Blood Trail

of the lower hall and listened to Celluci patiently explain to Daniel that it was now too dark to play catch with the frisbee. He hadn't thought the mortal the type who cared for children but then, he hadn't thought much about this mortal at all.
    Obviously, he would have to rectify that.

    The man was close to Vicki, a good friend, a colleague, a lover. If only through Vicki, they would continue to come into contact. Their relationship must therefore be defined, for the safety of them both.

    Like most of his kind, Henry preferred to keep his dealings with the mortal world to a minimum and those dealings under his control. Mike Celluci was not the sort of man he would normally associate with. He was too ...

    Henry frowned. Too honest? Too strong? Was this where a prince had fallen then, avoiding the honest and the strong for the weak and the rogue? In his life, he had commanded the loyalty of men like this one. He was not now less than he had been. He stepped out into the light.

    Mike Celluci didn't hear Henry's approach, but he felt something at his back and turned. For a moment, he didn't recognize the man who stood just inside the kitchen door. Power and presence acquired over centuries hit him with almost physical force and when the hazel eyes met his and he saw they considered him worthy, he had to fight the totally irrational urge to drop to one knee.

    What the hell is going on here? He shook his head to clear it, recognized Henry Fitzroy, and to cover his confusion, snarled, "I want to talk to you."

    The phone rang, freezing them where they stood.

    A moment later Nadine came into the kitchen, glanced from one to the other and sighed. "It's Vicki. She sounds a little strange. She wants to talk to ..."

    Celluci didn't wait to hear a name, but even as he stomped into the office and snatched up the receiver, he had to acknowledge that Henry Fitzroy had allowed him to take the call; that without Fitzroy's implicit permission, he wouldn't have been able to move. If that man's nothing but a romance writer, I'm a ... He couldn't think of a sufficiently strong comparison.
    "What?"

    "Where's Henry?"

    "Why?" He knew better than to take his anger out on Vicki. He did it anyway. "Want to make kissy-face over the phone?"

    "Fuck off, Celluci." Exhaustion colored the words.

    "Carl Biehn was a member of the American shooting team in the 1960 summer Olympics in Rome."

    Anger no longer had a place in the conversation, so he ignored it. "You've found your marksman, then."

    "Looks that way." She didn't sound happy about it.

    "Vicki, this information has to go to the police."

    "Just put Henry on. I don't even know why I'm talking to you."

    "If you don't report this, I will."

    "No. You won't."

    He'd been about to say that their friendship, that the wer, couldn't come before the law but the cold finality in her voice stopped him. For a moment, he felt afraid. Then he just felt tired.
    "Look, Vicki, I'll come and get you. We won't do anything until we talk."

    A sudden burst of noise from the kitchen drowned out her reply and, tucking the phone under one arm, he moved to the door to close it. Then he stopped. And he listened.

    And he knew.

    Good cops don't ever laugh at intuition, too often a life hangs in the balance.

    "The situation's changed." He cut Vicki off, not hearing what she said. "You'll have to make it back here on your own. Peter's missing."

    Storm crept across the open twenty meters from the fence bottom to the barn crouched so low the fur on his stomach brushed the ground. When he reached the stone foundation of the barn wall, he froze.

    The boards were old and warped and most had a line of light running between them. He changed - to get his muzzle out of the way, not because one form had better vision than the other - and placed one eye up against a crack.

    A kerosene lantern burned on one end of a long table, illuminating the profile of the man from the jeep as he stood, back to the door, fiddling with something Peter couldn't see. A shotgun leaned against the table edge, in easy reach.

    Under the man-scent, the smell of the lantern, and the lingering odor of the animals the barn had once held there was a strong scent of oiled steel, more than the gun alone could possibly account for. Peter frowned, changed, and padded silently around to the big front doors. One stood slightly ajar, wide enough for him to slip through in either form but angled so that he couldn't charge straight into the barn