Disclaimer: Blood Ties and all related characters and names are copyright of Tanya Huff and various television networks.

Summary: Separated from her partner and injured in the line of duty, Vicki is saved by a stranger who can't possibly be what he appears… Can he? Pre-Blood Ties.

Just a little mysterious romance for the holiday season.

Cops(e)

Well, she hadn't planned on getting stuck in a situation like this. Of course, she hadn't planned on being on duty tonight at all, but it was Christmas Eve and since she wasn't spending it with Mom, she'd been put on-call for the night. She hadn't thought she'd be called in - after all, it was Christmas Eve. If people were going to get along for one night of the year, couldn't it be tonight? - but she had been. Her and Celluci, much to the ire of his family, she was sure.

"Do you really think there's any chance of finding the murderer in this?" Vicki asked, swinging her arms around in an arc to take in the dark sky, darker shadows, and even darker cloud cover. It was threatening to snow. Not a good sign.

"Follow the trail," Celluci replied. His flashlight traced out a trail of footsteps that led away from the red stained churned up snow in front of them. She let out a choke of laughter.

"And I suppose that's my job?" she asked. Celluci grinned as the beam of his flashlight reached where the footsteps disappeared into a copse of trees.

"I can't fit in there," he said. He sounded smug. She wanted to slug him. "I will, of course, be covering you from outside of the copse." Sureee he would be. No doubt he'd stay in the nice warm car while she was out verifying that their perpetrator had escaped.

"Fine, but remember this: You owe me," Vicki snapped, turning her own flashlight on and taking off toward the copse. There was snow everywhere; on her pants, in her hair, soaking into her boots… It was enough to make anyone testy. It didn't help that she was freezing her butt off.

She brought one hand up to push away an overhanging branch and entered the copse of trees, letting out a curse when, upon releasing the branch, it came back and smacked her across the head, sending a shower of the heavy snow that had been resting on it all down her front. She spat some of it out of her mouth. Celluci definitely owed her for this.

Shaking her head to clear it of her vendetta, well aware that she had a job to do, Vicki focused her flashlight on the footprints in the snow beneath her feet. If there was one good thing about snowy Toronto winters, it was that it made tracking murderers a slight bit easier. Or it at least made it easier to make a guess at the size of the suspect they were searching for. Yeah, that was about it.

She brought the flashlight up and shone it through the copse around her. The trees were thicker than they had appeared from the outside, it was darker inside of the copse than it had been outside of it, and she'd come so deeply into it that she could only see faint shadows of the flashing lights that still had to be whirring around on top of the cars. If anything, those faint shadows that were being cast were more eerie than it would have been in here without them.

She really hoped that whoever had killed the man outside of here wasn't hiding behind one of those trees. There wasn't much room for a tussle and there were plenty of places to hide and strike from if the suspect felt threatened. She should've swallowed her pride and told Mike that he was following her in here - why did she have to be such a hot shot all the time?

There was a noise to her left and though Vicki identified it a moment later as only being the wind moving through the trees and causing them to rustle, it was a moment too late. She spun, moving one foot out to get a better foothold in the deep snow, and her foot plunged into a hole that the snow had hidden. Cursing as pain shot up through the leg, Vicki made to move it and then thought better of it. She'd probably fallen into a rabbit hole and twisted it. What did the rabbit think it was doing, digging a hole here?

There was another noise behind her and Vicki resisted the urge to spin again. That hadn't been the wind, she was sure of it. Tense at the knowledge that there was something behind her that she probably wouldn't be able to see even if she did dare to turn around and look for it, Vicki took a long breath where she stood. As she let it out, she felt a hand on her shoulder.

Reflexes kicking in at the unexpected touch, Vicki's elbow shot out behind her to catch the person in the stomach, and her flashlight flipped around in her hand so that she was using the handle as a baton. Before she could move to hit the person with it though, she found her hand was stopped by a hand firmly on her wrist.

"I'm not going to hurt you, Detective," a man's voice said in her ear. Vicki tensed. The voice was cultured, not at all the type of voice that she would expect from someone hiding in a copse of trees. Not at all the voice that she expected the man - or woman - who had committed the murder outside would have. Of course, that was a terrible generalization. It took all types of people to make the world, after all.

"Let go of me, let me turn around to see you, don't move and then we'll see," Vicki instructed. She felt the hand on her wrist hesitate before it loosened and the presence behind her - and what a strange presence it was - took a step backward. She felt as though a pressure on her shoulders had lessened as she forced herself to turn around and look at the man.

She brought her flashlight up and over him so that she could get an idea of what he looked like, noting with interest the way in which he flinched backward when the beam of light stayed too long near his eyes. He was either naturally incredibly light sensitive or had been out in the dark far too long. If he was her murderer - though from the look of it, he wasn't. He wasn't wearing the heavy boots that had made the footprints in the snow, for one thing - then he was fairly daring, approaching her like this.

"Your name, and your reason for being here," Vicki said in a bland tone. They weren't requests, they were statements that the man was required to answer. She wasn't going to do him the favour of asking them nicely. Not when he'd snuck up behind her in a bush.

"It doesn't matter," the man's voice had a strange rasp to it now and as Vicki stared, she noticed that his eyes had darkened and his teeth looked a little bit shinier than they had been a moment ago. "You haven't seen me." Even as he said it though, he carefully lifted her and then put her down before she could blink.

When she finally did blink though, her eyes readjusted to see Mike leaning against the front of one of the cars, talking to someone. She was at the edge of the copse again. What the hell had just happened?

Carefully, wary of her injured ankle, Vicki spun and shone her flashlight back into the copse. There had been a man. Or, she thought that he was a man. He had certainly looked, sounded and - as reluctant as she was to admit the observation - smelled like a man. She turned back to face Celluci, who was crossing the snow covered lawn to reach her.

"Well?" she heard him ask. Her mind wasn't fully on Mike though, as terrible as it probably was for their outside-of-work relationship. Even as she responded to his query, telling him that everything was normal in the copse, that she hadn't found anyone and that shecould walk and didn't need his help getting to the car, no matter how much she was limping, her mind was elsewhere. It was stuck on the man that had somehow taken her from the middle of the copse to where she had come in before she could blink an eye.

It was stuck on the man that had whispered, "Merry Christmas, may we meet again," in her ear as he put her down. And most of all, it was on the place on her forehead where she could still feel the pressure of his lips as he had given her a gentle kiss.

"It's been a weird night, Mike. Are we done here?"

Celluci raised an eyebrow at her but quickly turned his head to scan the scene before he nodded. "Sure, Vicki." He was used to her odd behaviour, she was used to his. It had to come from being a homicide cop. Had there really been a man in those trees?

End

Oh. Wow. That didn't turn out how I wanted it to. Oh well… I like the title though. It amuses me.