Blood Pact (Vicki Nelson #4)

Blood Pact (Vicki Nelson #4) Page 12

As the day surrendered its power to hold him, Henry fought the panic that accompanied awareness, the steel coffin still enclosed him, wrapped him in the stink of death perverted and the acrid odor of his own terror. He couldn't prevent the first two blows that slammed up into the impervious arc of padded metal, but he managed to stop the third and the fourth. With full consciousness came greater control. He remembered the futile struggles of the night before and knew that mere physical strength would not be enough to free him.

His head swam with images, the young man, strangled, newly dead; the older man, long dead, not dead, not alive; the young woman, pale hair, pale skin, empty eyes. He swallowed, tasted the residue of blood, and was nearly lost as the Hunger rose.

It was too strong to force back. Henry barely managed to hold the line between the Hunger and self.

He had fed the night before. The Hunger should be his to command. Then he realized his struggles had tangled his arms in the heavy folds of his leather trench coat. Someone had removed both it and his shirt and not bothered to replace them. Bare to the waist, he found the marks of a dozen needles.

And I no more want to be strapped to a table for the rest of my life than to have my head removed and my mouth stuffed with garlic.

He'd made that observation, somewhat facetiously, just over a year ago. It seemed much less facetious now. Over the course of the day someone had obviously been conducting experiments. He was helpless during the oblivion of the day. He was captive in the night.

The panic won and a crimson tide of Hunger roared free with it.

Consciousness returned a second time that night, bringing pain and an exhaustion so complete he could barely straighten twisted limbs. His body, weakened by blood loss, had obviously set a limit on hysteria.

Can't say... as I blame it. Even thinking hurt. Screaming had ripped his throat raw. Bruising, bone-deep on knees and elbows, protested movement. Two of the fingers on his left hand were broken and the skin over the knuckles, split. With what seemed like the last of his strength, he realigned the fractures then lay panting, trying not to taste the abomination in the air.

They've taken so much blood, I have to assume they know what I am.

The Hunger filled his prison with throbbing crimson need, bound for the moment by his weakness. Eventually, the weakness would be devoured and the Hunger would rule.

In all his seventeen years, Henry had never been in a darkness so complete and, in spite of Christina's remembered reassurances, he began to panic. The panic grew when he tried to lift the lid off the crypt and found he couldn't move. Not stone above him but rough wood embracing him so closely that the rise and fall of his chest brushed against the boards.

He had no idea how long he lay, paralyzed by terror, frenzied need clawing at his gut, but his sanity hung by a...

"No." He could manage no more than a whispered protest, not quite enough to banish the memory. The terror of that first awakening, trapped in a common grave, nearly destroyed by the Hunger, would reach out to claim him now if he let it. "Remember the rest, if you must remember at all."

... he heard a shovel blade bite into the dirt above him, the noise a hundred thousand times louder than it could possibly have been."

"Henry!"

The Hunger surged out toward the voice, carrying him with it.

"Henry!"

His name. It was his name she called. He clutched at it like a lifeline, the Hunger a surrounding maelstrom.

"Henry, answer me!"

Although the Hunger tried to drown him out, he formed a single word. "Christina... "

Then, the nails shrieking protest, the coffin lid flew back. Pale hands, strong hands, gentle hands held him in his frenzy. Rough homespun ripped away from alabaster skin and a wound in a breast reopened so he could feed again on the blood that had changed him, safe behind a silken curtain of ebony hair.

He couldn't free himself.

Four hundred and fifty years ago, a woman's love had saved him.

He couldn't surrender to despair.

But it had taken Christina three days...

Vicki, come quickly. Please. I can't survive that again.

The halls had always been empty when she walked them, empty, echoing, and dimly lit. And they are no different tonight, Aline Burke told herself firmly, placing one foot purposefully before the other. They are still empty. I am making the only sounds. Shadows are merely absences of light.

But air currents moved where she'd never felt air currents before and the whole building exuded an aura of expectant doom.

Which is not only overly melodramatic, it's ridiculous. She dried moist palms against her pants and kept her eyes firmly focused on the next band of illumination. She would not give in to fear; she never had and she wasn't about to begin now.

Who was in number eight's isolation box?

There could be any number of very good reasons why Donald hadn't been around all day; Vicki Nelson's investigation was only the most obvious. Donald, charming, brilliant, and undisciplined, had never had any trouble in coming up with reasons to take a day off.

Who was in number eight's isolation box?

Memory continued to replay the fall of Henry Fitzroy's wallet onto the pile of clothes.

Who was in number eight's isolation box?

There was only one way to find out.

Rounding a corner, she could see the outline of the lab door. No light escaped, but then they'd gone to a great deal of trouble to ensure that none did.

They're probably both in there. Arguing about something trivial. Or he's watching her work, letting those damned candy wrappers fall on my floor.

She put her hand on the metal doorknob, the stainless steel cold under her fingers. Stainless steel. Like the isolation boxes.

Her heart began to pound. The metal warmed under her grip. Fifteen seconds passed. Twenty. Forty-five. A full minute. She couldn't turn the knob. It was as if the link between brain and hand had been severed. She knew what she had to do, but her body refused to respond.

Lips compressed into a thin line, she jerked her arm back to her side. This kind of betrayal could not be allowed. She drew in a calming breath, exhaled, and then in one continuous motion grabbed the knob, turned it, pushed the door open, and stepped into the room.

The lights were off. She could see a number of red and green power indicators at the far end of the room but nothing else. Stretching out her left arm, she groped along the wall, the sound of her breathing moving outward to meet the hum of working equipment. The light switches were just to the right of the door. Turning her back was out of the question.

Her fingers touched a steel plate, recoiled, then continued on until finally they hooked behind a protruding bit of plastic.

A heartbeat later, Dr. Burke blinked in the sudden blue-white glare of the fluorescents.

At the far end of the room, number eight's isolation box, number eight's no longer, hummed in unattended solitude. The other two boxes were gone and with them the portable dialysis machine and one of the computers. A quick scan showed smaller pieces of equipment were missing as well and apprehension turned to anger as Dr. Burke stomped the length of the room to the remaining computer.

"That vindictive little bitch!"

The message on the screen was succinct and to the point.

I've hidden Mr. Fitzroy. You can have him back when you agree that numbers nine and ten can continue to their natural conclusions. I have the only copy of today's data. I'll be in touch. - Catherine.

Obviously, she'd not only hidden the vampire but numbers nine and ten as well.

"Damn her! She must've started the second I hung up the phone." This would ruin everything! If Catherine couldn't be brought round and quickly, the whole plan would be as dead as...

She raised her head and bands of pressure settled around her temples. The distorted reflection of a small, warped figure in white stared back from the curved side of the only remaining box.

Why hadn't Catherine hidden this box as well?

Because it couldn't be unplugged.

Why couldn't it be unplugged?

Because the bacteria still worked on the body it contained.

Who was in number eight's isolation box?

The clothes remained on a chair on the other side of the lab, a pale brown windbreaker draped over the back.

Lots of people wear jackets like that in Kingston in April.

She made the largest circle around the box she could without admitting to herself that she was avoiding it. Desperately holding on to the anger, using it as a weapon against the rising fear, she reached out and lifted the jacket off the chair. It could still belong to anyone. Ignoring the damp smudges her fingers printed on the fabric, she reached into one of the front pockets and drew out two wrapped candies and a half-eaten chocolate bar, package neatly resealed with a bit of tape.

There's nothing that says Donald couldn't have left his jacket in the lab.

But she was losing the fight and she knew it.

Henry Fitzroy's identification lay where she'd tossed it. Draping the jacket over one arm, she watched her free hand reach out and scoop the wallet and its contents up off a neatly folded pile of clothes. A jacket might be accidentally left behind but not jeans and a shirt, socks and underwear. These were Donald's clothes, no question of that, and beneath the chair, heels and toes precisely in line, were the black high-top basketball sneakers he'd been so absurdly proud of.

"But Donald, you don't play basketball."

Donald continued to vigorously pump the bright orange ball set into the tongues of his new shoes. "What does that have to do with anything ?" he asked, grinning broadly. "We're talking the cutting edge of footwear here. We're talking high tech. We're talking image."

Dr. Burke sighed and shook her head. "The perception of athletics without the sweat?" she offered.

The grin grew broader. "The point exactly."

Still holding the jacket and the vampire's wallet, Dr. Burke slowly turned to face the isolation box. Numbers one through nine had been pulled from the medical school morgue already very dead. Marjory Nelson was dying. But Donald, Donald had been very alive.

She took a step forward, feeling so removed from reality that she had to concentrate on placing her foot down on the floor. Walking no longer seemed to be a voluntary movement. She could see Donald, dark eyes sparkling, completely unrepentant, as he sat in her office and listened to the reasons why he should not only be thrown out of medical school but brought up on charges. When she'd asked him why he'd done it, he'd actually looked thoughtful for a moment before answering. "I wanted to see what would happen." She'd gotten him off. The particulars were buried when the professor who'd uncovered the incident had moved out west the next semester.

She took another step. She could see Donald frowning over the neural net, clever fingers running along the gold strands, bottom lips caught between his teeth as he struggled with the design.

Another step. She could see Donald lifting a confused Catherine's hand aloft for a high-five when number four finally responded to their combined genius.

Another. She could see Donald joining her in a private toast to fame and fortune, barely touching the single malt to his lips for he never drank.

Another. She could see Donald agreeing that Marjory Nelson was the inevitable next step.

Her knee touched the box, the vibration burrowing into the bone. She flinched back, then froze.

Staring down at her reflection, she saw it become a progression of gray faces, contorted, robbed of rest, bodies disfigured by gaping incisions hastily tacked together with knotted railway lines of black silk. What would she see when she lifted the lid? How far had Catherine gone?

Forcing a deep breath past the constriction in her throat, she let Henry Fitzroy's wallet drop from her right hand to floor. It wasn't really important anymore. Anymore. Anymore...

She reached out, unable to stop the trembling but refusing to give in, and wrapped her empty hand around the latch. Her fingers were so cold, the metal felt warm beneath them.

"Knowledge is strength," she whispered.

The latch clicked open.

From inside the box came a sigh of oxygen rich air as the seal broke, then, following it, a noise that had nothing to do with electronics or machinery.

Dr. Burke froze. The muscles in her arm, already given the command to lift, spasmed and shook.

A moan.

"Donald?"

Vowels began to form. A tortured shaping. Still recognizable.

There was nothing even remotely human in the sound.

Sweat dribbled in icy tracks down her sides. Fingers fought to close the latch. Whatever was in there, wasn't getting out.

"Doc... tor .. ."

She jerked back; panting, whimpering. Then she turned and ran.

Terror that couldn't be banished by intellect, or rationalizations, or strength of purpose ran beside her through the empty halls. The echoes mocked her. The shadows bulged with horror.

"What if she's not there?"

"She's not at home," Vicki replied through set teeth, they'd found Dr. Burke's address in the brown leather book beside her mother's phone. "She has to be somewhere."

"Not necessarily at the office."

Vicki turned to face him, even though the darkness left her blind. "You have a better idea?"

She heard him sigh. "No. But if she isn't there, what then?"

"Then we rip her office apart. We look for anything that might tell us where Henry is."

"And if we don't... "

"Shut up, Celluci." She spat the words in his direction. "We'll find him."

He drew in breath to speak again, then let it out silently.

Vicki twisted back around in the passenger seat, her grip on the dashboard painfully tight. We'll find him. All she could see through the windshield was the glare of the headlights, nothing of what they illuminated, not even the surface of the road. The lights of other cars appeared suspended, red and yellow eyes on invisible beasts. She felt the car turn, then slow, then finally stop. Silence fell, then darkness.

"I parked around beside the building," Celluci said. "A little less obvious if we have to slip past Security."

"Good idea."

For a moment, neither of them moved, then Vicki turned toward her door just as Celluci opened his. The interior light came on and for a heartbeat she saw herself reflected in the car window.

Pressed up against the glass, fingers splayed, mouth silently working, was her mother.

"Mike!"

He was at her side in an instant, the door mercifully closing as he slid across the front seat. She backed into the circle of his arms, squeezed her eyes so tightly shut they hurt, and tried to stop shaking.

"Vicki, what is it? What's wrong?" He'd never heard his name called in such a way before and he hoped like hell he'd never hear it called that way again.

The pain in Vicki's voice not only gouged pieces out of his soul, it clutched at him in a way she wasn't able to. She had her back pressed so hard against his chest he could barely breathe, but her fingers were folded into fists and her arms wrapped tightly around herself.

"Mike, my mother is dead."

He rested his cheek against the top of her head. "I know."

"Yeah, but she's also up and walking around." A hint of hysteria crept into her tone. "So, it just occurred to me, when we find her, what are we supposed to do. I mean, how do we bury her?"

"Jesus H. Christ." The whispered profanity came out sounding more like a prayer.

"I mean," she had to gulp air between every couple of words, "am I going to have to kill her again?"

"Vicki!" He held her closer. It was all he could think of to do. "Goddamnit! You didn't kill her the first time! As much as it seems cruel to say it, her dying had nothing to do with you."

He could feel her fighting for control.

"Maybe not the first time," she said.

The Hunger clawed and fought to be free and it took almost all the strength he had left to contain it. Released, it would quickly drive his abused body back into unconsciousness, probably breaking more bones as it fought to feed. Henry had no intention of allowing that to happen. He had to remain aware in case his captors should actually be stupid enough to open the box between dusk and dawn.

With so little left to fuel fear, he was able to view his imprisonment almost dispassionately. Almost. Memories of being trapped in darkness flickered mothlike against the outside edges of his control but worse even than that were images of the experiments that would begin when sunrise made him vulnerable once more.

Henry had seen the Inquisition, the slave trade, and the concentration camps of World War II and knew full well the atrocities people were able to commit. He'd seen his own father condemn men and women to the pyre for no better reason than temper. And these particular people, he thought, have already proven themselves less than ethically bound. There had been three containers. He was in one of them. Vicki's mother was, no doubt, in one of the other two.

Turning his head slightly so that the flow of fresh air through the grille, through the unbreakable grille, passed over his mouth and nose, he concentrated on breathing. It wasn't much of a distraction, but it was one of the few he had.

A minor comfort that I don't have to worry about suffoca...

The stench of abomination suddenly engulfed him. He jerked back against the far side of his prison, shoulder blades pressed hard into the plastic, laboring heart pounding in his ears. The creature was right outside the box; it had to be.

Cupping his injured hand against his chest, Henry fought for calm. This might be his only chance for freedom; he couldn't allow blind panic to take it from him.

Something dragged across the top of the box, something large and soft. Henry had a sudden vision of an old Hammer film, where Dracula brought his pair of hungry brides a child to feed on.

Oh, lord, not that.

Given an opportunity to feed, he wouldn't be able to stop the Hunger. The child would die. He'd killed many times over the centuries; sometimes because he had to, sometimes only because he could. But never an innocent. Never a child.

The dragging stopped.

When the lid opens... Henry made himself as ready as he was able. But the lid remained closed and a moment later, muscles trembling, he sagged back against the padded bottom.

"If I call her in the morning, she'll have had time to think it over and she'll realize that I'm serious."

Although he could still smell nothing but abomination, Henry recognized the voice. It belonged to the pale young woman with the empty eyes.

"She's a reasonable person and I'm sure that as a scientist she'll come to see my position."

The young woman was crazy. Henry, who had touched her mind, had no doubt about that. But she was also on the outside of the box, capable of releasing him, and crazy or not, she was, at this moment, the only game in town. Ignoring the pain, he squirmed around until his mouth pressed up against the dented surface of the air vents and pitched his voice to carry, keeping his tone as matter-of-fact as he could.

"Excuse me? Would you mind opening the lid?"

For a very little while, he thought normalcy might have worked where an attempt at coercion or charm would've found no reaction. He caught a trace of her scent threaded through the stink of perverted death, not, he thanked God, enough to pull the Hunger out of his control, he heard her hands at the latch, then he heard her reply.

"Yes, I would mind actually, because I didn't have time today to take any tissue samples."

"If all you want are tissue samples, let me out and I'll stay around so you can take them." Henry swallowed, his throat working around the fear. Just let me out!

"Well, actually, I'm not very good at biopsies on living subjects. I think I'll wait until tomorrow."

Not very good at biopsies on living subjects? What the hell was she talking about? "But I'll still be alive!"

"Not exactly." She sounded as though she were pointing out something so obvious that she couldn't understand why he even brought it up.

He heard her move away. "Wait!"

"What is it now? I have a lot on my mind tonight."

"Look, do you know what I am?" All things considered, she had to know.

"Yes. You're a vampire."

"Do you know what that means?"

"Yes. You have fascinating leukocytes."

"What?" He couldn't stop himself from asking.

"Leukocytes. White blood cells. And your hemoglobin has amazing potential as well."

Much more of this and I'll be as crazy as she is. "If you know what I am, you know what I can give you." His voice reverberated inside the box; ageless, powerful. "Let me out and I can give you eternal life. You'll never grow old. You'll never die."

"No, thank you. I'm working on something else at the moment."

And he heard her move away.

"Wait!" He forced himself to lie quiet and listen, but all he could hear was the pounding of his own heart and Henry Fitzroy, bastard son of Henry the VIII, four-hundred-and-fifty-year-old vampire, became suddenly just Henry Fitzroy.

"DON'T LEAVE ME ALONE!"

"You know," Catherine said, pulling the heavy steel door closed behind her. "I hadn't realized he'd be so noisy. Good thing we put him in here." She slid a lock through the eye of the security bar and snapped it shut. "Dr. Burke will never be able to hear him."

Number nine stared at the door. The "Warning: High Voltage" meant nothing to him, but he remembered being locked in the box. In the same box. He hadn't liked it.

Slowly, the two fingers on his right hand that were still working, closed around the security bar.

Already halfway across the room, Catherine turned at the noise as the lock jumped but held. "What is it? What's wrong?"

Without releasing the bar, he carefully turned to face her. He hadn't liked being locked in the box.

"You think I should have let him out?" She came back to his side, shaking her head. "You don't understand. If I can isolate the factors that result in his continuous cell regeneration, I can integrate them into a bacterium that will actually repair you." Taking hold of his wrist, she very gently pulled his hand from the door and smiled up at him. "You can stay with me forever."

He understood the smile.

He understood forever.

That was enough.

His walk had degenerated into a lurch and a shuffle as he followed her from the room.

He remembered joy.

The level in the bottle of single malt whiskey had dropped rather considerably over the last... Dr. Burke peered at her watch but couldn't quite make out the time. Not that it mattered. Not really. Not any more.

"Nothing can stop me from garnering the glory." Bracing her elbow, she poured a little more whiskey into her mug. "I said that. Nothing can stop me." She took a long drink and sat back, cradling the mug against her stomach.

"Doc... tor... "

She couldn't hear him. He was locked in a stainless steel box in another building.

"Doc... tor... "

She took another drink to drown out the sound.

"Are you all right?"

Vicki slid into the outer office and started across the room. Why was he asking her now? She'd managed to regain control before they left the car. "I'm fine."

"Would you tell me if you weren't?"

Unable to see, she slammed her knee into the side of a desk and bit back a curse. Obviously, her memory of the office layout was less than perfect. "Fuck off, Celluci."

Aware she could no more see him than she could see anything else, he rolled his eyes. She certainly sounded a lot better.

Dr. Burke heard the impact of flesh against furniture even through the covering noise of the whiskey. Her heart stopped. She had latched the isolation box. It couldn't have climbed out and followed her.

Could it?

Then she heard the voices and her heart started beating again.

"How nice." The alcohol she'd consumed, while not yet enough to insulate her from the memory of what she'd left in the lab, was enough to make her feel removed from the rest of the world. "I've got company."

Bending carefully down from her chair so as not to put more stress on an already overloaded sense of balance, she lifted Donald's jacket from the carpet and laid it on the desk in front of her.

"Please come in, Ms. Nelson. I can't abide a person who lurks."

Celluci pivoted to face the door. "Sounds like we've found the doctor." Through the light grip around Vicki's biceps he felt her shudder, but her voice remained steady.

"So let's not keep her waiting."

Together they moved into the inner office.

The street lamp, outside the window and five stories down, provided enough illumination for Celluci to see the doctor sitting at her desk. He couldn't make out her expression, but he could smell the booze. Twisting around, he stretched back a long arm and flicked on the overhead light.

In the sudden glare, no one moved, no one said anything, until Vicki stepped forward, watering eyes squinted almost shut, and said with no trace of humor, "Dr. Frankenstein, I presume."

Dr. Burke snorted with laughter. "Good God, wit under stress. We could use a little more of that around here. Grad students are generally a boring, academically intensive bunch." One hand closed tightly around a fold of the jacket on her desk, the other lifted the mug to her mouth. "Generally," she repeated after a moment.

"You're drunk," Vicki snarled.

"A-plus for perception. C-minus for manners. As obvious as it obviously is, that's not the sort of thing you're supposed to point out."

Vicki charged the desk, barely stopping herself from going over it with a white-knuckled grip on the edge. "Enough bullshit! What have you done with Henry Fitzroy?"

Dr. Burke looked momentarily surprised. "Oh, good lord, is that what this is about? I should have realized he was too good to be an accident. I should have realized he was with you. You strike me as just the sort of person who'd keep company with vampires. Detective-Sergeant!" She swung her head around to face Celluci who'd come up on her right side. "Do you know that your buddy here aids and abets the bloodsucking undead?" She set the empty mug carefully on the desk and reached for the bottle. Celluci was faster. Shrugging philosophically, Dr. Burke sat back in her chair. "So, what brought you to the conclusion that your Mr. Fitzroy was with me?"

"Realizing that you killed my mother." Behind her glasses, Vicki's eyes blazed. Although she remained motionless, every line of her body screamed rage.

"And what makes you say that?" The question could have concerned a thesis footnote for all the emotion Dr. Burke showed.

Vicki glared at her. Her voice trembled with the effort it took to keep from shrieking accusations. "My mother's death had to occur during the four weeks Donald was at the funeral home. Preferably near the end of those four weeks when the Hutchinsons had come to trust him."

"Donald was very charming," Dr. Burke agreed, her left hand continuing to work in the jacket.

"That kind of timing can't be left to chance," Vicki continued, a muscle jumping in her jaw. "You were with her just before she died! You killed her!"

"You forget that Mrs. Shaw was with her when she died. But, never mind." Dr. Burke held up her hand. "Why don't I just tell you what happened. I gave your mother vitamin shots every morning. You must have read that in Dr. Friedman's records?"

Vicki nodded, gaze locked on the other woman's face.

"These shots, they couldn't actually do anything to help, but they made your mother feel like she was doing something, so she felt better, was under less stress, and the last thing she needed in her condition was stress." She frowned and shrugged. "You'll have to bear with me if I'm less than usually coherent. As you pointed out earlier, I'm drunk. Anyway, I had a lovely talk with Dr. Friedman about stress. That last morning your mother didn't get a vitamin shot; she got lots of pure adrenaline. Her heart slammed into action and the strain was too much for it."

"An autopsy would find that much adrenaline," Celluci pointed out quietly. "And there's be little difficulty in tracing it back to you."

Dr. Burke snorted. "Why the hell would anyone do an autopsy? Everyone was waiting for Marjory to die." She shot a smug look at Vicki. "Well, everyone but you."

"Shut up."

"She kept saying she was going to tell you. I guess she never got around to it."

"SHUT UP!"

Dr. Burke watched half the items from the top of her desk crash to the floor and turned to Celluci. "What are the chances of me getting that bottle back if I told you I needed it for medical reasons."

Celluci smiled unpleasantly. "Shut up," he said.

"You two have a decidedly limited vocabulary." Dr. Burke shook her head. "Don't you even want to know why I did it?"

"Oh, yes," Vicki snarled. "I'd love to know why you did it. My mother thought you were her friend!"

"It's a good thing I'm not a melancholy drunk, or you'd have me in tears. Your mother was dying, no way out. I saw to it she died for a reason. No, don't bother." Again Dr. Burke raised her hand. "I know what you're going to ask. If she was dying anyway, why not wait and have her leave you her body in her will or something. Well, it doesn't work that way. We had tissue cultures, brain wave patterns, everything to go to the next experimental step and this was our only way to get the body."

"So she was just a body to you?"

Dr. Burke leaned forward. "Well, she was after she died, yes."

"She didn't die. You killed her."

"I expedited the inevitable. You're just angry because you seem to be the only person she didn't confide in."

"Vicki! No!" Celluci threw himself forward and managed to prevent Vicki's hands from going around the doctor's throat. He pushed her back and held her until blind rage faded enough for reason to return, then released her. When he was certain she had herself under control, he turned to Dr. Burke and said with quiet passion. "The next time you make a crack like that, I won't stop her and you'll get exactly what you deserve."

"What I deserve?" The smile was humorless, the tone bitter. "Detective-Sergeant, you have no idea."

Celluci frowned. His gaze dropped down to the jacket, then slowly lifted back to Dr. Burke's face. "You said, Donald was charming. Why was? Why past tense? What's happened to Donald?"

Dr. Burke picked up the bottle from where Celluci had dropped it in order to restrain Vicki's charge and refilled her mug. "I expect that Catherine killed him."

"Catherine's your second graduate student?... "

"Go to the head of the glass." She took a long swallow and sighed in relief; the world had been threatening to return. "Perhaps I'd better start at the beginning."

"No." Vicki slapped both palms down on the desk. "First, we get Henry back."

Dr. Burke met Vicki's gaze and sighed again. "You need to save him because you couldn't save your mother." Her voice held so much sympathy that Vicki lost her reaction in it. "I think you'd better know about Catherine."

Celluci swiveled his attention from one woman to the other but held his tongue. It was Vicki's call.

"All right," she said at last, straightening. "Tell us what's going on."

Dr. Burke took another drink, then visibly slipped into lecture mode. "I am a good scientist but not a great one. I just don't possess the ability to devise original concepts that greatness requires. I am a great administrator. Probably the best in the world. Which means diddley squat. I make a reasonable amount of money, but do you have any idea what a couple of biological patents with military applications could net you? Or something that the pharmaceutical companies could really sink their teeth into? Of course you don't. This is where Catherine comes in.

"She's a genius. Did I mention that? Well, she is. As an undergraduate she'd patented the prototype of a bacterium that should, with further development, be able to rebuild damaged cells. When I became her adviser, it soon became obvious that she was, like many geniuses, extremely unstable. About to suggest that she seek professional help, I realized that this was my chance. Her research was the only thing that she related to and I was her only touchstone with reality. The whole situation begged to be exploited.

"Pretty soon I realized we weren't just heading toward monetary rewards but that there was a distinct possibility of a Nobel prize. Once we actually managed to defeat death, of course. Sounds insane, doesn't it?" She took another drink. "Let's not rule it out; it might be a valid defense. Anyway, Catherine came up with some pretty amazing possibilities and we began working out experimental parameters."

"Don't you guys usually work with rats," Celluci growled.

"Usually," Dr. Burke agreed. "Are you familiar with the theory of synchronicity? Just as Catherine finished working out the theory, someone in Brazil published a paper involving roughly the same ideas. There was only one way to guarantee we'd win the race. We went directly to experimentation on human cadavers. I set up a lab and rerouted the freshest bodies from the medical morgue, you'll excuse me if I don't go into the tedious bureaucratic details of how that was accomplished with no one the wiser, but if you'll remember I did say I was a great administrator... ." Confused, she stared down into the mug. "Where was I?"

"Human cadavers," Vicki snarled.

"Oh, yes. That was when I realized we needed someone else. Donald had gotten himself in a little trouble at medical school and I'd smoothed things over for him. Mostly because I liked him. Also a genius, he was charming and pretty much completely unethical." With exaggerated care, she smoothed out the wrinkles she'd folded into the jacket. "After a while, we began to have some success. We'd been using nonspecific bacteria and brain wave patterns, but if we wanted to move on we had to get our hands on a body we'd been able to type before death. That turned out to be Marjory Nelson. When I was certain she was going to die anyway, under the cover of tests on her condition, we took tissue samples and recorded her brain wave patterns."

"Then you brought her back to life."

Gray eyes opened with a flash of recognition. "More or less. We brought back the mechanics of life, that was all." That was all. "Organic robots, if you like. Trouble was, the bacteria are very short-lived and we had a problem with rot. Which, in case you were wondering, was why I wanted your mother partially embalmed." She finished the whiskey remaining in the mug, then lifted it to Vicki in a mocking salute. "If you'd just left that casket closed, no one would have been the wiser."

"You seem to be forgetting that you murdered my mother!"

Dr. Burke shrugged, refusing to argue the point any further. "So now you know the whole story, or at least the edited for television version. There'll be a test in the morning. Any questions?"

"Yeah, ignoring for the moment a teenage boy whose death you're also directly responsible for, I've got two." Vicki shoved at her glasses. "Why are you telling us all this?"

"Well, there are theories that say confession is a human compulsion, but mostly because our little experiment has now moved completely out of my control. Catherine slipped into the abyss and I have no intention of following her." Although just for a moment, with her hand on the latch of the casket, she'd come close. How far, she'd wondered, would they be able to go with a really fresh corpse? And then Donald had told her. But that was personal and no one's business but hers. "And because Donald's dead."

"So's that kid and so's my mother!"

"The kid was an accident. Your mother was dying. Donald had everything to live for." For an instant her face crumpled then it smoothed again. "What's more," she continued, pouring the final dregs from the bottle, "I liked Donald."

"You liked my mother!"

Dr. Burke looked placidly across the desk at Vicki. "You said you had two questions. What's the second?"

How could this creature sit there so calmly and admit to such horror? Caught up in an emotional maelstrom, Vicki was unable to speak. Realizing that the next time she broke, Celluci wouldn't be able to stop her, she spread her hands and stepped back from the desk.

He recognized the signs and moved forward.

"Where," he asked, "is Henry Fitzroy?"

"With Catherine."

He took a deep breath and ran both hands up through his hair. "All right. Where is Catherine?"

Dr. Burke shrugged. "I haven't the faintest idea."