Blood Trail

concept I know you're unfamiliar with."

    Except he didn't know what he was thinking. There were a number of things Vicki wasn't telling him and exhaustion had distanced the events of the night so they felt as though they'd happened to someone else. He couldn't believe he'd actually pulled his gun. It was easier to believe in werewolves.

    "Werewolves," he muttered. "What next?"

    "Sleep?" Vicki suggested hopefully, her voice slurred.

    "Does this have anything to do with what happened last spring?"

    "Sleeping?" Something about that didn't make sense but she couldn't quite get her brain around it.

    "Never mind." He pulled her glasses off her face and set them down beside his gun, then quickly undressed her. She let him. She hated sleeping in her clothes and didn't have the energy to get rid of them herself.

    "Goodnight, Vicki."

    "Night, Mike. Don't worry." She fought with her mouth to get the last words out. "It'll all make sense in the morning."

    He leaned over and pulled the sheet up around her shoulders. "Somehow, I doubt it," he told her softly, although he suspected she could no longer hear him.

    Henry stood and stared up at the night, trying to decide how he felt. Jealousy was an emotion his kind learned to deal with early on or they didn't survive long. You are mine! sounded very dramatic, especially when accompanied by a swirling cape and ominous music, but real life just didn't work that way.

    The trouble, therefore, had to be Celluci. "The man throws his life out like a challenge,"
    Henry muttered. He wasn't at all surprised Stuart had attacked the detective - dominant males usually came to blows. His continuing presence probably hadn't helped. Although he had a special status within the family, while he was around Stuart remained on edge, instincts demanding that one of them submit. It was the alpha male's responsibility to protect the pack and his frustration at having to call in outside help had no doubt destabilized Stuart further.

    Given Celluci's attitude and Stuart's state of mind, a fight had been inevitable. Storm's intervention, on the other hand, had been a complete surprise to everyone involved, including Storm. Cloud must be getting very close for her twin to be behaving so irrationally.

    Which brought them back around, more or less, to Vicki.

    Henry grinned. If Celluci was a wer, he'd piss a circle around her, telling the world, This is mine! And then Vicki would get up and walk out of it.

    "I'm not jealous of him," he told the night, aware as he spoke that it was almost a lie.

    "Can we love?" The process had begun although the final change had not yet been made.
    Christina turned to him, dark eyes veiled behind the ebony fan of her lashes.

    "Do you doubt it?" she asked, and came into his arms.

    He had loved half a dozen times in the centuries since and each time it had shone like a beacon in the long darkness of his life.

    Was it happening again? He wasn't sure. He only knew he wanted to tell Mike Celluci, "The day is yours, but the night is mine. "

    Celluci would be as unlikely to agree to such a division as Vicki would.

    "You cannot resent what they do in the daylight hours." Christina laid his head upon her breast and lightly stroked his hair. "For if you do, it will fester in your heart and twist your nature and you will become one of those creatures of darkness they are right to fear. Fear is what kills us,"

    Perhaps, when the wer were safe, he would ask her, "Will you give me your nights?" Perhaps.
    He wanted to touch her, hold her ... no ... he wanted to catch her up and throw her down and reestablish his claim on her. The intensity of his desire frightened him, stopped him. Confused, he sat on the edge of his bed, watching her sleep, listening to the soft sound of her breathing play a counterpoint to the helicopter roar of cheap air-conditioning.

    They'd never had an exclusive relationship. They'd both had other lovers. She'd had other lovers.

    Mike Celluci forced his hands to relax against his bare thighs and took a deep breath of the chilled air. Nothing had changed between him and Vicki since Henry Fitzroy came on the scene.

    Suddenly, he couldn't stop thinking about the first eight months after she'd left the force.
    They'd had one last bitter fight and then no contact at all as the days dragged into weeks and the world had become more and more impossible to deal with. Until she was gone, he hadn't realized how important a part of his life she'd been. And it