Victoria Nelson - Blood Lines Part 9

Slowly, he straightened.

"I wasn't here for you this morning and I'm sorry about that, but I spent most of the day thinking about this whole thing." Celluci's phone call had given her confidence a boost when it had needed it most. She'd always managed to keep up her half ofthat relationship and she'd be d.a.m.ned if this one would defeat her.And in return for your trust, Henry, I'm going to give you your life . She pulled her purse up onto her lap and dug a hammer and a handful of u-shaped nails out of its depths. "I've got a blackout curtain in here." She prodded the shopping bag with the toe of her shoe. "I bought it this afternoon from a theatrical supply house. We'll hang it over the door to the bedroom. After you go out, I leave. The curtain will block the sunlight coming in from the hall. From now on, until your personal little sun sets, I tuck you in every morning and if the time comes when you can't stop yourself from heading for the pyre, I stop you."

"How?"

Vicki reached into the shopping bag. "If you go for the window," she said, "I figure I've got about a minute, maybe two, before you get through the barrier. You proved rather definitively last summer that though you heal quickly you can be hurt."

"And if I should try for the door?"

She smacked the aluminum baseball bat against the palm of her left hand. "Than I'm afraid it's a frontal a.s.sault."

Henry stared at the bat for a moment, brows drawn down into a deep vee, then he raised his head and gazed intently at Vicki's face. "You're serious," he said at last.

She met his eyes then. "Never more so." A muscle jumped in his jaw and his brow smoothed out. Then the corners of his mouth began to twitch.

"I think," he told her, "that the solution is as dangerous as the problem."

"That's the whole idea."

He smiled then, a softer smile than she'd ever seen him use. It made him look absurdly young and it made her feel strong, protective, necessary. "Thank you."

She felt her own lips curve and the knots of tension slip out of her shoulders. "You're welcome."

Henry set the points of the last nail against the curtain and pushed it into the wall without bothering to use the hammer. Behind him, he heard Vicki mutter, "Show-off." The curtain was an inspired idea. He wasn't so sure about the baseball bat although clubbing him senseless had a certain brutal simplicity to it he could appreciate in the abstract. When it came right down to it, he still felt Vicki's presence would be enough to remind him that he didn't want to die.

Stepping down off the chair, he twitched the edge of the curtain into place. It extended about three feet past the door, similar, in form at least, to the tapestries that used to hang in his bedchamber at Sheriffhuton to block the drafts. Hopefully, it would be more effective.

Vicki had laid the bat on the bureau where it gleamed dully against the dark wood like a modern mace awaiting the hand of a twenty-first century warrior. There had been a lord at his father's court, a Scot if memory served, whose preferred weapon had been a mace. Just after his invest.i.ture as the Duke of Richmond, he had watched in open-mouthed awe as the man-who mostly certainlyhad to have been a Scot-reduced a wooden door to kindling and then defeated the three men behind it with identical strokes.

Even his majesty had been impressed, clapping a beefy hand on his b.a.s.t.a.r.d's slender shoulder and declaring heartily, "You can't do that with a sword, boy!"

His royal father and that half-remembered lord had long since returned to dust. Although the mace quite probably still hung over a lowland mantel between the stag heads and the claymores, it no doubt had been centuries since it had been lifted in battle. Henry ran one finger down the smooth, cool length of aluminum.

"Penny for your thoughts?"

He could feel Vicki's unease in spite of her matter-of-fact tone. He could almost hear her thinking,What do I do if he decides to get rid of the bat? Or more likely, knowing Vicki, Would a kidney punch break his grip if he decides to hold on ? "I was just considering," he told her, turning slowly, "how battle has become a stylized ritual with forms that change to fit the seasons."

Both her brows arced above the upper edge of her gla.s.ses. "Oh, there's still plenty of real battles going on," she drawled.

"I know that." Henry spread his hands, searching for the words that would help her to understand the difference. "But all the honor and the glory seem to have been taken from reality and given to games."

"Well, I'll admit there's very little honor and less glory in having your head bashed in by some biker with a length of chain or having a junkie in an alley go for you with a knife or even in having to take your nightstick to some drunk trying to do you first, but you're going to have to go a long way to convince me that honor and glory ever went along with violence of any kind." "It wasn't the violence," he protested, "it was the..."

"Victory?"

"Not exactly, but at least you used to know when you won."

"Maybe that's why they've given the honor and glory to games-you can fight for victory without leaving an unsightly mound of bodies behind."

He frowned. "I hadn't actually thought of it like that."

"I know." She ducked under the curtain and out into the hall. "Honor and glory mean b.u.g.g.e.r all to the losers. Prince, vampire; you've always been on the winning side."

"And what side are you on?" he asked a little testily as he followed her. She hadn't so much missed the point of what he'd been trying to say as completely changed its direction.

"The side of truth, justice, and the Canadian way."

"Which is?"

"Compromise, for the most part."

"Funny, I've never thought of you as a person who compromises well."

"I don't."

He reached out and took hold of her wrist, pulling her to a stop and then around to face him. "Vicki, if I said I was tired, that I've lived six times longer than the natural human span and I've had enough, would you let me walk out into the sun?"

Not b.l.o.o.d.y likely. She bit back the immediate emotional response. He'd asked her the question seriously, she could hear that in his voice and see it in his face, and it deserved more than a gut reaction.

She'd always believed that a person's life was his own and that what he did with it was his business, no one else's. That worked fine in general, but would she letHenry choose to walk out into the sun?

Friendship meant responsibility or it didn't mean much and, come to think of it, they'd settled that once already tonight. "If you want me to let you kill yourself, you'd d.a.m.n well better be able to convince me that dying does more for you than living."

She'd gotten angry just thinking about it. He heard her bean speed up, saw muscles tense beneath clothes and skin. "CouldI convince you?"

"I doubt it."

He lifted her hand and placed a kiss gently on the palm. "Has anyone ever told you that you're a very pushy person?" he murmured against the soft skin at the base of her thumb, inhaling the blood-rich scent of her flesh.

"Frequently." Vicki s.n.a.t.c.hed her hand away and rubbed it against the front of her sweatshirt. Great, just what she needed, more stimulus. "There's no point in starting something you're not going to finish," she muttered a little shakily. "You fed last night from Tony." "True."

"You don'tneed to feed tonight."

"True."

It always annoyed her that he could read her physical reaction so easily, that he alwaysknew and she could only guess. Occasionally, however, the question became moot.

"I am too old for frenzied f.u.c.king in the hall," she informed him a moment later. "Stop that." Walking backward, she towed him toward the bedroom.

Henry's eyes widened. "Vicki, be careful..."

She tightened her grip and grinned. "After four hundred and fifty years, you should know that it won't pull off."

"I had dinner with Mike Celluci tonight." Henry sighed, and lightly traced the shadow of a vein in the soft hollow below Vicki's ear. Although he'd taken only a few mouthfuls of blood he felt replete and lazy. "Do we have to talk about him now?"

"He thinks there's a mummy walking around Toronto."

"Lots of mummies," Henry murmured against her neck. "Daddies, too."

"Henry!" She caught him just under the solar plexus with an elbow. He decided to pay attention. "Celluci seriously believes that an ancient Egyptian has risen from his coffin and killed two people at the museum."

"The two people who died of heart attacks?"

"That's right."

"And youbelieve him?"

"Look, if Mike Celluci called me up and told me aliens had him trapped in his house, I might not believe him, but I'd show up with a flamethrower just in case. And as you're the closest thing to an expert on rising from the dead I know, I'm asking you. Is this possible?"

"Let me get this straight." Henry rolled over on his back and laced his fingers behind his head.

"Detective-Sergeant Michael Celluci came to you and said,There's a mummy loose in Toronto, murdering janitors and Egyptologists . And let me guess, he can't tell anyone else because no one else will believe him."

"Essentially."

"Are you sure this isn't just an elaborate April Fool's prank?"

"Too complicated. Celluci's a salt in the sugar bowl kind of guy, and besides, it's October."

"Good point. I a.s.sume he gave you his reasoning behind this stu... ouch, unusual idea." "He did." Tapping out the points on Henry's chest, Vicki repeated everything Celluci had told her.

"And if PC Trembley confirms that there was a mummy, what then?"

She wound a short, red-gold curl around her finger. "I was hoping you could tell me."

"We help him stop it?"

"How?"

"I haven't the faintest idea." He heard her sigh, felt her breath against his chest, and lightly kissed the top of her head. "Did he ask you to speak to me about it?"

"No. But he said he didn't mind if I did." He'd actually said,Use a ghoul to find a ghoul ? Why not?

But under his sneer there'd been a sense of relief and Vicki had gotten the feeling that he'd been waiting all evening for her to ask, unwilling to bring it up himself. "He had to go to a hockey practice or I'd have suggested he tell you all this firsthand."

"That would have been a fun evening."

Vicki grinned. Celluci's reaction would have been louder and more profane but essentially similar.

Henry sat down at his desk and turned on his computer. Over the hum of the fan he could hear deep, slow breathing coming from the living room and, under that, the measured beat of a heart at rest.

"Don't expect me to stay around every night, " Vicki had warned him, yawning. "I expect most of the time I'll show up just before dawn to tuck you in. But, as long as I'm here, you might as well do some writing and I might as well get some sleep. " She'd led the way out of the bedroom, pillow tucked under one arm, blanket under the other. "I'll sack out on the couch. The airflow's better out there and you won't have to sleep surrounded by blood scent."

It was a plausible, even a considerate reason, but Henry didn't believe it. He'd seen the lines of tension smooth out of her back as they'd left the room. He listened to her sleep for a moment longer, then shook his head and turned his attention to the monitor. The book was due the first of December and he figured he was still a chapter away from happily ever after.

Veronica paced the length of her room in the Governor's mansion, silk skirts whipping around her shapely ankles. Captain Roxborough would hang on the morrow unless she could find some way to prevent it. She knew he wasn't a pirate but, even though the Governor had been more than kind, would her word mean anything once everyone discovered that she'd made her way to the islands disguised as a cabin boy? That Captain Roxborough had discovered her and that he'd...

She stopped pacing and raised slender fingers to cover her heated cheeks. None of that mattered now. "He must not die," she vowed.

"I can't seem to get away from dying at dawn," Henry muttered, pushing back from the desk.

Last spring, the dawn had caught him away from safety and he'd raced the sun for his life. He still bore the puckered scar on the back of his hand where the day had marked him. Would it happen as quickly as that had, he wondered, or more slowly? Would it be instantaneous as his flesh ignited and turned to ash, or would he burn slowly in agony, screaming his way to the final death?

He forced his mind away from the thought, listening to the even tempo of Vicki's breathing until he calmed. There had to be something else he could think about.

"Celluci seriously believes that an ancient Egyptian has risen from his coffin and killed two people at the museum."

He'd been to Egypt once; just after the turn of the century; just after the death of Dr. O'Mara when England had seemed tainted and he'd had to get away. He hadn't stayed long.

He'd met Lady Wellington on the terrace at Shepheard's. She'd been sitting alone, drinking tea and watching the crowds of Egyptians making their way up Ibrahim Pasha Street when she'd felt his gaze and called him over. A recent widow in her early forties, she had no objection to keeping company with an attractive, well-bred young man. Henry, for his part, had found her candor refreshing. "Don't be ridiculous," she'd told him, when he'd expressed his sympathy on her loss, "the nicest thing his Lordship ever did for me was to drop dead before I was too old to enjoy my freedom. " And then she'd stroked the inside of his thigh under the cover of the damask tablecloth.

Publicly, they were as discreet as the society of 1903 demanded. Privately, she was just what Henry needed after the incident with the grimoire. He never told her what he was and she accepted the time he spent away from her with the same aplomb as the time he spent with her. He rather suspected she had another lover for the daylight hours and found himself admiring her stamina.

On the nights he had to feed from others, he stayed away from the English and American tourists and slipped into the dark and twisting streets of old Cairo where sloe-eyed young men never knew they paid for their pleasure with blood.

And then he began to feel watched. Although he could identify no obvious threat-dark eyes watched all the visitors and certainly seemed to watch him no more than the rest-the skin between his shoulder blades continued to crawl. He began to take more care moving to and from his sanctuary.

A moonlight climb to the top of the Great Pyramid had become "the thing to do" and it took little pleading for Henry to agree to accompany Lady Wallington on her expedition. The city had started to feel like it was closing around him, as if it were some large and complicated trap. Perhaps a few hours away from it would clear his head.

They stepped out of the carriage onto moon-silvered sand that drifted up against the base of the monuments like new fallen snow, its purity broken by the pits that marked vandalized tombs or sunken shrines. The light had erased the patina of age from the pyramids and they in turn cast dark bands of shadow across the features of the Sphinx so that he looked both more and less human as he gazed enigmatically down on the night. Unfortunately, flaring torches and crawling bodies marred the pale sides of the Great Pyramid and the sounds of their progress carried clearly on the desert air.

"Hot d.a.m.n, ain't we there yet?"

"While I admire Americans as a breed," Lady Wallington sighed, tucking her hand in the crook of Henry's elbow, "there are a few individuals I could gladly do without."

As they approached the pyramid, they braced themselves for the charge of self-styled guides, antiquitiespeddlers, and a.s.sorted beggars who stood cl.u.s.tered around the base waiting for the chance to part foreigners from their money.

"How strange," Lady Wallington murmured, as the men remained where they were, peering out at them from under their turbans and muttering to themselves in Arabic. "Although, I suppose we can manage quite well without them." But she looked rather dubiously at the monument as she spoke, for in full evening dress the three to three and a half foot steps would not be easy to navigate without a.s.sistance.

Most of the women already climbing had two men pulling from above and another pushing from below.

Henry frowned. Under the scent of dirt and sweat and spice, he could smell fear. As he leapt up onto the first block and reached down for Lady Wallington's hand, one of them made the sign against the evil eye.

Lady Wallington followed his gaze and laughed. "Don't mind that," she explained as he lifted her easily up onto the next level, "it's just that in the torchlight your hair looks redder than it generally does and red hair is the mark of Set, the Egyptian version of the devil."

"Then I won't mind it," he rea.s.sured her with a smile. But the smile would have meant more if he hadn't seen the knot of men melt away the moment he'd climbed beyond the range of a normal man's vision.

Over the years, the top of the pyramid had been removed, leaving a flat area about thirty feet square at the summit. Breathing a little heavily, Lady Wallington collapsed onto one of the scattered blocks and was immediately surrounded by natives who tried to sell her everything from bad reproductions of papyrus scrolls, guaranteed genuine, to the finger of a mummy, undeniably genuine. Henry, they ignored.

He left her to her purchases and wandered closer to the eastern edge where, past the obsidian ribbon that was the Nile, he could see the twinkling lights of Cairo.

They came from upwind, moving so quietly that mortal ears would not have heard them. Henry caught the sound of hearts pounding in a half dozen chests and turned long before they were ready.

One man moaned, grimy fist shoved up to cover his mouth. Another stepped back, whites showing all around his eyes. The remaining four only froze where they stood and over the stronger stink of fear, Henry caught the smell of steel and saw moonlight glint on edged weapons.

"An open place for thieves," he remarked conversationally, hoping he wouldn't have to kill them.

"We are not here to steal from you,afreet ," their leader said softly, his voice pitched so that none of the other foreigners on the pyramid would hear, "but to give you a warning. We know what you are. We know what you do in the night."