Blood Debt - By Tanya Huff Page 0,117

repeated, brows raised in a sardonic arch.

He blushed and was unable to stop himself from responding like some kind of rookie idiot instead of a three-year veteran of the Vancouver Police Depart?ment. "Well, there's been a whole lot of gang violence lately, and things have been pretty busy, and the sys?tem crashed two days ago, and we just got it up and running this morning."

"But my van's okay?"

"Yes, uh, as far as I know, yes."

"Good."

When she smiled at him, he was suddenly glad he had his notebook in his lap. There was something about her that made him feel like rolling over and wagging his tail when she scratched his stomach. "Now, uh, about the fall... "

"Actually, we didn't see anything."

"Nothing?"

"We were busy."

"Busy?" He felt himself redden again. "Oh."

He left soon after; envying the detective his rela?tionship and hoping the old boy's heart was up to it.

"The whole world is getting younger," Celluci growled when the door closed behind the irritating young punk in the blue uniform. "I can't say that I like it much."

Vicki put her arms around his waist and leaned into his chest. "For what it's worth, you're not getting older, you're getting better."

"Spare me," he snorted tilting her chin up so he could look into her face.

"What?"

You've always been a lousy liar, but that constable believed everything you told him.

"Mike?"

"Nothing." Sighing, he rested his cheek on the top of her head. "Just feeling old."

She pressed herself closer until she resonated with his heartbeat.

"So, you and Henry are, uh... " Celluci looked down at his spinach salad and found no answers, so he looked back up at Tony to find the younger man smiling. "What?"

"You're living with a vampire, Celluci. Why do two men cause you so much trouble?"

"We're not exactly living together, but I take your point. I guess it is a little ridiculous." He speared something green he couldn't identify. Why the hell couldn't he have fries with his burger? Everything in Vancouver was too goddamned healthy; he'd be glad to leave. "But you didn't answer my question."

"I'm moving out. But we'll still be friends."

"So you're staying here in Vancouver?"

Tony shrugged. "My life is here. I have a job, I have friends, I'm going to school; why would I leave?"

"He's here." Resting his forearms on the table, Cel?luci leaned forward. "You'll never be free of him, you know. You'll expect to see him in every shadow. Sepa?rating your life from his won't be that easy."

"He doesn't own me, Detective, no matter what it might have seemed like. It was time for me to leave, and we both knew it." Tony toyed with his salad a moment, started to speak, stopped, then finally said, the words spilling over each other in the rush, "And it's not that hard. You could leave, too."

After a moment, Celluci smiled and shook his head, remembering all the days and all the nights that had followed. "No. I couldn't."

"They didn't even come back to say thank you?"

"If it's all the same to you, I'm just as glad that they're gone." The dead had stopped shrieking when the doctor's heart had stopped beating. And only the doctor's heart. This time, in spite of the heightened intensity, no one else had died. In the end, vengeance, or justice, had been surgically precise. Henry, whether from proximity or awareness, had been the only other casualty. Retching and trembling, he'd had to force himself to walk out of the closet-he'd wanted to crawl. He completely understood why the doctor had gone eleven stories straight down to get away from the sound.

Vicki read some of that time on his face and reached out. Just for an instant, her hand covered his.

Henry stared down at his hand, then up at her. Less than a week ago, he'd have wanted to kill her for that. Now he regretted the touch could last so short a time. Six days out of four hundred and fifty years and they'd changed the way he deemed what he was. "Do you always rewrite the rules?"

"If they're bad rules."

He shook his head. "I wonder how we managed for all those years before you came along?"

Vicki snorted. "You and me both. Most of our kind changes for passion's sake, Henry-you told me that yourself-and no one does passion like a teenager. You were seventeen. How old were the rest? I could be the first adult to come along in centuries."

"You're still a child to this life."

She grinned. "Don't sulk, Henry. It's unattractive in a