Blood Trail - By Tanya Huff Page 0,22

a certain amount of sense. "And what about after the war?"

"Perkin emigrated. I don't know."

They drove in silence for a while, one of only a few vehicles on the highway now that Toronto had been left behind. Vicki closed her eyes and thought of Henry's story. In some ways the war, for all its complications, had been a simple problem. At least the enemies had been well defined.

"Henry," she asked suddenly, "do you honestly think that a pack of werewolves can live as a part of human society without their neighbors knowing?"

"You're thinking city, Vicki; the Heerkens' nearest neighbors live three miles away. They see people outside the pack when they choose to. Besides, if you didn't know me, and you hadn't met that demon last spring, would you believe in werewolves? Would anyone in North America in this century?"

"Someone obviously does," she reminded him dryly. "Although I'd have expected blackmail over murder."

"It would make more sense," Henry agreed.

She sighed and opened her eyes. Here she was, trying to solve the case armed only with a magnifying glass and a vampire, cut off from the resources of the Metro Police. Not that those resources had been any help so far. Ballistics had called just before she left to tell her that the slug had most likely been a standard 7.62mm NATO round; which narrowed her possible suspects down to the entire North Atlantic Treaty Organization as well as almost everyone who owned a hunting rifle. She wasn't looking forward to arriving at the Heerkens farm.

This was the first time she'd ever really gone it alone. What if she wasn't as good as she thought?

"There's a map in the glove compartment." Henry maneuvered the BMW off Highway 2. "Could you get it out for me?"

She found both glove compartment and map by touch and shoved the latter toward her companion.

He returned it. "Multitalented though I may be, I'd rather not try to read a map while driving on strange roads. You'll have to do it."

Fingers tight around the folded paper, Vicki pushed it back at him. "I don't know where we're going."

"We're on Airport Road about to turn onto Oxford Street. Tell me how long we stay on Oxford before we hit Clarke Side Road."

The streetlights provided barely enough illumination to define the windshield. If she strained, Vicki could see the outline of the map. She certainly couldn't find two little lines on it.

"There's a map light under the sun visor," Henry offered.

The map light would be next to useless.

"I can't find it."

"You haven't even looked... "

"I didn't say I wouldn't, I said I couldn't." She'd realized from the moment she'd agreed to leave the safe, known parameters of Toronto that she'd have to tell him the truth about her eyes and couldn't understand how she'd gotten herself backed into that kind of a corner. Tension brought her shoulders up and tied her stomach in knots. Medical explanation or not, it always sounded like an excuse to her, like she was asking for help or understanding. And he'd think of her differently once the "disabled" label had been applied, everyone did. "I have no night sight, little peripheral vision, and am becoming more myopic every time I talk to the damn doctor." Her tone dared him to make something of it.

Henry merely asked, "What's wrong?"

"It's a degenerative eye disease, retinitis pigmen-tosa... "

"RP," he interrupted. So that was her secret. "I know of it." He kept his feelings from his voice, kept it matter-of-fact. "It doesn't seem to have progressed very far."

Great, just what I need, another expert. Celluci wasn't enough? "You weren't listening," she snarled, twisting the map into an unreadable mess. "I have no night sight. It drove me off the force. I am piss useless after dark. You might as well just turn the car around right now if I have to solve this case at night." Although she hid it behind the anger, she was half afraid he'd do just that. And half afraid he'd pat her on the head and say everything was going to be all right - because it wasn't, and never would be again - and she'd try to rip his face off in a moving car and kill them both.

Henry shrugged. He had no intention of playing into what he perceived as self-pity. "I turn into a smoldering pile of carbon compounds in direct sunlight; sounds like you've got a better deal."

"You don't understand."

"I haven't seen the sun in four hundred and fifty