Blood Bank (25 page)

Hard not to conclude that they were feeding something.

She slid the rest of the way to the tunnel floor, waited for a train to pass, and began working her way carefully up the line. If the bugs were using that crack as their primary access, that suggested the main access had been sealed shut. Twenty paces. Twenty-five. And her fingertips caught a difference in the wall.

The TTC had actually gone to the trouble of parging over the false wall, most likely in an attempt to hide it—or more specifically what was behind it—from street people looking for a place to squat. The faint outline of a door suggested they hadn't originally wanted to hide it from themselves. Forcing her fingers through the thin layer of concrete, Vicki hooked them under the nearest edge and pulled, the
crack
hidden in the roar of a passing train.

Under the concern, plywood and a narrow door nailed shut.

The nails parted faster than the concrete had.

Feeling a little like Sigourney Weaver and a lot like she should have her head examined, Vicki pushed into the second tunnel.

It wasn't very big; a blip in the line between Yonge and University swinging around to the north of the Bay Street station, probably closed because it came too close to any number of expensive stores. Although the third rail was no longer live, it seemed everything else had just been sealed up and forgotten. The place reeked of old blood and sulfur.

Well, they certainly smell like they came from a hell dimension.

Closing the door behind her, Vicki waded carefully toward what seemed to be the quiet center in the mass of seething bugs.

The bugs ignored her.

They can't feed from me, so they ignore me. I've done nothing to harm them, so they ignore me. I also feed on blood so they... Holy shit.

Duncan Travis and his group had been certain there'd be a queen in the nest. They were just a bit off. There were three queens. Well, three great big scary somethings individually wrapped in pulsing gelatinous masses being fed by the returning blood carrying—no, harvesting—bugs.

You guys haven't missed a cliché, have you?

Sucker bet that the blood being drained down between three frighteningly large pairs of gaping mandibles was type O. The workers could probably feed on any type—since they seemed to be biting across the board—but they needed that specific universal donor thing to create a queen.

Like worker bees feeding a larva royal jelly.

And Mike laughed at me for watching The Magic School Bus.

As she shifted her weight forward, a double row of slightly larger King-tics moved into place between her and the queens. Apparently, their tolerance stopped a couple of meters out. Not a problem; Vicki didn't need to get any closer. Didn't actually want to get any closer. Like recognized like and she knew predators when she saw them. The queens would not be taking delicate bites from the city's ankles, they'd be biting the city off at the ankles and feeding on the bodies as they fell.

A sudden desire to whip out the can of bug spray and see just how well it lived up to its advertising promise was hurriedly squashed. As was Mike's idea of grabbing a bug and presenting it to the proper authorities—whoever the hell they were. Somehow it just didn't seem smart—or survivable—to piss them off while she was standing in midst of hundreds of them. Barely lifting her feet from the floor, she shuffled back toward the door, hurrying just a little when she saw that all three queens had turned their eyestalks toward her.

Odds were good they weren't going to be confined by that gelatinous mass much longer.

So. What to do?

Closing the door carefully behind her, she waited, shoulder blades pressed tight against the wood as another train went by. Options? She supposed she could always let the TTC deal with it. It would be as easy for her to convince the right TTC official to come down to the tunnels for a little look as it would be for her to convince him to expose his throat. Not as much fun, but as easy. Unfortunately, years of experience had taught her that the wheels of bureaucracy ran slowly, even given a shove, and her instincts—new and old—were telling her they didn't have that kind of time to waste.

Still, given that the King-tics were nesting in the subway system, it seemed only right that the TTC deal with it.

*

Vicki picked up the garbage train at Sherbourne. There were no security cameras in the control booth and coverage on the platform didn't extend to someone entering the train from the tracks. Tucking silently in behind the driver, Vicki tapped him on the shoulder and dropped her masks.

And sighed at the sudden pervasive smell of urine.

"Your hands! Blood all over your hands!"

"It's not blood," she sighed, scrubbing her palms against the outside of her thighs. "It's rust. Now concentrate, I need you to tell me how to start this thing."

"Union rules..."

Her upper lip curled.

"... have no relevance here. Okay. Sure. Push this."

"And to go faster?"

"This. To stop..."

"Stopping won't be a problem." She leaned forward, fingers gently gripping his jaw, her eyes silver. "Go join your coworkers on the platform. Be surprised when the train starts to move. Don't do
anything
that might stop it or cause it to be stopped, forget you ever saw me."

"Saw who?"

*

Mike was watching the news when Vicki came upstairs the next evening. "Here's something you might be interested in. Seems a garbage train went crashing into an access tunnel and blew up—which they're not wont to do—but unfortunately a very hot fire destroyed all the evidence."

"Did you just say
wont?"

"Maybe. Why?"

Just wondering." Leaning over the back of his chair, she kissed the top of his head. "Anyone get hurt?"

"No. And, fortunately, the safety protocols activated in time to save the surrounding properties."

"Big words. You quoting?"

"Yes. You crazy?"

She thought about it for a minute but before she could answer, her phone rang. Stepping away from the chair, she flipped it open. "Good evening, Duncan."

"How did you know it was me?"

"Call display."

"Oh. Right. But yesterday...?"

"You called before I was up. It's pretty damned dark inside a coffin."

"You sleep in a coffin!?"

"No, I'm messing with your head again. I expect you've seen the news?"

"It's the only thing that's been on all day. You did that, didn't you? That was you destroying the nest! Did you get them all?"

"Yes."

"Are you sure?"

"They shit sulfur, Duncan. They were pretty flammable."

"But what if some of them were out, you know, hunting?"

"They hunt on crowded subway platforms. No crowds in the wee smalls."

"Oh. Okay. Did you find out where they came from?"

"No. It didn't seem like a good idea to sit down and play twenty questions with them. And besides, they just seemed to be intelligent because they were following pretty specific programming. They were probably no smarter than your average cockroach."

"But giant and bloodsucking?"

"Oh, yeah."

Vicki had no idea what he was thinking about during the long pause that followed; she didn't
want
to know.

"So it's safe for me to go back on the subway?"

"You and three million other people."

"About your bill..."

"We'll talk about it tomorrow in the coffee shop— we should be able to get into the area by then." She looked a question at Mike, now standing and watching her. He nodded reluctantly. "Seven thirty. Good night, Duncan."

Mike shook his head as she powered off the phone and holstered it. "You're actually going to charge him?"

"Well, I'd send a bill to the city but I doubt they'd pay it—given that there's no actual evidence I just saved their collective butts. Again." Demons, mummies, King-tics—it was amazing how fast that sort of thing got old. She followed Mike into the kitchen and watched a little jealously as he poured a cup of coffee. She missed coffee.

"Speaking of no actual evidence; how did you get the garbage train to blow?"

Vicki grinned. "Not that I'm admitting anything, detective-sergeant, but
if
I wanted to blow up a garbage train in a specific giant bloodsucking bug-infested place, I'd probably use a little accelerant and a timer, having first switched the rails and cleared the tunnels of all mammalian life forms."

"You closed down the entire system. Vicki."

"Giant bloodsucking bugs, Mike."

"I'm not saying you didn't have a good reason," he sighed, leaning against the counter. "But don't you think your solution was a little extreme?"

"Not really, no."

"What aren't you telling me?"

Moving into his arms, she bit him lightly on the chin. "I'm not telling you I blew up that garbage train."

"Good point."

"I'm not telling you what I really think of people who watch golf."

"Thank you."

She could feel his smile against the top of her head, his heart beating under her cheek, his life in her hands. Nor was she telling him that people like him, with type O blood, had been tagged so they'd be easier to find. Why bother with random biting when it was possible to go straight to the blood needed to create new queens? Even if they'd been harmless parasites, she'd have blown them up for that alone.

Mike Celluci was hers and she didn't share.

"Vicki, you going to tell me what you're snarling about?"

"Just thinking of something that really bugs me ..."

Sceleratus

*

"Man, this whole church thing just freaks me right out." Tony came out of the shadows where the streetlights stopped short of Holy Rosary Cathedral and fell into step beside the short, strawberry blond man who'd just come out of the building. "I mean, you're a member of the bloodsucking undead for Christ's sa... Ow!" He rubbed the back of his head. "What was that for?"

"I just came from confession. I'm in a mood."

"It's going to pass, right?" In the time it took him to maneuver around three elderly Chinese women, his companion had made it almost all the way to the parking lot and he had to run to catch up. "You know, we've been together what, almost two years, and you haven't been in church since last year around this time and..."

"Exactly this time."

"Okay. Is it like an anniversary or something?"

"Exactly like an anniversary." Henry Fitzroy, once Duke of Richmond and Somerset, bastard son of Henry VIII, fished out the keys to his BMW and unlocked the door.

Tony studied Henry's face as he got into his own seat, as he buckled his seat belt, as Henry pulled out onto Richards Street. "You want to tell me about it?" he asked at last.