Blood Price

around, and although his mouth worked, no sound emerged.

    She frowned and, after taking two very careful steps forward, squatted. The ground under her fingertips was damp and slightly sticky. The smell had grown stronger. Gradually her eyes adjusted and, not bound by any social expectations of machismo, she screamed. And continued to scream for some time.

    * * *
    Vicki squinted, trying desperately to bring the distant blur of lights into focus. She knew the bright white beam pouring down into the ravine had to be the searchlight of a police car, although she couldn't actually see the car. She could hear an excited babble of voices but not make out the crowd they had to be coming from. It was late. She should be at Henry's. But there might be something she could do to help. . . . Keeping one hand on the concrete wall surrounding the ManuLife head office, she turned onto St. Paul's Square and aimed herself at the light.

    It never failed to amaze her how quickly an accident of any kind could draw a crowd-even at past midnight on a Monday. Didn't any of these people have to be at work in the morning? Two more police cars screamed past and a couple of young men running up the street to watch nearly knocked her down. She barely noticed either of them. Past midnight. . . .

    Fingers skimming along the concrete, she began to move faster until one of the voices rising out of the babble stopped her in her tracks.

    ". . . her throat gone just like the others."

    Henry had been wrong. The demon had killed again tonight. Although why here, practically at the heart of the city, miles from any of the possible names? Henry, and the feeling that kept him at his apartment tonight. . . .

    "Damn!" Trusting her feet to find their own path, Vicki turned and started to run, thrusting her way through the steadily arriving stream of the curious. She stumbled over a curb she couldn't see, clipped her shoulder against an ill-defined blur that might have been a pole, and careened off at least three people too slow to move out of her way. She had to get to Henry.

    As she reached his building, an ambulance raced by and a group of people surged up the circular drive and after it, trailing along behind like a group of ghoulish goslings as it squealed around the corner onto St. Paul's Square. The security guard must've been among them for when Vicki pushed through the doors and into the lobby, his desk was empty.

    "God double damn!"

    She reached over and found the switch that opened the inner door but, as she'd feared, he'd locked it down and taken the key with him. Too furious and too worried even to swear, she gave the door a vicious yank. To her surprise it swung open, the lock protesting as a metal tongue that hadn't quite caught pulled free. She dashed through, took a second to shut it carefully behind her-old habits die hard-raced across the inner lobby and jabbed at the elevator buttons.

    She knew full well that continued jabbing would do no good, but she did it anyway.

    The ride up to the fourteenth floor seemed to take days, months even, and adrenaline had her bouncing off the walls. Henry's door was locked. So certain was she that Henry was in trouble, it never even occurred to her to knock. Scrambling in her bag, she pulled out her lock picks and took a few deep breaths to steady her hands. Although fear still screamed Hurry! she forced herself to slowly insert the proper probe and more slowly still work on the delicate manipulations that would replace the key.

    After an agonizingly stretched few moments during which she thought the expensive lock was beyond her skill, just about when she was wishing Dirty Harry would show up and blow the door off its hinges, the last of the tumblers dropped. Breathing again, thanking God the builders hadn't gone with electronics, she threw the picks into her bag and yanked open the door.

    The wind whistling in from the balcony had blown away much of the stench, but a miasma of rot lingered. Again she thought of the old woman they had found six weeks dead in high summer, but this time her imagination gave the body Henry's face. She knew the odor came from the demon, but her gut kept insisting otherwise.

    "Henry?"

    Reaching behind her, she tugged the door closed and groped for a light switch. She couldn't see a damned thing. Henry could be dead at her feet and she'd never. . . .

    He wasn't quite at her feet. He lay sprawled over the tipped couch, half covered in torn upholstery. And he