Blood Bank (23 page)

"King-tics are smarter than either. And they drink blood." Confident that he now had her full attention, Duncan stretched out one leg and tugged his pants up from his ankle.

Vicki stared at the dingy gray sweat sock and contemplated beating someone's head—hers, his, she wasn't sure which—against the table. "Try using hot water and adding a little bleach."

"What?" He glanced down and flushed. "Oh."

A quick adjustment later and Vicki found herself studying two half-healed puncture wounds just below the curve of Duncan's ankle. Slightly inflamed and about an inch apart, they were right over a vein that ran close to the surface. "Big bug."

"Yeah. But they move really, really fast. They use the crowds in the subway stations as cover. Bite. Drink. Scuttle away. Who's going to notice a couple of little pricks when we're surrounded by bigger pricks every day of our lives?"

"Cynical observation?" Vicki asked the expectant silence.

"Uh, yeah."

"Okay." He'd probably been saving it up too. "You didn't feel the bite?"

"No. I'd have never noticed anything except that my shoe was untied and I knelt to do it up and I..."

Screamed like a little girl?

"...saw this bug. It looked at me, Ms. Nelson. I swear it looked at me..."

She believed him, actually. She could hear the before and after in his voice.

"...and then it disappeared. I sort of saw it moving but it was just so fast. We started looking for them after that and well, once you know what you're looking for..." He paused then and his gaze skittered off hers but she had to give him credit for trying. "Once you
admit
what you're looking for, it becomes a lot easier to see."

Yeah. Yeah. You know what I am. I got that twenty minutes ago.
"Go on."

"I told the group what had happened and we started looking for the bugs. The King-tics. I mean, we spotted them so we figured we should get to name them, right?" When she didn't answer, he sighed, shrugged, and continued. "At first we only saw them at Bloor and Yonge, at the Bloor Station, probably because it's lower. More subterranean. But then, we saw a few on the upper level, you know, the Yonge line. Yesterday, I saw three at Wellsley."

Vicki fought the urge to turn her head. Wellsley Station was a short block south of the coffee shop.

"Thing is," Duncan laughed nervously, "they saw me too. They were watching me from the shadows. First time I'd ever seen them still. Usually you catch a sort movement out of the corner of one eye but this ... It was creepy. Anyway, we talked it over and decided to call you."

"So I can...?"

"I told you. Destroy the nest and the queen. One way or another the subway system hooks up to every major building in the downtown core. The whole city could become a giant banquet hall for these things."

Vicki sat back in her chair and thought about giant intelligent bloodsucking bugs in the subway for a moment. When Duncan opened his mouth to... well, she didn't know what he was planning to do because she cut him off with a finger raised in silent warning. Giant, intelligent bloodsucking bugs in the subway. Feeding off the ankles of Toronto. Another predator— predators—feeding in her territory, true, but it was somehow hard to get worked up about something called a King-tic.

Giant, intelligent bloodsucking bugs in the subway.

She couldn't believe she was even considering taking the job.

Still, that sort of thing always ended badly in the movies, didn't it?

*

The Wellsley platform was empty except for a clump of teenagers at the far end discussing the appalling news that 'N Sync would be on the
Star Wars Episode II
DVD. On the off chance that the six simultaneous rants would suddenly stop and silence fall, Vicki pitched her voice too low to be overheard. "That's where you saw them?"

Duncan nodded. "Yeah. Right there. In the corner. In the shadows. Three of them. Staring at me."

"If you're talking like a character in a Dashiell Hammett novel on purpose, you should know I find it really annoying."

"Sorry."

"Just don't do it again." Stepping closer, Vicki examined the gray tiled corner for webs or egg casings or marks against the fine patina of subway station grime and came up empty. Sighing, she turned her attention back to Duncan. "What were you doing while the bugs—the King-tics—were staring at you?"

He shrugged. "I stared at them for a while."

"And then?"

"They left." He pointed up the tunnel toward Bloor.

"Right."

His expectant silence took her to the edge of the platform. A train had gone by just before they'd entered the station. She could hear the next one a station, maybe a station and a half away. Plenty of time. "You wouldn't have a...
artist's conception
of these things, would you?"

"Not with me. I could fax it to you when I get home."

"You do that. Go now."

"What are you going to do?"

"What you're paying me to do."

"You're going into the tunnel!"

He sounded so amazed, she turned to look at him. "It's where the bugs are, Duncan. What did you expect me to do?"

"Go into the tunnels," Duncan admitted. "It's just..." He shifted his weight from foot to foot and flashed her an admiring smile. "…well, you're actually doing it. And it's so dangerous."

"Because of the bugs?"

"No. Because of the subway trains."

"Trust me, trains aren't a problem."

Behind the beard, his jaw dropped. "You turn into mist?"

Vicki sighed. "I step out of the way."

*

There were bugs in the subway tunnels. There were also rats, mice, fast food wrappers, used condoms, and a pair of men's Y-front underwear, extra large. The bugs were not giants, not bloodsucking, and, although one of the cockroaches gave her what could only be interpreted as a dirty look just before she squashed it flat, not noticeably intelligent. The rats and mice avoided her, but then, so did pretty much all mammals except humans and cats. The fast food wrappers and used condoms were the expected debris of the twenty- first century. Vicki didn't waste time speculating about the underwear because she really,
really
didn't want to know.

At Yonge and Bloor she crossed the station and slipped down to the lower tracks, easily avoiding the security cameras and the weary curiosity of late commuters.

There were maybe—possibly—fewer rats and mice scrabbling out of her way.

Maybe—possibly—sounds that didn't quite add up to the ambient noise she remembered from other trips.

It depressed her just a little that she'd been down in these tunnels often enough to remember the ambient noise.

When the last train of the night went by, she fought the urge to brace herself against the sides of the workman's niche, rise up to window height, and give any passengers a flickering, strobelike look at what haunted the dark places of the city.
Something about being an immortal, undead creature of the night really changes the things you find funny,
she sighed, allowing the rush of wind to hold her in place as the squares of light flashed by.

The maintenance workers traveled in pairs, but it wasn't hard to separate the younger of the two from his companion. A crescent of white teeth in the darkness. A flash of silver eyes. A promise of things forbidden in the light.

Like shooting fish in a barrel.
Grabbing a fistful of his overalls, Vicki dragged him into a dark corner, stiffened her arm to keep him there, and locked her gaze with his. "Giant intelligent bloodsucking bugs."

He looked confused. "Okay."

"Seen any?"

"Down here?"

"Anywhere."

Dark brows drew in. "The cockroaches seem to be getting smarter."

"I noticed that too. Anything else?"

Broad shoulders shrugged. "Sometimes I think I'm hearing things, but the other guys say it's just me."

If they're really intelligent and nesting in the tunnels, they wouldn't want the maintenance workers to find them, would they? Even if they did cross over from some television-inspired hell dimension, a couple of TTC-issue flamethrowers would still take them out. They'd wait, hiding quietly, feeding where it wouldn't be noticed until. . .

Until what?

Until there were enough to them to ... to...

The heat under her hand and the thrum of blood so close weren't making it any easier to think. Not that she'd ever thought well on an empty stomach.

Later, when she lifted her mouth from an open vein in the crock of a sweaty elbow, she had the strangest feeling of being watched. Watched in an empty section of tunnel with no feel of another life anywhere near.

Watched and weighed.

*

Mike Celluci was asleep when Vicki got home an hour or so before dawn. He was lying on his back, one arm under the covers, one flung out over the empty half of the bed. She slipped in beside him and snuggled up against his shoulder, still damp and warm from the shower, knowing this was how she felt the most human—body temperature almost normal, skin flushed. She felt him wake, felt his arm tighten around her.

"So how'd the job work out?"

"Giant intelligent bloodsucking bugs in the subway." She was beginning to enjoy saying it.

"Seriously?"

"Well, so far I'm pretty much taking the word of my employer. I had a look around the tunnels in question and saw sweet FA but he truly believes there's something nasty down there and I think he may be right."

"There's a lot of nasty in the tunnels."

Memory called up the underwear. Vicki winced. "Yeah. I know." After a moment, spent pushing back against the large hand stroking her back, she sighed and murmured, "Any rumors going around Toronto's finest about strange shit in the subway?"

"Sweet talker."

"Just answer the question."

"No one's said anything to me but I'll ask around. You should probably talk to TTC security."

"Tomorrow. Well, technically, later today."

"You... hungry?"

Which wasn't really what he was asking her but feeding had gotten so tied up with other things it had become impossible to separate them. They'd tried. It hadn't worked.

"I could eat."

She only took a mouthful or two from him these days. Enough for mutual sensation, not enough to worry about bleeding him dry over time. Every relationship had to make compromises—she never told him she when she got a bite downtown, he didn't die.

Tonight was... different.

Sitting up, sheet folding across her lap, she rolled the taste of his blood around in her mouth.

Sharp. A little bitter.

Like something had been... added?

"S'matter?" he asked sleepily, rubbing the toes of one foot against the ankle of the other.