Blood Price - By Tanya Huff Page 0,34

up against her ribs in response. This was it. She was as sure of it as she'd ever been of anything in her life.

She started to run. Slowly at first, well aware that a misstep would result in a fall or worse. Her flashlight remained off; she needed the stations of the streetlights to guide her and the flashlight beam confined her sight. At Baker Street, she rocked to a halt.

Where now? Her other senses strained to make up for near blindness.

Metal screamed against wood; nails forced to release their hold.

East. She turned and raced toward it, stumbled, fell, recovered, and went on, trusting her feet to find a path she couldn't see. Fifty running paces from the corner, shadow sight marked something crossing her path. It slipped down the narrow drive between two buildings and when Vicki followed, responding to the instinct of the chase, she could see red taillights burning about a hundred yards away.

It smelled as if something had died at the end of the lane. Like the old lady who'd been found the third week of last August but who'd been killed in her small, airless room around the first of July.

She could hear the car engine running, movement against the gravel, and a noise she didn't want to identify.

The evil that had lingered in the subway tunnel had been only the faintest afterimage of the evil that waited for her here.

A shadow, its parameters undefined, passed between Vicki and the tailight.

Her left hand trailing along a wall of fake brick siding and her right holding the flashlight out before her like the handle of a lance, Vicki pounded up the drive paying no attention to the small, shrill voice of reason that demanded to know just what the hell she thought she was doing.

Something shrieked and the sound drove her back a half dozen steps.

Every dog in the neighborhood began to howl.

Ignoring the cold sweat beading her body and the knot of fear that made each breath a labored fight, Vicki forced herself to move forward again; the six steps regained, then six more...

Half sprawled across the trunk of the car, she turned on the flashlight.

Horror flickered just beyond the beam's farthest edge where a wooden garage door swung haphazardly from a single twisted hinge. Darkness seemed to move within the darkness and Vicki's mind shied away from it so quickly and with such blind panic that it convinced her nothing lingered there at all.

Caught in the light, a young man crouched, one arm flung up to shield his eyes from the glare. At his feet, a body; a bearded man, late thirties, early forties, blood still draining from the ruined throat, thickening and congealing against the gravel. He had been dead before he hit the ground, for only the dead fall with that complete disregard of self that gives them the look of discarded marionettes.

All this Vicki took in at glance. Then the crouching man stood, his open coat spreading and bracketing him like great black leather wings. He took a step toward her, face distorted and eyes squinted nearly shut. Blood had stained his palms and fingers a glistening crimson.

Scrambling in her purse for the heavy silver crucifix she'd acquired that afternoon-and not really, God help her, expected to need-Vicki drew breath to scream for backup. Or maybe just to scream. She never found out which for he took another step toward her and that was all she saw for some time.

Henry caught the young woman as she fell and eased her gently to the gravel. He hadn't wanted to do that, but he couldn't allow her to scream. There were too many things he couldn't explain to the police.

She saw me bending over the body, he thought as he snapped off the flashlight and shoved it into her purse. His too sensitive eyes welcomed the return of night. They felt as though they'd been impaled with hot irons. Got a good look at me, too. Damn. Common sense said he should kill her before she had a chance to expose him. He had strength enough to make it look no different from the other deaths. He would be safe again then.

Henry turned and looked past the body-meat now, nothing more-into the torn earthen floor of the garage where the killer had fled. This night had proven the deaths were in no way his responsibility.

"Damn!" He said it aloud this time as approaching sirens and a car door slamming at the end of