Blood Price

sorry, Sire, and I wish it been you in my place."

    The heavy face reddened dangerously. "You wished to see your Sovereign unseated?"

    The immediate area fell completely silent, courtiers holding their breath.

    "No, Sire, for if it had been you in my saddle, it would have been Sir John on the ground."

    King Henry turned and stared down the lists at Sir John Gage, a man ten years his junior and at the peak of his strength and stamina. He began to laugh. "Aye, true enough, lad. But the bridegroom does not joust for fear he break his lance."

    Staggering under a jocular slap on the back, Henry would nave fallen but for Sir Gilbert's covert assistance. He laughed with the others, for the king had made a joke, but although he was thankful to be back in favor all he could really think of was soaking his bruises in a hot bath.

    * * *
    Henry lifted an arm. "A little thinner perhaps but definitely the same shade." Rolling his shoulder muscles, he winced as one of the half-healed abrasions pulled. Injuries that had once taken weeks, or sometimes months, to heal now disappeared in days. "Still, a good set of tournament armor would've come in handy last night."

    Last night. . . . He had taken more blood from Vicki and her young friend than he usually took in a month of feedings. She had saved his life, almost at the expense of her own and he was grateful, but it did open up a whole new range of complications. New complications that would just have to wait until the old ones had been dealt with.

    He strapped on his watch. 8:10. Maybe Vicki had called back while he was in the shower.

    She hadn't.

    "Great. Norman Birdwell, York University, and I'll call you back. So call already." He glared at the phone. The waiting was the worst part of knowing that the grimoire was out there and likely to be used.

    He dressed. 8:20. Still no call.

    His phone books were buried in the hall closet. He dug them out, just in case. No Norman Birdwell. No Birdwell of any kind.

    Her message tied him to the apartment. She expected him to be there when she called. He couldn't go out and search on his own. Pointless in any case when she was so close.

    8:56. He had most of the glass picked up. The phone rang.

    "Vicki?"

    "Please do not hang up. You are talking to a compu ..."

    Henry slammed the receiver down hard enough to crack the plastic. "Damn." He tried a quick call out, listened to Vicki's message-for the third time since sunset, and it told him absolutely nothing new-and hung up a little more gently. Nothing appeared to be damaged except for the casing.

    9:17. The scrap metal that had once been a television and a coffee table frame were piled in the entryway, ready to go down to the garbage room. He wasn't sure what he was going to do about the couch. Frankly, he didn't care about the couch. Why didn't she call?

    9:29. There were stains in the carpet and the balcony still had no door-though he'd blocked the opening with plywood-but essentially all signs of the battle had been erased from the condo.
    No mindless task remained to keep him from thinking. And somehow he couldn't stop thinking of a woman's broken body hanging from a rusted hook.

    "Damn it, Vicki, call!"

    The empty space on the bookshelf drew his gaze and the guilt he'd been successfully holding at bay stormed the barricades. The grimoire was his. The responsibility was his. If he'd been stronger. If he'd been faster. If he'd been smarter. Surely with four hundred and fifty years of experience he should be able to outthink one lone mortal with not even a tenth of that.

    He looked down at the city regretfully. "I should have. . . ." He let his voice trail off. There was nothing he could have done differently. Even had he continued to believe the killer an abandoned child of his kind, even had Vicki not stumbled onto him bending over that corpse, even had he not decided to trust her, it wouldn't have changed last night's battle with the demon, his loss, and the loss of the grimoire. The only thing that could have prevented that would have been his destruction of the grimoire back when he first acquired it in the 1800s, and, frankly, he wasn't sure he could have destroyed it, then or now.

    "Although," he acknowledged, right hand wrapped lightly around left forearm, skin even paler than usual against the stark white of the gauze, "had Vicki not worked her way into the equation, I would have died." And there would have been no one to stop the Demon Lord from rising. His lips