Stalemate

Detective Mike Celluci rubbed his chin and permitted himself a sigh in place of the groan rising in his gut. He shouldn't have stayed late—again. He could have done without knowing this particular of the Jamison homicide, a detail Mohadevan was far too meticulous to let go unnoticed. Closing the coroner's report, he looked warily at the files piling in his in box. How many more in there harbored the same dark earmarks? Those tiny oddities hiding in the everyday that he was cursed to comprehend for what they truly were?

With uncanny timing, the paper pile fluttered ever so slightly around the edges. Even as he realized what was happening he puzzled over whether the evening was now totally ruined or improving considerably. "Didn't they knock in your century?"

"Good evening, Detective."

Celluci looked up, despairing. His guest wasn't taking the bait. Plan B then. "You're getting sloppy in your old age, Fitzroy." He brandished the Jamison report.

Henry Fitzroy's lean, twenty-something form lounged casually in the visitor chair in front of Celluci's desk, right foot propped on left knee, fingers steepled before a face an artist might have chiseled from marble. He had to admit that even in a purely physical sense Fitzroy was seductive. Any woman would have been hard pressed to resist those striking features and intense gaze even without knowing anything else about him. Any woman. Even...

Fitzroy's voice, as silky as it was haughty, interrupted that uncomfortable train of thought. "Of what do I stand accused now?"

Celluci slapped the file down, flipped it open and slid a series of crime scene photos across the desk. "Rachel Jamison. Twenty-one years old and not one day more. Found in the landfill this morning after being missing for a week following a night of clubbing with her friends to celebrate self-same twenty-first birthday. As you can see the night didn't end well for her."

Fitzroy rifled through the images, one more gruesome than the next, as Celluci watched him intently for anything at all the other might reveal. To his surprise, there actually was a reaction. A soft furrow of the unmarked brow. A turning down of a corner of the sensual mouth. Celluci moved in for the kill, figurative though it would be. "Someone went through an awful lot of trouble to make this look like a particularly brutal rape and stabbing." Fitzroy looked up, his blue eyes sharp and cold, but Celluci was undeterred. He flung down one more picture—the damning evidence—this one taken by Mohadevan of a wound on the victim's neck that had not been evident until all the excess blood had been cleared away. "Care to tell me how many others there are that we haven't found?"

Fitzroy stared at the last image for a moment longer before responding. "Much as I appreciate your impressive skills at deductive reasoning, Detective Celluci, you do realize that you are jumping to conclusions here, don't you?"

"Oh, let's see now. A canine bite mark on a victim's throat. One vampire in all of Toronto. What am I supposed to think? I swear, if I thought it'd actually do any good I would put a gun to you right now and get this over with."

"I won't deny that I fed on her. But I did not kill her any more than I have any of my dining companions for at least four centuries. It's wholly unnecessary not to mention stupid for exactly this reason." With a flick of his wrist the photo went sailing back across the desk.

Celluci caught it under a slamming hand. "This girl was murdered by..."

"Someone else," Fitzroy snapped in a tone that brooked no argument. "Just because I feed on someone doesn't make me responsible for them afterward."

How convenient for you, he thought and took a moment to calm himself. "Very well. Let's say that's so. Any other vampires recently in town?" God, how he longed for the time when that questions would have been unthinkable in a serious discussion.

"You know that your perpetrator is human. I will help you look for him if you like."

Celluci snorted. "If he's human, I might just try and handle this one on my own. Thanks anyway." Fitzroy shrugged. "To what do I owe this visit anyway, Your Highness? Surely you didn't just stop by to give me a headache."

The vampire smiled. "On the contrary. I am about to fulfill your fondest wish, Detective."

"Oh, I really doubt that."

"I will be leaving Toronto."

"OK. You're getting warmer," he conceded. "For how long?"

"For good." Celluci blinked, the gears of his mind slowing. "I have sold my territory here," Fitzroy went on. "The buyer has an impeccable reputation and should not present you with any problems. I doubt you'll even know she's here. You will be free to live once more in utter ignorance of my kind," he finished with a grand gesture of both hands.

"It's too late for that, Fitzroy," said Celluci, leaning forward. The tumblers in his head clicked into place and locked. "Have you told Vicki?"

"Not yet. But she suspects." When Celluci said nothing, the vampire leaned closer, his regard of the human intensifying. Mere inches remained between them. The scent of damp night rose from Fitzroy's coat. "I thought...you might be glad."

"Yeah. I thought so too."

"I don't understand." The slanted eyes narrowed. "I am leaving. I am leaving her. Not that I'm doing this for you, but isn't that what you wanted?"

"That's right. You're leaving her." He nodded to himself. The relief he had long thought this news would accompany was nowhere in evidence. "You're leaving her to fend for herself in the hell you introduced her to. You're leaving her to deal with the parade of ghouls that have come into her life, again, on account of..."

"Not true."

"...you. And worst of all, you're leaving her unprotected against a demon just waiting to get his claws into her and take over the frigging world!" With some satisfaction he noted the dumbfounded expression on Fitzroy's perfect face. "Just like everyone else you feed on, you selfish little bastard, you accept no responsibility for her whatsoever."

Anger, bright and clear, replaced the surprise. "That will be quite enough, Detective Celluci."

"Aw. Have I hit an un-dead nerve?"

"Vicki can more than take care of herself. Mentally she is stronger than any other human I have ever met. That is why the occult finds her. I'm merely part of that 'parade of ghouls' as you call it. And she has been very, very good at keeping me at arm's length, I assure you."

"Ah. So that's it then. If you don't get what you want, you tug tail and run? Hardly worthy of a son of Henry VIII, ill-begotten or not, don't you think?"

Fitzroy closed his eyes. When he opened them again, Celluci realized that he might have crossed the unspoken line they had maintained ever since the unfortunate incident with that radical priest. The pain was raw enough to almost make him regret the words. But only almost.

"I don't want to leave," Fitzroy said very succinctly as though trying to explain himself to a small child. "I want to stay here and protect her for the rest of her life. She has risked her life for mine several times. She…." He paused, cleared his throat. "She means more to me than I can say. But I can never give her the life she deserves. And she will never give me more than her friendship. She deserves you, Mike. I love her too much to stand in the way of that any longer."

Celluci felt like he had been hit in the gut—by Fitzroy's words as well as the truth they crystallized for him. "Well. Since we're confessing our darkest thoughts here…. God help me, Henry, I can't believe I'm saying this, but Vicki needs you more than she ever needed me. I can't protect her anymore. I can't be there for her. I can't live this double life between light and dark, dealing with things I don't even remotely understand. I'm useless to her. Useless." He took a breath and plunged in. "As for giving her a life she deserves, what sort of life is she going to have once her eyesight is completely gone?"

"What are you saying?"

"Don't tell me you can't cure her. I won't buy it."

The vampire looked a little like Celluci had slapped him. "I won't tell you that, no. But...I would have to turn her. And that would mean losing her. Forever. We cannot share territories. You know that."

"But you are willing to lose her now?"

"To the life she deserves. Yes."

"A blind life. With true death at the end."

"Do I understand you correctly? You would have me turn her to restore her vision? You would lose her to a lonely life of drinking blood and eternal darkness of the soul?"

Celluci set his jaw. He hadn't thought all this out to its conclusion until just now. It would be a deal with the devil, true. But then, where Vicki was concerned, these days every deal was a deal with the devil. "Seems to be working for you well enough."

Fitzroy stood up sharply, paced for the door, came back, leaned across the desk. "I wanted to be a vampire! Vicki does not. I for one intend to respect that."

"Not yet anyway. Not even she is stubborn enough to hold out against you forever, Henry," he said very quietly, his heart sinking low. Or was it breaking?

Their eyes locked, searching. A long silence dragged through the room until Fitzroy broke it with a whisper. "Now who is the selfish bastard, I wonder?"

Before the human could fully comprehend the question, the vampire was gone as completely as though he had never been there at all. "Wait!" he shouted into the darkened hallway. "Does that mean you're staying?"

But there was no answer.