Prosperity

Chapter Thirteen

Henry was standing back from the sidewalk, leaning against his car with his arms folded across his chest. He was staring straight forward, carefully watching Arianrhod and Katrijn where they stood on the sidewalk in front of the house. Vicki, though watching the two female vampires as intently as Henry was, couldn't help the repeated glances back toward him that she made. There was a weird energy in the air, and she had no idea why she could feel it. Was this what happened when there were too many vampires in one place at once?

Arianrhod was saying something in a low tone to Katrijn and making gestures with her hands. Vicki suspected that she was teaching her something - Henry had implied as much when he'd made his excuse for standing back, away from the two. He'd said something about not wanting to accidentally seem to get in the way of Arianrhod's relationship with Katrijn. Common sense told her that this had to be what it was that he was referring to.

Suddenly, Arianrhod looked up toward Henry and beckoned him toward them. He glanced toward Vicki and she tilted her head to one side, frowning at him, until he made his way over o the other two vampires, gesturing for her to join them as he moved.

"What have you found?" Henry asked. Arianrhod looked at Katrijn and made a motion with her hand, telling her to explain. Attention turned onto her, the blonde shuffled nervously.

"Ambrose came to see me, just before dawn," she said quietly. Vicki's mouth twisted into a frown. Why hadn't they been told this sooner? "He wanted me to come with him."

Henry made a motion at the edge of her (rather limited) peripheral vision that Vicki barely caught as she turned her head so that she could better bring him into focus, and the next moment, she had been pushed to the side by someone's hand - she wasn't sure whose - and was sitting in pile of snow. Above her, Arianrhod had placed herself between Henry and Katrijn and the two older vampires were hissing at each other. The PI wasn't quite sure what was going on, and from what she could see of Katrijn, the woman just looked scared.

"Hello? Middle of a public street here. Growl at each other when we get in the car," Vicki snapped, not at all amused by the way the snow had soaked into the seat of her pants. When she found out who had pushed her, they were going to pay. Since she suspected that it had been Henry, she was going to have fun making him pay.

The two vampires stared at each other for another long moment before, as one, their monster faces slipped away to be replaced with the faux humanity that they hid behind. "Thank you," Vicki said, both to the ease with which they had complied, and to the hand that Henry extended toward her to help her up off of the ground and, more importantly, out of the snow.

Henry opened his mouth as though to speak, then hesitated and shut it again as he nodded and gestured toward the car. "So, you have an idea of where he is then?" he asked, looking from Arianrhod to Katrijn.

Katrijn frowned, then nodded slowly. "An idea, yes. But it may be incorrect, I mean…" she passed beneath a streetlight as she made her way to the car and Vicki saw that her eyes were wild, the whites in them almost flashing with her motions. "He didn't tell me where he was going. I made him leave. I didn't want him there. Not after… not after…" she faltered and didn't appear to be able to finish her sentence - she was slowly shaking her head back and forth, eyes closed, the textbook picture of someone in denial.

"Shh…" Arianrhod murmured, moving up behind the taller woman and wrapping her arms around her. There was a dangerous look in her eye as she looked at Henry that dared him to say something about the weakness that Katrijn was showing. Looking at Henry, Vicki decided that it was unnecessary. The man looked decidedly unsettled by what he was seeing. Almost as though he were thrown off balance by the whole situation.

"So you have an idea, but you're really not sure," Vicki said slowly. She couldn't control the sardonic tone that the phrase came out in. It was a useless way to communicate information and it guaranteed that Mike wouldn't be willing to follow the lead to wherever Katrijn tried to take them. Not if there wasn't a good chance that Haward would be there.

Katrijn was nodding quickly. Arianrhod looked as though she was going to launch herself at the next person that tried to question her child. Henry looked… She thought Henry looked amused, but a second glance made her unsure. And as for Vicki herself, well, Vicki wanted to go home and go to bed, but something in her gut was telling her that the murder of Jane Deer was only the start of whatever Ambrose Haward wanted to do. For some reason, she thought that the seemingly isolated incident was going to escalate into something greater. She really wished that the feeling would go away.

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"There's no reason for him to have left the campus. Or at least the area around it," Katrijn said in her heavy accent. She was nervous again - all three vampires were, and it was causing Vicki to be on edge as well. Something about all of that potential power being locked up in one car was making her tense, and she could see that Henry was visibly tense as well, which meant that he was very uptight indeed. Then again, Arianrhod was sitting right behind him, and though she wasn't doing anything that Vicki could see, the PI suspected that she didn't really have to.

"You'd think that someone would have discovered him by now," Vicki replied. All three vampires were scanning the sidewalks as they drove up and down the criss-cross of roads that made up the U of T campus, but Vicki hadn't bothered. She couldn't see out there anyway, so she was making conversation instead. She thought that it was probably the easiest way of alleviating the tension that was sitting heavily in the car. So far, it wasn't working.

"Why?" Katrijn asked. "He's a sorcerer. He can hide himself." Vicki supposed that she had a point.

"Why would you get involved with a sorcerer then? And a dangerous one at that?" Henry made a noise after the question, as thoughhe'd found it offensive - or unnecessary - but since Katrijn was responding, Vicki didn't think it had been too personal. Besides that, she felt that she had a right to know as much about her client - or, former client - as was possible. However, the question that Katrijn snapped out at her wasn't the response that Vicki had expected.

"Why are you involved with a vampire?"

'Touché,' Vicki thought to herself, even though she and Henry weren't exactly involved. How did she go about responding to that without hurting the feelings of the vampire in the seat next to her though?

"It's different," Henry said, overriding anything that Vicki was going to say. "You became involved with a vampire and are now one yourself. You should realise that." He was looking at Katrijn in his rear view mirror, one dark eyebrow raised.

Katrijn made a soft noise but didn't respond for a long moment until she spied something outside of the car window. "That's him," she said in a low tone. Vicki felt something ripple through the car, heard air rushing in her ears and behind it, a woman's voice saying something. A long moment later, the air rushing in her ears stopped and she was able to spin around in her chair to find that the car was empty.

"Nice," she growled to the empty vehicle. "Real nice. Leave the girl with night blindness to stumble around outside, trying to find you. Henry you're so going to hear about this," she growled as she fumbled in her purse for her cell phone so that she could call Mike. He picked up on the first ring.

"Found him," she said before he could even finish stating his name. "I'm staring at Varsity Stadium."

"You're one hundred percent sure that he's there?" Mike asked. She could hear his pen scratching information down on a piece of paper as he spoke. At least he as taking her seriously, no matter how much doubt there was in his voice.

"Almost one hundred percent. I haven't actually seen him, but I'm sure that they've caught him by now," she replied, feeling around the dash with one hand, trying to find the switch that would turn on the interior lights. She was sure that it hadn't seemed dark to the vampires, but it was dark to her. Very dark.

"They?Vicki!" Mike exclaimed, rather emphatically. "Are you telling me that you let a bunch of vampires after him instead of going yourself?"

"Hey, hey! They left me here, Mike," she growled. "And they'll be hearing about it. Or at least, one of them will. Until then, are you going to get down here or not?" she demanded, suddenly remembering what the point of their conversation had been.

"Yeah, I'm on my way. Sit tight. Behind Varsity Stadium, right? That's right near the first scene…" Even as he hung up, it sounded as though Mike was putting the situation together in his head.

Vicki let out a long breath and let her head fall back against the head rest of the seat. She knew that she should really be getting up to stumble around the campus and try to figure out where the vampires had run off to, but she couldn't seem to bring herself to actually sit up and open the door. Or take off her seatbelt for that matter. Why hadn't she taken off her seatbelt yet?

And why was she so tired? There was no reason for her to be so exhausted. It was as though the seconds racing past were dragging with them her energy. It was actually a very strange feeling, and one that she couldn't quite push out of her head even though it sounded absolutely ridiculous. Then again, how could she label it ridiculous when it seemed that she had been thrown into an ocean of supernatural activity that she couldn't quite find her way out of?

Vicki grimaced and scratched idly at one of her wrists when it began to itch. Great. Now the thoughts were making her skin crawl. She needed to think about something else. For that matter, she was pretty sure that she needed a new job. Or she needed to stop accepting all of these paranormal cases. That might work.

It was a shame that she was fairly certain most of the people who wanted her to solve cases concerning the supernatural wouldn't give up easily. Neither, for that matter, would the itch on her wrists. Vicki growled and pulled back the sleeves of her jacket to give her better access to the skin hidden beneath and furrowed her brow at the eruption of light that was revealed when the fabric had been pulled back.

"Shit. Shit, shit, shit," Vicki muttered. She couldn't make out the shape of the glowing but she was well aware that there was only one place that it could possibly be coming from. She had no idea what could have happened to set the demon brands glowing, but she was quite certain that whatever it was, it wasn't a good sign.

The brands had glowed when they'd removed the binding spell from Arianrhod. That meant that what was causing them to glow now was probably another spell. But what kind of spell was it, and who was doing the casting? Since she assumed it was Haward doing the casting, who was the spell being cast on?

Vicki rubbed at her wrists as she fumbled for the latch and opened the car door. Pushing her glasses back up her nose when they slipped down, Vicki swirled her head back and forth, peering through the layers of darkness and trying to make out where Henry could have taken off to. In the distance she could hear sirens. Good. That meant Mike would be here soon.

She knew that she should probably wait by the car until Mike arrived, not only because he would want to know exactly what was going on, but also because she was more likely to wander in the wrong direction or get hit by a car than she was to actually find Henry. Why weren't there more streetlights here? For that matter, why couldn't the lights at Varsity Stadium be switched on?

She paused, mid-thought. Varsity Stadium had a large field that had to be empty right now. They were right near it, and her marks were glowing. Maybe Haward was taking advantage of the large open space to cast his next spell. The vampires could easily have gone up and over the iron fence - she assumed - which meant that she was going to have to make her way up to Bloor and around to the main entrance of the building. Hopefully, it wouldn't be locked. If it was, she was going to have to wait for Mike, and something told her that she didn't have that kind of time to waste.

Taking a deep breath, Vicki looked around once more. They had been driving North, which made Bloor Street in the direction that the nose of the car was pointing. That was good. Pushing her glasses up her nose once more, Vicki took off along the sidewalk, keeping her eyes straight ahead.

Had her peripheral vision been a little better, she would have noticed that her still glowing demon marks had caught the attention of a man standing just inside the enclosed field of the stadium that bordered the sidewalk to her right.

Chapter Fourteen Preview

If he could just extinguish one of the candles, the spell would be broken and he'd be able to escape. Or kill Haward. He didn't really have a preference, though he supposed he might once the spell was actually broken and he could think straight.

"Can you reach it?" Arianrhod's voice was even soft to his enhanced hearing. Could he reach it? Couldn't she tell that he couldn't?