Blood Price - By Tanya Huff Page 0,68

smell of the coroner's equipment left an almost visible track through the damp morning air.

"I seen her before the cops stuffed her in the bag," confided a neighbor to an avidly listening audience. She paused, enjoying the feeling of power, and cinched her spring coat more tightly over her plaid flannel nightgown. "Her face was all bashed in and her legs were apart." Nodding sagely, she added, "You know what that means."

Listeners echoed her nod.

As the coroner's wagon drove away, the police barricade broke up into individual men and women who hurriedly stepped out of the way as Mike Celluci and his partner came out of the yard.

"Get statements from anyone who saw something or who thinks they saw something," Celluci ordered. At any other time he would have been amused at the reaction that invoked in the crowd as half of them preened and the other half quietly slipped away, but this morning he was far beyond amusement. The very senselessness of this killing wrapped him in a rage so cold he doubted he'd ever be warm again.

The reporters, for whom the story had more reality than what had actually happened, surged forward, demanding some sort of statement from the police. The two homicide investigators pushed through them silently until they got to their car, a rudimentary instinct of self-preservation keeping the reporters from actually blocking their way.

As Celluci opened his door, Dave leaned forward and murmured, "We've got to say something, Mike, or God knows what they'll come up with." Celluci glowered at his partner, but Dave refused to back down. "I'll do it if you'd rather not."

"No." Scowling, he looked out at the pack of jackals. "Anicka Hendle is dead because of the asinine stories you lot have been spreading about vampires. You're as much responsible as those two cretins we took away. Quite the story. I hope you're proud of it."

Sliding in behind the wheel, he slammed his car door closed with enough force to create echos between the neighboring houses.

A single reporter moved out of the stunned mass, microphone raised, but Dave Graham shook his head.

"I wouldn't," he suggested quietly.

Microphone still in the air, the reporter stopped and the whole pack of them watched as the two investigators drove away. The unnatural stillness lasted until the car cleared the end of the alley then a voice behind them prodded the pack back into action.

"I seen her before the cops stuffed her in the bag."

"You still have that friend at the tab?"

"Celluci?" Vicki settled back into her recliner, lifting the phone onto her lap. "What the hell are you talking about?"

"That Fellows woman, the one who writes for the tabloid, are you still seeing her?"

Vicki frowned. "Well I'm not exactly seeing her... "

"For Chrissakes, Vicki, this is no time to be coy! I'm not asking if you sleep with her; do you talk to her or not?"

"Yeah." In fact, she'd been going to call her that very afternoon to see what could be done to ease Henry's fears about peasant hordes with stakes and garlic. What weird serendipity had Celluci thinking about Anne Fellows on the same day? They'd only met once and hadn't hit it off, had spent the entire party circling each other like wary dogs looking for an exposed throat. "Why?"

"Get a pen and paper, I've got some things I want you to tell her."

His tone sent Vicki scrabbling in the recliner's side pocket and by the time he started to talk she'd unearthed a ballpoint and a coffee-stained phone pad. When he finished, she swore softly. "Jesus-God, Mike, can I assume the higher-ups don't know you're passing this along?" She heard him sigh wearily and before he could speak, said, "Nevermind. Stupid question."

"I don't want this to happen again, Vicki. The papers started it, they can finish it."

Vicki looked down at the details of Anicka Hendle's life and death, scrawled across three sheets of paper in her precisely readable handwriting, and understood Celluci's anger and frustration. An echo of it brushed her spine like a cold finger. "I'll do what I can."

"Let's hope it's enough."

She recognized the finality in that statement, knew he was hanging up, and yelled his name. The seconds she had to wait before she knew he'd heard her were the longest she'd faced in a while.

"What?" he growled.

"I'll be home tonight."

She could hear him breathing so she knew he was still on the line.

"Thanks," he said at last and the click as he put down the receiver was