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THE city ue was in the basement at Vancouver General Hospital Henry supposed it worked on the same principle as the crypts under cathedrals-the deeper in the ground, the cooler the a into the rest of the building

Hospitals had never been one of Henry&039;s favorite places Not because of light levels kept painfully high for eyes adapted to darkness Not even because of the ohly with disease

It was the despair

It hung in the halls like s, fro That modern medicine re?sulted in far more successes than failures made little difference

Predators preyed on the weak The defenseless The despairing

Even though he had already fed, the Hunger strained against Henry&039;s control as he stepped over the threshold and into the building His reaction wasn&039;t about feeding; it was about killing, killing be?cause he could, because they were all but asking him to As the door closed behind hi the Hunter beneath

He&039;d decided to gain access through E that he could hide his movements in the chaos that always see city hospitals As far as it went, the reasoning was sound, but the bloodscent hanging over the croaiting rooer Acutely conscious of the weak and injured around hi of despair, Henry stepped away fro

No one tried to stop him

Those who saw him quickly looked away

Passing as swiftly as possible through the crowded e room, he slipped unnoticed into the first stairwell he found The air was clearer there, but he had no time to compose himself

Folklore aside, vampires not only showed up in mir?rors but in security ca down the stairs at full speed, a dark flicker across a distant hts down, he opened a door ratefully into a diet cuts were the reason for two out of three fluorescent banks to be off-there&039;d be no patients wandering about down here after all and, given the hour, few staff-it was hard not to appreciate the at? to the ue should be barred with shadow

Teeth bared buthis car, Henry followed the trail of death to an unlocked door Pulling on a pair of leather driv?ing gloves, he passed silently through an outer office and into the actual ue

Here, he breathed easier still In these rooms, the blood spilled was lifeless and the dead were past fear

Only six of the refrigerated draere in use Five were labeled with the occupant&039;s name The sixth held the body of the handless man pulled out of Van?couver Harbor

His face had taken a beating-although it was un?clear whether it had happened in the water or be?fore-but enough areas of definition rehost Had he any doubts, the fuzzy blue hoer on the left forearh there were computer files as well, paper copies of recent autopsy reports were stored in a huge filing cabinet against one wall of the office It only took a moment to match the number on the draith the nue on the photocopier

He heard the jangle of keys in the hall the instant after he pushed print

Kevin Lam tossed his car keys from hand to hand as he hurried down the corridor It had been one hell of a shift and all he wanted to do was go ho that didn&039;t taste like disinfectant, and see if ame on He didn&039;t actually like baseball that ured it had the only plot on the tube he&039;d be able to understand

Once I&039;m in the car, I&039;o hoe at the end of the hall, he alue office

The supposedly deserted lass in the upper half of the door was dark Fro late

"So who the hell is running the photocopier?" Kevin glanced toward the parking garage and sighed If he called hospital security, he could be stuck here for hours even if it turned out to be nothing And if it did turn out to be nothing, he&039;d be the butt of every ue joke in the hospital "I&039;ll just open the door and turn on the light, see that it&039;s nothing, and then go ho? he asked himself as he shoved his keys in his pocket and reached for the door He shook his head Yeah, right Like soue atphotocopies

Henry had plenty of time to hide He just didn&039;t bother

In the instant the orderly stood silhouetted in the open door, one hand reaching for the light switch, Henry grabbed the front of his uniforer roared in his ears, restraints rubbed raw by Vicki&039;s presence, then further torn by his pas?sage through theabove Self-preservation barely held hi man down onto a desk

It wasn&039;t colealowed over the door Kevin saw the pale oval of a face bend over him, felt himself fall into the bot?tomless depths of dark eyes, and choked back a screaripped his wrist, the touch both chill?ing and burning, sensations racing up his ar quickened Itdarker

He didn&039;t understand when the pale face withdrew and that sa like a child" When the face returned, when the voice told hiladly

Tony had left just after Henry had She&039;d sent Celluci to bed at about two All the lights were out except a small crescent moon lamp on a shelf in the entryway

With the curtains open, the city spilled into the living roo darkness for those who lived at night Having carefully moved two days&039; worth of unopeneddown at a blank piece of paper and waiting for Henry

He&039;d be back soon He had to be if he wanted to give her any chance to study the autopsy report and ht about waiting for Henry, she was fine When she started thinking about what Henry was, her thoughts were tinted red

Vampire

But he always had been-he wasn&039;t the one who&039;d changed

She fidgeted with the heavy fountain pen she&039;d found in one of the desk drawers, turning the suely soothing

All right I&039;m not what I was, but I&039;m still who 1 was I accepted the liracefully, honesty forced her to admit, but I accepted the my life exactly as I pleased I a to let Henry Fitzroy change the way I operate He&039;sto act like friends if I have to rip hi entrails!

The pen snapped between her fingers

"Shit!"

Breathing heavily, Vicki barely kept herself fro a roo with the effort, she set both halves of the pen gently in the ed to her feet and vi-ciously kicked the chair away

While a small voice in the back of her head won?dered where the hell this was colea silver in the mirror wall of the entry, she reached for the doorknob and realized another heart beat in unison with hers

Henry

In the corridor Almost at the door

Vampire

Then merabbed onto that and used it to bludgeon her instinctive response back into the shadows Her breathing slowed and the roaring in her ears dirowl Vampires did not share territories with other va that said vampires could not share a territory with ro

And if there&039;s one thing I excel at, it&039;s attitude Hold?ing tightly to that thought, she opened the door and said, "What the hell took you so long?"

Henry recoiled a step at her proxi his lips back off his teeth "Don&039;t push it, Vicki"

"Hey" She spread her hands, the gesture serving a double function of eo for his throat "I just asked you a question, you&039;re the one who&039;s overreacting" Soe which was not at all what she&039;d intended It had been easier with the door between them; face-to-face, her visceral reac?tion to the threat he posed was harder to ignore "Look, Henry, it was getting late, I was getting wor?ried; okay?"

"Why worried?"

Because you&039;re old and slowing down Where the hell did that coht back into her subconscious "Forget it What did you find out?"

Forgetting was safer for the

He&039;d seen the threat surface, seen her push it away Considering the short ti short of incredible A faint hint of jealousy, that she should so easily push aside the demands of her nature, added itself to the emo?tional host has a body As requested, I made a copy of the autopsy report and added a full description"

"Thanks" Her fingers cru backward, she closed the door between theered, when she finally heard hiainst the carved cedar "So much for the romance writer defense" Old instincts told her to follow and patch things up New instincts told her to follow and destroy hi on the door, she breathed deeply until his scent had been thoroughly , expensive potpourri scent of the apart runsto the desk, she slapped the creased file folder down on the polished wood "I a behind her teeth Under the circu "if it killsfate

Down the hall, Henry stood staring out at the West End, rubbing his throbbing temples It could have been much worse-he&039;d expected it to have been much worse Neither of them had actually attacked, and their conversation, while short, had been essen?tially civil It was beginning to look as though Vicki had been right all along Perhaps the old rules could be changed

After all, coyotes had been solitary hunters for centuries and they were learning to hunt in packs One corner of his mouth quirked up as he re household pets in North Vancouver

"On second thought, perhaps that&039;s not the ht

Vicki&039;s strength had surprised hith came from who she was, not what After he worked past the jealousy, he found a tenuous faith in that strength beginning to push aside his expectations, beginning to allow him to have faith in himself

The desire to throw her out of his territory in bleed?ing chunks persisted, but, for the first ti didn&039;t necessarily have to be acted upon

Suddenly hopeful, he headed for the shower to wash off the lingering stink of the hospital

"Mike, wake up We need to talk before sunrise" Only experience allowed her to translate his mumbled response as "I&039; had barely changed, she chose not to believe it

Rather than use borrowed bedding, he&039;d rolled his sleeping bag out in the center of the king-sized bed but hadn&039;t bothered to zip it up Kneeling by his side, Vicki reached through the gap and wrapped her fin?gers around the warmest part of his anato!"

She grinned, having jerked back too quickly for his wild swing to connect "Now you&039;re awake"

"No shit" Squinting past her, he ed to focus on the clock beside the bed "4:03 That&039;s just great Whatever we need to talk about had better be fuck?ing important"

"You actually heard me say we needed to talk?"

"I told you I ake" He yawned and dragged in another pillow to prop up his head "So what is it?"

"If it&039;s our case, then we should discuss it"

"You couldn&039;t have leftup the file folder fros and started to read "Henry&039;s ghost was a male Caucasian between twenty and twenty-five, a s he&039;d received sometiically removed within the last month which was not, by the hat killed him After death, his hands, wrists, and about two inches of forearm were removed, prob?ably with an ax His body was later found in Vancou?ver Harbor" She frowned down at the photocopy of the autopsy pictures "We can assuue, the police scanned his picture into the system and didn&039;t find a s they should be doing"

Brows raised at her phrasing-he&039;d just bet the Vancouver police would love to hear what they should be doing-he indicated she should continue

"They should be showing the photographs around at different hospitals, hoping someone can ID him from the kidney perspective"

"And I&039;ht of that," Celluci muttered "Can&039;t be a lot of places around that take out kidneys"

"Depends on what you&039;re calling around," Vicki re?uy could&039;ve been anywhere in the world just hours before he ca, she smacked him on the chest with the file folder "Fortunately, we know so the police don&039;t The body was naked when they pulled it out of the water, but according to Henry&039;s description, his ghost is wearing a T-shirt advertising a local band We can ignore everything outside this immediate area"

"Then shouldn&039;t we tell the police this guy&039;s local?

In case you&039;ve forgotten, withholding evidence is a cri a phone "Hello? Violent criot in the host is appearing to this va up an iinary receiver, she snorted "I don&039;t think so Anyway, they should also be investigat?ing this tattoo" She passed over a page of photocop?ied pictures

He sighed, turned on a light, and studied the collec?tion "He&039;s pretty beat up Henry ID froested he not ask why, he e "Looks like a street job Notout the gang connection"

"The what?"

"Well, why do you think they took off his hands?"

Celluci shrugged "Somewhere his prints are on file"

"Then so&039;s his picture"

"Not looking like that it isn&039;t" He fanned the pho?tocopies "The co to spit out ashots takes so much time no one has that it becomes real low priority"

"I think they took off his hands because they wanted to use them"

"Dead anized cri theory"

"Hey! It&039;s not my theory," he protested "I just re?peated what I heard on that cable show"

"It adds up, Mike Organized cri for neays to ans for transplant, then, in their oarped version of reduce, reuse, and recy?cle, they use the hands to print weapons for hits It even explains why the body was found in the harbor The Port Authority is fully unionized, and unions have always had ties to organized crime"

"What? When Jimmy Hoffa disappeared, he moved to Vancouver?" Celluci tossed the papers down on the bed and jerked both hands back through his hair "You&039;re really reaching, Vicki"

"All right, forget the unions But I still say the siht explanation"

"You think that&039;s a sihtly exaggerated "And in case you haven&039;t noticed, there&039;s only been one body Not many bucks made there"

"There&039;s only been one body found Either they&039;re just getting started and their disposal&039;s still a bit sloppy, or this one got caught in the wrong current Either way, no one&039;s going to set up so so co to do with the murder and isn&039;t just a coincidence You renored him "Besides, we have to start soo on I&039;ll look into the gang aspect torants, odds are good there&039;s a triad presence at the very least"

"Unfortunately, I can&039;t argue with that "

Her mouth made a sarcastic moue "Poor baby"

" but I think perhaps if all this is what the police should be doing, maybe we should leave it to the po?lice You knoell as I do, that the last thing the investigating officers are going to want is some out-of-town PI-and an out-of-town cop on vacation," he added hurriedly when her eyes started to silver, "-butting in where they don&039;t belong and screwing up the case"

"Norree with you" She frowned at his expression of patent disbelief "I would Unfortu?nately, Henry&039;s ghost see him, so we have to find thetwenty questions with the dead for eternity"

"I&039; the possibility of Henry Fitzroy backed into a corner

"I&039;host care who avenges him?"

"How the hell should I know?"

"I won&039;t allow Henry to play va you to"