Blood Price - By Tanya Huff Page 0,80

last three true grimoires remaining in the world, or so he'd been told, and he had no reason to doubt the man who'd told him-not then, not now.

"So you're Henry Fitzroy." Dr. O'Mara gripped Henry's hand, his large pale eyes gleaming. "I've heard so much about you from Alfred here, I feel that I already know you."

"And I you," Henry replied, stripping off his evening gloves and carefully returning exactly the amount of pressure applied. The hair on the back of his neck had risen and he had a feeling that appearing stronger than this man would be just as dangerous as appearing weaker. "Alfred admires you a great deal."

Releasing Henry, Dr. O'Mara clapped Alfred on the shoulder. "Does he now?"

The words held an edge and the Honorable Alfred Waverly hastened to fill the silence that followed, his shoulder dipping slightly under the white knuckled grip. "It's not that I've told him anything, Doctor, it's just that... "

"That he quotes you constantly," Henry finished with his most disarming grin.

"Quotes me?" The grim expression eased. "Well, I suppose one can't object to that."

Alfred beamed, eyes bright above slightly flushed cheeks, the expression of terror that had caused Henry to intervene gone as though it had never existed.

"If you will excuse me, Mr. Fitzroy, I have a number of things I must attend to." The doctor waved an expansive hand. "Alfred will introduce you to the other guests."

Henry inclined his head and watched his host leave the room through narrowed eyes.

The ten other guests were all young men, much like the Honorable Alfred, wealthy, idle, and bored. Three of them, Henry already knew. The others were strangers.

"Well, what do you think?" Alfred asked, accepting a whiskey from a blank-faced footman after introductions had been made, the proper things said, and they were standing alone again.

"I think you've grossly misled me," Henry told him, refusing a drink. "This is hardly a den of iniquity."

Alfred's smile jerked up nervously at the corners, his face paler than usual under the flickering gaslight. "Dash it, Henry, I never said it was." He ran his finger around the edge of his whiskey glass. "You're lucky to be here, you know. There's only ever twelve invited and Dr. O'Mara wanted you specifically after Charles... uh, had his accident."

Accident; Charles was dead, but Alfred's Victorian sensibilities wouldn't let him say the word. "I've been meaning to ask you, why did Dr. O'Mara want me?"

Alfred flushed. "Because I told him all about you."

"All about me?" Given the laws against homosexuality and Alfred's preferences, Henry doubted it, but to his surprise the young man nodded.

"I couldn't help myself. Dr. O'Mara, well, he's the kind of person you tell things to."

"I'm sure he is," Henry muttered, thanking God and all the Saints that Alfred had no idea of what he actually was. "Do you sleep with him, too?"

"I say, Henry!"

The bastard son of Henry VIII, having little patience with social conventions, merely asked the question again. "Are you sleeping with him?"

"No."

"But you would... "

Managing to look both miserable and elated, Alfred nodded. "He's magnificent."

Overpowering was closer to the word Henry would have used. The doctor's personality was like a tidal wave, sweeping all lesser personalities before it. Henry had no intention of being swept, but he could see how he might be if he were the idle young man he appeared to be; could see how the others in the room had been, and he didn't like it.

Just after eleven, the doctor disappeared and a gong sounded somewhere in the depths of the house.

"It's time," Alfred whispered, clutching at Henry's arm. "Come on."

To Henry's surprise, the group of them, a dozen young men in impeccable evening dress, trooped down into the basement. The huge central room had been outfitted with torches and at one end stood what appeared to be a stone block about waist high, needing only a knight lying in effigy on its top to complete the resemblance to a crypt. Around him, his companions began stripping off their clothes.

"Get undressed," Alfred urged, thrusting a loose black robe in Henry's direction. "And put this on."

Suddenly understanding, Henry had to bite back the urge to laugh. He'd been brought in as the twelfth member of a coven; a group of juvenile aristocrats dressing up in black bedsheets and capering around in a smoky basement. He allowed Alfred to help him change and he remained amused until Dr. O'Mara appeared behind the altar.

The Doctor's robe was red, the color of fresh blood.