Disclaimer: Blood Ties belongs to Tanya Huff and Lifetime, not to me.
Spoilers: for everything up through Stone Cold
Luxuria - Extravagance or lust, one of the seven deadly sins
Vicki shut the novel she'd been reading and rubbed her aching eyes, bouncing her glasses against the bridge of her nose. How long, she wondered, would she be able to read books? How long would she be able to see a computer screen or navigate her way to the cab waiting for her at the curb? How long did she have until she went blind?
For some reason she didn't dread not being able to see a television, even though during her years as a cop her tastes in fiction had changed from books to the more passive TV. TV she figured she'd always be able to follow, but the realization that her favorite books might be locked away from her before long filled her with dread. She was rereading like crazy.
Especially the trash. She sighed as she tossed the paperback onto the coffee table and started turning out the high-wattage lights she needed in order to read without a headache. Every book she chose lately seemed to have steamy sex scenes thick within its pages. Some she remembered, others took her by surprise. And she couldn't help but notice that she noticed it too much.
She headed into the bedroom, pulled off her clothes and pitched them toward the hamper, and slid into bed in her underwear. She fell asleep quickly.
And dreamed of hands stroking her body, a comfortable weight on the bed, warm and familiar. A scent of cologne and male musk, so good, so right, just there. She writhed and rubbed, her skin glorying in his caresses. Vaguely she realized she was dreaming, but like the best of such dreams, it was so real . . .
Vicki woke in darkness and sat up. There was no one in her bed but her. And the faintest hint of cologne.
"Emmanuel!" she yelled into the murk. "Emmanuel, cut it out!"
Tina sorted the DVDs from the VHS in the return box, checking that there were discs in the covers and that the tapes had been rewound. A customer approached the counter, DVD in hand, the double sided disc of Desperado and El Mariachi. Tina opened the box, confirmed the right DVD was there and rang him up. By the time she was done Tim, her manager, had gone to the back. She grabbed the chance to check her email illicitly.
Still nothing. That morning, before leaving for work, she had posted the latest chapter of her Harry Potter fanfiction story to a mailing list. She had hoped for at least one email from someone saying they liked it. Well, truth be told, she hoped for a flood of emails praising the story, like the kind of feedback Jen always got for her stories. Tina hadn't gotten one, yet. It had been hours.
Hurt and angry, she logged out and went to her next customer. He was renting King Kong. She opened the case, but the DVD was not King Kong. The label was decorated with odd symbols in a drippy red font. Nowhere could she read the movie's name. No matter, it wasn't King Kong. She showed him the problem and the man went to get a different disc from the shelf. While she waited, she fumed. What was the matter with those people? Couldn't they tell a good story when one came into their inbox? How ungrateful to get another chapter in this wonderful epic tale and not even say thank you. She yanked the disc from the case, and it snapped in two in her hand. Shit! She looked around for Tim, but he wasn't there. She tossed the disc in the trash, and pushed some paper in on top of it to hide it just as the customer returned. This time he did have King Kong in the DVD case, so she rung him up and got rid of him.
Since she was still alone at the counter, Tina got on the web and logged into a public community for Harry Potter fanfiction. This was where Jen always posted her stories, but Tina usually wasn't brave enough. It was bad enough to have an empty inbox, but in a place where everyone could see the feedback your story got - it was too humiliating to have everyone see that no one had replied. Jen, who went to Tina's high school, always posted to these public communities, and always got tons of compliments in public for her stories. Jen hogged all the praise. Sure enough, Jen's latest stupid story was being sung to the heavens. "Brilliant!" someone said, and "You are a genius!" someone else said. Tina couldn't believe it.
As if thinking of her had conjured her, Jen herself walked into the store, with her boyfriend, Tiegan. Tiegan was 18, so he could rent from their store where Jen couldn't, so Jen always came in with Tiegan. Tina looked away, pretending she didn't notice them. It was better than letting Jen pretend she didn't notice Tina. Since they both were huge fans of Harry and both wrote fanfiction for other fans, they should have been friends, but Jen and her older boyfriend thought they were too good to associate with Tina. Tina thought Jen's stories were crap and kept waiting for the people with taste in the fandom to recognize that. She logged off the fiction group, hastily.
Jen and Tiegan came to the counter. Jen with her long, straight flaxen hair and her willowy limbs, could have played a graceful elf in the Tolkein movies. Tiegan, slender and pale, with curly dark hair and a cute nose, made Tina's heart beat faster. Tina felt acutely her twenty extra pounds and coarse, unruly hair. These were not the guys to be impressed with her piercings or her skunk stripe, either.
"Hey," said Tiegan, putting Henry V on the counter. Jen gave her a forced smile, acknowledging their acquaintance. Tina forced one back. "Hi," she said. She wished Jen would say something about her story; she must have seen it. But she'd poke sharp sticks in her eyes before she said anything about Jen's story.
She concentrated on ringing up the rental. She had never seen Henry V but had vaguely wondered what the V was for. She opened the case and there was another one of those unreadable discs with the drippy red font on the label. Someone must have gotten an entire shipment of discs misplaced.
She reached to remove the disc automatically, but then stopped herself. As casually as she could manage, she snapped the case closed, placed it on the counter, and took Tiegan's cash. She carried the DVD to beyond the theft control sensors, met the couple there, and handed it to them. "Enjoy," she said. They left without a word.
Ha, she thought. So much for their romantic evening. She risked a quick glimpse of her email, again. There, to her amazement, were twelve messages, all with the subject line of her story title. Twelve feedback emails. As she stared, the computer beeped and a Thirteenth came in. Her heart was pounding, but before she could click to open one of the messages, Tim came back out and headed for the counter. She had to log off.
But, oh God, it was wonderful.
Coreen was late. Vicki was irritated. She hadn't been able to find much on incubi on the internet, not even the sites Coreen had found when she first encountered Emmanuel. She'd gotten little sleep, since she'd been so unnerved she'd turned the lights on. Finishing the steamy novel had not done anything for her peace of mind, either.
She gave up on the internet and concentrated on the missing persons case she might actually get paid for solving, sordid as it was. When Coreen breezed in, even the double mocha latte she placed on Vicki's desk wasn't enough to mollify her.
"Where have you been? You're late."
Coreen arched a sculpted Goth eyebrow. "I have hours?" she asked.
Vicki shut her mouth and rethought what she was going to say. "Well, you're usually in at . . ."
"Because that would imply I was getting paid," Coreen said. She smiled brightly, which took the edge off the words, but Vicki felt it anyway.
"Maybe you ought to consider getting a real job," Vicki said, reluctantly.
"And miss all this? Nothing doing."
Vicki admitted defeat. She really couldn't demand regular hours from someone she wasn't paying yet. And Coreen had been a help. "All right, well, then find me that information you had on incubuses . . . incubi. What was the part about taking the woman's soul to Hell?"
"Okay," Coreen sat at the computer, unburdening herself of her jacket and purse. "Why?"
Vicki paced around in front of her desk. "I was just thinking, we never did anything about Emmanuel. I kind of figured what he was doing with the Desperate Housewives was harmless, after the jealousy demon turned out to be the culprit. But, you know, Mike said something about how he was breaking the husbands' hearts, and I swear there was something about if the woman yields to the incubus . . ." She glanced at Coreen and looked away.
"He's back, isn't he?" Coreen asked. "Did he visit you?"
"You know, that's really none of your business."
"He did! How cool is that?" Then, at Vicki's look, "or not? Okay, okay. I think that part about taking the woman's soul to Hell came from Henry. I never read it in anything."
"Well, look, would you? I'm off to go knock on some doors and ask questions about this, totally non-supernatural, case."
Celluci almost didn't notice. It wasn't his case, it didn't happen on his beat. He wasn't even on duty at the time. But he saw the crime scene photos on Kate's desk. The police photographer had managed to capture the small but elaborate symbol carved into the wood of some piece of furniture near the woman's body.
"Kate, what's this?" Celucci asked. He had to ask. Now that he knew of the existence of the supernatural - some supernatural, anyway - he couldn't let it go. Not that it meant anything to him, not that he recognized it, but it looked wrong.
Kate shrugged. "Dunno," she said. "If it were painted in blood on the wall, and we didn't already know who did it, we'd definitely be thinking cult murder, but that could have been cut years ago by the woman's kids when they were little and got ahold of Daddy's knife."
"What's the case?"
"Woman was murdered by her daughter's boyfriend. She caught the kids making out and the boy went ape-shit with an axe. Ugly."
"That hasn't been on the news."
Kate tightened her mouth. "Watch tonight. The boy's 18, so they'll release his name. The girl's hysterical." Kate shuffled the folder to the school photo of the girl - smiling face with delicate features and lovely straight blonde hair.
"Pretty," Celucci said.
"Good student, too. Same with the boyfriend; no priors. Nothing to explain this."
"Did forensics look at that carving in the . . . what is that?"
"It's the living room entertainment center. I didn't ask them to. Think I should?"
"Hey, it's your case, I didn't mean to butt in."
"But . . .?" Kate smiled. She was a promising detective and not too proud to take advice.
"Humor me. Have them look at it."
"Done."
Henry rose, showered, shaved and dressed, his usual routine. In his work area he found the canvas of Christine he had painted for their anniversary. It depressed him. One reason he painted her every year was that he had never been satisfied with any of his attempts to capture her, and this one was no better. He checked his answering machine. No calls. That depressed him further. He knew he'd have plenty of correspondence waiting for him in his email, but if Vicki wanted him, she'd call, and she hadn't.
He considered Vicki as he stared at the painting. He did want to keep her safe; she'd been branded by Astaroth and now it seemed that supernatural and infernal beings were drawn to her. But his own life was dear to him as well, and since meeting her his life had been disrupted, put in mortal danger, and worst of all, judged. He'd actually resolved after the Wendigo to back off some from Vicki and her sleuthing. It was hard to remember back to the better times, before Celucci and Mendoza had changed everything, but the Wendigo had reminded him that Vicki's line of work could kill him. The horror of even those few seconds he'd been turned to stone by the Gorgon stayed with him, too. And he'd been there because Vicki had been worried about Celucci. Henry hadn't allowed himself the fury and hate he could feel for the man, and he stifled that for Vicki's sake, too. And for what? Vicki had always resisted his affection, despite the fact that physically, as his senses informed him, she was receptive. And after Mendoza . . . he didn't know what she thought of him. He could be risking his life for a love that would remain entirely unrequited. In his youth he had thought dying for love to be romantic, now it looked sickeningly inevitable.
He resolved again to keep more distance from Vicki; protect his heart from any further pain. Get some more work done.
The phone rang and he snatched it. "This is Henry."
"Henry." It was Vicki! "Have you got a minute? I wanted to find out more of what you know about incubuses, or incubi, whatever."
"I've got all night. I'll be right over." He hung up before she could say it wasn't necessary, grabbed his coat and went out his door.
to be continued