1 Blood Price (27 page)

The trees surrounding the graveyard bent almost double in the wind, their silhouettes wild and ragged. Henry shivered. Three nights of waiting had left him edgy and longing for a confrontation of any kind.
Even losing would be better than much more of this
. Demonic lore left large pieces to the imagination and his imagination obligingly kept filling them in.

The path of power, still waiting for an anchor, pulsed sullenly, damped down by Easter Sunday and the symbolic rising of Christ.

Then it changed.

The pulse quickened, the darkness deepening into something other than night.

Somewhere, Henry knew, the pentagram had been drawn, the fire had been lit, and the call had begun. He tensed, senses straining, ready to close his own pentagram at the first sign. This was it. The lesser demon then, if he couldn’t stop it, the greater and with it the end of the world. His right hand rose in the sign of the cross. “Lord, lend your strength,” he prayed.

The next thing he knew, he was kneeling on the damp ground, tears streaming from light sensitive eyes as afterimages danced in glory on the inside of his lids.

The third drop of blood hit the coals, and the air over the pentagram shivered and changed. Norman sat back on his heels and waited. This afternoon, he’d found where Coreen lived—the student records at York had been almost insultingly easy to hack into. Tonight, there would be no more mistakes and she’d pay for what she’d done to him.

The throbbing in his head grew until it seemed the entire world thrummed with it.

He frowned as the shimmering grew more pronounced and a hazy outline of the demon appeared. It almost seemed to be fighting against something, lashing out against an invisible opponent. Its mouth opened in a soundless shriek and abruptly the pentagram was clear.

At that same instant, the coals in the hibachi blazed up with such power that Norman had to throw himself backward or be consumed. The throbbing became a high-pitched whine. He clawed at his ears, but it went on and one and on.

After three or four seconds of six-foot flames, the tempered steel of the hibachi melted to slag, the flames disappeared, and a gust of wind from the center of the pentagram not only blew the candles out but threw them against the far wall where they shattered.

“That isn’t p-possible,” he stammered into the sudden silence. His ears still rang with echoes, but even the throbbing had died, leaving an aching emptiness where it had been. While a part of his mind cowered in fear, another disbelieved the evidence of his eyes. Heat enough to melt the cast iron hibachi should have taken the entire apartment building with it.

He reached out a trembling hand and touched the pool of metal, all that remained of the tiny barbecue. His fingertips sizzled and a heartbeat later he felt the pain.

It hurt too much to scream.

When his sight finally returned, Henry dragged himself to his feet. He hadn’t been hit that hard in centuries. Why he hadn’t assumed it was the Demon Lord breaking through he had no idea, but he hadn’t, not even during that first panicked instant of blindness.

“So what was it’?” he asked, sagging against a concrete angel and brushing mud off his knees. He could just barely feel the power signature of the naming. It had retreated as far as it could without returning to hell altogether. “Any ideas, mister, miss . . .” he asked, turning to read the name off the headstone. Carved into the stone at the angel’s feet was the answer.

CHRISTUS RESURREXIT!
Christ is risen.

Henry Fitzroy, vampire, raised a good Catholic, dropped back to his knees and said a Hail Mary—just in case.

Coreen slipped through the double doors moments before the class was about to begin and made her way across the lecture hall to a cluster of her friends. Her eyes had the fragile, translucent look of little sleep and much crying. Even the bright red tangle of her hair seemed dimmed.

The cluster opened and let her in, seating her in the safety of their circle, offering expressions of shock and sympathy. Although Janet had been a friend to all of them, Coreen had seen her last and that gave her grief an immediacy theirs couldn’t have.

None of them, Coreen least of all, was aware of the expression of hatred that crossed Norman Birdwell’s face every time he glanced in their direction.

The throbbing had returned sometime during the night, each pulse reassuring Norman that the power was still his, each pulse demanding that Coreen pay.

Coreen had become the symbol for everyone who had ever laughed at him. For every slut who’d spread her legs for the football team but not for him. For every jock who pushed him aside as if he wasn’t there. Well, he was there, and he’d prove it. He’d turn his demon loose on the lot of them—but first Coreen had to die.

Very carefully, he moved his bandaged hand from his lap to the arm of the chair. After spending a virtually sleepless night, he’d stopped by the student medical center before class. If that’s what his student funds paid for, he wasn’t impressed. First, they’d made him wait until two people who’d arrived before him went in—even though he was obviously in more pain—and then the stupid cow had hurt him when she’d taped down the gauze. They hadn’t even wanted to hear the story he’d made up about how he did it.

Briefcase awkwardly balanced on his knees, he pulled out the little black book he’d bought in high school to keep girls’ phone numbers in. The first four or five pages had been raggedly torn out and on the first remaining page, under the word Coreen, he wrote,
the Student Medical Center.

From here on, Norman Birdwell was going to get even. He didn’t understand what had gone wrong the night before. He’d performed the ritual flawlessly. Something had interfered, had stopped the demon, had stopped
his
demon. Norman frowned. Obviously, there were things around stronger than the creature he called to do his bidding. He didn’t like that. He didn’t like that at all. How dare something be able to interfere with him.

He could see only one solution. He’d have to get a stronger demon.

After the lecture, he made his way to the front of the class and planted himself between the professor and the door. Over the years he’d learned that the best way to get answers was to block the possibility of escape.

“Professor Leigh? I need to talk to you.”

Resignedly, the professor set his heavy briefcase back by the lectern. He tried to be available when his students needed him, recognizing that a few moments of answering questions could occasionally clarify an entire semester’s work, but Norman Birdwell would corner him for no better reason than to prove how clever he was. “What is it, Norman?”

What was it?
The throbbing had grown so loud again it had become difficult to think. With an effort, he managed to blurt out, “It’s about my seminar topic. You said earlier that as well as a host of lesser demons there were also Demon Lords. Can I assume that the Demon Lords are the more powerful?”

“Yes, Norman, you can.” He wondered briefly what the younger man had done to his fingers.
Probably got them caught in a metaphorical cookie jar. . . .

“Well, how can you tell what you’re going to get? I mean if you call up a demon, how can you ensure that you’re going to get a Demon Lord?”

Professor Leigh’s brows rose. This sounded like it was going to be one hell of a seminar. So to speak. “The rituals for calling up one of the demon kind are very complicated, Norman. . . .”

Norman hid a sneer. The rituals were nonspecific but hardly complicated. Of course, he’d never be able to convince the professor that. Professor Leigh thought
he
knew everything. “How do they differ for a Demon Lord?”

“Well, just for starters, you need a name.”

“Where do I find one?”

“I am not going to do your research for you, Norman.” The professor picked up his briefcase and headed for the door, expecting Norman to move out of his way. Norman stayed right where he was. Faced with a shoving match or surrender, Professor Leigh sighed and surrendered. “I suggest you have a word with Dr. Sagara at the University of Toronto’s Rare Book Room. She might have something that can help.”

Norman weighed the worth of that information for a moment then nodded, stepping back against the blackboard. It was less than he wanted, but it was a beginning and he still had ten hours until midnight.

“Fine. I’ll call Dr. Sagara and tell her you’ll be coming down.” Once safely out in the corridor, the professor grinned. He almost wished he could be there to see the irresistible force come up against the immovable object. Almost.

 

A few flakes of snow slapped wetly against his face as Norman stood waiting for the bus. He shifted his weight from foot to foot, glad he’d worn his sneakers—cowboy boots, he’d discovered, had next to no insulation against the cold. The black leather jacket kept him reasonably warm, although the fringe kept flapping up and whipping him in the back of the neck.

When he saw the bus approaching, he moved to the curb, only to be engulfed by the waiting pack of students and pushed back almost to the end of the line. All his efforts to regain his place met with failure and finally he gave in, shuffling forward with the line and fuming.

Just wait. . . .
Norman shifted his grip on his briefcase, ignoring the way it cracked against the shins of the person next to him.
When I have my Demon Lord
,
there’ll be no more lines, no more buses,
no more sharp elbows. He glared at the back of the tall skinny young man attached to the elbow in question. As soon as he got a chance, that guy was going on the list.

Vicki allowed herself to be caught up in the rush of students and carried with them out through the back doors of the bus. Intensive eavesdropping during the long trip had taught her two things; that nothing had changed much since she’d gone to university and that the verb “says” seemed to have disappeared from common usage.

“. . . so then my dad goes, if you’re going to take the car out I gotta know where you’re going like and . . .”

And what’s really depressing is that she’s probably an English major
. Out on the sidewalk at last, Vicki fastened her jacket and took a quick look back at the bus. The doors were just closing behind the last of the students fleeing the campus and, as she watched, the heavily loaded vehicle lumbered away. Well, that was that, then; no changing her mind for another forty minutes.

She felt a little foolish, but this was the best idea she could come up with. With any luck, the head of the computer science department would be able—and willing—to tell her who’d be likely to own and use the stolen computer system. Coreen might have had information that could help sort the living needle out of the haystack, after all, she was a student out here, but when Vicki’d called her apartment at about 8:30 there’d been no answer.