Vicki and Celluci exchanged identical glances.
'I don't think," Vicki managed to gasp, "that we really want? to know."
Although the timed portion of the climb was over, they had another four flights to go up before they reached the observation deck and were officially finished.
'Nine minutes and fifty-four seconds." Celluci scrubbed at his face with the lower edge of his T-shirt as they moved back into the stairwell. "Not bad for an old broad."
'Who are you calling old, asshole? Let's just keep in mind that I can give you five years."
'Fine." He held out his hand. "I'll take them now."
Vicki pulled herself up another step, quadriceps visibly trembling under the fleece of her sweatpants. "I want to spend the rest of the day submerged in hot water."
'Sounds good to me."
'Mike?"
'Yeah?"
'Next time I suggest we climb the CN Tower, remind me of how I feel right now."
'Next time?"
His kind never dreamed, or so he'd always believed-they lost dreaming as they lost the day-but in spite of this, for the first time in over four hundred and fifty years, he came to awareness with a memory that had no connection to his waking life.
Sunlight. He hadn't seen the sun since 1539 and he had never seen it as a golden disk in an azure sky, heat spreading a shimmering shield around it.
Henry Fitzroy, bastard son of Henry VIII, romance writer, vampire, lay in the darkness, stared at nothing, and wondered what the hell was going on. Was he losing his mind? It had happened to others of his kind. They grew so that they couldn't stand the night and finally they gave themselves to the sun and death. Was this memory, then, the beginning of the end?
He didn't think so. He felt sane. But would a madman recognize his condition?
'This is going nowhere." Lips tight, he swung his legs off the bed and stood. He certainly had no conscious wish to die. If his subconscious had other ideas, it would be in for a fight.
But the memory lingered. It lingered in the shower. It lingered as he dressed. A blazing circle of fire. When he closed his eyes, he could see the image on his lids.
His hand was on the phone before he remembered; she was with him tonight.
'Damn!"
In the last few months Vicki Nelson had become a necessary part of his life. He fed from her as often as it was safe, and blood and sex had pulled them closer into friendship if not something stronger. At least on his side of the relationship.
'Relationship, Jesu! Now that's a word for the nineties." Tonight, he only wanted to talk to her, to discuss the dream-if that's what it was-and the fears that came with it.
Running pale fingers through short, sandy-blond hair, he walked across the condo to look out at the lights of Toronto. Vampires hunted alone, prowled the darkness alone, but they had been human once and perhaps at heart were human still, for every now and then, over the long years of their lives, they searched for a companion they could trust with the truth of what they were. He had found Vicki in the midst of violence and death, given her his truth, and waited for what she would give him in return. She'd offered him acceptance, only that, and he doubted she ever realized how rare a thing acceptance was. Through her, he'd had more contact with mortals since last spring than he'd had in the last hundred years.
Through her, two others knew his nature. Tony, an uncomplicated young man who, on occasion, shared bed and blood, and Detective-Sergeant Michael Celluci, who was neither young nor uncomplicated and while he hadn't come right out and said vampire, he was too intelligent a man to deny the evidence of his eyes.
Henry's fingers curled against the glass, forming slowly into a fist. She was with Celluci tonight. She'd as much as warned him of it when they'd last spoken. All right. Maybe he was getting a bit possessive. It was easier in the old days. She'd have been his then, no one else would have had a claim on her. How dared she be with someone else when he needed her?
The sun burned down in memory, an all-seeing yellow eye.
He frowned down at the city. He was not used to dealing with fear, so he fed the dream to his anger and allowed, almost forced, the Hunger to rise. He did not need her. He would hunt.
Below him, a thousand points of light glowed like a thousand tiny suns.
Reid Ellis preferred the museum at night. He liked being left alone to do his work, without scientists or historians or other staff members asking him stupid questions. "You'd think," he often proclaimed to his colleagues, "that a guy with four degrees would know when a floor was wet."
Although he didn't mind working the public galleries, he preferred the long lengths of hall linking offices and workrooms. Within the assigned section, he was his own boss; no nosy supervisor hanging over his shoulder checking up on him; free to get the job done properly, his way. Free to consider the workrooms his own private little museums where the storage shelves were often a hell of a lot more interesting than the stuff laid out for the paying customers.