Blood Bank (33 page)

Henry stepped forward to meet her and, as they made contact, the room and the bed swirled away. When their surroundings came back into focus, they were standing on one side of a familiar room, tucked in between a green vinyl recliner and an artificial Christmas tree. A little girl, about five years old, sat cross-legged on the floor gleefully cheering on the battling plastic robots set up on the coffee table.

"Oh, my God, that's me!"

Henry pulled his cloak from Vicki's loosened grasp. "I told you—Christmas past."

"I loved those robots!" Stepping forward, she knelt at the end of the table. "Now this is what I call a toy with no socially redeeming value."

"Vicki! Uncle Stan's here."

The young Vicki jumped to her feet shrieking, "Grandma!" and raced for the kitchen leaving the red robot lying on its side, fists flailing, plastic feet paddling the air. Unopposed, the blue robot headed for the edge of the table.

"My grandmother always stayed with Uncle Stan's family at Christmastime," Vicki explained. She could almost hear Henry wondering how she'd gotten from her uncle to her grandmother. "If Uncle Stan's here, Grandma's here." She reached for the blue robot only to have it fall through her palm and bounce under the couch.

"This is the past," Henry reminded her. "Shadows of things that were; you can't affect it."

"Which makes me think we're here in order for it to affect me." Still on her knees, she twisted around to face him. "If I'm supposed to get in touch with my inner child, you might as well take me back right now. My inner child is at a boarding school in Uruguay."

"Ah." He nodded as if that made perfect sense. "Well, we can't go back until we've seen everything. There are rules."

"Rules? You tricked me to get me here." Rolling up onto her feet, she took a step toward him.

Henry shrugged. "You're a little predictable."

"And you're a..."

A babble of voices cut her off. Her mother led the group into the living room, closely followed by her Aunt Connie holding baby Susie and trying to keep three-year-old Steve from racing straight for the tree. The last time Vicki'd seen her mother, she'd been a rotting reanimated corpse, murdered and brought back to life as part of an insane science experiment. Infinitely preferable to see her young and laughing, even if the home highlight job made her hair look horribly striped.

Young Vicki came next, walking backward, holding her grandmother's hand and listing everything Santa had brought her.

"Oh, my God, I'm wearing a Partridge Family sweatshirt."

"You're very cute."

"I'm five," Vicki snorted. "Even I could manage cute at five."

Last into the room came her dad and her Uncle Stan, conducting a spirited argument about hockey in general and the recent Toronto/Boston game in particular. Her dad, a lifelong Black Hawks fan, was loudly declaring that the Leafs' recent win had been pure luck. Her Uncle Stan, who really didn't care either way but liked to wind her dad up, was declaiming the superior firepower of the Toronto team.

"Weird," she said softly as her father scooped up her cousin Steve just as he was about to climb the tree, "I thought he was taller."

"You were five."

"I haven't been five for a long time, Henry."

Time kindly compressed opening yet more presents and the singing of Christmas carols led by Vicki's no longer decomposing mother. As the sun set, the whole family sat down to a dinner of turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, frozen peas, and brown-and-serve buns.

"Good lord," Vicki muttered as the canned cranberry sauce was passed around the table, "could we have been any more middle class?"

"You look happy."

Waving an enormous drumstick, young Vicki was teaching her younger cousin how to make a dam out of potatoes so the gravy didn't touch the vegetables. She did look happy, older Vicki had to admit, but then, it didn't take much at five. "Are we finished here?"

Henry nodded. "Here, yes. Time to move on." He raised a hand and their surroundings wobbled slightly, then came back into focus.

Vicki rolled her eyes. "Wow. They clearly spent a fortune on the special effects. And in case you didn't notice..." She waved a dismissive hand at the table. "...we didn't go anywhere."

"We moved two years forward."

"Golly gee. Nothing's changed."

And then she noticed the empty place at the table.

"My grandmother..."

"Died," Henry said softly.

"She was old. People get old and they die." Even to her own ears, she sounded angry.

"She was surrounded by people who loved her, right to the end. There are worse ways to die."

Vicki remembered the way flesh felt tearing under her teeth, the rush of blood into her mouth, the feel of a life as it fled. "Yeah, well, you should know."

Henry made no response, but then what could he say?
Takes one to know one.
Too trite, however true.

The scene shifted again. This time, although the food hadn't changed, there were only two people sitting at the table.

"Your Uncle Stan just didn't feel right coming this year," Vicki's mother said as she spooned mashed potatoes onto a plate. "Not with your father so recently... gone."

Ten-year-old Vicki muttered something that may have been, "Sure," and slapped margarine onto a bun.

"Wow. You lose one, you lose them all." Vicki folded her arms.

"They were the closest family your mother had and they never came back for Christmas after your father..."

"...ran off with the whore half his age. Yeah, tell me something I don't know, Henry, or move on, because if you're the only thing around here I can affect, I'm about to."

His eyes darkened but before Vicki could react, the scene shifted.

There wasn't anything especially Christmas-like about Linda Ronstadt except that "Desperado" was blasting from the speakers at the police Christmas party. This was the party after the family party—a staff sergeant from 52 Division sat slumped in a chair wearing the bottom half of a Santa suit, three couples shuffled around the dance floor, a group of old-timers were scaring the piss out of a rookie with exaggerated stories of Christmas suicides, and everyone had been drinking. Heavily.

"You're on the dance floor," Henry shouted over the music, breaking into her search.

"Oh, no..."

It was
that
Christmas party.

Grabbing Henry's arm, she leaned toward his ear. "Let's go."

"Oh, come on, you look cute. Both of you."

Unable to help herself, she followed his gaze to one of the three dancing couples. Her younger self wore a navy blue sweater with white snowflakes embroidered onto it over a very tight pair of acid wash jeans with ankle zippers tucked into a pair of black and silver ankle boots. Fashion being slightly kinder to men, Mike wore black jeans, a black dress shirt, and a red lamé tie.

"Oh, my God."

"At least you weren't in leg warmers. I remember the eighties," Henry added when she shot him a warning glare. "And trust me, the 1780s were worse."

Both younger Vicki and younger Mike were obviously drunk. He leaned forward and murmured something into her ear. She leaned back, one hand slipped between their bodies, then she grinned and mouthed, "Where?"

"Forget it." A hand against his chest kept Henry from following the couple off the dance floor. "I know how this ends and we're not watching."

One red-gold eyebrow rose. "Why not? Are you ashamed?"

"For Christ's sake, Henry, we had sex in a stall in the women's can. I'm not proud of it." But she couldn't stop herself from grinning at the memory. "Okay, I'm not ashamed of it either but we're still not watching."

"We could..."

"No."

"Fine." Linda Ronstadt gave way to ABBA. "It seems that after the disappointment of your childhood, you learned how to celebrate Christmas."

She stared at him in disbelief. "Is that why we're here?" When his eyebrow rose again, she started to snicker. "This is the best whoever is in charge of this farce could come up with? I get drunk and done up against some badly spelled graffiti? That's their idea of a merry Christmas?"

"You didn't have a good time?"

"I had a great time." Laughing now, full out. She hadn't laughed like this in... actually, she couldn't remember the last time she'd laughed like this. A quick sidestep took her out of the path of the staff sergeant in the Santa suit as he staggered off to empty his bladder, bang on the wall between the cans, and yell at the younger them to keep it the hell down. "I had a great time at least twice," she gasped, forcing the words through the laughter. "I always have a great time with Mike if you must know, but that's not the point."

Henry was looking a little pouty and that was funny too. "Then what is the point?"

"That this is stupid." Wiping her eyes with one hand, she waved the other at the cheesy decorations and the drunk cops. "If you've got nothing better than this, you might as well call it a night! Oh, my God..." She'd almost got herself under control but the opening bars of the DJ's latest choice set her off again. "...he's going to play 'The Time Warp'!"

Snarling softly, Henry raised a hand, the party faded, and they were back in the bedroom again.

Vicki collapsed on the bed. "Thank you. I don't think I was up to watching that." After a few final snickers, she took a deep breath and sat up to find Henry staring down at her. "You're not finished?"

"Just one more thing." His eyes darkened. "Michael Celluci was the best thing that ever happened to you, as much as it pains me to admit it. He has always accepted you for what you are—opinionated, obnoxiously competitive, and emotionally defensive—and has loved you anyway. He has given you a place in his home and his heart without ever asking that you cease to walk the night. All he asks is that you spend Christmas with his family and yet your fear continually denies him this one thing."

"And it's going to keep denying him." Gripping the comforter with both hands, she kept herself from rising to answer the challenge in his eyes. "That way there's no danger of my skipping the shortbread and snacking on Aunt Louise."

"That's not what you fear."

"Cousin Jeffrey then."

"I have seen four hundred and seventy Christmases, Vicki. I know your fear."

"You know Cousin Jeffrey?"

"Vicki..."

She snorted. "You know your fears, Henry. You don't know mine."

"I know..."

"No, you don't."

"Our kind..."

"Nope."

He was going to lose control any minute, she could see it in the way he'd subtly shifted his weight. His age made the whole one-vampire-to-a-territory imperative— not to mention the one-vampire-to-a-completely- cracked-fantasy—both easier and harder to overcome. "You can be the most irritating person I have ever met," he snarled and vanished.

Vicki pulled her fingers out of the holes in the comforter and the mattress beneath and raised them over her head. "I win."

Although it didn't, unfortunately, appear that she could go home yet.

Three spirits, Tony had said.

"Next," she sighed.