1 Blood Price (38 page)

Brows drawn down into a deep vee, Celluci fanned the phone messages stacked on his desk, checking who they were from. Two reporters, an uncle, Vicki, the dry cleaners, one of the reporters again . . . and again. Growling wordlessly, he crumpled them up and shoved them into his pocket. He didn’t have time for this kind of crap.

He’d spent the day combing the area where the latest victim and her dog had been found. He’d talked to the two kids who’d found the body and most of the people who lived in a four block radius. The site had held a number of half obliterated footprints that suggested the man they were looking for went barefoot, had three toes, and very long toenails. No one had seen anything although a drunk camped out farther down in the ravine had heard a sound like a sail luffing and had smelled rotten eggs. The police lab had just informed him that between the mastiff’s teeth were particles identical to the bit of whatever-it-was that DeVerne Jones had been holding in his hand. And he was no closer to finding an answer.

Or at least no closer to finding an answer he could deal with.

He slammed out of the squad room and stomped down the hall. The new headquarters building seemed to deaden sound, but he made as much as he could anyway.

As he passed the desk, the cadet on duty leaned forward. “Uh, Detective, a Vicki Nelson called for you earlier. She seemed quite insistent that you check out. . . .”

Celluci’s raised hand cut him off. “Did you write it down?”

“Yes, sir. I left a message on your desk.”

“Then you’ve done your job.”

“Yes, sir, but. . . .”

“
Don’t
tell me how to do mine.”

The cadet swallowed nervously, Adam’s apple bobbing above his tight uniform collar. “No, sir.”

Scowling, Celluci continued stomping out of the building. He needed to be alone to do some thinking. The last thing he needed right now was Vicki.

Henry stepped out of the shower and frowned at his reflection in the full-length mirror. The lesser cuts and abrasions he’d taken the night before had healed, the greater were healing and would give him no trouble. He unwrapped the plastic bag from around the dressing on his arm and poked gently at the gauze. It hurt and would, he suspected, continue to hurt for some time, but he could use the arm if he was careful. It had been so many years since he’d taken a serious wound that his biggest problem would be remembering it before he caused himself more pain.

He turned a little sideways and shook his head. Great green splotches of fading bruises still covered most of his body.

“Looks familiar, actually. . . .”

The lance tip caught him under the right arm, lifting him up and out of the saddle. For a heartbeat, he hung in the air, then as the roar of the watching crowd rose to a crescendo, he crashed down to the ground. The sound of his armor slamming against the packed earth of the lists rattled around inside his head much as his head rattled around inside his helmet. He almost wouldn’t mind the falls if only they weren’t so thrice-damned loud.

He closed his eyes.
Just until all the noise stops. . . .

 

When he opened them again, he was looking up into the face of Sir Gilbert Talboys, his mother’s husband.
Where the devil did he come from?
he wondered.
Where did my helmet go?
He liked Sir Gilbert, so he tried to smile. His face didn’t seem to be functioning.

“Can you rise, Henry? His Grace, the King, is approaching.”

There was an urgency in Sir Gilbert’s voice that penetrated the ringing in Henry’s ears. Could he rise? He wasn’t exactly sure. Everything hurt but nothing seemed broken. The king, who would not be pleased that he had been unseated, would be even less pleased if he continued to lie in the dirt. Teeth clenched, he allowed Sir Gilbert to lift him into a sitting position then, with help, heave him to his feet.

Henry swayed but somehow managed to stay standing, even after all supporting hands had been removed. His vision blurred, then refocused on the king, resplendent in red velvet and cloth of gold, advancing from the tournament stand. Desperately, he tried to gather his scattered wits. He had not been in his father’s favor since he had unwisely let it be known that he considered Queen Catherine the one true and only Queen of England. This would be the first time his father had spoken to him since he had taken up with that Lutheran slut. Even three years later, the French Court still buzzed with stories of her older sister, Mary, and Henry could not believe that his father had actually put Anne Boleyn on the throne.

Unfortunately, King Henry VIII had done exactly that.

Thanking God that his armor prevented him from falling to one knee—he doubted he’d be able to rise or, for that matter, control the fall—Henry bowed as well as he was able and waited for the king to speak.

“You carry your shield too far from your body. Carry it close and a man cannot get his point behind it.” Royal hands flashing with gold and gems lifted his arm and tucked it up against his side. “Carry it here.”

Henry couldn’t help but wince as the edge of his coutel dug into a particularly tender bruise.

“You’re hurting, are you?”

“No, Sire.” Admitting to pain would not help his case.

“Well, if you aren’t now, you will be later.” The king chuckled low in his throat, then red-gold brows drew down over deep set and tiny eyes. “We were not pleased to see you on the ground.”

This would be the answer that counted. Henry wet his lips; at least the bluff King Hal persona was the easiest to deal with. “I am sorry, Sire, and I wish it been you in my place.”

The heavy face reddened dangerously. “You wished to see your Sovereign unseated?”

The immediate area fell completely silent, courtiers holding their breath.

“No, Sire, for if it had been you in my saddle, it would have been Sir John on the ground.”

King Henry turned and stared down the lists at Sir John Gage, a man ten years his junior and at the peak of his strength and stamina. He began to laugh. “Aye, true enough, lad. But the bridegroom does not joust for fear he break his lance.”

Staggering under a jocular slap on the back, Henry would have fallen but for Sir Gilbert’s covert assistance. He laughed with the others, for the king had made a joke, but although he was thankful to be back in favor all he could really think of was soaking his bruises in a hot bath.

Henry lifted an arm. “A little thinner perhaps but definitely the same shade.” Rolling his shoulder muscles, he winced as one of the half-healed abrasions pulled. Injuries that had once taken weeks, or sometimes months, to heal now disappeared in days. “Still, a good set of tournament armor would’ve come in handy last night.”

Last night. . . . He had taken more blood from Vicki and her young friend than he usually took in a month of feedings. She had saved his life, almost at the expense of her own and he was grateful, but it did open up a whole new range of complications. New complications that would just have to wait until the old ones had been dealt with.

He strapped on his watch. 8:10. Maybe Vicki had called back while he was in the shower.

She hadn’t.

“Great. Norman Birdwell, York University, and I’ll call you back. So call already.” He glared at the phone. The waiting was the worst part of knowing that the grimoire was out there and likely to be used.

He dressed. 8:20. Still no call.

His phone books were buried in the hall closet. He dug them out, just in case. No Norman Birdwell. No Birdwell of any kind.

Her message tied him to the apartment. She expected him to be there when she called. He couldn’t go out and search on his own. Pointless in any case when she was so close.

8:56. He had most of the glass picked up. The phone rang.

“Vicki?”

“Please do not hang up. You are talking to a compu . . .”

Henry slammed the receiver down hard enough to crack the plastic. “Damn.” He tried a quick call out, listened to Vicki’s message—for the third time since sunset, and it told him absolutely nothing new—and hung up a little more gently. Nothing appeared to be damaged except for the casing.

9:17. The scrap metal that had once been a television and a coffee table frame were piled in the entryway, ready to go down to the garbage room. He wasn’t sure what he was going to do about the couch. Frankly, he didn’t care about the couch. Why didn’t she call?

9:29. There were stains in the carpet and the balcony still had no door—though he’d blocked the opening with plywood—but essentially all signs of the battle had been erased from the condo. No mindless task remained to keep him from thinking. And somehow he couldn’t stop thinking of a woman’s broken body hanging from a rusted hook.

“Damn it, Vicki, call!”

The empty space on the bookshelf drew his gaze and the guilt he’d been successfully holding at bay stormed the barricades. The grimoire was his. The responsibility was his. If he’d been stronger. If he’d been faster. If he’d been smarter. Surely with four hundred and fifty years of experience he should be able to outthink one lone mortal with not even a tenth of that.

He looked down at the city regretfully. “I should have. . . .” He let his voice trail off. There was nothing he
could
have done differently. Even had he continued to believe the killer an abandoned child of his kind, even had Vicki not stumbled onto him bending over that corpse, even had he not decided to trust her, it wouldn’t have changed last night’s battle with the demon, his loss, and the loss of the grimoire. The only thing that could have prevented that would have been his destruction of the grimoire back when he first acquired it in the 1800s, and, frankly, he wasn’t sure he could have destroyed it, then or now.

“Although,” he acknowledged, right hand wrapped lightly around left forearm, skin even paler than usual against the stark white of the gauze, “had Vicki not worked her way into the equation, I would have died.” And there would have been no one to stop the Demon Lord from rising. His lips drew up off his teeth. “Not that
I
seem to be doing much to prevent it.”

Why didn’t she call?

He began to pace, back and forth, back and forth, before the window.

She’d lost a lot of blood the night before. Had she run into trouble she was too weak to handle?

He remembered the feel of Ginevra’s dead flesh under his hands as he cut her down. She’d been so alive. Like Vicki was so alive. . . .

Why didn’t she call?