Blood Price - By Tanya Huff Page 0,32

this one."

"A vampire?"

He peered up at her from under the thick fringe of his eyelashes. "Killer ain't human, that's what the street says. Sucks blood, don't it? Vampire's a good enough name for it. Cops won't catch it 'cause they're lookin' for a guy." He grinned. "Cops in this city ain't worth shit anyway. Not like they used to be."

"Well, thank you very much." She watched him scrape his plate clean, then asked, "Tony, do you believe in vampires?"

He flicked a tiny crucifix out from inside his shirt. "I believe in stayin' alive."

Outside the restaurant, turning collars up against the wind, she asked him if he needed money. She couldn't get him off the street, he wouldn't accept her help, so she gave him what he'd take. Celluci called it white-middle-class-guilt-money. While admitting he was probably right, Vicki ignored him.

"Nah," Tony pushed a lock of pale brown hair back off his face. "I'm doing okay for cash."

"You hooking?"

"Why? You can't arrest me anymore; you wanna hire me?"

"I want to smack you. Haven't you heard there's an epidemic going on?"

He danced back out of her range. "Hey, I'm careful. Like I said," and just for an instant he looked much, much older than his years, "I believe in stayin' alive."

"Vicki, I don't care what your curbside guru says and I don't care what the 'feeling on the street is'; there are no such thing as vampires and you are losing your mind."

Vicki got the phone away from her ear before Celluci slammed his receiver down. Shaking her head, she hung up her own phone considerably more gently. All right, she'd told him. She'd done it against her better judgment and knowing full well what his reaction would be. No matter what went down tonight, her conscience was clear.

"And it's not that I believe in vampires," she pointed out to the empty apartment, pushing back to extend the recliner. "I believe in keeping an open mind." And, she added silently, grimly, her mind on Tony and his crucifix, I, too, believe in stayin' alive. Beside the chair, her bag bulged with the afternoon's purchases.

At 11:48, Vicki stepped off the northbound Woodbine bus at Mortimer. For a moment, she leaned against the window of the small garden store on the corner, giving herself time to grow used to the darkness. There, under the street lamp, her vision was functional. A few meters away, where the overlap of two lights created a double-shadowed twilight, she knew she wouldn't be able to trust it. It would be worse off the main street. She fished her flashlight out of her bag and held it ready, just in case.

Across a shadow-filled distance, she saw a traffic signal work through its tiny spectrum and decided to cross the street. For no reason really, the creature could appear on the east side of Woodbine just as easily as on the west, but it seemed like the thing to do. Moving had always been infinitely preferable to waiting around.

Terry's Milk Mart on the north side of Mortimer appeared to be open-it was the only building in the immediate neighborhood still brightly lit-so she crossed toward it.

I can ask a few questions. Buy a bag of chips. Find out.... SHIT! Two men from homicide were in the store talking to a surly looking teenager she could only assume was not the proprietor. Eyes streaming from the sudden glare of the fluorescents, she backed down the six stairs much more quickly than she'd gone up them. She spotted the unmarked car south across Mortimer in the Brewers Retail parking lot-trust the government to light a square of asphalt at almost midnight-and headed in the opposite direction, willing to bet long odds that Celluci had included her in his instructions to his men.

If she remembered correctly, the houses that lined the street were small, virtually identical, detached, two-story, single family dwellings. Not the sort of neighborhood you'd think would attract a vampire. Not that she expected the creature to actually put in an appearance on Woodbine; the street was too well lit, too well traveled, with too great a possibility of witnesses. No, she was putting her money on one of the quiet residential streets tucked in behind.

At Holborne, for no reason she could think of, she turned west. The streetlights were farther apart here and she hurried from one island of sight to the next, trusting to bureaucracy and city planning to keep the sidewalk under her feet. She slipped at one