1 Blood Price (30 page)

Henry grabbed for the phone, then ground his teeth when the caller hung up before the message had even finished. There were few things he hated more and that was the third time it had happened this evening. He’d turned the machine on when he sat down to write, more out of habit then anything, with every intention of picking up the receiver if Vicki chanced to call. Of course, he couldn’t tell who was calling if they didn’t speak. He looked at his watch. Ten past eleven. Had something gone wrong? He dialed her number and listened to her complete message before hanging up. It told him nothing at all.

Where was she?

He considered going to her apartment and trying to pick up some kind of a trail but discarded the idea almost immediately. The feeling that he should stay in the condo was stronger than ever, keeping him in a perpetual sort of twitchy unease.

As long as he had to hang around anyway, he’d been attempting to use that feeling in his writing.

Smith stepped backward, sapphire eyes wide
,
and snatched the captain’s straight razor off his small shaving stand. “Come one step closer,” she warned, an intriguing little catch in her voice, “and I’ll cut you!”

It wasn’t going well. He sighed, saved, and turned off the computer. What was taking Vicki so long?

Unable to remain still, he walked into the living room and peered down at the city. For the first time since he’d bought the condo, the lights failed to enthrall him. He could only think of them going dark and the darkness spreading until the world became lost in it.

He moved to the stereo, turned it on, pulled out a CD, put it back, and turned the stereo off. Then he began to pace the length of the living room. Back and forth, back and forth, back. . . .

Even through the glass doors of the bookcase he could feel the presence of the grimoire but, unlike Vicki, he named it evil without hesitation. A little over a hundred years ago it had been one of the last three true grimoires remaining in the world, or so he’d been told, and he had no reason to doubt the man who’d told him—not then, not now.

“So you’re Henry Fitzroy.” Dr. O’Mara gripped Henry’s hand, his large pale eyes gleaming. “I’ve heard so much about you from Alfred here, I feel that I already know you.”

“And I you,” Henry replied, stripping off his evening gloves and carefully returning exactly the amount of pressure applied. The hair on the back of his neck had risen and he had a feeling that appearing stronger than this man would be just as dangerous as appearing weaker. “Alfred admires you a great deal.”

Releasing Henry, Dr. O’Mara clapped Alfred on the shoulder. “Does he now?”

The words held an edge and the Honorable Alfred Waverly hastened to fill the silence that followed, his shoulder dipping slightly under the white knuckled grip. “It’s not that I’ve told him anything, Doctor, it’s just that. . . .”

“That he quotes you constantly,” Henry finished with his most disarming grin.

“Quotes me?” The grim expression eased. “Well, I suppose one can’t object to that.”

Alfred beamed, eyes bright above slightly flushed cheeks, the expression of terror that had caused Henry to intervene gone as though it had never existed.

“If you will excuse me, Mr. Fitzroy, I have a number of things I must attend to.” The doctor waved an expansive hand. “Alfred will introduce you to the other guests.”

Henry inclined his head and watched his host leave the room through narrowed eyes.

The ten other guests were all young men, much like the Honorable Alfred, wealthy, idle, and bored. Three of them, Henry already knew. The others were strangers.

“Well, what do you think?” Alfred asked, accepting a whiskey from a blank-faced footman after introductions had been made, the proper things said, and they were standing alone again.

“I think you’ve grossly misled me,” Henry told him, refusing a drink. “This is hardly a den of iniquity.”

Alfred’s smile jerked up nervously at the corners, his face paler than usual under the flickering gaslight. “Dash it, Henry, I never said it was.” He ran his finger around the edge of his whiskey glass. “You’re lucky to be here, you know. There’s only ever twelve invited and Dr. O’Mara wanted you specifically after Charles . . . uh, had his accident.”

Accident; Charles was dead, but Alfred’s Victorian sensibilities wouldn’t let him say the word. “I’ve been meaning to ask you, why did Dr. O’Mara want me?”

Alfred flushed. “Because I told him all about you.”

“All
about me?” Given the laws against homosexuality and Alfred’s preferences, Henry doubted it, but to his surprise the young man nodded.

“I couldn’t help myself. Dr. O’Mara, well, he’s the kind of person you tell things to.”

“I’m sure he is,” Henry muttered, thanking God and all the Saints that Alfred had no idea of what he actually was. “Do you sleep with him, too?”

“I say, Henry!”

The bastard son of Henry VIII, having little patience with social conventions, merely asked the question again. “Are you sleeping with him?”

“No.”

“But you would. . . .”

Managing to look both miserable and elated, Alfred nodded. “He’s magnificent.”

Overpowering was closer to the word Henry would have used. The doctor’s personality was like a tidal wave, sweeping all lesser personalties before it. Henry had no intention of being swept, but he could see how he might be if he were the idle young man he appeared to be; could see how the others in the room had been, and he didn’t like it.

Just after eleven, the doctor disappeared and a gong sounded somewhere in the depths of the house.

“It’s time,” Alfred whispered, clutching at Henry’s arm. “Come on.”

To Henry’s surprise, the group of them, a dozen young men in impeccable evening dress, trooped down into the basement. The huge central room had been outfitted with torches and at one end stood what appeared to be a stone block about waist high, needing only a knight lying in effigy on its top to complete the resemblance to a crypt. Around him, his companions began stripping off their clothes.

“Get undressed,” Alfred urged, thrusting a loose black robe in Henry’s direction. “And put this on.”

Suddenly understanding, Henry had to bite back the urge to laugh. He’d been brought in as the twelfth member of a coven; a group of juvenile aristocrats dressing up in black bedsheets and capering around in a smoky basement. He allowed Alfred to help him change and he remained amused until Dr. O’Mara appeared behind the altar.

The Doctor’s robe was red, the color of fresh blood. In his right hand he carried a human skull, in his left an ancient book. He should have looked as foolish as his sycophants. He didn’t. His pale eyes burned and his personality, carefully leashed in the drawing room, blazed forth, igniting the chamber. He used his voice to whip the young men to a frenzy, one moment filling the room with thunder, the next dropping it low, wrapping it about them, and drawing them close.

Henry’s disgust rose with the hysteria. He stood in the deepest shadows, well away from the torches, and watched. A sense of danger kept him there, a pricking up and down his spine that told him no matter how ludicrous this looked, the doctor, at least, played no game and the evil that spread from the altar was very real.

At midnight, two of the anonymous, black clad bodies held a struggling cat upon the stone while a third wielded the knife.

“Blood. Blood! BLOOD! BLOOD!”

Henry felt his own need rise as the blood scent mixed with the smell of smoke and sweat. The chant grew in volume and intensity, pulsing like a heartbeat and pounding against him. Robes began to fall, exposing flesh and, surging just below the surface, blood . . . and blood . . . and blood. His lips drew back off his teeth and he stepped forward.

Then, over the mass of writhing bodies between them, he met the doctor’s eyes.

Terror broke through the blood lust and drove him from the house. Clad only in the robe, and more frightened than he’d been in three hundred and fifty years, he made his way back to his sanctuary, gaining it just before dawn, falling into the day with the memory of the doctor’s face before him.

The next night, as little as he wanted to, he went back. The danger had to be faced. And eliminated.

 

“I knew you’d return.” Without rising from behind his desk, Dr. O’Mara waved Henry to a chair. “Please, sit down.”

Senses straining, Henry moved slowly into the room. Except for the sleeping servants on the third floor the doctor was the only life in the house. He could kill him and be gone with no one the wiser. He sat instead, curiosity staying his hand. How did this mortal know him and what did he want?

“You blend quite well, vampire.” The doctor beamed genially at him. “Had I not been aware already of the existence of your kind, I would have disregarded young Alfred’s babblings. You made quite an impression on him. And on me. The moment I realized what you were, I had to have you with me.”

“You killed Charles to make room for me.”

“Of course, I did. There can never be more than twelve.” At Henry’s utterance of disgust, he only laughed. “I saw your face, vampire. You wanted it. All those lives, all that blood. Fresh young throats to rip. And they’d have given themselves joyously to your teeth if I commanded it.” He leaned forward, pale eyes like cold flames. “I can give you this, each and every night.”

“And what do I give you?”

“Eternal life.” Hands became fists and the words rang like a bell. “You will make me as you are.”

That was enough. More than enough. Henry threw himself out of the chair and at the doctor’s throat.

Only to slam up against an invisible barrier that held him like a fly in a web. He could thrash about where he stood, but he could move neither forward nor back. For a moment he fought against it with all his strength and then he hung, panting, lips drawn back, a soundless growl twisting his face.

“I rather suspected you would refuse to cooperate.” The doctor came around the desk, standing so close Henry could feel his breath as he spoke. “You thought I was a posturing fool, didn’t you, vampire? You never thought I would hold real power; power brought out of dark places by unspeakable means, gained by deeds even you would quail to hear. That power holds you now and will continue to hold you until you are mine.”

“You cannot force me to change you.” Raw fury kept the fear from his voice.

“Perhaps not. You are physically very strong and mentally almost my match. Nor can I bleed you and drink, for a touch would release the bonds.” Turning, the doctor scooped a book up off the desk and held it up to Henry’s face. “But if I cannot force you, I have access to those who can.”

The book covered in greasy red leather, was the same one he’d held the night before during the ceremony. At such close quarters, the evil that radiated from it struck Henry with almost a physical blow and he rocked back against the unseen chains that held him.

“This,” said Dr. O’Mara, caressing it lovingly, “is one of the last true grimoires left. I have heard there are only two others in the world. All the rest are but pale copies of these three. The man who wrote it sold his soul for the information it contains, but the Prince of Lies collected before he could use the knowledge so dearly bought. If we had the time, dear vampire, I would tell you what I had to do to make it mine, but we do not—you must be mine as well before dawn.”

The naked desire in his eyes was so consuming that Henry felt sick. He began to struggle, fighting harder when he heard the doctor laugh again and move away.

“From months of ceremonies, I have drawn what I need to control the demon,” the doctor remarked conversationally, rolling up the carpet before the fire. “The demon can give me anything save life eternal. You can give me that so the demon will give me you.” He looked up from the pentagram cut into the floor. “Can you stand against a Lord of Hell, vampire? I think not.”

His mouth dry and his breath coming in labored gasps, Henry threw all his strength against the binding. Muscles straining and joints popping, he fought for his life. Just as it seemed he could no longer contain a wail of despair, his right arm moved.

The candles lit and a foul powder burning on the fire, Dr. O’Mara opened the book and began to read.

His right arm moved again. And then his left.

A shimmering began in the center of the pentagram.

Power fed into the calling bled power away from the bindings, Henry realized. They were weakening. Weakening. . . .

The shimmer began to coalesce, falling into itself and forming. . . .

With a howl of rage, Henry tore free and flung himself across the room. Before the doctor could react, Henry grabbed him, lifted him, and threw him with all his remaining strength against the far wall.

The doctor’s head struck the wooden wainscoting and the wood proved stronger. The thing in the pentagram faded until only a foul smell and a memory of terror remained.