ringing within her head. "Last night," she said with quiet menace, "there was a man being held in the hidden room. Where is he now?"
Confusion battled fear. "What hidden room?"
"The room at the back of the building."
"You mean the old laundry? There was no one in there."
The menace grew. "He was there."
Caught between what she knew to be true and the truth she saw in the silver eyes, the nurse whimpered low in her throat.
"He was there!" Vicki repeated. The Hunger rose. Her fingers closed around a white-clad shoulder and soft flesh compacted under her grip. "Where is he now?"
"I don't know." Tears trickled down cheeks blanched of color, and the words barely made it past trembling lips.
"Tell me!"
"I don't ..." A strangled sob broke the protest in half. "... want to die."
The staccato pounding of the nurse's heart, the panicked racing of her blood, made it difficult to think. The Hunger, barely held in check, urged Vicki to take the fear and make it hers. To rend. To tear. To feed. She took a half step forward, head slightly back, nos?trils flared to drink in the warm, meaty scent of life seasoned with terror. After the exhilarating experience in the warehouse, it would be so easy to let go.
"Do what you have to do quickly ..."
Yes.
"Those of our kind who learn to control the Hunger, have eternity before them. Those the Hunger controls are quickly hunted down and put to death."
Henry's words again, but a deeper memory, an older lesson.
Nothing controls me.
If "Victory" Nelson lived by any maxim, that was it.
She released the nurse so quickly the woman swayed and would have fallen had she not taken another, less threatening hold. "You have not seen us and you will not see us while we are here."
"I will not see you," the nurse repeated almost prayerfully. "I will not see you." This time when Vicki let her go, she staggered sideways and collapsed into a chair. A heartbeat later, she was alone in the room, certain she'd always been alone, staring at the brown glass bottle in her hand and wondering if it was possi?ble to dream, to nightmare, while awake.
"I almost killed her." The Hunger raged against its restraints and Vicki determinedly ignored the almost painful feeling that she'd left something important unfinished.
"I know."
"Then why didn't you try to stop me?"
"I didn't need to, did I?" Henry glanced over her shoulder as she flipped through the communication book she'd taken from the nurse's station. They were standing in the hall next to the operating room; safely far enough away from everyone else in the building. "I had to trust what I'd taught you, or there wasn't much point in teaching it."
She twisted around far enough to see his face, "You ought to lay off the reruns of Kung Fu, Henry. You're sounding like a pompous ass-and I'm telling you this for your own good because we're friends." Before he could respond, before he'd figured out what to re?spond, she added, "Maybe you should've trusted your teaching all along."
"All along?"
Her lip curled. "All along-from the moment I ar?rived in Vancouver."
"If you remember, I taught you we couldn't share a territory."
"Which just proves what you know," she announced triumphantly and turned her attention back to the communication book. "Ah. Here it is." She tapped an entry with one finger. "5:09 A.M., two cops show up, so does a Dr. Mui-apparently one of her patients was dying-she shows the cops around, they leave. They must've moved him before the cops arrived. Son of a bitch."
"I don't see how... "
"Does it matter? Come on." She tossed the book into the operating room-let them wonder-and started down the hall. "I doubt there's a forwarding address, but they might've left something in that room we can use."
Nothing, except the lingering scent of three men and a woman.
Vicki stood by the empty bed, forcing herself to recognize other lives but Mike Celluci's. "Dr. Mui."
Henry frowned, recognizing Death beneath the re?cent patina of life. "What about her?"
"She's in on it. This... " Vicki waved a hand in the air, scooping it toward her nose. "This is the woman who gave Celluci that shot."
"Are you sure?"
"Trust me. I make it a point to remember the other women he smells like."
I suspect I owe the detective an apology, Henry mused as he stepped back out of Vicki's way. He was definitely better acquainted with territorial imperatives than I assumed. "Now where?"
"Dr. Mui's office."
"... and he's safe at second! Can