Blood Sisters_ Vampire Stories by Women - Paula Guran Page 0,129

a five-foot-high crawl space—but just to be on the safe side, Vicki dropped two-by-fours into iron brackets over the entrance. Folded nearly in half, she hurried to her sanctuary, feeling the sun drawing closer, closer. Somehow she resisted the urge to turn.

“There’s nothing behind me,” she muttered, awkwardly stripping off her clothes. Her heart slamming against her ribs, she crawled under the front flap of the box, latched it behind her, and squirmed into her sleeping bag, stretched out ready for the dawn.

“Jesus H. Christ, Vicki,” Celluci had said squatting at one end while she’d wrestled the twin bed mattress inside. “At least a coffin would have a bit of historical dignity.”

“You know where I can get one?”

“I’m not having a coffin in my basement.”

“Then quit flapping your mouth.”

She wondered, as she lay there waiting for oblivion, where the other was. Did they feel the same near panic knowing that they had no control over the hours from dawn to dusk? Or had they, like Henry, come to accept the daily death that governed an immortal life? There should, she supposed, be a sense of kinship between them but all she could feel was a possessive fury. No one hunted in her territory.

“Pleasant dreams,” she said as the sun teetered on the edge of the horizon. “And when I find you, you’re toast.”

Celluci had been and gone by the time the darkness returned. The note he’d left about the car was profane and to the point. Vicki added a couple of words he’d missed and stuck it under a refrigerator magnet in case he got home before she did.

She’d pick up the scent and follow it, the hunter becoming the hunted and, by dawn, the streets would be hers again.

The yellow police tape still stretched across the mouth of the alley. Vicki ignored it. Wrapping the night around her like a cloak, she stood outside the restaurant door and sifted the air.

Apparently, a pimp crucified over the fire exit hadn’t been enough to close the place and TexMex had nearly obliterated the scent of a death not yet twenty-four hours old. Instead of the predator, all she could smell was fajitas.

“God damn it,” she muttered, stepping closer and sniffing the wood. “How the hell am I supposed to find …”

She sensed his life the moment before he spoke. “What are you doing?”

Vicki sighed and turned. “I’m sniffing the door frame. What’s it look like I’m doing?”

“Let me be more specific,” Celluci snarled. “What are you doing here?”

“I’m looking for the person who offed Mac Eisler,” Vicki began. She wasn’t sure how much more explanation she was willing to offer.

“No, you’re not. You are not a cop. You aren’t even a P.I. anymore. And how the hell am I going to explain you if Dave sees you?”

Her eyes narrowed. “You don’t have to explain me, Mike.”

“Yeah? He thinks you’re in Vancouver.”

“Tell him I came back.”

“And do I tell him that you spend your days in a box in my basement? And that you combust in sunlight? And what do I tell him about your eyes?”

Vicki’s hand rose to push at the bridge of her glasses but her fingers touched only air. The retinitis pigmentosa that had forced her from the Metro Police and denied her the night had been reversed when Henry’d changed her. The darkness held no secrets from her now. “Tell him they got better.”

“RP doesn’t get better.”

“Mine did.”

“Vicki, I know what you’re doing.” He dragged both hands up through his hair. “You’ve done it before. You had to quit the force. You were half blind. So what? Your life may have changed but you were still going to prove that you were ‘Victory’ Nelson. And it wasn’t enough to be a private investigator. You threw yourself into stupidly dangerous situations just to prove you were still who you wanted to be. And now your life has changed again and you’re playing the same game.”

She could hear his heart pounding, see a vein pulsing framed in the white vee of his open collar, feel the blood surging just below the surface in reach of her teeth. The Hunger rose and she had to use every bit of control Henry had taught her to force it back down. This wasn’t about that.

Since she’d returned to Toronto, she’d been drifting; feeding, hunting, relearning the night, relearning her relationship with Michael Celluci. The early morning phone call had crystallized a subconscious discontent and, as Celluci pointed out, there was really only one