Blood Trail (Vicki Nelson #2)

Blood Trail (Vicki Nelson #2) Page 3

'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 am I supposed to stop a killer I can't see ? The more rational part of her mind tried to interject that the wer were hiring her for her detective abilities and her experience, not her eyes, but she was having none of it. Maybe I'll get lucky and one of them's been trained as a guide dog.

"Yo! Victory!"

Frowning, she looked around. Her anger had carried her almost to Parliament and Gerrard, farther than she'd expected. "What are you doing in this part of town?"

Tony grinned as he sauntered up. "What happened to, 'Hi, how are ya?' "

Vicki sighed and attempted not to take the day out on Tony. When she'd gone to him for help and together they'd saved Henry, their relationship had changed, moved up a level from cop and kid - not that he'd actually been a kid for some time. Four years ago, when she first busted him, he'd been a scrawny troublemaker of fifteen. Over the years, he'd become her best set of eyes and ears on the street. Now, they seemed to be moving toward something a little more equal, but old habits die hard and she still felt responsible for him.

"All right." She flicked a drop of sweat off her chin. "Hi. How are you?"

"How come," he asked conversationally, falling into step beside her, "when you ask, 'How are you?' it comes out sounding like, 'How much shit are you in?' "

"How much?"

"None."

Vicki turned her head to look at him but he only smiled beatifically, the picture of wronged innocence. He was looking pretty good, she had to admit, his eyes were clear, his hair was clean, and he'd actually begun to gain a little weight. "Good for you. Now back to my first question, what are you doing in this part of town?"

"I got a place here." He dropped that bombshell with all the studied nonchalance a young man of almost twenty could muster.

"You what!" The exclamation was for Tony's benefit, as he so obviously wanted her to make it. Her mood began to lighten under the influence of his pleasure.

"It's just a room in a basement." He shrugged - no big deal. "But I got my own bathroom. I never had one before."

"Tony, how are you paying for this?" He'd always turned the occasional trick, and she hoped like hell he hadn't gone into the business full time - not only because it was illegal but because the specter of AIDS now haunted every encounter.

"I could say it's none of your business... " As her brows drew down, he raised his hands appeasingly. "But I won't. I got a job. Start on Monday. Henry knows this guy who's a contractor and he needed a wiffle."

"A what?"

"Guy who does the joe jobs."

"Henry found you this?"

"Yup. Found me the place too."

All the years she'd known Tony, the most he'd ever been willing to take from her had been the occasional meal and a little cash in return for information. Henry Fitzroy had known him less than five months and had taken over his life. Vicki had to unclench her teeth before she could speak. "Have you been spending a lot of time with Henry?" The question held an edge.

Tony glanced over at her appraisingly, squinting a little in the bright afternoon sun. "Not much. Hear you're gonna be doing some howling with him this weekend though." At her frown, he leaned closer and in an excellent imitation of a monster movie matinee, intoned, "Verevolves."

"And did he discuss the case with you too?"

"Hey, he just mentioned it."

"I'm surprised he didn't invite you along."

"Jeez, Victory," Tony shook his head. "There's just no talking to you in this mood. Get laid or something and lighten up, eh." He waved jauntily and raced to catch the streetcar at the lights.

Vicki's reply got lost in traffic sounds and it was probably just as well.

"Is it something I said?"

Vicki didn't bother to lift her head off the cool glass of the car window. The highway lights were less than useless as illumination so why bother turning to face a man she couldn't see. "What are you talking about?"

Her tone was so aggressively neutral that Henry smiled. He concentrated for a moment on slipping the BMW into the just barely adequate space between two transports then out the other side to a clear section of road where he actually managed to achieve the speed limit for seven or eight car lengths before he caught up to another section of congested traffic. "You haven't said two civil words to me since I picked you up. I was wondering if I'd done something to annoy you."

"No." She shifted position, drummed her fingers on her knee, and took a deep breath. "Yes." Personal differences must not be allowed to influence the case; things were going to be difficult enough already. If they didn't deal with this now, odds were good it'd turn up sometime a lot more dangerous. "I spoke with Tony today."

"Ah." Jealousy, he understood. "You know I must feed from a number of mortals, Vicki, and you yourself chose the other night to... "

She turned to glare at the indistinct outline his body made against the opposite window. "What the hell does that have to do with anything?" Her left fist slammed down on the dash. "For four years I couldn't get Tony to take anything from me but a couple of hamburgers and some spare change. Now all of a sudden you've found him a job and a place to live."

Henry frowned. "I don't understand the problem." He knew her anger was genuine, both her breathing and her heartbeat had accelerated, but if it wasn't the sexual aspect that bothered her... "You don't want Tony to be off the streets?"

"Of course I do, but... "... but I wanted to be the one to save him. She couldn't say that, it sounded so petty. It was also completely accurate. Abruptly anger changed to embarrassment. "... but I don't know how you did it," she finished lamely.

The pause and the emotional change were as clear an indication of her thoughts as if she'd spoken them aloud. Four hundred and fifty years having taught discretion if nothing else, Henry wisely responded only to Vicki's actual words. "I was raised to take care of my people."

Vicki snorted, grateful for a chance to change the subject. "Henry, your father was one of the greatest tyrants in history, burning Protestants and Catholics impartially. Disagreement of any kind, personal or political, usually ended in death."

"Granted," Henry agreed grimly. "You needn't convince me. I was there. Fortunately, I wasn't raised by my father." Henry VIII had been an icon for his bastard son to gaze at in awe and, more than that, he'd been king in a time when the king was all. "The Duke of Norfolk saw to it that I was taught the responsibilities of a prince." And only fate had prevented the Duke of Norfolk from being the last death of King Henry's reign.

"And Tony is one of 'your people'?"

He ignored the sarcasm. "Yes."

It was as simple as that for him, Vicki realized, and she couldn't deny that Tony had responded to it in a way he'd never responded to her. She was tempted to ask, "What am I?" but didn't. The wrong answer would likely throw her into a rage and she had no idea of what the right answer would be. She fiddled with the air-conditioning vents for a moment. "So tell me about werewolves."

Definitely a safer topic.

"Where should I start?"

Vicki rolled her eyes. "How about with the basics? They didn't cover lycanthropy at the police academy."

"All right." Henry drummed his fingers on the steering wheel and thought for a moment. "For starters, you can forget everything you've ever seen at the movies. If you're bitten by a werewolf, all you're going to do is bleed. Humans cannot become wer."

"Which implies that werewolves aren't humans."

"They aren't."

"What are they then, small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri?"

"No, according to the oldest of their legends, they're the direct descendants of a she-wolf and the ancient god of the hunt." He pursed his lips. "That one's pretty much consistent throughout all the packs, although the name of the god changes from place to place. When the ancient Greek and Roman religions began to spread, the wer began calling themselves Diana's chosen, the hunting pack of the goddess. Christianity added the story of Lilith, Adam's first wife, who, when she left the garden, lay with the wolf God created on the fifth day and bore him children."

"What do you believe?"

"That there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed up in your philosophy."

Vicki snorted. "What a cop-out," she muttered. "And misquoted."

"How do you know? Remember, I heard the original. Had the hardest time convincing Shakespeare not to call the poor guy Yoluff." He sounded perfectly serious but he had to be pulling her leg. "Yoluff, Prince of Denmark. Can you imagine?"

"No. And I don't really care about mythic wer. I want to know what I can expect tonight."

"What do you know about wolves?"

"Only what I've learned from National Geographic specials on PBS. I suppose we can discount the character assassination indulged in by the Brothers Grimm?"

"Please. Brothers Grimm aside, wer function much the same way wolves do. Each pack is made up of a family group of varying ages, with a dominant male and a dominant female in charge."

"Dominant? How?"

"They run the pack. The family. The farm. They do the breeding."

"The Stuart and Nadine you mentioned the other night?"

"That's right."

Vicki pulled thoughtfully on her lower lip. "For something this important, you'd think that they'd have come and spoken to me."

"The dominant pair almost never leave their territory. They're tied to the land in ways we just can't understand."

"You mean, in ways I can't understand," she said testily, his tone having made that quite clear.

"Yes." He sighed. "That's what I mean. But before you accuse me of, well, whatever it was you were about to accuse me of, you might consider that four hundred and fifty odd years of experience counts for something."

He had a point. And an unfair advantage. "Sorry. Go on."

"Donald, Rose and Peter's father, used to be the alpha male, so I imagine the hold is still strong on him. Sylvia and Jason are dead and Colin works nights, which makes it difficult to use me as an intermediary. Rose and Peter, while not adults by wer standards, were the only remaining choice."

"And they were, after all, only the icing on a cake you were perfectly capable of baking on your own."

Henry frowned, then smiled as he worked his way through the metaphor. "I didn't think you'd be able to turn them down," he said softly. "Not after you'd seen them."

And what makes you think I'd be able to turn you down, she wondered, but all she said aloud was, "You were telling me about the structure of the pack."

"Yes, well, about thirteen years ago, when Rose and Peter's mother died, their Uncle Stuart and Aunt Nadine took over. Stuart was originally from a pack in Vermont but had been beta male in this pack for some time."

"He'd just wandered in?"

"The young males often leave home. It gives them a better chance to breed and mixes the bloodlines. Anyway, Donald gave up without a fight. Marjory's death hit him pretty hard."

"Fight?" Vicki asked, remembering the white gleam of Peter's teeth. "You mean that metaphorically, I hope?"

"Not usually. Very few dominant males will just roll over and show their throat and Stuart had already made a number of previous attempts."

Vicki made a bit of a strangled sound in her own throat and Henry reached over and patted her on the shoulder. "Don't worry about it," he advised. "Basically, the wer are just nice, normal people."

"Who turn into wolves." This was not the way Vicki had been raised to think of normal. Still, she was sitting in a BMW with a vampire - things couldn't get much stranger than that. "Do, uh, all you supernatural creatures hang out together or what?"

"What?" Henry repeated, confused.

Vicki pushed her glasses up her nose. It didn't help in the dark but it was a reassuring gesture nevertheless. "Just tell me your doctor's name isn't Frankenstein."

Henry laughed. "It isn't. And I met Perkin Heerkens, Rose and Peter's grandfather, in a perfectly normal way."

Slowly, as the day released its hold on the world, he became aware. First his heartbeat, gaining strength from the darkness, the slow and steady rhythm reassuring him that he'd survived. Then breathing, shallow still for little oxygen reached this far below ground. Finally, he extended his senses up and out, past the small creeping things in the earth to the surface. Only when he was sure that no human lives were near enough to see him emerge, did he begin to dig his way out.

His hiding place was more a collapsed foxhole than anything else, although, if discovered, Henry hoped that the Nazis would believe it a shallow grave. Which, he supposed as he pushed through the loose dirt, was exactly what it would be if the Nazis discovered it. Being unearthed in daylight would kill him more surely than enemy fire.

"I really, really hate this," he muttered as his head broke free and he unhooked the small perforated shield that kept the earth out of his nose and mouth. He dug in only as a last resort, when dawn caught him away from any other shelter. Once or twice he'd almost left it too long and had had to claw the dirt aside with the heat of the sun dancing fire along his back. Burial reminded him too much of the terror of his first awakening, trapped in his common coffin, immortal and alone, hunger clawing at him.

He had all but one leg clear when he caught sight of the animal lying motionless in the pool of darker night under a fir.

Wolves? In the Netherlands? he wondered as he froze. No, not a wolf, for the russet coloring was wrong, but it definitely had wolf in its bloodline and not so very far back. It crouched carefully downwind, ears back flat against its skull, plumed tail tucked in tight against its flanks. It was reacting to the scent of another hunter, preparing to attack to defend its territory.

White teeth gleamed in the darkness and a low growl rumbled deep in the massive throat.

Henry's own lips drew back and he answered the growl.

The animal looked surprised.

And even more surprised a second later when it found its spine pressed against the forest floor and both Henry's hands clamped deep in its ruff. It struggled and snapped, digging at its captor with all four feet. Although the growls continued, it made no louder noises. When it found it couldn't get free, it squirmed around until it managed to lick Henry's wrist with the tip of its tongue.

Cautiously, Henry let it up.

It shook itself vigorously, had a good scratch, and sat, head to one side, studying this strange creature, nose wrinkled and brows drawn down in an expression so like a puzzled frown that Henry had to hide a smile - showing his teeth at this moment would only start the whole thing off again.

With dominance determined, Henry brushed the worst of the dirt from his heavy workman's clothes and slipped a hand beneath the shirt to check the canvas pouch taped around his waist. He knew the documents were safe, but the faint crackle of the papers reassured him anyway.

He'd need most of the night to reach the village where he'd meet his contact in the Dutch Resistance and as he needed to feed before he arrived - it made working with mortals bearable - he'd better be on his way. Checking his course with the small compass SOE had provided, he started off toward the northeast. The dog rose and followed. He heard it moving through the brush behind him for a time, its movements barely distinguishable from the myriad sounds of a forest at night. As he began to pick up speed, even that trace faded away. He wasn't surprised. A full blood wolf would have trouble keeping up. A dog, regardless of its heritage would have no chance at all.

The German patrol crossed his path about three hours before dawn, not far from the village. As they passed him, standing motionless beside the trail with barely inches to spare, Henry smiled grimly at the skull and crossbones that fronted each cap. Totenkopf. An SS unit used for internal security in occupied territory, especially where the Resistance was active.

The straggler was a barrel-chested young man who somehow managed to strut in spite of the hour and the ground condition, and whose more-master-race-than-thou attitude radiated off of him. It seemed safe to assume that his comrades had deliberately let him fall a little behind; there were limits, apparently, even in the SS.

Henry had a certain amount of sympathy for the common soldier in the German army but none whatsoever for the Nazis among them. He took the young man from behind with a savage efficiency that had him off the trail and silenced between one breath and the next. As long as the heart continued to beat, damage to the body was irrelevant. Quickly, for he was vulnerable while he fed, Henry tore open the left wrist and bent his head to drink. When he finished, he reached up, wrapped one long-fingered hand about the soldier's skull, twisted, and effortlessly broke his neck. Then he froze, suddenly aware of being watched.

The forest froze with him. Even the breeze stilled until the only sound became the soft phut, phut of blood dripping slowly onto leaf mold. Still crouched over the body, muscles tensed and ready, Henry turned to face downwind.

The big dog regarded him steadily for another few seconds, then faded back until not even the vampire's eyes could separate it from the shifting shadows.

The dog shouldn't have been able to track him. Foreboding ran cold fingers along Henry's spine. Swiftly he stood and moved toward the place where the huge animal had disappeared. A heartbeat later he stopped. He could feel the lives of the patrol returning, no doubt searching for the missing soldier.

He would have to deal with the dog another time. Grabbing a handful of tunic and another of trouser, he lifted the corpse up into the crotch of a tree and wedged it there, well above eye level. With one last apprehensive look into the shadows, he continued his journey to the village.

It wasn't difficult to find.

Harsh white light from a half dozen truck-mounted searchlights illuminated the village square. A small group of villagers stood huddled on one side, guarded by a squad of SS. A man who appeared to be the local commander strode up and down between the two, slapping a swagger stick against his leg in the best Nazi approved manner. Except for the slap of the stick against the leather boot top, the scene was surreally silent.

Henry moved closer. He let the sentry live. Until he knew what was going on, another unexplained death could potentially do more harm than good. At the edge of the square he slid into a recessed doorway, waiting in its cover for what would happen next.

The tiny village held probably no more than two hundred people at the very best of times, which these certainly weren't. Its position, near both the border and the rail lines the invaders needed to continue their push north, made it a focal point for the Dutch Resistance. The Resistance had brought Henry, but unfortunately it had also brought the SS.

There were seventy-one villagers in the square, mostly the old, the young, and the infirm. Pulled from their beds, they wore a wide variety of nightclothes and almost identical wary expressions. As Henry watched, two heavily armed men brought in five more.

"These are the last?" the officer asked. On receiving an affirmative, he marched forward.

"We know where the missing members of your families are," he said curtly, his Dutch accented but perfectly understandable. "The train they were to have stopped is not coming. It was a trap to draw them out." He paused for a reaction but received only the same wary stares. Although those of an age to understand were very afraid, they hid it well; Henry's sensitive nose picked up the scent, but the commander had no way of knowing his news had had any effect. The apparent lack of response added an edge to his next words.

"By now they are dead. All of them." A young boy smothered a cry and the commander almost smiled. "But it is not enough," he continued in softer tones, "to merely wipe out resistance. We must wipe out any further thought of resistance. You will all be executed and every building in this place will be burned to the ground as both an example of what happens to those civilians who dare support the Resistance and to those inferiors who dare oppose the Master Race."

"Germans," snorted an old woman, clutching at her faded bathrobe with arthritic fingers. "Talk you to death before they shoot you."

Henry was inclined to agree - the commander definitely sounded like he'd been watching too many propaganda films. This did not lessen the danger. Regardless of what else Hitler had done in his "economic reforms," he'd at least managed to find jobs for every sadistic son-of-a-bitch in the country.

"You." The swagger stick indicated the old woman. "Come here."

Shaking off the restraining hands of friends and relatives and muttering under her breath, she stomped out of the crowd. The top of her head, with its sparse gray hair twisted tightly into an unforgiving bun, came barely up to the commander's collarbone.

"You," he told her, "have volunteered to be first." With rheumy eyes squinted almost shut in the glare of the searchlights, she raised her head and said something so rude, not to mention biologically impossible, that it drew a shocked, "Mother!" from an elderly man in the clutter of villagers. Just to be sure the commander got the idea, she repeated herself in German. The swagger stick rose to strike. Henry moved, recognizing as he did so that it was a stupid, impulsive thing to do but unable to stop himself.

He caught the commander's wrist at the apex of the swing, continued the movement and, exerting his full strength, ripped the arm from the socket. Dropping the body, he turned to charge the rest of the squad, swinging his grisly, bleeding trophy like a club, lips drawn back from his teeth so that the elongated canines gleamed.

The entire attack had taken just under seven seconds.

The Nazis were not the first to use terror as a weapon; Henry's kind had learned its value centuries before. It gave him time to reach the first of the guards before any of them remembered they held weapons.

By the time they gathered their wits enough to shoot, he had another body to use as a shield. He heard shouting in Dutch, slippered feet running on packed earth, and then suddenly, thankfully, the searchlights went off.

For the first time since he entered the square, Henry could see perfectly. The Germans could see nothing at all. Completely unnerved, they broke and tried to run, only to find their way blocked by the snarling attack of the largest dog any of them had ever seen.

It was a slaughter after that.

Moments later, standing over his final kill, blood-scent singing along every nerve, Henry watched as the dog that had followed him all night approached stiff-legged, the damp stain on its muzzle more black than red in the darkness. It looked completely feral, like a wolf from the Brothers Grimm.

They were still some feet apart when the sound of boots on cobbles drew both their heads around. Henry moved, but the dog was faster. It dove forward, rolled, and came up clutching a submachine gun in two very human hands. As the storm troopers came into sight, he opened fire. No one survived.

Slinging the gun over one bare shoulder, he turned back to face Henry, scrubbing at the blood around his mouth with the back of one grimy hand. His hair, the exact russet brown of the wolf's pelt, fell in a matted tangle over his forehead and the eyes it partially hid were the eyes that had watched Henry emerge from the earth and later feed.

"I am Perkin Heerkens," he said, his English heavily accented. "If you are Henry Fitzroy, I am your contact."

After four hundred years, Henry had thought that nothing could ever surprise him again. He found himself having to rethink that conclusion.

"They didn't tell me you were a werewolf," he said in Dutch.

Perkin grinned, looking much younger but no less dangerous. "They didn't tell me you were a vampire," he pointed out. "I think that makes us even."

"That is not a perfectly normal way to meet someone," Vicki muttered, wishing just for an instant that she was back at home having a nice, normal, argument with Mike Celluci. "I mean, you're talking about a vampire in the Secret Service meeting a werewolf in the Dutch Resistance."

"What's so unusual about that?" Henry passed an RV with American license plates and a small orange cat sleeping in the rear window. "Werewolves are very territorial."

"If they were living as part of normal... " She thought for a second and began again. "If they were living as part of human communities, how did they avoid the draft?"

"Conscription was a British-North American phenomenon," Henry reminded her. "Europe was scrambling for survival and it happened so quickly that a few men and women in a few isolated areas were easy to miss. If necessary, they abandoned 'civilization' for the duration of the war and lived of the land."

"All right, what about British and North American werewolves then?"

"There are no British werewolves... " "Why not?" Vicki interrupted. "It's an island. Given the human propensity for killing what it doesn't understand, there's not enough space for both humans and wer." He paused for a moment then added, "There may have been wer in Britain once... "

Vicki slumped lower in the seat and riddled with the vents. I don't want to die, Ms. Nelson. "So the wer aren't worldwide?"

"No. Europe as far south as northern Italy, most of Russia, and the more northwestern parts of China and Tibet. As far as I know there are no native North American wer, but I could be wrong. There's been a fair bit of immigration, however."

"All post World War II?"

"Not all."

"So my original question stands. How did they avoid the draft?"

Vicki heard him shrug, shoulders whispering against the thick tweed seatback. "I have no idea but, as most of the wer are completely color-blind, I'd guess they flunked the physical. I do know that the allies used color-blind observers in aerial reconnaissance; because they had to perceive everything by shape they were able to see right through most camouflage. Maybe some of that lot were wer."

"Well, what about you, then? How does a vampire convince the government he should be allowed to do his bit for liberty?" Then she remembered just how convincing Henry could be. "Uh, never mind."

"Actually, I didn't even approach the Canadian government. I stowed away on a troop ship and returned to England where an old friend of mine had risen to a very powerful position. He arranged everything."

"Oh." She didn't ask who the old friend was. She didn't want to know - her imagination was already flashing her scenes of Henry and certain prominent figures in compromising positions. "What happened to the villagers?"

"What?"

"The villagers. Where you met Perkin. Did they all die?"

"No, of course not!"

Vicki couldn't see any of course not about it. After all, they'd wiped out an entire squad of SS and the Nazis had disapproved of things like that.

"Perkin and I set it up so that it looked as though they'd been killed in an allied air strike taking out the railway line."

"You called in an air strike?"

She could hear the grin in his voice as he answered.

"Didn't I mention this old friend had risen to a very powerful position?"

"So." One thing still bothered her. "The villagers knew there was a pack of werewolves living amongst them?"

"Not until the war started, no."

"And after the war started?"

"During the war, any enemy of the Nazis was a welcome ally. The British and the Americans even managed to get along."

She supposed that made a certain amount of sense. "And what about after the war?"

"Perkin emigrated. I don't know."

They drove in silence for a while, one of only a few vehicles on the highway now that Toronto had been left behind. Vicki closed her eyes and thought of Henry's story. In some ways the war, for all its complications, had been a simple problem. At least the enemies had been well defined.

"Henry," she asked suddenly, "do you honestly think that a pack of werewolves can live as a part of human society without their neighbors knowing?"

"You're thinking city, Vicki; the Heerkens' nearest neighbors live three miles away. They see people outside the pack when they choose to. Besides, if you didn't know me, and you hadn't met that demon last spring, would you believe in werewolves? Would anyone in North America in this century?"

"Someone obviously does," she reminded him dryly. "Although I'd have expected blackmail over murder."

"It would make more sense," Henry agreed.

She sighed and opened her eyes. Here she was, trying to solve the case armed only with a magnifying glass and a vampire, cut off from the resources of the Metro Police. Not that those resources had been any help so far. Ballistics had called just before she left to tell her that the slug had most likely been a standard 7.62mm NATO round; which narrowed her possible suspects down to the entire North Atlantic Treaty Organization as well as almost everyone who owned a hunting rifle. She wasn't looking forward to arriving at the Heerkens farm.

This was the first time she'd ever really gone it alone. What if she wasn't as good as she thought?

"There's a map in the glove compartment." Henry maneuvered the BMW off Highway 2. "Could you get it out for me?"

She found both glove compartment and map by touch and shoved the latter toward her companion.

He returned it. "Multitalented though I may be, I'd rather not try to read a map while driving on strange roads. You'll have to do it."

Fingers tight around the folded paper, Vicki pushed it back at him. "I don't know where we're going."

"We're on Airport Road about to turn onto Oxford Street. Tell me how long we stay on Oxford before we hit Clarke Side Road."

The streetlights provided barely enough illumination to define the windshield. If she strained, Vicki could see the outline of the map. She certainly couldn't find two little lines on it.

"There's a map light under the sun visor," Henry offered.

The map light would be next to useless.

"I can't find it."

"You haven't even looked... "

"I didn't say I wouldn't, I said I couldn't." She'd realized from the moment she'd agreed to leave the safe, known parameters of Toronto that she'd have to tell him the truth about her eyes and couldn't understand how she'd gotten herself backed into that kind of a corner. Tension brought her shoulders up and tied her stomach in knots. Medical explanation or not, it always sounded like an excuse to her, like she was asking for help or understanding. And he'd think of her differently once the "disabled" label had been applied, everyone did. "I have no night sight, little peripheral vision, and am becoming more myopic every time I talk to the damn doctor." Her tone dared him to make something of it.

Henry merely asked, "What's wrong?"

"It's a degenerative eye disease, retinitis pigmen-tosa... "

"RP," he interrupted. So that was her secret. "I know of it." He kept his feelings from his voice, kept it matter-of-fact. "It doesn't seem to have progressed very far."

Great, just what I need, another expert. Celluci wasn't enough? "You weren't listening," she snarled, twisting the map into an unreadable mess. "I have no night sight. It drove me off the force. I am piss useless after dark. You might as well just turn the car around right now if I have to solve this case at night." Although she hid it behind the anger, she was half afraid he'd do just that. And half afraid he'd pat her on the head and say everything was going to be all right - because it wasn't, and never would be again - and she'd try to rip his face off in a moving car and kill them both.

Henry shrugged. He had no intention of playing into what he perceived as self-pity. "I turn into a smoldering pile of carbon compounds in direct sunlight; sounds like you've got a better deal."

"You don't understand."

"I haven't seen the sun in four hundred and fifty years. I think I do."

Vicki shoved her glasses up her nose and turned to glare out the window at a view she couldn't see, unsure of how to react with no outlet for her anger. After a moment she said, "All right, so you understand. So I have a comparatively mild case. So I can still function. I haven't gone blind. I haven't gone deaf. I haven't gone insane. It still sucks."

"Granted." He read disappointment at his response and wondered if she realized that she expected a certain amount of effusive sympathy from the people she told. Rejecting that sympathy made her feel strong, compensating for what she perceived as her weakness. He suspected that the disease was the first time she hadn't been able to make everything come out all right through the sheer determination that it would be.

"Have you ever thought about taking on a partner? Someone to do the night work?"

Vicki snorted, anger giving way to amusement. "You mean you helping me out as a regular sort of a job? You write romance novels, Henry; you have no experience in this type of thing."

He drew himself up behind the wheel. He was Vampire. King of the Night. The romance novels were just the way he paid the rent. "I wouldn't say... "

"And besides," she interrupted, "I'm barely making enough to keep myself going. They don't call the place 'Toronto the Good' for nothing you know."

"You'd get more jobs if you could work nights."

She couldn't argue with that. It was true.

His voice deepened and Vicki felt the hair on the back of her neck rise. "Just think about it."

Don't use your vampiric wiles on me, you son-of-a-bitch. But her mouth agreed before the thought had finished forming.

They drove the rest of the way to the farm in silence.

When they pulled off the dirt road they'd been following for the last few miles, Vicki could see only a vague fan of light in front of the car. When Henry switched off the headlights, she could see nothing at all. In the sudden silence, the scrabble of claws against the glass beside her head sounded very loud. She didn't quite manage to hold back the startled yell.

"It's Storm," Henry explained - she could hear the smile in his voice. "Stay put until I come around to guide you."

"Fuck you," she told him sweetly, found the release, and opened the car door.

"Yeah I'm glad to see you, too," she muttered, trying to push the huge head away. His breath was marginally better that of most dogs - thanks, no doubt, to his other form being able to use a toothbrush - but only marginally. Finally realizing that without better leverage the odds of moving Storm were slim to none, she sat back and endured the enthusiastic welcome. Her fingers itched to dig through the deep ruff, but the memory of Peter's naked young body held them in check.

"Storm, that's enough."

With one last vigorous sniff, the wer backed out of the way and Vicki felt Henry's hand touch her arm. She shook it off and swung out of the car. Although she could see the waning moon, a hanging, three-quarter circle of silver-white in the darkness, it shed a light too diffuse to do her any good. The blurry rectangles of yellow off to the right were probably the lights of the house and she considered striding off toward them just to prove she wasn't as helpless as Henry might think.

Henry watched the thought cross Vicki's face and shook his head. While he admired her independence, he hoped it wouldn't overwhelm her common sense. He realized that at the moment she felt she had something to prove and could think of no way to let her know she didn't. At least not as far as he was concerned.

He put her bag into her hand, keeping his own hold on it until he saw her fingers close around the grip, then drew her free arm gently through his. "The path curves," he murmured, close to her ear. "You don't want to end up in Nadine's flowers. Nadine bites."

Vicki ignored the way his breath against her cheek caused the hair on the back of her neck to rise and concentrated on walking as though she was not being led. She had no doubt that the wer, in wolf form at least, could see just as well as Henry and she had no intention of undermining her position here by appearing weak to however many of them might be watching.

Head high, she focused on the rectangles of light, attempting to memorize both the way the path felt beneath her sandals and the way it curved from the drive to the house. The familiar concrete and exhaust scents of the city were gone, replaced by what she could only assume was the not entirely pleasant odor of sheep shit. The cricket song she could identify, but the rest of the night sounds were beyond her.

Back in Toronto, every smell, every sound would have meant something. Here, they told her nothing. Vicki didn't like that, not at all; it added another handicap to her failing eyes.

Two sudden sharp pains on her calf and another on her forearm, jolted her out of her funk, reminding her of an aspect of the case she hadn't taken into account.

"Damned bugs!" She pulled her arm free and slapped down at her legs. "Henry, I just remembered something; I hate the country!"

They'd moved into the spill of light from the house and she could just barely make out the smile on his face.

"Too late," he told her, and opened the door.

Vicki's first impression as she stood blinking on the threshold was of a comfortably shabby farmhouse kitchen seething with people and dogs. Her second impression corrected the first: Seething with wer. The people are dogs. Wolves. Oh, hell.

It was late, nearly eleven. Celluci leaned back in his chair and stared at the one remaining piece of paper on his desk. The Alan Margot case had been wrapped up in record time and he could leave it now to begin its ponderous progress through the courts. Which left him free to attend to a small bit of unfinished business.

Henry Fitzroy.

Something about the man just didn't ring right and Celluci had every intention of finding out what that was. He scooped up the piece of paper, blank except for the name printed in heavy block letters across the top, folded it twice, and placed it neatly in his wallet. Tomorrow he'd run the standard searches on Mr. Fitzroy and if they turned up nothing... His smile was predatory as he stood. If they turned up nothing, there were ways to delve deeper.

Some might call what he planned a misuse of authority. Detective-Sergeant Michael Celluci called it looking out for a friend.