Blood Bank (32 page)

"Look, I have no problem with Christmas. You want to dress up and play Santa's Workshop, that's fine with me. Someone else wants to go into debt until next November, their choice. I just want to be left alone to celebrate Christmas my way."

"Bet you don't."

"Don't what?"

"Celebrate Christmas."

"Maybe I'm Jewish. You ever think of that?"

"Are you?"

"No, but..." She waved at hand at Mike, suddenly wanting the elf's too-penetrating gaze pointed somewhere else. "He's working all day."

Dark eyes remained locked on her face. "So the cops with families can have the day off and then I betcha he's spending the evening with about sixty people from nine to ninety who'll be glad to see him. Big Italian-Canadian family. Lot of hugging. You should go with him."

"You should mind your own business."

"Except we're not talking about me," he snorted. "We're talking about you."

"You don't know anything about me." She let the Hunter rise enough to silver her eyes.

To her surprise, the elf met her gaze. "All right, you're not so tough," he muttered after a long moment. "And you need to get moving, lady. The mall's about to close."

Vicki blinked, looked around, and realized that a number of the stores had already pulled down their security grids and the food court was rapidly emptying. Santa had disappeared and his helpers were packing things up.

"I forgot things closed so early on Chrismas Eve," Mike said as he wrapped her hand in his and continued their interrupted walk to the exit. "I hope you didn't still have shopping to do."

A little unsettled, she let him pull her along. "No, I'm good."

"I've always thought so."

His tone of voice made her feel warm, wanted, and unworthy all at once but she recovered enough to snarl at a group of carolers outside the doors. "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen" went up an octave and changed key twice.

It wasn't until they got to the car that she thought to wonder how the elf had known Mike was a cop.

*

Mike was working a twelve-hour shift—six am to six pm—so Vicki woke him up at five with lips and teeth and kept him distracted for long enough that he had no time to do anything but throw on clothes and race out the door. No time to start in on it being Christmas Day. Time enough to say, "Think about tonight, that's all I'm asking," as he left.

She'd thought about it. She thought it was a bad idea, her mingling with Mike's extended family as if they were a couple like any other.

"And what does your girlfriend do, Michael?"

"Well, Mom, Vicki spends her days unconscious in a lightproof packing crate in my crawl space and after sunset she works as a private investigator."

"That sounds interesting."

"Have her tell you about the reanimated Egyptian wizard who tried to take over the world sometime. Oh, and did I mention she's a vampire?"

Okay, not likely, but still not a good idea. Besides, with luck she had a couple of hundred Christmases to look forward to. She needed to pace herself.

"A couple of hundred years of Chia pets, dogs in antlers, and Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree,'" she muttered, sitting down at her laptop. "I can't wait."

At fifteen minutes to sunrise, she shut down, took her cell phone from the charger, and headed for the crawl space only to find that Mike had hung a wreath on the end of the crate that opened.

"You'd think I could get away from the whole Christmas thing down here," she sighed as she stripped..Sinking into the slab of memory foam, she locked up, slipped under the duvet, and turned off the flashlight.

By sunset, Christmas would be nearly over.

*

Vampires don't dream.

"All right, if I'm not dreaming, what the hell is going on?" Vicki got out of the enormous wingback chair and peered around the room. There was a window and door and a fireplace, but beyond that, the room seemed a bit undefined—as though only the essentials were in place. There had to be walls, hard to have either a window or a door without them, but they were present more by inference than actuality.

The chair felt real. The green and blue checked dressing gown felt real. The sound of heavy footsteps dragging chains up a flight of stairs, however...

She turned as a familiar translucent figure burst through the door.

"In life," he howled, approaching the chair, "I was your informant Tony Foster!"

Because it seemed like the safest reaction, Vicki sat back down. "You're not dead, Tony."

Tony stopped and pulled a script from the pocket of his
Darkest Night
show jacket. "I'm sure that was my line," he muttered, flipping pages. "It's not like I ever wanted to be in front of the cameras, oh, no, I want to direct but what do I get... Ah. Here it is. In life I was your informant, Tony Foster. That's what it says." He shoved the script back in his pocket and grinned at her. "Can I go on?"

"Why not?" Eventually, there'd be a punch line and maybe then she'd figure out what was happening.

"I have come from beyond the grave to warn you."

Now they were getting somewhere. "Warn me of what?"

He held up the end of the chain wrapped around his body. About every fifteen centimeters was a classic lunch box. Although it was hard to see them clearly, Vicki recognized
Bewitched, The Brady Bunch,
and
Starsky and Hutch
as well as assorted
Star Wars, Star Treks,
and superheroes. "The chain you bear was as long and heavy as this when I left Toronto and it has grown longer and heavier since."

"I'm dragging lunch boxes?"

"They're metaphors. Each box represents—Hey!" Tony pulled a bit of the chain around to look more closely at the lunch box. "Cool. The old
Batman
television show. Do you know how much one of these things is worth, mint?"

"Do I care?"

"Right. Do you care? That's the problem." He cleared his throat and took up his declamation posture again. "Each box represents a family commitment you blew off."

"Okay." Vicki folded her arms and frowned. "My mother died, was brought back to life, and died again. That's about all the family commitment I've had in the last few years."

"And what about Mike Celluci? I mean, he's not my first choice, but you two are tight."

"How tight Mike and I are is none of your business."

"Friends are my business!"

"I thought you were a TAD on a crappy television show.'

Tony threw back his head and howled. Lights flashed. Thunder crashed. Omnious music played. "Why do you not believe in me, O Woman of the Worldly Mind?"

Still frowning, Vicki stared at him. The music stopped. The thunder faded. The ambient light steadied. After a long moment, Tony shrugged, looking sheepish.

"Listen, Vicki..." Adjusting his chain, he sat down on a second chair that had appeared as his butt descended. ". . . sometimes you get family, sometimes you make family; you know what I mean? Like Neil Simon said, no man is an island..."

"Paul
Simon. And that's not what he said."

"Whatever. What I'm getting at is even Dracula had those babes in the basement. Just because you're a member of the bloodsucking undead doesn't mean you should cut yourself off from human intercourse." He paused. Frowned. Started to snicker.

"You're laughing because you said intercouse, aren't you?" When Tony nodded, she rolled her eyes. "What are you, twelve?"

"Sorry."

"Just get on with it."

"Fine." Standing, he drew himself up to his full height and pointed. "You have one chance to escape my fate."

Vicki opened her mouth and closed it again, strongly suspecting that any questions about said fate wouldn't be answered anyway. At least not coherently.

Tony stared at her suspiciously for a moment then continued, "You will be visited by three ghosts..."

"You have got to be kidding me."

His shrug set the lunch boxes clanking. "Yeah, surprised me too. I'd have bet you were more the
It's a Wonderful Life
type."

"Get out."

"Expect the first when the bell tolls one!"

Before she could ask
What bell?
or even
What part of get out do you not understand?
he was gone.

Wondering just how high Mike's blood alcohol level had been and how he'd gotten it there before she fed on him this morning, Vicki blinked and found herself in an entirely different scene, lying inside the closed red brocade curtains of a huge four-poster bed. A quick glance under the covers. She was wearing blue flannel pajamas printed with dancing polar bears. Since she didn't own pajamas matching that description, or any pajamas at all for that matter, she was beginning to get a little concerned about just who was supplying the imagery.

A bell, and it sounded like a big one, tolled once.

All things considered, the sudden soft illumination through the red brocade wasn't much of a surprise.

"I can't believe I'm doing this," she muttered, sitting up and pulling the curtain back. On the far side of the room, she could just barely make out a figure in the center of a blazing circle of light. "Turn it down!" she snarled, one hand raised to protect sensitive eyes.

The light dimmed. "Better?"

"Henry?"

Glowing only slightly, Henry Fitzroy, bastard son of Henry VIII, once Duke of Richmond and Somerset, romance writer, ex-lover, and vampire walked toward the bed. He was wearing...

"What the hell are you wearing?"

Henry glanced down and smoothed the velvet skirt of his coat. "These are my Garter Robes. I have to say that I'm impressed by the condition they're in given that I haven't worn them in four hundred and seventy years."

"You look like..."

He bowed, right leg to the front, ass in the air, and his poofy hat nearly sweeping the floor. "A Tudor prince?"

"Yeah all right, that too." She sighed and dragged a pillow up against the headboard so she could lean back in comfort. "So what's going on? Tony told me I'd be visited by three ghosts."

"I am the first."

"No way."

"I am the Ghost of Christmas Past."

Vicki snorted. "Well, they got the past part right."

"Not my past, your past."

She snorted again. "Then you should be wearing a mullet and leg warmers. Either way, I'm not playing."

"This isn't a game, Vicki."

"And it isn't a dream." Arms folded over the dancing polar bears, she scowled up at him. "Because we don't dream. So what is it?"

"That's not for me to say. I'm here as a guide, nothing more."

"And if I refuse to be guided?"

His eyes darkened and his smile became a scimitar slash across his face.

She felt her own Hunter rise to answer his. Lips drawn back, she threw herself out of the bed, propelled by the territorial imperative that declared vampires hunted alone. How dare Henry show up in her subconscious—or wherever the fuck they were—and challenge? "You think so? Bring it on!"