Blood Pact - By Tanya Huff Page 0,96

walls of the abandoned tower. "You forgot?"

"Yes. Perhaps that is why we are able to continue as a race."

He bowed his head, eyes squeezed shut, but his nature no longer allowed tears. "It hurts. As though you cut my heart out and take it with you."

"Yes." Her skirts whispered as she stood and he felt her fingers touch his hair in gentle benediction. "Perhaps that is why we are so few."

He never saw her again.

"And that," he told the darkness as despair's grip tightened, "is not helping." Surely there were pleasanter times to use as weapons against the knowledge that he was trapped, and alone... .

"No. There have been prisons and prisoners before," he snarled. "I can survive it."

You can survive the nights, despair whispered, but what of the days? So much blood has been taken. How much more will they take? How much more can you lose and still have a night to return to? What else will they do that you will be unable to prevent?

Lips drawn back from his teeth, Henry tried to twist away from the voice. It surrounded him, sounded within him, echoed against the metal that enclosed him. "Vicki... "

She doesn't know where you are. What if she doesn't find you in time? What if she doesn't come?

"NO!"

He released his hold on the Hunger and let the Beast take him as it clawed its way free.

It was all he had left to fight with.

"As long as these are working, we have no guarantee that she's going to leave Henry in one place." Vicki squinted in the brightly lit interior of the elevator and switched off her flashlight. "She can keep rolling him around this building with us two steps behind like some kind of bad Marx Brothers movie."

"So we jam them?" Celluci asked, stepping over the threshold and matching his companion's don't-fuck-with-me tone. That either of them was still functioning at all, he considered to be some sort of miracle. Let's hear it for the human animal's ability to cope.

Vicki shook her head and hit the button for the subbasement with enough force to nearly crack the plastic cover. "Not good enough. The elevators are in opposite ends of the building. She can unjam them as fast as we can jam them. We're going to shut them off."

"How?"

"By shutting off the power supply to the building."

"I repeat, how?"

Vicki turned to stare at him through narrowed eyes. "How the hell should I know? Do I look like an electrician? We'll find the electrical room and pull the plug."

"Metaphorically speaking."

"Don't give me any of your fucking attitude, Celluci."

"My attitude? Nelson, you've got one hell of a nerve."

"Nerve!"

"You want attitude?"

Their voice overlapped, the sound slamming up against the confining walls and crashing back. Words got tangled in the noise and were stripped of meaning. Toe to toe, they stood and screamed invective at each other.

The elevator reached the subbasement. Stopped. The door opened.

"... patronizing asshole!"

The echoes changed. The words shot into the darkness and didn't come back.

They realized it together and together fell silent.

Vicki was trembling so violently, she wasn't sure she could stand. Her legs felt like cooked pasta and there was a metal band wrapped so tightly around her throat that breathing hurt and swallowing was impossible. Her glasses had slid so far down her nose they were almost useless. She peered over them, through the tunnel the disease had pared her vision down to, and tried to focus on the face just inches from her own. Her hand came up to push them back into place but instead continued moving until it brushed the curl of hair off Celluci's forehead. She heard him sigh.

Slowly, he raised his arm and, with one finger against the bridge, slid her glasses back into place. "We okay?"

His breath was warm against her cheek. She nodded jerkily and stepped back, out of the range of that comfort.

"What about the tracks?" he asked.

She switched on her flashlight and walked out into the subbasement, a little amazed her legs would obey even such basic commands. "We look for tracks after we immobilize Catherine."

Celluci paused for a moment on the threshold of the elevator, his presence preventing the door from closing. "We turn off the power to the building," he said, "and we'll turn off any other experiments she might be running."

Vicki stopped and half turned to face him. "Yes."

He recognized the raw anger that spit the word out. Recognized it because he felt it himself. It had nothing to do with