Blood Price - By Tanya Huff Page 0,92

walked to the window and rested his forehead gently against the glass. Cool and smooth, it helped to ease the ache in his head. Everything worked, but everything hurt. He couldn't remember the last time he'd felt this weak or in this much pain and his body, now that the initial rush of energy that came with feeding had passed, was insisting he rest and allow it to heal. "You saved my life," he admitted.

"Then don't throw it away." Vicki felt a faint echo of warmth surging up from the cut on her wrist. She ignored it. Maybe they'd get a chance to continue where they'd left off, but this certainly was not the time. And anything more energetic than heavy petting would probably kill both of us. Scooping up her clothes, she moved into the kitchen and pulled one of the louvered doors closed. "You did what you could, now let someone else take over."

"You."

"You see anyone else around?"

Henry managed half a smile. "No." She was right about that as well. He'd had his chance and failed.

"Fine." She zipped up her jeans and shrugged out of the bathrobe. "You can join me after sunset if you're mobile by then."

"Give me a day of rest and I should be back to normal. Okay, not quite normal," he amended at Vicki's snort of disbelief, "but well enough to function."

"That'll do. I'll leave a message on your machine as soon as I know where I'm likely to be."

"You've got less than twenty-four hours to find the person with the grimoire in a pity of three million people. You may have been a good cop, Vicki... "

"I was the best," she informed him, carefully stretching the neck of her sweatshirt around her glasses.

"All right. You were the best. But you weren't that good. No one is."

"Maybe not," her tone argued the point even if her words didn't, "but while you were spending your nights waiting for the demon to strike, I haven't been spending my days just sitting on my butt." Carefully picking her way through the glass, she came back to the couch and sat down to put on her shoes. "One of the items the demon picked up was a state of the art computer system. Apparently, they don't make them smarter or faster than this particular machine. I went out to York University today-enough bits and pieces have pointed in that direction to convince me there's a connection-and spoke to the head of the Computer Science Department. He gave me a list of twenty-three names, students who could really make a system like that sing." She straightened and pushed her glasses up her nose. "So instead of one in three million, I've got one in twenty-three in about twenty thousand."

"Terrific." Henry tore off the ruin of his shirt as he walked back across the room. Dropping carefully onto the couch, he tossed the ball of fabric at the destroyed face of the television. "One in twenty-three in twenty thousand."

"Those aren't impossible odds. What's more I won't have to deal with all twenty thousand. The men and women on the list are part of a pretty narrowly defined group. If I can't find them, I think I can flush them out."

"In a day? Because if that grimoire is used tomorrow night, that's all the time you have before the slaughter begins."

Her chin rose and her brows drew down. "So what do you suggest? I give up because you don't think it can be done? You thought you could defeat the lesser demon, remember?" Her eyes swept over his injuries. "You're not exactly infallible where this stuff is concerned."

Henry closed his eyes. Her words cut deeper than any other blow he'd taken tonight. She was right. It was his fault the grimoire had been taken, his fault the world faced pain and death on a scale few mortal minds could imagine.

"Henry, I'm sorry. That was uncalled for."

"But true." She'd moved closer. He could feel her heartbeat tremble the air between them. Her hand closed lightly around his, and he waited for the platitudes that would do nothing to ease his guilt.

"Yes," she agreed.

His eyes snapped open.

"But you wouldn't have lived as long as you have if you hadn't figured out how to learn from your mistakes. When I find this person, I'm going to need you for backup."

"Well, thank you very much." Just what he needed, being patronized by someone whose ancestors had no doubt been grubbing out a living on a