Blood Pact (Vicki Nelson #4)

Blood Pact (Vicki Nelson #4) Page 10

Vicki woke first and lay staring blindly at the ceiling, uncertain where she was. The room felt unfamiliar, the dimensions wrong, the patterns of shadow that made up the world without her glasses not patterns she, recognized. It wasn't her bedroom, nor, in spite of the man still asleep beside her, was it Celluci's.

Then she remembered.

Just past dawn, the two of them had lain down on her mother's bed. Her dead mother's bed. Two of them, where there should've been three.

All three of us in my dead mother's bed? The edge on the sarcasm very nearly drew blood. Get a grip, Nelson.

She slid out from under Celluci's arm without waking him and groped on the bedside table for her glasses, the daylight seeping around the edges of the blinds providing barely enough illumination for her to function. Her nose almost touching the surface of the clock radio, she scowled at the glowing red numbers. Ten minutes after nine. Two hours' sleep. Add that to the time Henry had granted her and she'd certainly functioned on less.

Pulling her robe closer around her, she stood. She couldn't go back to sleep now anyway. She couldn't face the dreams, Henry burning and screaming her name while he burned, her mother's rotting body a living barrier between them. If she wanted to save Henry, she had to go past her mother. And she couldn't. Feelings of fear and failure combined, lingered.

My subconscious is anything but subtle.

Bare feet moving soundlessly over the soft nap of the carpet, it was still nearly new; Vicki could remember how pleased her mother had been to have replaced a worn area rug with thick wall-to-wall plush, she made her way to the walk-in closet where Henry had been spending his days. After a moment's groping to find the switch, she flicked on the closet light and closed the door silently behind her.

It was, as Henry had said, just barely large enough for a not-so-very-tall man. Or a not-so-very-tall vampire. A pad of bright blue compressed foam, the sort commonly used for camping, lay along one wall under the rack of woman's clothes. On it, a neatly folded length of heavy blackout curtain rested beside a leather overnight bag. Another piece of curtain had been tacked to one side of the door which itself had been fitted out with a heavy steel bolt.

Henry must've put it up. Vicki touched the metal slide and shook her head. She hadn't heard hammering but, given Henry's strength, hammering might not have been necessary. We'd better remember to take it down or it'll confuse the hell out of the next tenant.

The next tenant. It was the first time she'd considered the apartment as anything but her mother's. Only reasonable, I suppose. She let her head fall back against the wall and closed her eyes. My mother's dead.

The scent of her mother's cologne, of her mother, permeated the small enclosure, and with her eyes shut it almost seemed that her mother was still there. Another time, the illusion might have been comforting, or infuriating. Vicki was honest enough to admit the possibility of either reaction. At the moment, though, she ignored it. Her mother wasn't the reason she was here.

Opening her eyes, she dropped to her knees beside the pallet and lifted the makeshift shroud to her face, breathing in the faint trace of Henry trapped in the heavy fabric.

He wasn't dead. She refused to believe it. He was too real to be dead.

He wasn't dead.

"What are you doing?"

"I'm not entirely certain." With knuckles white around the folds, she set the piece of curtain down and turned to face Celluci, standing outlined in the doorway. He'd opened the blinds in the bedroom and the morning sun behind him threw his face into shadow. Vicki couldn't see his expression, but his tone had been almost gentle. She didn't have a clue to what he was thinking.

He held out his hand and she put hers into it, allowing him to pull her to her feet. His palm was warm and callused. Henry's would have been cool and smooth. With her free hand resting on a crumpled expanse of shirtfront, she had the sudden and completely irrational desire to take that one extra step into the circle of Celluci's arms and to rest her head, not to mention the whole mess she found herself in, if only for a moment, on the broad expanse of his shoulders.

This is no time to be getting soft, Vicki, she told herself sternly, fighting the iron bands tightening around her ribs. You've got far too fucking much to do.

Celluci, who'd read both the desire and the internal response off Vicki's face, smiled wryly and moved out of her way. He recognized the growing strain that painted purple half-circles under her eyes and pinched the corners of her mouth and knew that some of it needed to be bled off before it blew her apart. But he didn't know what to do. Although their fights had often been therapeutic, this situation went a little beyond the relief that could come from screaming at one another over trivial disagreements. While he could think of a few nontrivial disagreements available for argument, he had no intention of hurting her by bringing them up. All he could do was continue to wait and hope he was the one in the right place to pick up the pieces.

Of course, if Fitzroy's actually bought it... It was a dishonorable thought, but he couldn't stop it from taking up residence.

"So." He watched her cross to the open bedroom door and wondered how long he'd have been content with the status quo had Fitzroy not come into their lives. "What do we do now?"

Vicki turned and stared at him in some surprise. "We do exactly what we have been doing." She jabbed her glasses up onto the bridge of her nose. "When we find the people who have my mother's body, we'll find Henry."

"Maybe he just went to ground, got caught out too late and had to take what shelter he could."

"He wouldn't do that to me if he could help it."

"He'd call?" Celluci couldn't prevent the mocking tone.

Vicki's chin went up. "Yeah. He'd call." He wouldn't leave me to think he was dead if he could help it. You don't do that to someone you say you love. "We find my mother. We find Henry." He couldn't call if he was dead. He isn't dead. "Do you understand?"

Actually, he did. After nine years, he'd gotten proficient at reading her subtext. And if his understanding was all she'd take... Celluci spread his hands, the gesture both conciliatory and an indication that he had no wish to continue the discussion.

Some of the stiffness went out of Vicki's stance. "You make coffee," she told him, "while I shower."

Celluci rolled his eyes. "What do I look like? Live-in help?"

"No." Vicki felt her lower lip tremble and sternly stilled it. "You look like someone I can count on. No matter what." Then, before the lump in her throat did any more damage, she wheeled on one bare, heel and strode out of the room.

His own throat tight, Celluci pushed the curl of hair back off his face. "Just when you're ready to give up on her," he muttered. Shaking his head, he went to make the coffee.

Running her fingers through her wet hair, Vicki wandered into the living room and dropped onto the couch. She could hear Celluci mumbling to himself in the kitchen and, remembering what had happened on other occasions, decided it might be safer not to bother him when he was cooking. Without quite knowing how it happened, she found herself lifting the box of her mother's personal effects and setting it in front of her on the coffee table.

I suppose no day's so bad that you can't make it worse.

There was surprisingly little in it: a sweater kept hanging over the back of the office chair, just in case; two lipsticks, one pale pink, the other a surprisingly brilliant red; half a bottle of aspirin; the coffee mug; the datebook with its final futile message; her academy graduation portrait; and a pile of loose papers.

Vicki picked up the photograph and stared into the face of the smiling young woman. She looked so young. So confident. "I looked like I thought I knew everything."

"You still think you know everything." Celluci handed her a mug of coffee and plucked the picture out of her grasp. "Good God. It's a baby cop."

"If I ignore you, will you go back into the kitchen?"

He thought about it for a second. "No."

"Great." Pulling her bathrobe securely closed, Vicki lifted out the loose paper. Why on earth did Mrs. Shaw think I'd want a bunch of Mother's notes? Then she saw how each page began.

Dear Vicki: You're probably wondering why a letter instead of a phone call, but I've got something important to tell you and I thought I might get through it easier this way, without interruptions. I haven't written a letter for a while so I hope you'll forgive...

Dear Vicki: Did I tell you the results of my last checkup? Well, I probably didn't want to bore you with details, but...

Dear Vicki: First of all, I love you very much and...

Dear Vicki: When your father left, I promised you that I'd always be there for you. I wish I...

Dear Vicki: There are some things that are easier to say on paper, so I hope you'll forgive me this small distance I have to put between us. Dr. Friedman tells me that I've got a problem with my heart and I may not have long to live. Please don't fly off the handle and start demanding I see another doctor. I have.

Yes, I'm afraid. Any sensible person would be. But mostly I was afraid that something would happen before I found the courage to tell you.

I don't want to just disappear out of your life like your father did. I want us to have a chance to say goodbye. When you get this letter, call me. We'll make arrangements for you to come home for a few days and we'll sit down and really talk.

I love you.

The last and most complete letter was dated from the Friday before Marjory Nelson died.

Vicki fought tears and with shaking hands laid the letters back in the box.

"Vicki?"

She shook her head, unable to push her voice past an almost equal mix of grief and anger. Even if the letter had been mailed, they still wouldn't have had time to say good-bye. Jesus Christ, Mom, why didn't you have Dr. Friedman call me?

Celluci leaned forward and scanned the top page. "Vicki, I... "

"Don't." Her teeth were clenched so tightly it felt as though there was an iron band wrapped around her temples. One more sympathetic word, one more word of any kind, would destroy the fingernail grip she had on her control. Moving blindly, she stood and hurried toward the bedroom. "I've got to get dressed. We've got to look for Henry."

At 10:20, Catherine lifted the lid of the isolation box and smiled in at the woman who had once been Marjory Nelson. "I know; it's pretty boring in there, isn't it?" She pulled on a pair of surgical gloves and deftly unhooked the jack and laid it, gold prongs gleaming, to one side. "Just give me half a sec and we'll see what we can do about getting you out of there." Nutrient tubes were tugged gently from catheters and tucked away in specific compartments in the sides of the box. "You've got amazingly good skin tone, all things considered, but I think that working a little estrogen cream into the epidermis might be in order. We don't want things to tear while you're up and moving around."

Catherine hummed tunelessly to herself as she worked, stopping twice to make notes on muscle resilience and joint flexibility. So far, number ten proved her theory. None of the others, not even number nine, had responded to the bacteria quite so well. She couldn't wait to see how Donald, number eleven, turned out.

Had she seen the girl before? Why couldn't she remember?

The girl was not the right girl, although she didn't understand why not.

Hooking her fingers over the side of the box, she pulled herself up into a sitting position.

There was something she had to do.

Catherine shook her head. Initiative was all very well but at the moment a prone, immobile body would be of more use.

"Lie down," she said sternly.

Lie down.

The command traveled deeply rutted pathways and the body obeyed.

But she didn't want to lie down.

At least she didn't think she did.

"You're trying to frown, that's wonderful!" Catherine clapped gloved hands together. "Even partial control of the zygomaticus minor is a definite advance. I've got to take some measurements."

Number nine watched closely as she moved about the other one like him. He remembered another word.

Need.

When she needed him, he'd be there.

Just for an instant, he thought he remembered music.

With number ten measured, moisturized, dressed, and sitting at the side of the room, Catherine finally turned her attention to the intruder. She'd heard no sounds at all from what had been number nine's box since she'd returned to the lab and she rather hoped he hadn't died. With no brain wave patterns and no bacteria tailored, it would be a waste of a perfectly good body, especially as, if he'd suffocated or had a heart attack, there wouldn't even be any trauma to repair.

"Of course, if he has died, we could use Donald's brain wave patterns and the generic bacteria," she mused as she lifted the lid. "After all, it worked on number nine and he wasn't exactly fresh. It'd be nice to have a little backup data for a change."

She frowned down into the isolation box. The intruder lay, one pale hand curled against his chest, the other palm up at his side. His eyes were closed and long lashes, slightly darker than the strawberry blond hair, brushed against the curve of pale cheeks. He didn't look dead. Exactly. But he didn't look alive. Exactly.

Head to one side, she pushed his collar back and pressed two fingers into the pulse point at his throat. His flesh responded with more resilience than she'd expected, far more than a corpse would have but, at the same time, it seemed his body temperature had dropped too low to sustain life. She checked to make sure that the refrigeration unit had, indeed, been shut off. It had.

"How very strange," she murmured. Then things got stranger still for just as she was about to believe his heart had stopped, for whatever reason, a single pulse throbbed under her fingertips. Frown deepening, she waited, eyes on her watch as the seconds flashed by. Just over eight seconds later, the intruder's heart beat again. And then eight seconds after that, again.

"About seven beats a minute." Catherine drummed the fingers of both hands on the side of the isolation box. "The alternation of systole and diastole occurs at an average rate of about seventy times per minute in a normal human being at rest. What we have here is a heart beating at one tenth the normal rate."

Brows knit, she carefully lifted an eyelid between thumb and forefinger. The eye had not rolled back. The pupil, rather than being protected under the ridge of brow bone, remained centered, collapsed to pinprick dimensions. There was no reaction of any kind to light. Nor, for that matter, to any other kind of stimuli by any other part of the body, and Catherine tried them all.

Accompanied by low level respiration, the heart continued to beat between seven and eight times a minute, undetectable had she not been specifically searching for it. These were the only signs of life.

She'd heard of Indian fakirs putting themselves into trances so deep they appeared to be in comas or dead and she supposed this was a North American variation on that ability; that when her intruder had found himself trapped, he'd lowered his metabolism to conserve resources. Catherine had no idea what he'd been hoping to accomplish as he seemed, at the moment, totally unable to defend himself, but she had to admit that, minor point aside, it was a pretty neat trick.

Finally, she had number nine help her remove his leather trench coat and, rolling up his shirtsleeve, she pulled two vials of blood. She'd intended to take three but, with the intruder's blood pressure so low, two used up all the time she was willing to allow. Closing the box, she headed for one of the tables at the other end of the lab. Running the blood work might give her some answers to this trance thing but, even if it didn't, she could always use the information later should the intruder happen to die.

"Look, Detective Fergusson, I'm aware that my mother died of natural causes before the crime was committed and I realize that this makes her a very low priority but... "

"Ms. Nelson." Detective Fergusson's voice hovered between exasperation and annoyance. "I'm sorry you're upset, but I've got a murdered teenager on my hands. I'd like to find the asshole who offed him before I've got another body bag to deal with."

"And you're the only detective on the force?" Vicki's fingernails beat a staccato rhythm against the pay phone's plastic casing.

"No, but I am the one assigned to the case. I'm sorry if that means I can't give your mother the attention you think she deserves... "

"The cases," she snarled, fingers curling into a fist, "are connected."

Behind her, leaning on the open door of the phone booth, Celluci rolled his eyes. Even without hearing the other end of the conversation, he had some sympathy for Fergusson's position. Although she could be surgically delicate with a witness, Vicki tended to practice hammer and chisel diplomacy on the rest of the world.

"Connected?" The exasperation vanished. "In what way?"

Vicki opened her mouth then closed it again with an audible snap. My mother has been turned into a monster. Your boy was killed by a similar monster. We find my mother, I guarantee we find your perp. How do I know all this? I can't tell you. And he's missing anyway.

Shit.

She shoved at her glasses. "Look, call it a hunch, okay?"

"A hunch?"

Realizing that she'd have had much the same reaction had their positions been reversed, her tone grew sharply defensive. "What's the matter? You've never had a hunch?"

Anticipating disaster should the current conversation continue, Celluci used a shoulder to lever Vicki back from the phone, then dragged the receiver from her grip. Scowling, she allowed his interference with ill grace and the certain knowledge that antagonizing the Kingston Police was a bad idea.

"Detective Fergusson? Detective-Sergeant Celluci. We've determined that one of Dr. Burke's grad students, a Donald Li, at least superficially fits the description of Tom Chen. We'd appreciate it if you could call the registrar's office and have them release a copy of his student photo so we can check his identity with the funeral parlor."

Detective Fergusson sighed. "I called the registrar's office yesterday."

"And they released the photos of the medical students. But Li isn't studying medicine and they won't release his picture without another call from you."

"Why do you think Li's involved?"

"Because he works for Dr. Burke, as did Marjory Nelson."

"So. What make you think Dr. Burke's involved?"

"Because she appears to have the scientific qualifications to raise the dead as well as access to the necessary equipment."

"Give me a break, Sergeant." Incredulity fought with anger for control of Fergusson's voice. "How did you come up with raising the fucking dead?"

Good question, Celluci admitted, ignoring a glare from Vicki so intense that he could almost feel its impact. Making a quick decision, given that the police were already involved, he pulled out as much of the truth as he thought Fergusson could swallow. "Ms. Nelson thought she saw her mother outside the apartment window, two nights ago."

"Her dead mother?"

"That's right."

"Walking around?"

"Yes."

"Next thing you're going to tell me," Fergusson growled, "is that her dead mother offed my teenie bopper."

"No, but... "

"No buts, Sergeant." His voice clipped off the words. "And I've listened to as much of this crap as I'm going to. Go back to Toronto. Get a life. Both of you."

Celluci got the receiver away from his ear just barely fast enough to save his hearing from the force of Fergusson's disconnection. He hung up the phone with an equal emphasis. "I knew I shouldn't have let you talk to him."

Behind her lenses, Vicki's eyes narrowed. "And you did so much better? What the hell made you tell him about my mother? About Dr. Burke?"

Celluci pushed his way out of the phone booth. She stepped back, giving him just enough room to get by. "This is science, Vicki, not one of the weird supernatural situations your undead buddy has pulled us into over the last year. I thought he could handle it. I thought he should know."

"You didn't think we should discuss it first?"

"You brought it up. 'The cases are connected.' Jesus H. Christ, Vicki, you knew you couldn't support a statement like that."

"I didn't notice you supporting your statements with much, Celluci." With an effort, she unclenched her teeth. "I assume he's not going to make the call?"

Celluci's scowl answered the question. And then some.

"All right." She hoisted her bag off the sidewalk and threw it onto her shoulder. "I guess we do it the hard way."

"You're a lot more philosophical about this than I expected you'd be."

"Mike, my recently dead mother has been turned into some kind of grade B movie monster, my..." what word to use? "...friend who also happens to be a vampire is missing, in the daylight, and possibly captured. When I sleep, I have nightmares. When I eat, the food turns to rock and just sits there." She turned to face him and her expression closed around his heart and squeezed. "I find it difficult to give a shit that local police don't see things exactly my way."

"You've still got me." It was the best he could offer.

Her lower lip began to tremble and she caught it savagely between her teeth. Unable to trust her voice, she reached up and pushed the long curl of dark brown hair back off his forehead then turned and strode away from the Administration buildings, heels hitting pavement with such force that they should have imprinted crescent moons into the concrete.

Celluci watched her for a moment. "You're welcome," he said quietly, his own voice not entirely steady. With a dozen long strides, he caught up and fell into step by her side.

"All right, Catherine, I'm here." Dr. Burke pushed the lab door shut behind her and walked purposefully across the room. "What is it you've found that's so important I had to see it immediately?"

Catherine came out from behind the computer console and offered a page of printout. "It's not that it's important, precisely, it's more that I don't understand what I've found. If you could just take a look at the results of this blood work."

Dr. Burke frowned down at the piece of paper. "Formed elements sixty percent of whole blood, that's high. Plasma proteins, twelve percent, high as well. Organic nutrients... " She looked up. "Catherine, what is this?"

Catherine shook her head. "Read the rest."

Although inclined to demand an immediate explanation, respect for the grad student's abilities, manipulating the younger woman's genius had, after all, been a main component of the plan from the beginning, dropped Dr. Burke's gaze back down to the printout. "Ten million red blood cells per cubic millimeter of blood? That's twice human norm." Her brows drew in as she continued. "If this data on the hemoglobin is correct... "

"It is."

"Then just what is this?" Dr. Burke punctuated her questions by shoving the paper back into Catherine's hands. "A replacement for the nutrient solution?"

"No, although... " Her eyes glazed and two spots of color began to come up on pale cheeks.

Dr. Burke recognized the signs, but she didn't have the time to allow genius to percolate. She'd had to reschedule an end of term meeting to come here and she had no intention of falling farther behind. "Think about it later. I'm waiting."

"Yes. Well... " Catherine took a deep breath and smoothed down the front of her lab coat. She hadn't even begun to consider the experimental applications yet. The ability to leap so far ahead, she mused, was what made Dr. Burke such a brilliant scientist. "We had an intruder in the lab last night."

"A what!"

Catherine blinked at both volume and tone. "An intruder. But don't worry, number nine took care of him."

"Number nine took care of him?" Dr. Burke suddenly saw her world becoming infinitely more complicated. She shot a disgusted glance across the room to where both number nine and Marj... and number ten sat motionless by the wall. "The way he, it, took care of that boy?"

"Oh, no! He captured the intruder, and with only the most basic of instructions. There really can be no more doubt that he's reasoning independently, although I haven't had time this morning to run a new EEC."

"Catherine, that's fascinating I'm sure, but the intruder? What did you do with him?"

"I locked him into number nine's isolation box."

"Is he still in there?"

"Yes. He made a horrible racket at first, very distracting while I was working, especially since I had to do the whole job alone, but he quieted around sunrise."

"Quieted." Dr. Burke rubbed at her temples where an incipient headache had begun to pound. Thank God, Catherine had been mucking about in the lab long after the rest of the world had gone to sleep. Had there been no one around to stop him, they would have all very likely been in a great deal of trouble. On the other hand, Catherine stopping an intruder was a mixed blessing, her grip on the world's standard operating procedures not being particularly strong. "He didn't die, did he? I mean you did check on him?" And if he's alive, what the hell are we going to do with him?

"Of course I did. His metabolic rate is extremely low, but he's alive." She held the printout higher. "This is a partial analysis of his blood."

"That's impossible," Dr. Burke snapped. With a captured intruder to deal with, she didn't have time for the grad student's delusions.

Catherine merely shook her head. "No, it isn't."

"No one has blood like that. You had to have done something wrong."

"I didn't."

"Then the sample was contaminated."

"It wasn't."

Unable to break past Catherine's calm certainty, Dr. Burke snatched the printout back and glared down at it, scanning the data she'd already read, looking more closely at the rest. "What's this? This isn't blood work."

"I also did a cheek swab."

"Your intruder has thromboplastins present in his saliva? That's ridiculous."

"He's not my intruder," Catherine protested. "And if you don't trust my results, run the tests yourself. Besides, if you'll notice, they don't exactly register as thromboplastins although there is a ninety-eight point seven percent similarity."

"No one has that kind of clotting initiators in their sa... " Ten million red blood cells per cubic millimeter of blood... thromboplastins present in his saliva... he quieted around sunrise... his metabolic rate is extremely low... quieted around sunrise... around sunrise... . "No, that's impossible."

Eyes narrowed, Catherine squared her shoulders. She couldn't understand how Dr. Burke continued to deny the experimental results. Science didn't lie. "Obviously, it isn't impossible."

Dr. Burke ignored her. Heart pounding, she turned toward the row of isolation boxes. "I think," she said slowly, "I'd better have a look at your intruder."

"He isn't my intruder," Catherine muttered again as she followed the other woman across the room.

Palms resting on the curve of number nine's isolation box, apparently no longer only number nine's, Dr. Burke told herself she was letting fantasy get the best of both common sense and education. He can't be what evidence suggests he is. Such creatures exist in myth and legend. They aren't walking around in the twentieth century. But if the test results were accurate... There's probably a perfectly normal, scientific explanation for all this, she told herself firmly, and opened the lid.

"Good Lord, he's paler than you are. I didn't think that was possible." She hadn't expected him to look so young. Much as Catherine had done earlier, she pushed her fingers up against the pulse point at the base of the ivory column of throat. Thirty seconds passed while she stood silently, eyes on her watch, then she wet her lips and said, "Not quite eight beats a minute."

"I got the same," Catherine nodded, pleased to have her figure corroborated.

She reached to check his pupils but instead, her hand moving almost of its own volition, she peeled up a lip barely tinted with color.

Catherine's brow furrowed. "What are you looking for?"

Her heart beat so loudly she nearly missed the question. "Fangs," she said softly, realizing she was being one hundred sorts of an old fool. "Fangs."

Bending forward, Catherine peered down at the exposed line of white. "Although the canines are somewhat prominent, I wouldn't go so far as to... "

"Son of a bitch! They're sharp!"

Together, the two women watched the drop of blood roll from the puncture in Dr. Burke's finger. It splashed crimson against the barrier of the teeth, seeped into sculpted crevices, drained into the mouth beneath. So slowly that they would have missed the movement had they not been staring so hard, the young man swallowed.

In the long moment that followed, Dr. Burke reviewed a thousand rational reasons why this creature could not be what it had to be. Finally, she said, "Catherine, do you realize what we have here?"

"Incipient percutaneous infection. Better sterilize the puncture."

"No, no, no. Do know what he is?"

"No, Doctor." Catherine rocked back on her heels and shoved her hands deep into the pockets of her lab coat. "I realized I didn't know what he was when I saw the results of the blood work. That's why I called you."

"This," Dr. Burke's voice rose with an excitement she didn't bother to suppress, "is a vampire!" She whirled to face Catherine, who looked politely interested. "Good lord, girl, don't you find that amazing? That this is a vampire? And we have him?"

"I guess."

"You guess?" Dr. Burke stared at the grad student in disbelief. "We have a vampire break into the lab and you guess it's amazing?"

Catherine shrugged.

"Catherine! Pull your head out of your test tubes and consider what this means. Up until this moment, vampires were creatures of myth and legend. We can now prove that they exist!"

"I thought vampires disintegrated in daylight."

"He hasn't been in daylight, has he?" An expansive gesture indicated the wall of boarded up windows. "The scientific community will go crazy over this!"

"If he is a vampire. So far we can only prove he has a hyperefficient bloodtype, clotting agents in his saliva, and sharp teeth."

"And doesn't that say vampire to you?"

"Well, it doesn't prove it. Sunrise may have caused his metabolic rate to drop, but we can't actually prove that either." She frowned. "I suppose we could push him up against an open window and see what happens."

"No!" Dr. Burke took a deep breath and leaned back against number eight's isolation box, allowing the soft vibration of the machinery to soothe her jangled nerves. "This is a vampire. I'm as certain of it as I've ever been of anything in my life. You saw how he reacted to my blood."

"That was pretty strange."

"Strange? It was incredible." With her left hand supporting the vampire's hip, he was heavier than she expected, she slid her right hand into his pants pocket and pulled out a slim, black leather wallet. "Now then, let's find out who you are."

"Would a vampire carry identification?"

"Why not? This is the twentieth century. Everyone carries identification of some kind. Here we are; Henry Fitzroy. I suppose they can't all be named Vladimir." Lips pursed and eyes gleaming, Dr. Burke turned over a gold patterned credit card. "Don't leave the crypt without it, as Donald would probably say. Speaking of Donald... " She paused and frowned. "Where is he, anyway?"

"Well, you see... " Catherine laid a gentle hand on number eight's isolation box. "He... "

"Has that damned tutorial this morning, doesn't he? And I expect he was long gone before our visitor showed up. It's his loss, you'll have to fill him in later. Now then, ownership, insurance, ah, driver's license. Apparently the myth that vampires show no photographic image is also false."

"I just can't believe we have vampires in Kingston."

"We don't. He's from Toronto." Gathering up the contents of the wallet, Dr. Burke tossed them onto a pile of clothes draped over a nearby chair. "We'll have to do something about his car... no, we don't. He'll just disappear. Become another tragic statistic. He's already living a lie; who's going to look for him?"

She patted the back of one pale hand, fingers lightly stroking the scattering of red-gold hair. "Of all the laboratories in all the world, you had to stumble into mine."

"But, Dr. Burke, what are we going to do with him?"

"Study him, Catherine. Study him."

Head cocked to one side, Catherine examined the doctor. The last time she'd seen the older woman this excited had been the day number four had made the initial breakthrough with the neural net. Her eyes had held the same brilliant mix of greed and self-satisfaction then that they did now and, now that she thought about it, Catherine hadn't liked the expression that day either. "Dr. Burke, vampires are outside my experimental parameters."