Blood Trail

the last inch of tepid beer remaining in the bottle. "Get your mind out of the gutter, Vicki."

    "My mind?" It was her turn to snort. She peeled herself out of the recliner, sweaty skin coming away from the vinyl with a painful tearing sound. "I didn't bring it up. But seeing as you have. ..."

    He recognized her next move as a distraction, an attempt to pull his attention away from Henry Fitzroy. As distractions went, it wasn't bad and he decided to cooperate. Time enough later to do a little investigating into the elusive Mr. Fitzroy's background.

    Halfway to the bedroom, he asked with mock seriousness - or as close as he could get given his current shortness of breath - "What about the game?"

    "They're two runs ahead with an inning an a half to play," Vicki muttered. "Surely they can win this one without us."

    As Henry's teeth opened the vein in Tony's wrist he looked up to find the eyes of the younger man locked on him. The pupils dilated and orgasm weighted the lids, but through it all, Tony watched avidly as the vampire drank.

    When it was over, and he was sure the coagulant in his saliva had stopped the bleeding, Henry raised himself up on one elbow. "Do you always watch?" he asked.

    Tony nodded drowsily. "S'part of the turn on. Seeing you do it."

    Henry laughed and pushed a long lock of damp brown hair back off Tony's forehead. He'd been feeding from Tony as often as had been safe for the last five months, ever since Vicki had convinced the young man to help save his life. "And do you watch while I do other things?"

    Tony grinned. "I don't remember. You mind?"

    "No. It's pleasant not to have to hide what I am."

    Letting his gaze drift down the length of Henry's body, Tony yawned. "Not hiding much now," he murmured. "You gonna be around on the weekend?"

    "No," Henry told him. "Vicki and I are going to London. Some friends of mine are in trouble."

    "More vampires?"

    "Werewolves."

    "Awesome." The word blurred, his voice barely audible. Then his eyes slid closed as he surrendered to sleep.

    It was very pleasant not having to hide what he was, Henry reflected, watching the pulse slow in Tony's throat. It had been a long time since he'd had the luxury of removing all masks, and now he had not one but two mortals who knew him for what he was.

    He smiled and stroked the soft skin on the inside of Tony's wrist with his thumb. As he couldn't feed from the wer, this trip would finally see him and Vicki ... better acquainted.

Three
'JAYS LOSE IN NINTH'

    "Damn!" Vicki squinted at the headline and decided it wasn't worth thirty cents to discover how the Jays had blown it this time. With no streetcar in sight, she leaned against the newspaper box, immediately regretting it as the box had spent the day basking under an August sun and its metal surface was hot enough to grill steak.

    "Well, that was just what I needed," she growled, rubbing her reddened forearm. Her eyes itched and ached from a combination of the drops and the contortions her ophthalmologist had just put them through, and now she'd fried six square inches of skin. And the streetcar still wasn't coming.

    "Fuck it. Might as well walk while I can still see the sidewalk." She kicked the newspaper box as she went by and stepped out onto the street, challenging a Camaro crossing Broadview on the yellow light. The driver hit the horn as she dodged the front fender, but the expression she turned toward him closed his teeth on the profane comment he'd been about to add. Obviously not all young men driving Camaros had a death wish.

    She crossed the Gerrard Street Bridge in a fog, fighting to keep her emotions under control.

    Until this morning she'd thought she'd come to grips with the eye disease that had forced her off the Metro Police. She hadn't accepted it graciously, not by any means, but anger and self-pity had stopped being the motivating factors in her life. Many, many people with retinitis pigmentosa were in worse shape than she was but it was hard to keep sight of that when another two degrees of her peripheral vision had degenerated in the last month and what little night sight she had remaining had all but disappeared.

    The world was rapidly taking on the enclosed dimensions of a slide show. Snap on the scene in front of her. Turn her head. Snap on the scene in front of her. Turn her head. Snap on the scene in front of her. And could someone please get the lights.

    What bloody good am I going to be to a pack of werewolves anyway? How