Blood Price - By Tanya Huff Page 0,104

The young man he'd relieved had raised an eyebrow at the armband and another at the explanation. Young people today had no real concept of respect; not for the dead, not for authority, not for themselves. Henry Fitzroy was one of the few young people he'd met in the last ten years who understood.

Henry Fitzroy. Greg pulled at his lower lip. Last night he'd done a very, very foolish thing. He was embarrassed by it and sorry for it, but not entirely certain he was wrong. As an old sergeant of his used to say, "If it walks like a duck, and it talks like a duck, and it acts like a duck, odds are good it's a duck." The sergeant had been referring to Nazis, but Greg figured it applied to vampires as well. While he had his doubts that a young man of Mr. Fitzroy's quality could have committed such an insane murder-there'd been nothing crazy about the look Greg had seen in Mr. Fitzroy's eyes so many weeks ago, it had, in fact, been frighteningly sane-he couldn't believe that a man of Mr. Fitzroy's quality would allow a young lady visiting him to answer the door a deshabille. He'd have gotten up and done it himself. When he'd calmed down enough to think about it, Greg realized that she had to be hiding something.

But what?

A movement in one of the monitors caught his eye and Greg turned toward it. He frowned. Something black had flickered past the fire door leading to the seventh floor too quickly for him to recognize it. He reached for the override and began activating the cameras in the stairwell.

Seconds later, the fifth floor camera picked up Henry Fitzroy running down the stairs two at a time and scowling. He looked like any other young man in reasonable shape-and a bad mood-who'd decided not to waste his time waiting for an elevator. While Greg himself wouldn't have walked from the fourteenth floor, he realized there was nothing supernatural about Henry Fitzroy doing it. Nor in the way he was doing it.

Sighing, he turned the controls back to their random sequencing.

"And what if it doesn't act like a duck all the time?" he wondered aloud.

Henry had reached the sixth floor when the abuse his body had taken the night before caught up with him and he had to slow to something more closely approximating a mortal's pace. He snarled as he swung his weight around on the banister, frustrated by the refusal of muscles to respond as they should. Rather than touching down only once on every half flight, he actually had to use every other step.

He was in a bad mood when he reached his car and he took the exit ramp from the underground garage much faster than he should have, his exhaust pipe screaming along concrete. The sound forced him to calm. He wouldn't get there any faster if he destroyed his car or attracted the attention of the police.

At the curb, while he waited impatiently for the light to change, he caught a familiar scent.

"A BMW? You've got to be kidding." Tony leaned his forearms through the open window and clicked his tongue. "If that watch is a Rolex," he added softly, "I want my blood back."

Henry knew he owed the boy a great deal, so he tried bury the rage he was feeling. He felt his lips pull back off his teeth and realized he hadn't been significantly successful.

If Tony had doubted his memory of what had happened the night before, Henry's expression would have convinced him for there was very little humanity in it. Had the anger been directed at him, he would've run and not stopped until sunrise and safety. As it was, he pulled his arms back outside the car, just in case. "I thought you might want to talk... "

"Later." If the world survived the night, they'd talk. It wasn't of immediate concern.

"Yeah. Right. Later's good. Say... " Tony frowned. "Is Victory okay?"

"I don't ..." The light changed. He slammed the car into gear. "... know."

Tony stood watching the car speed away, lips pursed, hands shoved deep in his pockets. He rolled a quarter over and over between his ringers.

"This is my home number." Vicki handed him the card and turned it over so he could see the other number handwritten on the back. "And this is who you call if you're in trouble and you can't get to me."

"Mike Celluci ?" Tony shook his