Disclaimers in part one
Fitzroy knelt on the floor by the table, close to Vicki. He reached first for Delphine's photo. "I wonder how long he lived off of her," he said softly. Vicki reached out with her bandaged hand and laid it on his forearm.
"Henry, why is she dead in this photo?" she asked.
Fitzroy looked at her, searching her face. Then he put the photo down and sifted slowly through the other pictures. He pulled the three other photos of women killed in 1944 to him. Mike had researched why four women killed with bite marks and drained of blood hadn't created a "vampire" scare in the press at the time, and had concluded that in 1944 the only news anyone cared about was of the war. Delphine Evans's murder had never even made the papers.
"I killed her," he said, still softly. "I loved her and she wanted me to turn her. I refused. I knew it wasn't what she thought it was, but I didn't let her see the ..." He looked up at both of them, hesitantly. "I never wanted anyone to see that." He looked at her photo again. "So I just refused."
"But then she got sick. They had no treatment for her. Her life - the things she loved to do - were horribly curtailed and it would all end soon. She . . . I . . . Well, the short version is that I gave in."
Mike and Vicki watched him as he stared at Delphine's photo.
"We did it at her apartment. I had to drain her completely of blood while she drank some of mine. It takes time. It isn't that easy to drain someone's blood completely." His voice got even softer. "We did it with ceremony, and love and hope. Hope on her part. I knew it meant we couldn't be together much longer, but I was going to lose her anyway. As she lay dead in my arms, with only my blood to sustain her through the change, Mendoza kicked down her door."
"Mendoza," cried Vicki. "He was hunting you then?"
"I didn't know it. I had no idea. Of course I attacked him, but even then he had some magic that immobilized me. He must have been using it on vampires all through the centuries."
"That sun thing?" Mike asked.
Fitzroy put his hand on his chest in an unconscious gesture. Mike winced inwardly. "No," his voice wavered. "Whatever this was, it didn't work that well. I couldn't stop him as he . . . put a wooden stake through Delphine's heart," Mike heard Vicki's swift intake of breath, "but I managed to move enough to go over the balcony before he got to me. I fell seven stories."
"Wow."
Mike had a sudden urge to reach for his notebook. This was the kind of tale he would normally check against the recorded facts, back at the station. For one thing, he was quite sure Delphine Evans's body had not been found with a wooden stake in it.
"The spell wore off with time and distance, but it was nearly dawn when I could go back. The police were there. I couldn't get to her and I had to get under cover."
"Henry," Vicki said, "You've known all this time that Mendoza was out there, somehow immortal and hunting you?"
Fitzroy looked at her, uncertain and wanting to be understood. "I wasn't sure it was him. It didn't make sense. I knew he wasn't a vampire, and even though he smelled like the same man . . . I couldn't quite believe it. I was in shock. And he wasn't what was important. I had to get to Delphine."
"But he'd put a stake in her heart," Mike said without thinking.
"I know," Fitzroy said, and dropped his head to his chest. "But it's not . . ." He looked up at Mike, his features set. "If you're planning to write a manual about vampires, Celucci, here's some information for you." He dropped Delphine's photo and stood. "A wooden stake through the heart will kill me." He looked uncomfortably at Vicki and then at something behind Mike's head. "But not for any magical reason. For the same reason it will kill you. I heal fast, that's all. But I have to be somewhat alive to heal. Shred my heart," his hand went to his chest again, and he looked back at Vicki, "and I die. That thing you put on me . . ." he closed his eyes, "went . . .in. . .my heart. Every time it beat I bled. I can't tell you how much that hurt."
Now Mike closed his eyes. He desperately wished he were somewhere else, but he'd known it might come to this when he agreed to bring Vicki here. He heard Vicki stand up and when he looked, she was standing once again just beyond arm's reach from Fitzroy, who looked at her as if his heart still pained him. Maybe it did. Vicki, as Mike well knew, was anything but touchy-feely, and normally Fitzroy seemed to interact with people - women - very sensually. But he kept his distance, and Vicki's own nature had her paralyzed. "Henry," she said gently, "what about Delphine?"
Fitzroy nodded and dropped his hand from his chest. "There is one special time, one state, when you can recover from almost anything," he told her. "Delphine was in a very pure state." He sighed and looked at the floor. "Pure evil, Mendoza would say, and maybe he's right, but I've never seen it that way. How can life itself be evil?"
Vicki shook her head. "Go on."
"She had no life of her own, only the . . . virtue of my blood sustaining her. Under those conditions - she was no more dead when the stake went in her heart than she had been from blood loss. All she needed was for the stake to be removed and the strength of my blood would heal her heart, cure her illness and restore her own life. Someone took the stake out. Now that I know what he wanted, I suppose it was Mendoza. I had escaped so maybe he hoped to use her when she returned to life. Oh, God!" Fitzroy's composure collapsed and he covered his face. "I left her there!"
"Henry, you didn't know, and what choice did you have? You couldn't fight him. C'mon, sit down." She touched him gingerly on an elbow to urge him back to his chair, and he went willingly, but pulling slightly ahead of her touch. Vicki reseated herself on the couch.
When Fitzroy didn't say anything, Vicki did. "You don't think Delphine has been with Mendoza since 1944, do you?" she asked.
He shook his head. "No, I found her." He took a deep breath. "I was desperate to find her. I tried the morgue and she had been there. They took her there while it was still night, so I knew she'd lived and risen. I was certain when I learned someone had killed a morgue worker."
Mike frowned at his photographs. He didn't remember any . . .
"Not like that," Fitzroy said. "Just, killed."
"I had to find her. Vicki, I have two natures, human and vampire. The humanity you say I fought so hard to keep," he faltered and looked almost embarrassed, "is completely overwhelmed at first. No one has any hope of reawakening it on their own. That's the job of the vampire who makes you. If I couldn't find her, she would kill and kill and kill until someone killed her. I had nothing to go on. She didn't go home, and it was a crime scene, anyway. Plus that lunatic was out there hunting us both. I've never been so . . ."
No one said anything.
Fitzroy reached for the photos. "Marcie, Rose and Amanda," he named the three photos. "Her friends. She went for the easy kills, the people she had access to. Her vampire nature didn't have the ability to function in any normal human way. After Rose I realized what she was doing. I still had a key to her apartment so I got her address book . . ." He waved a hand in a futile gesture and tossed the photos back on the table. "It doesn't matter what I did, I wasn't fast enough." He looked mournfully at Vicki. "I could have really used a detective's help."
"I'm sorry," Vicki murmured.
"I think she called them and asked them to dinner," Fitzroy said, this time to Mike, whose eyes widened in appreciation of the irony. "And they're just the people she fed on. There were other deaths. You have other unsolved cases that were her, like the morgue worker. I'm sorry I don't remember his name."
"Jesus," Mike said.
"So there you have it, Detective," Fitzroy said, all defiance gone from his tone. "I didn't kill those women, but I am responsible for their deaths."
"You stopped her," Vicki said softly.
"She stopped herself," Fitzroy said, stealing a glance at her, "like you said. But I had to show her how. I almost saved Amanda. Almost." He sighed. "When she was human again and saw what she had done, she hated me. Hated what I was, what I'd done to her. She called me every evil name that Mendoza did and it hurt so much more coming from her. We couldn't both stay in Toronto, and I was by far the more powerful, so she left and I never heard from her again."