Blood Trail

be alone."

    He grinned at her defensive tone, but his voice was soft as he said, "No, I don't suppose they will be."

    Jennifer and Marie didn't bother coming in for dinner.

    "They shared a rabbit about an hour ago," Nadine explained, smiling fondly, sadly, out the window at them. They were curled so tightly around each other that it was difficult to see where one fur-form ended and the other began.

    Colin had long since left for work so only the seven of them sat down at the table. Daniel did his best to make up for the missing three.

    After dinner, Vicki worked on her notes - impressions of Carl Biehn, Frederick Kleinbein, the birders, the doctor, the new set of tracks - and then she just sat, attempting to put the day and the day's discoveries in order. Order kept escaping her, she had a number of bits and pieces but nothing that definitely fit into the pattern. The opera in the background wasn't a lot of help and the weird harmonics added by her hosts could only be called distracting.

    Actually, Vicki could think of a number of other things to call them, but she went to the pond to watch Shadow hunt frogs instead. Under the circumstances, it seemed safer - not only for Shadow but for herself as well.

    "Don't let him eat too many," Nadine called over the music as they left, "or he'll make himself sick."

    "I'm not at all surprised," Vicki muttered, but she ended up letting him eat both frogs he caught. He'd worked so hard at it, bounding this way and that, barking hysterically, that she felt he deserved them.

    Back at the house, dusk seemed to stretch for hours, the crickets and Pavarotti singing duets to the setting sun. Vicki's vision dimmed and the sound of the wind moving in the trees became the sound of death quietly approaching the house: the tap of two twigs, a rifle bolt drawn back. She knew she was allowing her imagination to overrule common sense even while she waited for the gunshot that would tell her it wasn't imagination at all. Finally, the darkness drove her to the kitchen table where the hanging bulb surrounded her with a hard edged circle of sight.

    At last, Donald lifted his head and, nostrils flaring, announced, "Henry's up."

    Vicki pulled her glasses off and rubbed at her eyes. It was about time. You know it's been a strange day, she mused, when you 're looking forward to the arrival of the bloodsucking undead.

Eight
    Usually, when he awoke in a place other than his carefully shielded sanctuary, there would be a moment of near panic while memory fought to reestablish itself. Tonight, he knew even before full consciousness returned, for the unmistakable scent of the wer saturated his tiny chamber.
    He stretched and lay still for a moment, senses extended until they touched Vicki's life. The hunger rose to pulse in time with her heartbeat. He would feed tonight.

    As Henry made his way downstairs, Mozart's Don Giovanni filled the old farmhouse and, he suspected, a good portion of the surrounding countryside. Stereo systems had been one piece of human culture the wer had embraced wholeheartedly. Henry winced as a descant Mozart could never have imagined soared up and over and around the recorded soprano.

    Oh, well, I suppose it could be worse. He braced himself against Shadow's enthusiastic welcome. It could be New Kids on the Block.

    With one hand fondling Shadow's ears, Henry paused on the kitchen's threshold, allowing his eyes to become accustomed to the light. He half expected to see Vicki seated at the table, but the room was empty save for Donald who sat, feet up, watching Jennifer and Marie work their way through a sink full of dishes. Seconds later, this simple domestic scene shattered as Shadow bounded forward and shoved a cold, wet nose against the back of Marie's bare legs.
    A plate hit the floor, bounced, and lay there forgotten as both twins chased their younger brother out of the house.

    "Evening," Donald grunted as Henry bent to pick up the plate. "Don't suppose you know any opera singers?"

    He'd known an opera dancer once, almost two hundred years ago, but that wasn't quite the same thing. "Sorry, no. Why?"

    "Thought if you knew one, you could bring her out." Donald waved an arm in the air, the gesture encompassing Don Giovanni. "Be nice to hear this stuff live for a change."

    Henry was about to point out that Toronto wasn't that long a drive and that the Royal Canadian Opera Company, while not Vienna, definitely had its moments when he had a sudden vision of wer