There´s sometimes more than you´re expecting

Chapter 2

Is there a slight chance...?

Vicki walked to the front door and back into the living-room again. Anyway she had a feeling of inner restlessness. Coreen had come, had taken his keys and had brought him fresh, and foremost clean clothes, so he could drive home without problems. Then she had gone again. He has had his daily dosage of unpleasantness, more than he thought he would be able to cope with. Every support in one of Vicki´s cases seemed inevitably ending up with coping with Fitzroy and his weird cases.

"What are you running around like a caged tiger, Vic?" Mike asked while he pulled over his jacket. He registered that Vicki was looking on her clock over and over again.

"I´m not running caged tiger!" she grunted.

"And why are you constantly looking on your clock? Are you afraid that we won´t get away from that Prince-of-Darkness palace offshoot." He grinned.

"You can already drive home, Mike! As usually. Your work starts in about an hour!"

"Fitzroy has said, that he wants to be alone at sunrise! What of alone don´t you understand?"

"It´s shortly before sunrise, Mike...and Henry isn´t back yet!" Vicki confronted him, pushing her hands on her hips, when she shot him an icy view.

"And, what? Fitzroy is old enough to take care of himself. Eventually he´s older than all of us together. Or do ya wanna babysit him now, Vic? Of this he may be really excited, the way you have been discussing earlier!"

"I won´t make the babysitter here, Mike! Not for you and also not for Henry! It´s only already damn late and when he won´t show up here in a jiffy, Henry will definitely get problems!"

"Only when he´s then standing in front of a window without a blind. And as far as I´m reminding it, in the hallway are no windows and the elevator isn´t of glass! So." Mike laconically shrugged his shoulders, grabbed his coat and was about to leave Henry´s home.

"I for my part, am not up for a collision with Henry, when he comes home and gets pissy, cause we didn´t fly the coop. His order had been clear and when he had left, he had been in a mood like a garbage can with a blocking lid. In your case I´d take care to make yourself scarce. For my part...leave him a message. Then he can call back, when he had slept. Just if he´ll be up to it!"

"Get outta here, Mike and don´t care about my things. That´s none of your business."

"I´m right out!" Mike pulled the door closed into its lock with some force and she heard him stomping down the hallway to the elevator.

"Why must this bastard always give the psychologist again. Slowly he should know, that I don´t emphasize it and Vicki isn´t up for his psycho wish-wash!" Mike grunted, when the elevator had started his way down. With his head shaking no, he waited to reach the lounge.

Upstairs Vicki was looking on her clock.

It was sunrise. Two minutes ago!

Shit! Henry wasn´t back now!

"Damn it, Henry? Where the heck or better, where in heaven are you? I don´t wanna brush up your ashes with a dustpan!" Vicki swallowed hard. Determined she hit the #dial key under which Henry´s number was saved. Impatiently she waited, then she let it ring. Commonly and in his age he doesn´t drop to the ground on the stroke of twelve like cut by an ax. His mailbox and his answering machine didn´t switch on. Normally he was accessible, especially when he was working with her. But he was hanging at the jugular vein of one of his meal-on-legs. Of other areas she didn´t want to think of now, though the thought of where he might bite her, was driving an unwelcome, warm shudder down to her lower parts.

"Crap! Henry! Answer it!" she growled in her cellphone when she let it ring on. When he has gotten stuck anywhere and unable to get away cause of sunrise, she could pick him up and get him home. And when I´ll even need a damn card box, which I´ll have to shove in a cargo cab!

Any time later she remarked, that she was still holding the cell in her hand. The call signal had turned from green to red, what meant that he either hadn´t answered the call, being unavailable, or that he had switched his cell off. Vicki sighed. She forced herself with an iron will to stop her restless round through Henry´s home and to sit down in the living-room.

When Henry was stuck anywhere yet, cause he had missed the sunrise, it was quite possible that he had taken a fitting refuge and was now falling into his regular daytime sleep. And that could be anywhere in Toronto, so it was senseless to search for him blindly. Probably Mike was right with it and she would have to wait for a message from Henry. She had no clue how long exactly he would stay awake after sunrise. The few times she had stayed with him when he had fallen awake, had been when the demon had severely hurt him and after they had freed him from Mendoza´s cellar. The first time he had some problems to fall asleep and after his rescue he had been so turned up, that he practically had been awake until noon; all of it no measure for normal daily routine.

She got an idea.

Vicki dialed Coreen´s number and let it ring. It took some time and she looked impatiently on the innocent screen until finally a very tired voice answered her call.

"Hi...it´s Coreen here..." her assistant mumbled. Obviously she had been right on her way into her bed to get the well deserved sleep. Vicki could pay no attention to this fact. Not when it came to her partner...

"Coreen! Vicki here! Listen...has Henry gotten in touch with you?"

"Why...?" Coreen mumbled with a voice that was heavy with sleep and with her hand she dug through her hair, pushing herself upward in bed on her elbow.

"Why?! Coreen! Has he or has he not?" Vicki sounded impatiently.

"No, Ms. Nelson...So, I haven´t been called by him! Additionally I don´t believe that he´ll be much up to anything after tonight´s slime orgy. Anyway Henry looked frustrated to me, as far as I can see that or judge it. Has Mike him...again? Yup, ya know what I mean..."

"They didn´t quarrel, Coreen! We had some conversation and after it Henry left, obviously to get a bite between his teeth."

"Where from are you calling yet?" Slowly Coreen grow skeptically.

"I´m calling from his home! To be correct; I´m sitting here since tonight and Henry hasn´t been showing up here again, since he drove off. That is it, Coreen!" She stared angrily at her cellphone.

"Not. Showing up. Again!? Does that mean...?" Suddenly Coreen was fully awake and her heart started to beat faster.

What was going on with Henry? Simply disappearing, that wasn´t his thing, also when Mike and Vicki had some blowups with Henry. A vampire who wasn´t suitable to daylight won´t give up his refuge so easily!

"Yep! I´m waiting and waiting and Henry does not come home!" Vicki groaned and dug with her right hand through her hair. She had gotten up from her seat again without acting consciously and taken up her round through the living-room again.

"Hopefully he isn´t lying around anywhere with burns...or worse...!"

"Thank you for support, Coreen, you´re very tender-hearted once again!" Vicki growled. Sometimes her assistant was such straightforward that she wondered, how she had been going along with it. Burns or worse! Why didn´t she right say : dead!? The thought of a Henry lying anywhere...she had to gulp down hard and was feeling, how much he really meant to her meanwhile...dead or severely hurt... They had almost lost him no three weeks ago! That wasn´t to become what she had in mind for a relationship, even when a vampire potentially had some higher risk to die...as from sunlight, fire, stakes or farmers with pitch-forks and torches.

"Sorry, Ms. Nelson...Though, do you know, where he wanted to drive to? Did Henry say anything? I mean, mostly he goes to any clubs in Downtown. Queen, King Street or to the Distillery..." Coreen suggested what came to her mind from what he had told you.

"Coreen, it´s morning yet and most of the clubs are closed, so it may become difficult to ask somebody if he has seen Henry...above all Henry is acting rather unobtrusively. Out of reason..." Vicki replied.

"Has he taken a cap or did he left with his Jag? The cab company registers all tours and a black Jaguar isn´t even the most unremarkable car of all!" Coreen gave back, in an attempt to say just anything and it wasn´t as if Vicki won´t have been coming up with such options. Eventually she was an ex-cop and now-private eye.

"Okay, Coreen! I´ll check thru the cap companies and you´ll checking, which clubs on Queen and King are still open until the morning. When I don´t find out anything, we´ll have to go ringing doorbells, that is, to pound every club and watch around, if Henry´s Jag is parked anywhere. Just in case it hadn´t been stolen meanwhile...I´ll call ya later..."

Anywhere...

The ringing of the cellphone broke off and for a moment it was very silent in the room. Henry only heard the humming of the fluorescent tube, whose glass had become rather grayish-yellow than white and at the ends slightly darker areas were appearing, a sign that this thing was already beyond its best times. Its light was lighting up the room only dimly, a circumstance which Henry didn´t regret now, because the lamp was hanging from the ceiling right above him. And as much as he appreciated moderate light, so discomforting was the light now for his pounding skull.

H had the feeling that his head was stuck in a booming grinder and waves of dizziness were coming over again, follow by a wave of emetic nausea.

It was strange, he thought, how somebody could be concentrating on such secondary things like a lamp´s condition under these special circumstances. Apart from that, the constant humming, that only his sensitive vampire hearing could notice, was adding another nuance to the pounding inside his head. The ability to hear in this high frequency range was a reason why Henry didn´t use fluorescent tubes in his home. Additionally those might be easily exchanged against ultraviolet emanating tubes which would have the same effect on him like plain, natural sunlight.

He felt a new wave of nausea rising, swallowed convulsively and tried to turn his head to the side, trying to get his stomach under control with an iron will. Henry groaned deeply when he had the feeling that in his neck anything was piercing right between his spine bones...

The wooden door was opened.

Henry groaned, he tried to overcome the leaden heaviness, which were mixing up with the sharp pain in his neck.

Steps.

Breathing. Pain. Dizziness.

Steps.

His stomach revolted. What goddamn rat poison...?

Henry groaned and gasped for breath, when the dizziness, mixed with the boring pain in the back of his head, let his stomach cramping up. He wanted to breathe through and then he lost the fight against his body, when...

The steps were very near.

...his stomach violently emptied.

To throw up was bad enough, but by far not that bad, as when one wasn´t able to turn around then.

Hands grabbed him with brutal violence.

Throwing him around.

"Damn crap! I might you..." the woman cursed, when she brutally rolled him over to the side. "Goddamn mess! Nobody said that you shall puke all over here!"

Disgustedly she wiped her hands off on his hoodie sweater.

Enraged Henry stared at her, saliva and stomach contents were dripping from his mouth when he desperately fought for breath. The convulsions were emptying his stomach and he couldn´t do anything else but trying, not to get all that stuff into his wind-pipe. When the convulsions subsided, he tried to stare at her from tearing eyes.

"Mu...must...drink..." he helplessly cawed hoarsely.

"You will not get any blood now! When you want blood, lick it up from the ground!" She pushed his hand in the pool of blood, that was spreading under him. "I´ve already seen much, but this mess when a vampire pukes blood! My father was right! You are abhorrent creatures. I´m only sorry that he didn´t burn you off, before he died! You have killed him and you´ll pay for it, Henry Fitzroy!" she brought his name out with such contempt, as only deepest hatred could cause it. Who knows what Javier once had taught her about vampires or other creatures.

She stepped behind him and Henry screamed, when she pulled anything out of his spinal column and threw it on the ground. She kicked it in front of his eyes, so that he could see what it was.

It was a very long, flexible cannula.

The burning pain in his neck subsided, but the sight of what she had pulled out of his neck just now, would have been enough to cause a new attack of vomiting, wouldn´t his stomach be already empty. At least he couldn´t vomit anymore, but the little blood what he has had in his body from the last feeding, was lost yet too. Latest in the next night he definitely would start to feel it.

Henry swallowed convulsively, tried to ignore the blood taste, that was filling now his mouth.

"Drink...! Water! I...need water...!" Henry gasped. "Please!" he added. In the moment it was irrespective to him, how vulnerable he was now. He couldn´t change it and he couldn´t have become more vulnerable as in his current paralyzed state.

She could easily drag him outside, into the sunlight, watching him slowly burning down to ashes. If God was full of mercy, dying in sunlight would be rather fast, maybe...when it was really fast...it would only take seconds. Otherwise she could tie him to a wooden post at nighttime, lighting up a pile of wood and slowly burn him alive. Like they had done to witches during the inquisition. That would take an unbearable long time. He had suffered severe burns once, almost dying from it when London burnt down in 1666. The pain...

It was only a date to the humans; 1666. Like any date else. But this it was only in human´s eyes, who didn´t understand. They had accused a man for arson, had death sentenced him as any other option was...impossible to accept!

1666

What meant 1-666. The 1 didn´t matter other than "once", as once was related to one time of a couple of times. Important were the three following numbers: 6-6-6. Three times the six- the number of the animal. The devil, Lucifer. The numbers of the devil! This fire hadn´t been started by a conscious human´s will. That poor guy had only been a tool, an instrument in the hands of the forces of hell, driven, possessed by the demon who kept hell´s fire on blaze; Xaphan!

His undead mind had been drifting off for a mere second with preternatural speed. One of the vampire skills too! He switched back to reality, to the now and here so fast, that she didn´t even notice it, whatever she also was/is...

But his body was in need of liquid, any liquid, when already no blood was available, as she had promised him with enjoyment. When she was believing, that she had him driven so far, that he would lick up the blood from the ground, then she was wrong about this at least. Principally starved out vampires weren´t very sensitive when it came to the source of blood. But he would rather starve than doing her the favor to debase himself that way in front of her eyes.

"Uh, oh, Look! Well, well how about that! The great Henry Fitzroy can in fact say please! My father has warned me of your haughtiness and your royal affectation! But the Tudors are history and you have no power at all among the humans. Perhaps still among your kind only. But even this will have come to an end, when you yourself will only be dust in the dust of history!" She laughed loudly and he heard her walking through the room.

Moments later she was back beside him, shoving a pitcher with water to his side with her foot.

"Water! Drink! There won´t be a new chance coming for you so soon!" she looked down on him with an icy view.

Henry could smell the water and his body was following his basic instincts only to substitute lost liquid at any cost. With tearing eyes he tried to pull the pitcher with his hand to his lips, but he realized that he won´t manage that alone.

Angrily he closed his eyes, licking over his bloodied lips and he looked at her, trying to let his voice sound firmly when he growled; "You´ll have to help me, after you´ve paralyzed me with whatsoever! Unless you will relinquish to keep me alive long enough for your intent!"

"There you may be right with it, Henry Fitzroy! I don´t want prematurely shorten my enjoyment by simply letting you die of thirst. In which it would be interesting to find out, by what you´ll die faster: from the lack of blood or by thirst."

She bent down to him, took up the pitcher and grabbed with her other hand in his curls, pulling his head up so far that he could close his lips around the edge of the pitcher. For a moment his face distorted when his whole head with its full weight was hanging only at his hair. Then he pushed the headache aside and started to swallow carefully.

His instinct warned him to just drink, but he was so thirsty, that he was throwing all caution to the wind and started to gulp down the water, before she would change her mind. When the pitcher was empty, she let his head sink back to the ground, rather putting him down this time than simply letting him drop.

A sigh slipped from Henry´s lips and then he heard the soft rustling of plastic foil, that occurs when a package was ripped open.

Blood?

No blood, as he found out directly when she that, what she did, was doing in front of his eyes, so that he had the possibility to watch her. Tonia had put on gloves and a long needle with a slim tube was glistening in her hand. She bent down to him.

"No!" Henry choked. "No!" he couldn´t prevent it that his voice sounded fearfully, when she turned him around further so that she got access to the back of his head.

"No! Please...don´t!" he choked in horror.

Again she would...

The pain would return and the choking nausea, when she would shoot him that stuff yet. Henry didn´t know how long he was already lying here at all, since she had knocked him out in the club on King Street. He didn´t know if it still was night or just after sunrise. Cause of the drug, that was circulating in his system, he couldn´t trust anymore his vampire instincts and his body´s natural reaction to the sunrise.

"Your whimpering will not help you! You don´t believe in earnest, that I´ll be taking any risk with you! My father has warned me about you! Your strength and your power of resistance are sufficiently known, Henry Fitzroy!"

He felt pain, rather pressure than a sting when she stung the needle anywhere in the intersection between his neck and the back of his head and it went deeper. Henry clenched his teeth with such force that his jaws hurt, only to suppress a scream. With tensed muscles he was waiting for what he already knew from the club.

Wavering, all suffocating darkness.

She was handling behind him and then his brain seemed to explode in his skull, when she pushed down the piston of the syringe. Black claws closed around his lower jaw and the remains of blood in his mouth turned into a black flood. He wanted to fight for air, but there were only dull sounds coming from his throat when a heatwave seemed to disconnect his mind from the rest of his body. His body seemed to dissolve and the feeling of paralysis let panic well up in him.

She must have seen the reaction in his eyes.

"Don´t worry! That will be over soon! And then you´ll still be feeling enough, vampire!"

"I...sch...wha...at?" he choked almost unintelligibly.

"Seemed to work!" she mumbled and as for acknowledgment she kicked against his shinbone. When he pressed out a groan, she grinned. "I don´t want that you´ll run off here!" She pulled the syringe out and let Henry roll over on his back again where he kept lying motionless. "But you even can´t that, because the sun has risen long ago. Unless you´re up to a burn off"

So it was daytime since long and the damn stuff in his body kept him off from reacting normally and falling into the releasing daytime sleep.

Once again.

But this time it was definitely no Jia-o-gulan! Which devilish stuff did she use...?

His gums were strangely furry and numb and he heard when she left the room. Henry pressed out a throaty scream of rage and desperation. Useless. But it was the only thing to what he was able to in the moment and it felt good. Also when Vicki could not hear him.

Vicki! Vicki! Please help me! Get me outta here, before she... His mind denied to think further on.

He didn´t want to die yet.

Not here and now...

Toronto Downtown

Vicki had been calling through the cab company, without success. In this night hadn´t gone any tour from the Renaissance Plaza to any club. So Henry must have used his own car, she stated.

"Coreen! We´ll have to split up! You´re going to the Queen Street and searching for his black Jaguar with the license plate BCCE-124 for Ontario! I´ll searching thru King Street and then we´ll turn to the side streets. Anywhere Henry has got to!" she informed her assistant on phone.

"Maybe he has crept into his luggage trunk for hiding like Nick Night in Forever Knight...What means too, that in no case you shall open his luggage trunk..." Coreen meant.

"Thank you for the advise! I even didn´t know, that it doesn´t become him!" Vicki snarled

"Sorry, Ms. Nelson, I only wanted..." Coreen began.

"Yeah, yup! Bli bla blup spoke the fish! Com´on! Swing your goth body down the stairs and make yourself useful with searching! We don´t have time to waste, when Mike already put barriers in the path!" Vicki grunted. Thinking of Mike was driving her mood down the drain.

"But if we won´t find Henry, then Mike comes in! Cases of missing persons are police business."

"I wanna see Mike´s face when I tell him, that our vampire has gone lost already again. The last time had been only three weeks ago and Mike still isn´t in full possession of his tankful!" she indicated the theme that Mike had donated rather unwillingly more than one and a quarter liter of blood during the last Henry-Fitzroy-has-to-be-rescued-action.

"We´ll already find Henry, Ms. Nelson..." Coreen replied when she closed her jacket while leaving and then she stepped down the stairs. "When you´ll find something or find out, call me please! I´ll do the same."

"Good. See ya later, Coreen!"

Vicki almost lost her patience, when today the elevator seemed to need eternally to the lounge and when she finally arrived there, she only waved fleetingly to Greg when she hurried out for the street. She almost slipped on a layer of compacted snow, but at least it was so bright now that she could see better and more clearly. An advantage at least when one had to search for a vampire like in a spot-the-mouse game.

The gray daylight, which came from the sky that was up the pole with snow, was better than to stab around in the dark. In a darkness that was stinking of things one didn´t want to know what they were or more exactly; what they had been. As modern as Toronto was, there was, not far away from her own home, a place in the gutter where even in the greatest heat of summer, a pool of black liquid denied to dry out, giving of indefinable smells. When she had occasionally watched closer, she could not have gone rid of the imagination, that any day anything would crawl out of it...like any creepy, creeping, crawling creature from outer space. Or from the otherworld. Maybe a watch-out spot of Astaroth, like a spy hole...? Vicki shuddered, now not only by the cold. Angrily she wiped the thought aside.

When Vicki reached the King Street, the entertainment area was already running on daytime business. Most of the partygoers had left and most of the clubs were already closed to give space to the normal employees.

Vicki jumped to the side with a curse, when in front of an entrance somebody switched on a leaf blower to test out if this noise machine might be blowing snow as well as leaves.

It could.

Suddenly Vicki found herself in a whirling cloud of powder snow, which let her look like a Christmas decoration covered by powdered sugar only three steps ahead.

"You idiot! I´ll press charges against you cause of disturbance and the inappropriate use of technical supplies contrary to the authorized instructions!" she cursed.

"I don´t give a flying fuck, Lady! Over there´s a broom, with which you can brush up the street! Then I can indeed allow me a cup of hot tea meanwhile. And that does not violate the instructions for the use of tea bags!" He laughed out loudly and aimed the leaf blower explicitly in her direction, looking after Vicki with a smirk, when she ran away and shook the snow out of her hair with both hands.

Her eyes searched down the lane in the hope to see anywhere Henry´s Jaguar. Just in case that not anybody else had make use of it already.

In front of a club a man was closing a barring chain. He didn´t pay any attention to her until she carefully patted his back. He turned his head.

"It´s closed, Lady! We´ll open tonight seven pm!" He watched down Vicki and by her clothing he could see, that she didn´t look like the usual partygoer. "Or are you from the Department of public order, Madam?" The snippy Lady had turned into a more politely Madam.

"Why? Do you have a bad conscience?" she answered when she let her view glide from his shoulders down to his waist. Tough guy who was only doing his job.

" Nope, Madam! Then you aren´t from the department? My liquor license has been renewed one month ago. All lege artis* (*due to law)"

"I don´t wanna see your license! I´m searching for somebody."

"Then you´re from the police?"

Vicki shook her head no.

"No, no more! I´m searching for a man...I don´t know if he had been here yesterday evening and if he´s a regular guest at yours..."

"Listen, Miss! Lots of peeps in here...and I´m glad so! But I can´t memorize every night´s faces! I´ve full house every night!" the man explained.

"You might have remarked him; Approximately my size, dark brown hair, neck long curls, blue eyes. Blue jeans, gray coat, gray hoodie sweater. So relatively small, uhm..." A sentence came to her mind which she once had heard; "Small, handsome guy..."

"Uh, this one!" his face was lighting up and Vicki pricked her ears.

"I remind this guy, now ya´re sayin it. He asked for Freddy the barkeeper...but Freddy had his day off yesterday and then he´s gone..." he lifted one hand to indicate a body size.

"So he left again. Do you know where to?" Vicki hooked in and gave the waiter a smoldering look.

"There along...!" he indicated into the eastern direction of King Street. "He caught my attention. His view! Ya know, when I saw your eyes, Ms.! Anything , how shall I say...he has had such intensive, burning glance how...uhm...like you. But I don´t know where he finally made landfall. As I´ve said, had lots of business here yesterday..." he brought in additionally.

"Okay, thanks so far." Vicki smiled and started to move in a southern direction.

Probably Henry has had his Prince-of-darkness-number running to get a specific information. Freddy the barkeeper perhaps had been a make-believe, which the man should remind. Typically Henry.

Vicki searched down the street, lurking in gateways, which were wide enough for cars, but except for garbage cans, bicycles and for some cars, which were all but no black Jaguar, she found nothing.

A bit apart, Vicki tried the door of another club. Just in the moment when she wanted to jar at the lock with some vigor, the open was opened from inside. A guy of the size of a wardrobe, clad in black leather and with so much tattoos on his skull, that one would have to stitch a second layer for new ones, pulled the door from her hand.

"Hi!" Vicki smiled at him, trying to let it sound as causally as possible. Ouch! She would have felt way better now with Henry at her side. Sometimes a vampire could be some life- or at least a health insurance, she thought. Because...

"Lady! What do you want?" The man was at least one and a half head taller than her and his neck muscles indicated, that he belonged to the coalition of bouncers than to the service personal. "It´s closed here!" His voice was not even dripping from politeness.

"Thought so! Otherwise it won´t be locked." Vicki put her trust-the-cop-smile on her face. "I´m searching for someone..."

"It´s nobody in here!"

"However! You´re here!" Vicki countered.

The guy laughed. Well, the ice seemed to be broken or at least it had gotten a crack, Vicki thought.

"Anyway I´ve lost contact to my friend last night...perhaps you´ll remind him." Vicki fumbled for the photo, that they had found in the other church. The church in which Delphine had burnt up. She directed on the photo.

"Who? The blonde? I didn´t see this one in here!" Obviously he supposed, that Mike was the one she was searching for, related to her appearance.

"No, not the blonde. The other one..." once again she showed him the photo, directing to Henry.

"Alas! The small one beside him. You´ve could have said that directly..." he grinned. "No wonder he got lost..."

"I´ve lost him. Not otherwise around." Vicki countered. "So, have you seen him?" she brought up the cop a bit. When she won´t find Henry soon...

"Uhm, prob..." The man scratched his skull. "Can be. Can be not." He tilted his head thoughtfully back and forth, he pulled a face. Vicki felt her fist tingle, but she had to pull herself together now.

"Alas! What now?"

"I might have seen him..."

Vicki knew pretty well what that meant. Perhaps the guy had seen Henry, but he wasn´t willing to deliver information without a trade-off, said dough. With a sigh Vicki fumbled in the pocket of her leather jacket, got out a twenty dollar bill and gave it to him. Normally these exceptional input was flowing into a clients bill. The man grinned and Vicki hated that, but right now she was in need of such sleaze bags.

The man pushed the money in his pocket, rearranging his jacket pockets with ostentation, before he directed on the photo again.

"Yup! I´ve seen the small one in here last night. He came early I the morning and then he hopped off into the hindmost corner, where this dark haired was sitting..."

So Henry had searched himself some meal...

"Which dark haired? Does that go somewhat more exactly?" Vicki pressed on him. Eventually she had paid for more then a simple I´ve seen him cuddling with a meal-on-legs...

"Guess, such type Italian or so. Looked like that at least. The small one was making out with her after he had gotten them two drinks from the bar." He waved his hand midair. "That woman has...na, yup...been quite snogging with him. And when I watched over to her again occasionally, the small one had been sitting in the corner rather knocked over...But that´s none of my business what she´s doing with him as long as they won´t do that on the front bar..."

Vicki sighed, pulling a face and rolling with her eyes.

"Okay. Snogging. Have you seen when he left..."

"Uhm...was quite late in the night...When I passed by she was just about to drag him out. Man, that guy was drunk as a shunk. Seems, that small one can´t take much of a slosh...not like the tall one!" he directed to Mike again.

"Do you know the blonde?" Vicki hooked in on the point again. Mike in a club...uhm, rather not!

"Nope! But he looks more solid!" The door guard grinned.

"So ya serving alcohol by visual judgment, I suppose..." Vicki shot him an icy glance.

"That´s Steel Nail´s business." he directed with a thumb over to the bar, obviously he wanted to declare the barkeeper responsible for it.

"Steel Nail?" Vicki knitted her brows, putting her glasses down from her nose and she kneaded the base of her nose between her fingers. Slowly her eyes started to burn as she hadn´t slept since yesterday morning. "Who´s Steel Nail?"

"Our barkeeper! He got his name from screwing his shoulder in place with a titan screw after he kissed the lane with his Honda, down in Minneapolis..."

"Ouch!" Vicki meant.

"...he has helped her with shipping off the small one into his car outside."

"Where from do you know that exactly?Outside...it it has been his car?!"

"I held the door open. The woman doesn´t look as if she owns such a car. A mean...a Jaguar...? Steel Nail has stuffed him on the backseat and then she drove off..."

"Ah...and you don´t know...by pure chance...where she wanted to drive to!? Vicki took the photo from his hand.

"By pure chance...No! I won´t interrogate my guest, in difference to you! And she hasn´t given that away to me!"

"Okay, thank you. That´s all then." Vicki closed. She won´t get more useful information here. At least she knew that Henry had been accompanied by a mysterious woman and that he had been in a rather strange condition when they had left together. The woman had been driving his precious car and that at all was strange enough, as Henry was very restrictive with letting anybody else at the steering wheel of his car. Only once, after they had rescued him from Mendoza´s cellar, he had been willing in that Coreen would drive them. Mike was too weakened, she couldn´t see in the dark and Henry was suffering from the Jia-o-gulan poisoned blood...

Sometimes Vicki wished that she might be able to make people forget, that they had seen her...like Henry. For umpteen times today she noticed how much she was missing Henry yet already.

"You´re a cop, though. Ain´t you?" he shouted after her.

"No! Not anymore! Had I´ve been giving you any money then?!" She halfhearted waved to him and left the club. Outside she pulled her cell from her pocket to call Coreen.

"Did you find Henry?!" Coreen seemed to jump out of her shirt by expectation and excitement.

"Not Henry! But at least a trace of him...A woman has shipped him off the Night Sky on King Street. She had been driving his car, the bouncer said." Vicki informed her assistant without breathing.

"She has been driving? His Jag?" Coreen didn´t trust her ears.

"Yup, obviously! That guy meant, that Henry had been as drunk as a fish..."

"Henry and drunk? I think, he can´t..." Coreen didn´t know what to think of it. By her knowledge vampires couldn´t get drunk. But she couldn´t testify that theory. But that doesn´t look like Henry.

"That both of you...did you ever get plastered together, Coreen? I´ve not! I don´t know if and what he can cope with or rather not." Vicki shook her head. "We´ll drive to Mike. He shall search for the Jag. Per GPS or anything else!"

"Mike will be really enjoyed! Cause by now it´s a fact that here will be a Henry-search again!" Coreen groaned. Mike had been in a bad mood when he had left and to convince him now to give any support... wrong time at the wrong place!

"How did he say once?! Slowly Henry is becoming his personal nightmare! But when it comes to my partner, I don´t give a fuck about it, what Mike will be dreaming of!" Vicki growled low under her breath. "And when it´ll be a set of fangs, being at a place where they don´t belong to normally..."

"But! Miss Nelson!" Coreen criticized.

"Don´t act cute! Who´s constantly talking about, that you once wanna be bitten thoroughly by Henry? Henry isn´t a baby vampire anymore!" Vicki had to grin though.

"That´s called a newbie, Ms. Nelson! Newbie!" Coreen corrected her.

"Who?" Vicki absently stared at her cellphone, as a substitute for Coreen.

"Na, a childe! A newly turned vampire! That´s what is called a newbie, that´s from to be new or newly born! Not...baby vampire! Henry would be going nuts, when he hears that!"

"I´m going nuts immediately, when we don´t find Henry soon!" Vicki moaned. "But then I won´t be all alone in going nuts at least! Let´s go, Coreen, we´ll met with Mike in the homicide. See ya soon!" Vicki hung up and shoved her clammy fingers in her jeans pockets, when she went to the next bus stop.

Heaven, she still had become so used to using either a cab or to be driven by Henry, that she let out a hiss, when she reached the bus stop and became aware, that she had to wait a couple of minutes for the next bus. Her frustration grew bigger, when she saw that the bus was crowded now by all these people, who were on their morning way to the job. Rush hour! Angrily she shoved her body in the bus...

To be continued