The strange one looked at him.
He looked back.
Snarling, Henry broke contact and jerked away.
It was alive.
The body was dead.
But
it
was alive.
Whoever has done this thing should be damned for all eternity and beyond!
Trembling with anger and other emotions less easily defined, Henry dropped his hands to the lid of the box in front of him. Marjory Nelson, Vicki’s mother, had to be in one of these. He no longer knew what he would do when he found her.
We give them to Detective Fergusson.
So easy to decide in the abstract.
And what will Detective Fergusson do?
He opened the box.
The smell of recent death, free of any taint, rose with the lid and for an instant Henry hoped—but the body in the box had never belonged to Marjory Nelson. A young Oriental male wearing a band of purple finger marks around his throat, eyes bulging, tongue protruding, lay stretched out in the padded plastic hollow. He’d been dead for such a short time that the flush of blood caused by strangulation had not yet left his face.
Marjory Nelson suddenly became of lesser importance. She had already been lost and he could do no more for her than find her. This boy he could save.
Moving quickly, he closed the staring eyes then slid his arms behind knees and shoulders and lifted the chilled body free. The weight meant nothing but the load was awkward and he had to shuffle sideways until he cleared the row of boxes and could turn.
“What do you think you’re doing?”
Drowning in the stink of abomination, Henry hadn’t scented her approach nor, with ears tuned only to a heart that should be making no noise, had he heard her. In no mood to be subtle, he raised his head to meet her eyes, to order her away, and found behind a surface veneer of normalcy nothing he could touch. Her thoughts spiraled endlessly; starting nowhere, going nowhere.
Pale eyes narrowed. Pale cheeks flushed. “Stop him,” she said.
Hands clamped onto Henry’s shoulders and yanked him back. Across the top of his head, he could feel death breathing.
This is not life!
his senses screamed. His skin crawled in revulsion. He lost his grip on the boy, felt himself lifted and slammed down onto a surface that gave beneath the force of the blow. He twisted and looked up in time to see the lid coming down.
“NO!”
“He’s not back yet.”
Celluci jerked away, head snapping up painfully, muscles suddenly tense. “Wha . . . ?”
“He’s not back yet,” Vicki repeated from the center of the living room, arms wrapped tightly around herself. “And it’s nearly dawn.”
“Who’s not back? Fitzroy?” Shoving his fist in front of a jaw-cracking yawn, Celluci glanced down at his watch. “6:12. When’s the sun due up?”
“6:17,” Vicki told him. “He’s got five minutes.” She kept her face and voice expressionless, reporting the facts, just the facts, because if she gave the screaming panic clawing at her from inside any chance to get free she was horribly afraid she’d never be able to control it again.
Celluci recognized the defense. There wasn’t a cop on the planet who hadn’t used police training to cover a personal terror at least once. The ones who cared too much used it frequently. Occasionally, it started to use them. Joints protesting, he heaved himself up out of the armchair he’d fallen asleep in, muttering, “How the hell do you know when the sun comes up?”
All at once, a terrifying possibility hit him. Had Fitzroy been . . . been . . . his mind shied away from the whole concept of sucking blood, of feeding. Had Fitzroy been
with
her long enough that she was becoming like him? Wasn’t that how it worked? He shot an anxious glance at the mirror over the couch and was relieved to see her reflection still in it. Then he remembered that it had reflected Fitzroy just as clearly. “You’re not turning into a . . . a . . . one of them, are you?” he snarled.
Vicki pushed at her glasses with the back of one hand. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“How do you know that sunrise is at 6:17?” He wanted to cross the room and shake the answer from her and barely managed to hold himself back.
“I read it in the paper last night.” Her brows drew in, confused by the unexpected attack. “What is your
problem
, Mike?”
She read it in the paper last night. “Sorry, I, uh . . .” The surge of relief was so intense it left him feeling weak and a little dizzy. He spread his hands in apology and sighed. “I thought you were becoming like him,” he said quietly, “and I was afraid I was going to lose you.”
Drawing her lower lip between her teeth, Vicki stared at him for a long moment, although in the dim dawn light she could barely make out individual features. With no resources left to throw at denial, she could sense his caring, his fear, his love—and knew he put no conditions on it, no conditions on her. To her surprise, rather than diminishing her sense of self, it added to it and made her feel stronger. Even the panic over Henry calmed a little. Her eyes grew damp.
I am
not
going to cry.
Shoving the words past the lump in her throat, she said, “It doesn’t work like that.”
“Good.” He heard, if not acceptance, at least acknowledgment in her tone and was content for the time to leave it at that.
The room grew perceptibly lighter.
Vicki turned toward the windows, arms wrapped tightly around herself once more. “Open the curtains.”
They both heard the silent corollary.
You open them because I can’t. Because I’m afraid of what I might see.
“Who was your slave last year,” Celluci grumbled to cover it.
It was going to be a beautiful day. Several dozen birds were noisily welcoming the dawn and the air had the kind of clarity that only occurred in the morning in spring.
His watch said 6:22. “How long can he last in the sun?”
“I don’t know.”
“I’m going to check outside. Just in case he almost made it home.”
No twisted, blackened body crawled toward the door. No pile of ash spread man-shaped in the parking lot. When Celluci came back inside, he found Vicki standing where he’d left her, staring at the window.
“He isn’t dead.”
“Vicki, you have no way of knowing that.”
“So?” Her teeth were clenched so hard her temples began to throb. “He
isn’t
dead.”
“All right.” Celluci crossed the room to her side and gently turned her to face him. “I don’t want to believe it either.” It was true, he didn’t. He didn’t understand half the responses Fitzroy evoked in him, but he didn’t want him gone. “So we won’t believe it together.”
Together. Face twisted into a scowl to stop the threat of tears, Vicki nodded. Together sounded a whole lot better than alone.
He could feel the dawn. Even through the terror and the frenzy and the panic, he could feel the morning approach. For a moment he fought harder, slamming his whole body up against the lid of his prison, then he collapsed back against the padding and lay still.
The familiar touch of the sun trembling on the edge of the horizon brought sanity with it. For too long he had known only the all pervasive stench of abomination and the pain he inflicted upon himself to get free. Now he knew who he was again.
Just in time to lose himself to the day.
Working on her own, it took Catherine until after seven to finish preparing Donald’s body and hook it up in number nine’s box. She’d intended to use number eight’s, but the intruder locked inside had forced her to change her plans. It wouldn’t hurt number nine to stay out for a while. It might even be good for him.
She yawned and stretched, suddenly exhausted. It had been a long and eventful night and she was in desperate need of a couple of hours sleep. The constant pounding from number eight’s box had been very irritating and more than a little distracting during certain delicate procedures. She very nearly turned the refrigeration unit back on just to see if that would cool him down.
How unfortunate that, when the pounding finally stopped, she’d been nearly finished and able to appreciate the quiet for only a short time.
Ten
Vicki woke first and lay staring blindly at the ceiling, uncertain where she was. The room felt unfamiliar, the dimensions wrong, the patterns of shadow that made up the world without her glasses not patterns she recognized. It wasn’t her bedroom, nor, in spite of the man still asleep beside her, was it Celluci’s.
Then she remembered.
Just past dawn, the two of them had lain down on her mother’s bed. Her dead mother’s bed. Two of them—where there should’ve been three.
All three of us in my dead mother’s bed?
The edge on the sarcasm very nearly drew blood.
Get a grip, Nelson.
She slid out from under Celluci’s arm without waking him and groped on the bedside table for her glasses, the daylight seeping around the edges of the blinds providing barely enough illumination for her to function. Her nose almost touching the surface of the clock radio, she scowled at the glowing red numbers. Ten minutes after nine. Two hours’ sleep. Add that to the time Henry had granted her and she’d certainly functioned on less.
Pulling her robe closer around her, she stood. She couldn’t go back to sleep now anyway. She couldn’t face the dreams—Henry burning and screaming her name while he burned, her mother’s rotting body a living barrier between them. If she wanted to save Henry, she had to go past her mother. And she couldn’t. Feelings of fear and failure combined, lingered.
My subconscious is
anything
but subtle.
Bare feet moving soundlessly over the soft nap of the carpet—it was still nearly new; Vicki could remember how pleased her mother had been to have replaced a worn area rug with thick wall-to-wall plush—she made her way to the walk-in closet where Henry had been spending his days. After a moment’s groping to find the switch, she flicked on the closet light and closed the door silently behind her.
It was, as Henry had said, just barely large enough for a not-so-very-tall man. Or a not-so-very-tall vampire. A pad of bright blue compressed foam, the sort commonly used for camping, lay along one wall under the rack of woman’s clothes. On it, a neatly folded length of heavy blackout curtain rested beside a leather overnight bag. Another piece of curtain had been tacked to one side of the door which itself had been fitted out with a heavy steel bolt.
Henry must’ve put it up.
Vicki touched the metal slide and shook her head. She hadn’t heard hammering but, given Henry’s strength, hammering might not have been necessary.
We’d better remember to take it down or it’ll confuse the hell out of the next tenant.
The next tenant. It was the first time she’d considered the apartment as anything but her mother’s.
Only reasonable
,
I suppose.
She let her head fall back against the wall and closed her eyes.
My mother’s dead.
The scent of her mother’s cologne, of her mother, permeated the small enclosure, and with her eyes shut it almost seemed that her mother was still there. Another time, the illusion might have been comforting—or infuriating. Vicki was honest enough to admit the possibility of either reaction. At the moment, though, she ignored it. Her mother wasn’t the reason she was here.
Opening her eyes, she dropped to her knees beside the pallet and lifted the makeshift shroud to her face, breathing in the faint trace of Henry trapped in the heavy fabric.
He wasn’t dead. She refused to believe it. He was too real to be dead.
He
wasn’t
dead.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m not entirely certain.” With knuckles white around the folds, she set the piece of curtain down and turned to face Celluci, standing outlined in the doorway. He’d opened the blinds in the bedroom and the morning sun behind him threw his face into shadow. Vicki couldn’t see his expression, but his tone had been almost gentle. She didn’t have a clue to what he was thinking.
He held out his hand and she put hers into it, allowing him to pull her to her feet. His palm was warm and callused. Henry’s would have been cool and smooth. With her free hand resting on a crumpled expanse of shirtfront, she had the sudden and completely irrational desire to take that one extra step into the circle of Celluci’s arms and to rest her head—not to mention the whole mess she found herself in—if only for a moment, on the broad expanse of his shoulders.
This is no time to be getting soft, Vicki,
she told herself sternly, fighting the iron bands tightening around her ribs.
You’ve got far too fucking much to do.
Celluci, who’d read both the desire and the internal response off Vicki’s face, smiled wryly and moved out of her way. He recognized the growing strain that painted purple half-circles under her eyes and pinched the comers of her mouth and knew that some of it needed to be bled off before it blew her apart. But he didn’t know what to do. Although their fights had often been therapeutic, this situation went a little beyond the relief that could come from screaming at one another over trivial disagreements. While he could think of a few nontrivial disagreements available for argument, he had no intention of hurting her by bringing them up. All he could do was continue to wait and hope he was the one in the right place to pick up the pieces.
Of course,
if Fitzroy’s actually
bought
it . . .
It was a dishonorable thought, but he couldn’t stop it from taking up residence.
“So.” He watched her cross to the open bedroom door and wondered how long he’d have been content with the status quo had Fitzroy
not
come into their lives. “What do we do now?”
Vicki turned and stared at him in some surprise. “We do exactly what we
have
been doing.” She jabbed her glasses up onto the bridge of her nose. “When we find the people who have my mother’s body, we’ll find Henry.”