Many Bloody Returns Part 32

"Vicki will be forever young."

"No." Tony shook his head. "You'll be forever young; you were changed at seventeen. Vicki was thirty-four when you drew her over to the dark side-you know, dark? Literally." As Henry frowned, Tony waved a hand at the coffee shop's window and the night sky just barely visible behind the lights of Davies Street. "Never mind. The point is, she was human twice as long as you were. And she was in her thirties. And she's a woman. Trust me, forty counts. And if you can't trust me, trust Celluci; he's living with her."

Vampires did not share territory. By changing her, Henry had lost her to his mortal rival. And that sounded like a line from a bad romance. He rubbed his forehead and wondered what had happened to make his life so complicated. Stupid question. Vicki Nelson, exWonder Woman of the Metropolitan Toronto Police, had happened. Vicki had seen past the masks and gotten him involved in life in a way he hadn't been for hundreds of years. Vicki had pushed Tony into his life and had, with her change, been at least indirectly responsible for the two of them ending up in Vancouver. Forty years to such a woman should mean nothing.

"Look at it this way, Henry." Tony's voice interrupted his musing. "Vicki's essentially immortal; that's a long time for her to be p.i.s.sed at you."

On the other hand, who was he to say what forty years should mean to such a woman? He moved his water bottle, creating concentric rings with the condensation. "What are you getting her?"

Tony, exstreet hustler, expolice informant, third a.s.sistant director on the most popular vampire detective series on syndicated television and the only practicing wizard in the lower mainland, sagged against the wrought iron back of his chair. "I have no f.u.c.king idea."

There were two messages in Henry's voice mail when he woke the next evening. Both were from Tony. The first was, predictably, about Vicki's birthday. According to the script supervisor working on Darkest Night, women of her age appreciated gifts that made them feel young without reminding them of their advancing years. Given that Vicki's years weren't exactly advancing, Henry had no idea of what that meant.

a.s.suming it contained more of the same, Henry intended to delete the second message without listening to it but he hesitated a moment too long.

"Henry, there's a little girl missing from up by Lytton and someone called Kevin Groves about her."

Kevin Groves, who worked as a reporter for the Western Star, one of the local tabloids, had the uncomfortable ability of recognizing the truth. Given that his byline had once run under the headline OLYMPIC ORGANIZERS RELOCATE FAMILY OF SASQUATCH, this was occasionally more uncomfortable for those who knew about his skill than it was for him. Over the last year he'd become an indispensable way of keeping tabs on the growing metaphysical activity in Vancouver and the lower mainland.

Like attracted like. Henry had experienced this phenomenon over his long life, and as Tony gained more control over his considerable power, he was discovering it in spades. The difference was that while Henry would move heaven and earth for those he claimed as his own, he was generally willing to let the rest of humanity go its own way. But Tony had bought into the belief that with great power came great responsibility and become something of a local guardian for the entire lower mainland. A policeman, as it were, for the metaphysical.

Henry, because he considered Tony his, very often found himself acting as the young wizard's muscle. Vicki referred to them alternately as Batman and Robin or the new Jedi Knights, and for that alone deserved to have her birthday forgotten.

Occasionally, Henry wondered if he wasn't using Tony as an excuse to become involved. Celluci had called him a vampire vigilante once. He'd meant it as an insult, but when Henry thought of little girls gone missing, he also thought that the detective had been more perceptive than he'd been given credit for.

Moving quickly into the living room, Henry picked up the remote and turned on the TV.

"...while playing in the backyard with her mother working in the garden only meters away. There is rising fear in this traumatized community that a bear or cougar or other large predator has come out of the mountains and is feeding upon their children."

Henry suspected the reporter had taken advantage of a live feed to get that last line on the air.

The young woman stared at the camera with wide-eyed intensity and the certain knowledge that this was her time in the spotlight.

"Julie Martin's distraught father has declared his intention of 'taking care' of who or whatever has made off with his precious little girl. A spokes-person from the Ministry of Natural Resources has suggested that it would be dangerous for search parties to head into the wood unless accompanied by trained personnel but admits that their office is unable to provide trained personnel at this time."

She makes it sound like the Ministry should have grizzled trackers standing by. Henry waited until they cut back to the news anchor who solemnly reiterated that four-year-old Julie Martin had disappeared without a trace in broad daylight, then, as the screen filled with a crowd of angry and near-hysterical townspeople standing outside the RCMP office, berating two hara.s.sed-looking constables for not having found the child, he turned off the set.

If Kevin Groves had gotten a call about Julie Martin's disappearance and felt it had validity enough for him to call Tony, then the odds were good it wasn't a police matter. Or a matter for the Ministry of Natural Resources, as it was currently mandated.

At 6:47 p.m. Tony would likely still be on the sound stage, so rather than leave him a message Henry went straight to the source.

"Western Star; Kevin Groves."

"It's Henry."

Very faintly, Henry heard the reporter's heartbeat speed up. Everyone had a hindbrain reaction to vampires, the most primal part of them gibbering in terror in the presence of an equally primal predator. Kevin Groves knew why.

"So, are you...That is, I mean...You're calling about the missing Martin kid?"

"I am."

"Werewolves."

"I beg your pardon."

"I had a tip that there's werewolves in the mountains."

There was, in fact, a pack working an old mining claim just outside of Ashcroft. "And you believe that a werewolf took Julie

Martin?" It wasn't unheard of for a were to go rogue; they were more or less human after all.

"No. Just that there's werewolves in the mountains, but if that's the case then..."

"Then?" Henry prodded when Kevin's voice trailed off.

"Well, you know. Werewolves!"

"Is that it?"

"One of the Martins' neighbors saw something large and hairy carrying a small body."

"In its mouth?"

"No, but..."

"Werewolves don't have an intermediate state. They look like wolves or they look human." Essentially like wolves and essentially

like humans but close enough. "It's not werewolves."

"The old lady seemed pretty sure it wasn't a Sasquatch."

Even six months ago Henry would have believed it wasn't a Sasquatch went without saying. "Large and hairy?"

"That's what she said."

They couldn't save every child who went missing in British Columbia but large and hairy pointed toward something the police

might not be able to handle. "Give me the witness's name and we'll check it out."

"So"-just past the Spuzzum exit, Henry pulled out and pa.s.sed an empty logging truck then tucked his 1976 BMW back into the right lane-"where's Lee?"

"He's down in L.A. for a couple of days, auditioning for a movie of the week."

"He's leaving Darkest Night?" Lee Nicholas, Tony's partner, was one of the leads in the popular syndicated vampire detective show.

"What? No." That pulled Tony's attention off the screen of his PDA. "They'll be shooting in Vancouver; he figures he can do both. C.B.'s willing to adjust our shooting schedule if necessary."

"That doesn't sound like him." Chester Bane was notoriously inflexible when it came to situations that might cost him money.

"He's hoping he can scam some free publicity."

Henry snorted. "That does. What," he asked a few kilometers later when it became obvious Tony wasn't going to pick up the conversational ball, "are you finding so fascinating on that thing?"

"Sorry, I was just going over the list of possible...um, things."

"Things."

"Suspects who might have taken the kid. But they're not exactly people."

Eyes nearly closed in the glare of oncoming headlights, Henry sighed. "Let's hear the list."

"Well, there's Bugbears, a kind of a hairy giant goblin. Or Chimeras, because the lion and goat parts are hairy and that might have

been all they saw. It could be any one of a number of different demons but then we need to find out who's calling them. Uh..." He squinted at the screen as he scrolled down. "Displacer Beasts look like cougars except they're black and have tentacles so it wouldn't necessarily be carrying the kid in its mouth. Ettins are two-headed giants that live in remote areas and-"

"Tony, where did you get this list?" "Sort of from Kevin Groves."

"Sort of?"

"He lent me an RPG monster index. RPG: role playing game," Tony expanded when Henry's silence made it obvious he had no idea what that meant. "Like Dungeons and Dragons."

"I've never heard of it."

"Really? Because it's old. Well, oldish." When Henry replied with more silence, he sighed. "I wanted to go in with more information than hairy thing that eats children and hopefully isn't a werewolf."

"So you went to a game?"

It was Tony's turn to snort as he powered down and twisted around to slip the PDA into a side pocket on his backpack. "Yeah, well believe it or not, Googling big hairy eats children doesn't pull up anything useful."

"But imaginary..."

"Henry, whatever this is, I guarantee it'll be considered imaginary by most of the world. h.e.l.l, we're considered imaginary by most

of the world."

"I'm sure more people than you expect believe in third a.s.sistant directors."

"You'd be surprised." Slouching down as far as the seat belt would allow, he propped his knees up on the dashboard. "Ninety-

nine percent of the world's population is in denial about something. Take you, for instance."

That drew Henry's attention off the road. "Me?"

"You're still in denial about Vicki's birthday."

"I said I'd get her something."

"Yeah, but it has to be something good and I don't think you're giving it much thought."

"There's a child missing...."

"You want to talk about that all the way to Lytton? Because I don't."

"Fine." Henry pulled out and pa.s.sed a pair of trucks. "What about a gift certificate?"

"Dude, it's a good thing you're hard to kill."

The village of Lytton was about a two-hour drive from Vancouver. Henry had picked Tony up at his apartment in Burnaby at

twenty to eight, and it was a quarter to ten when Henry left the highway and steered the BMW down Main Street.

"You think they usually roll the sidewalks up this early," Tony wondered, staring out at the dark windows, "or is this a reaction to the Martin kid getting grabbed?"