Blood Shot

  Blood Shot: Stories from the Blood 'Verse

  Copyright © 2006, 2007, 2009, 2011, 2013, 2016, 2020 by Tanya Huff

  All rights reserved.

  Published as an ebook in 2020 by Jabberwocky Literary Agency, Inc.,

  Cover design © 2020 Tiger Bright Studios

  ISBN 978-1-625674-97-5

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Publication History

  Introduction to Blood Shot

  Quid Pro Quo

  Songs Sung Red

  If Wishes Were

  No Matter Where You Go

  Blood Wrapped

  After School Special

  See Me

  About the Author

  Also by Tanya Huff

  Publication History

  Quid Pro Quo — first published in Evolve: Vampire Stories of the New Undead, edited by Nancy Kilpatrick, published by Edge Science Fiction and Fantasy Publications, November 13th, 2013

  Songs Sung Red — first published in The Wild Side: Urban Fantasy with an Erotic Edge, edited by Mark L. Van Name, published by Baen Books, August 1st, 2011

  If Wishes Were — first published in Shadowed Souls, edited by Jim Butcher and Kerrie L. Hughes, published by ROC, Nov 1st 2016

  No Matter Where You Go — first published in A Girl’s Guide to Guns and Monsters, edited by Martin H. Greenberg and Kerrie Hughes, published by DAW Books, Inc., Dec 22nd, 2009

  Blood Wrapped — first published in Many Bloody Returns, edited by Charlaine Harris and Toni L. P. Kelner, Ace, September 1st, 2007

  After School Special — first published in Children of Magic, edited by Martin H. Greenberg and Kerrie Hughes, DAW Books, Inc., June 6th, 2006

  See Me — first published in Those Who Fight Monsters: Tales of Occult Detectives, edited by Justin Gustainis, Edge Science Fiction and Fantasy Publishing, November 5th, 2011

  Introduction to Blood Shot

  The last of the Blood books, Blood Debt, was published in 1997. Last millennium. Twenty-three years ago. And yet, people still ask me if there’s ever going to be another, which is embarrassingly gratifying. However, the answer has always been no. I have nothing more to say about these characters at novel length.

  But neither am I quite done with them.

  This is the second collection of short stories in the Blood ‘verse. The first, Blood Bank, still available in mass market paperback (we’re working on getting an epub)(it’s complicated) included the script I wrote for Blood Ties, the television series. Okay, technically, it included the script we shot, not the script I wrote, but I was the credited writer so let’s marvel at how writing for television works and not split hairs. It also included the process of writing that script, which more-or-less explains the preceding sentence.

  This collection is split between four Vicki/Mike stories and three Tony stories from the Smoke ‘verse. (Smoke and Shadows, Smoke and Mirrors, Smoke and Ashes—now in an omnibus edition so you can find all three books at the same time! Yay!) Because the Smoke ‘verse is a subset of the Blood ‘verse, combining the stories seemed like a no brainer.

  Vampires aren’t as crazy popular as they were a while ago, but there always has been—and I suspect there always will be—a core of fans to whom this is their mythos. Readers who love the potential for mayhem so carefully controlled, the struggle to hold onto Humanity, and yes, the sexual parallels. The books, and these stories, are for you.

  Author’s Note

  Given that Vicki has a certain presence in Toronto, it was inevitable that someone would discover just what she’s become. They never get it quite right though…

  This story was adapted into a radio play for the BBC. I never heard it. I could have. I just didn’t.

  I wonder if anyone in the UK got the Tremors reference.

  QUID PRO QUO

  “That first dose will keep him out for four or five hours, and I can safely give him two, maybe three more without ill effects.” Setting the syringe aside, he pulled a key ring from the discarded jacket and passed it back without turning. “Search the house. If you find her, restrain her, and bring her directly here.”

  “Restrain her, boss?”

  “I suggest you use a generous amount of duct tape.”

  *

  There were people in the house. Two of them. Given that their years together had taught her all the rhythms of his life, Vicki could say with confidence that neither of the hearts currently pounding out barely contained fear about two and a half metres above her head belonged to Metropolitan Toronto Police Detective Mike Celluci—which was interesting, because the house did.

  As she slid out the end of the packing crate, an alarm went off, freezing her in place. Watch alarm probably. Maybe cell phone.

  “Shit! Sunset!”

  They were speaking quietly—high emotion, but low volume. Not that it mattered.

  “So what? She’s not in here.”

  “You one hundred percent positive about that, Steve? You sure that she’s not tucked in between the floors or buried in the insulation in the attic or behind a false wall?”

  Whoever he was, he wasn’t stupid, Vicki acknowledged as she lifted the section of the false wall away and moved out into the crawlspace. This was unfortunate because he’d headed toward the door as he spoke, his footsteps and Steve’s beating a fast tattoo against the floor.

  Fast enough to survive?

  Good question.

  The crawlspace slowed her a little—at just under a metre high it had been chosen for safety not speed of exit. Out into the laundry room. Up the stairs as the door closed. Across the kitchen in time to see Steve and the smart guy throw themselves into the car they’d parked in the driveway.

  Also smart. Parking in the driveway made them look like they were friends visiting and gave them faster access to their wheels if, say, they’d stayed a little past sunset and had to haul ass or die.

  Vicki’d bet the smart guy hadn’t planned on letting Steve drive and was therefore not the short, bearded, white man but the taller, clean-shaven, black man sliding behind the wheel. She’d have been inclined to say they didn’t look like criminals, except she’d been a cop long enough, back before it had come down to change or die, to know criminals didn’t actually have a look.

  She could have caught them before they got the engine started. A closed car door meant nothing to her, but the whole sleeping-naked thing made her hesitate a moment too long. February in and of itself didn’t mean a lot, but she could hear Peter Yuen and his sister arguing as they headed up the driveway of the house next door and flashing the neighbour’s teenagers would definitely cause trouble for Mike.

  As the black Jetta sped away, she considered the few inarguable facts she had. Not only did Smart Guy and Steve have a pretty damned good idea of what she was, but also thought they knew where she spent the day and were willing to break into a police officer’s house in order to do something about it.

  The edge of the counter cracked under her grip.

  “Just what I need,” she growled, heading back to the crate for her phone. “A pair of modern Van Helsings. Like my life isn’t complicated enough.”

  Of the two halves of her life, maintaining some semblance of a normal relationship with Detective Mike Celluci seemed to be giving her the most problem. It required careful socializing with people who’d known them before she’d changed, and a safety net of lies complex enough to give the most jaded politician pause. The creature of the night thing? That she had down.
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  Never growing old had lost a little of its shine as she watched Mike’s hair grey and the lines around his eyes deepen, but being stronger and faster, being able to deal with the human and not-quite-human things that haunted the nights of a big city seemed a fair trade for being helpless between sunrise and sunset.

  Or had been a fair trade.

  Until today.

  Still naked, she headed back upstairs, listening to Mike’s phone go straight to voicemail. Theoretically, he finished at three and by 5:47 PM shouldn’t be doing anything that would keep him from answering. And anyone who believed cops had half a hope in hell of keeping regular hours was in a prime position to buy some Saskatchewan beach-front property.

  “We have a situation.” A situation; their personal code for someone knows. “Call me as soon as you can. Oh, and I’m heading into the office, so you can meet me there.”

  She couldn’t stay at the house. Not and think clearly.

  Pausing by the notepad on the fridge, she scrawled down the four numbers on the license plate that she remembered—AAK, blank, dash, blank, blank, 2—then went into the bedroom to dress. Half her clothes were here, half at her office downtown. She hadn’t spent the day there for months, but the belief that she maintained two separate residences allowed for a greater plausible deniability when friends couldn’t find her before sunset.

  Smart Guy and Steve hadn’t been subtle in their search. Both bed and dresser had been shifted and both closets emptied enough to check the back walls. They didn’t bother moving anything too small to hide a body.

  “Definitely knew what they were doing,” she snarled, yanking on a pair of jeans.

  She repeated the sentiment a few minutes later, slamming the kitchen door behind her and locking it. It was the door Smart Guy and Steve had come in through, and they’d taken the time to not only pick the lock on the door but also the lock holding the chain rather than take a pair of bolt cutters to it. The cold, and the pungent hand lotion used by whichever one of them had actually handled the door, made it difficult to get any kind of a scent, and they’d both obviously been wearing gloves while they were in the house. Winter clothes blocked most of the fear sweat.

  Scent would have allowed her to pick them out of a crowd regardless of how good a look she’d got at them. As it was, she might recognize their voices, but that wasn’t much to go on.

  Still, she’d found other men with less.

  “Picked the wrong damned vampire to stake this time,” she growled, forcing herself to relax her grip on the steering wheel before she broke it. Again.

  Winter driving in Toronto was never fun. Winter driving at rush hour, Downsview to her office on King Street East, barely maintaining a grip on her temper was less fun by an order of magnitude.

  As the door to her office closed behind her, Vicki exhaled what felt like the first actual breath she’d taken since sunset and admitted that just maybe the break-in—not to mention the possibility of true death that came with it—had left her a little tense.

  Any lock could be picked, but the two heavy steel bolts and the two-by-four slid through steel brackets that secured the office door required an entirely different skill set. And tools. And would likely attract unwanted attention from the other tenants in the building, three-quarters of whom ignored the clause in their lease that stipulated studios in the renovated warehouse were not live-in.

  She was safer here in the day than she was at Mike’s.

  She’d given up that safety for Mike.

  But then Mike had given up normal for her, so if someone, somewhere was keeping score, the game was tied as far as Vicki was concerned.

  “By sunrise,” she muttered, crossing the room to her desk, “I’d like that to be completely irrelevant.” Find the car. Find out who owned it. Neutralize the threat. A few months ago, she’d had dinner with a man who designed digital storage protocols for the Ministry of Transport. He didn’t know it, but after she’d fed, he’d built her a back door into the system and set up the search protocols that allowed her to make the best use of it. With the day denied her, it was nothing more than a way of evening the odds. That said, she hadn’t mentioned it to Mike. It wasn’t like he shared all the details of his job.

  Model and license information had just been entered when her office phone rang. The caller ID showed Mike’s cell number.

  Speak of the devil.

  “Hey. In case you didn’t get my message, we have a situation.”

  “You have more than that, Ms. Nelson. You have one chance to save Detective Celluci’s life.”

  She didn’t recognize the voice.

  Or her own when she answered, but then her lips were pulled so far back off her teeth that was hardly surprising. “You’re a dead man.”

  “One chance,” he repeated. He didn’t sound particularly worried about her reaction. “My people will meet you in front of your building and bring you to me.”

  It didn’t seem like she had much of a choice. “When?”

  “As soon as you can get out there. Leave your cell phone behind.”

  He’d hung up without waiting for a response, but she called him a few choice names anyhow as she shrugged back into her coat and pulled her phone out of her pocket.

  *

  The black Jetta. Big surprise.

  Smart Guy was still driving. Steve sat in the back and held up a phone as she closed the door. “Boss can hear every word. Try anything, and the cop dies.”

  Vicki twisted around and smiled at him, giving the Hunger free rein. They thought they knew what she was. They weren’t even close.

  There was a sudden, sharp smell of urine, and Steve whimpered. He hung onto the phone though.

  “Stop terrifying my people, Ms. Nelson.” The speaker crackled as they pulled out into traffic, passing under a triple layer of overhead wires. “I can see you, I can hear you, and only your full co-operation will keep Detective Celluci alive.”

  “If you kill him…” The small webcam had been mounted on the rearview mirror. She turned to stare directly into it. “…I will make you scream.”

  “I don’t doubt it. I am, however, banking on the fact that you will do nothing to endanger Detective Celluci’s life. Your phone?”

  “In the office.”

  “Excellent.”

  “You’re going to take my word for it?”

  “If I find out you’ve been lying, you won’t be the one to suffer for it. Put the blindfold on. You’ll find it on the seat beside you.”

  She found it on the seat between her and Smart Guy, almost covered by the spread of his grey wool winter coat.

  Smart Guy hadn’t looked at her once, his eyes locked on the road. At the speed they were traveling along the snow-covered city streets, she could kill him and take control of the car without endangering anyone else on the road. From the trickle of sweat running down his temple and behind the curve of his jaw to disappear behind his fleece scarf, it seemed he knew that.

  “Ms. Nelson?”

  The threat was implicit in the question.

  “Fine. I’m putting it on.”

  It wasn’t just a strip of black cloth, it was a strip of black cloth that had clearly been designed as a blindfold—thicker where it passed over the eyes, the ends thin enough to tie securely. Whoever this guy was, he probably knew if anal retentive had a hyphen.

  “Good. Now, since your hearing is undoubtedly good enough to pick up environmental sounds that may give my position away, Daniel, if you would.”

  Smart Guy had a name.

  Vicki heard the shush as the fabric of his coat brushed against itself, felt the air currents in the car shift, heard the click of switch, the whirr of a CD, and the dulcet tones of Celine Dion at a decibel level that had to be causing as much pain to the other occupants of the car as it was to her.

  Unless, of course, her Van Helsing had recruited his minions from gay-men-trapped-in-the-nineties-dot-com.

  “Couldn’t you just distract me by telling me your evil
plan?” she muttered, hands up over her ears. A whimper of agreement from Steve in the back, but no reply from the big man. “Whatever he’s paying you guys, it isn’t enough.”

  It might have still been possible to separate out distinct traffic sounds, but Vicki didn’t bother trying. She didn’t memorize the turns or try to time the sections of the trip. Wherever they were headed, she’d never need to find it again. The moment they’d laid their hands on Mike, everyone involved had died. Steve had died. Daniel had died. And their boss had died. Oh, they were still up and walking around, still apparently breathing, but it was only a matter of time. The only actual question remaining was just exactly how long their deaths would take. And that depended on the shape Mike was in.

  Celine slid into My Heart Will Go On.

  Vicki sang along. No reason they shouldn’t start suffering now.

  Fourteen and a half songs later, they turned onto what felt like unploughed ruts. Before the fifteenth song finished, Daniel turned the car off and Celine fell silent.

  All three of them breathed a simultaneous sigh of relief.

  “Stay in the car, Ms. Nelson, until Daniel comes around and opens your door.”

  By having Daniel do it, both minions were on the same side of the car as she was. Easier for one to react if she killed the other. Van Helsing was wasting his redundancies, since no one would die until Mike was safe.

  She stretched as Daniel closed the door behind her.

  “Turn to your right, Ms. Nelson.”

  Vicki turned.

  “Now walk twenty paces.”

  Four paces took her through a doorway and inside an unheated building. Her heels made no sound against the concrete floor. Approximately two metres behind her on the left, Daniel matched his pace to hers, while on the right Steve’s boots thumped out an arrhythmic beat, the echoes defining a large, empty space. The air reeked of cloves, but sixteen paces in, she caught a whiff of a familiar scent under the spice.

  Mike.

  He wasn’t bleeding.

  There weren’t spices enough in the city to cover that.