Blood Sisters_ Vampire Stories by Women - Paula Guran Page 0,131

eyes darted from side to side, both hands were locked around his glass, and his body language screamed: I’m dealing with some bad shit here, leave me alone.

Vicki sat down beside him and for an instant let the Hunter show. His reaction was everything she could have hoped for.

He stared at her, frozen in terror, his mouth working but no sound coming out.

“Breathe,” she suggested.

The ragged intake of air did little to calm him but it did break the paralysis. He shoved his chair back from the table and started to stand. Vicki closed her fingers around his wrist. “Stay.”

He swallowed and sat down again.

His skin was so hot it nearly burned and she could feel his pulse beating against it like a small wild creature struggling to be free. The Hunger clawed at her and her own breathing became a little ragged. “What’s your name?”

“Ph … Phil.”

She caught his gaze with hers and held it. “You saw something last night.”

“Yes.” Stretched almost to the breaking point, he began to tremble.

“Do you live around here?”

“Yes.”

Vicki stood and pulled him to his feet, her tone half command half caress. “Take me there. We have to talk.”

Phil stared at her. “Talk?”

She could barely hear the question over the call of his blood. “Well, talk first.”

“It was a woman. Dressed all in black. Hair like a thousand strands of shadow, skin like snow, eyes like black ice. She chuckled, deep in her throat, when she saw me and licked her lips. They were painfully red. Then she vanished so quickly that she left an image on the night.”

“Did you see what she was doing?”

“No. But then she didn’t have to be doing anything to be terrifying. I’ve spent the last twenty-four hours feeling like I met my death.”

Phil had turned out to be a bit of a poet. And a bit of an athlete. All in all, Vicki considered their time together well spent. Working carefully after he fell asleep, she took away his memory of her and muted the meeting in the alley. It was the least she could do for him.

The description sounded like a character freed from a Hammer film: The Bride of Dracula Kills a Pimp.

She paused, key in the lock, and cocked her head. Celluci was home, she could feel his life and if she listened very hard, she could hear the regular rhythm of breathing that told her he was asleep. Hardly surprising as it was only three hours to dawn.

There was no reason to wake him as she had no intention of sharing what she’d discovered and no need to feed but, after a long, hot shower, she found herself standing at the door of his room. And then at the side of his bed.

Mike Celluci was thirty-seven. There were strands of gray in his hair and although sleep had smoothed out many of the lines, the deeper creases around his eyes remained. He would grow older. In time, he would die. What would she do then?

She lifted the sheet and tucked herself up close to his side. He sighed and without completely waking scooped her closer still.

“Hair’s wet,” he muttered.

Vicki twisted, reached up, and brushed the long curl back off his forehead. “I had a shower.”

“Where’d you leave the towel?”

“In a sopping pile on the floor.”

Celluci grunted inarticulately and surrendered to sleep again.

Vicki smiled and kissed his eyelids. “I love you too.”

She stayed beside him until the threat of sunrise drove her away.

“Irene Macdonald.”

Vicki lay in the darkness and stared unseeing up at the plywood. The sun was down and she was free to leave her sanctuary but she remained a moment longer, turning over the name that had been on her tongue when she woke. She remembered facetiously wondering if the deaths of Irene Macdonald and her pimp were connected.

Irene had been found beaten nearly to death in the bathroom of her apartment. She’d died two hours later in the hospital.

Celluci said that he was personally certain Mac Eisler was responsible. That was good enough for Vicki.

Eisler could’ve been unlucky enough to run into a vampire who fed on terror as well as blood—Vicki had tasted terror once or twice during her first year when the Hunger occasionally slipped from her control and she knew how addictive it could be—or he could’ve been killed in revenge for Irene.

Vicki could think of one sure way to find out.

“Brandon? It’s Vicki Nelson.”

“Victoria?” Surprise lifted most of the Oxford accent off Dr. Brandon Singh’s voice. “I thought