their readers we are real, they can find us-our habits are too well known." He caught her gaze, held it, and grimly bared his teeth. "I, for one, don't intend to end up staked for something I didn't do."

    When he released her-and she refused to kid herself, she couldn't have looked away if he hadn't allowed it- Vicki swept the stuff on the coffee table back into her bag and stood. Although she faced him, she focused on the area just over his right shoulder.

    "I have to think about this." She kept her voice as neutral as she could. "What you've told me . . . well, I have to think about it." Lame, but the best she could do.

    Henry nodded. "I understand."

    "Then I can go?"

    "You can go."

    She nodded in