Blood Price

and lifted bright strands of his hair. Like all large predators, he could remain motionless for as long as the hunt required, senses straining for the first sight or sound or scent of prey.

    Midnight passed.

    Henry felt the heart of darkness go by and the current of evil strengthened momentarily. He tensed. He would have to move between one heartbeat and the next.

    Then the current began to fade.

    When it had sighed away to a mere possibility, Henry checked his watch again. 1:20. For tonight, for whatever reason, the danger was past.

    Relief caused him to sag against the fence, grinning foolishly. He hadn't been looking forward to the battle. He was grateful for the reprieve. He'd head back downtown, maybe drop in on Caroline, get something to eat, spend the hours until sunrise not worrying about being ripped to pieces by the hordes of hell.

    "Peaceful, isn't it?"

    The white-haired man never knew how close he came to dying. Only the returning surge of the pattern, sensing death, stopped Henry's strike. He forced his lips back over his teeth and shoved his trembling hands in his pockets.

    "Did I frighten you?"

    "No." The night hid the hunter while Henry struggled to resecure his civilized mask.
    "Startled me, that's all." The wind from the river had kept him from scenting the blood and the sound of the water had muffled the approach of crepe soled shoes. It was excusable that he'd been taken by surprise. It was also embarrassing.

    "You don't live around here?"

    "No." As he came closer, Henry revised his original impression of the man's age. No more than fifty, and a trim, athletic fifty at that, with the weathered look of a man who worked outside.

    "I thought not, I'd have remembered you." His eyes were pale blue and just beyond the edge of a gray down jacket, a vein pulsed under tanned skin. "I often walk at night when I can't sleep."

    Hands hanging loose beside his faded jeans, he waited for Henry's explanation. Ridged knuckles testified to past fights and somehow Henry doubted he'd lost many of them.

    "I was waiting for someone." Remaining adrenaline kept him terse although amusement had begun to wash it away. "He didn't show." He answered the older man's slow smile with one of his own, captured the pale blue gaze, and held it. Leading him into the shadows of the cemetery, allowing his hunger to rise, he considered this ending to the few last hours and, stifling slightly hysterical laughter, Henry realized there was truth in something he'd always believed; The world is not only stranger than you imagine, it's stranger than you can imagine-a vampire, waiting for a demon, gets cruised in a graveyard. Sometimes I love this century.

    * * *

    "Detective? I mean, Ms. Nelson?" The young constable blushed at his mistake and cleared his throat. "The, uh, sergeant says you might want to hear about the call I had this morning."

    Vicki glanced up from the stack of occurrence reports and pushed her glasses up her nose.
    She wondered when they'd started allowing children to join the force. Or when twenty had started looking so damned young.

    Standing a little straighter, the constable began to read from his notes. "At 8:02 this morning, Saturday, 23rd of March, a Mr. John Rose of 42 Birchmont Avenue reported an item missing from his gun collection. Said collection, including the missing item, was kept in a locked case behind a false wall in Mr. Rose's basement. Neither the wall nor the lock appeared to have been tampered with and Mr. Rose swore that only he and his wife knew the combination. The house itself showed no signs of forced entry. All papers and permits appeared to be in order and ..."

    "Constable?"

    "Yes, ma'am?"

    "What item was Mr. Rose missing?"

    "Ma'am?"

    Vicki sighed. She'd had a sleepless night and a long day. "What kind of gun?"

    "Oh." The constable blushed again and peered down at his handwriting. "The, uh, missing item was a Russian assault rifle, an AK-47. With ammunition. Ma'am."

    "Shit!"

    "Yes, ma'am."

    * * *
    "I don't believe it!" Norman kicked the newspaper box, the toe of his running shoe thudding into the metal with a very satisfactory boom. He'd stopped to read the front page story about the seventh victim and discovered that the stupid demon had killed the wrong girl. What was worse, it had killed the wrong girl Thursday night and here it was Saturday before he found out.

    Coreen had been walking around alive for two extra days!

    The throbbing, which had not disappeared