Blood Pact

"We'll end up staying on the . . . couch.”

    He lifted his mouth long enough to murmur, "So?" and that was the last coherent word either of them spoke for some time.

    "Four o'clock in the morning," Vicki muttered, digging for the keys to her apartment. "Another two hours and I'll have seen the clock around. Again. Why do I keep doing this to myself?" Her wrist throbbed, as if in answer, and she sighed. "Never mind. Stupid question.”

    Muscles tensed across her back as the door unexpectedly swung fully open. The security chain hung loose, unlocked, arcing back and forth, scraping softly, metal against wood. Holding her breath, she filtered out the ambient noises of the apartment, the sound of the refrigerator motor, a dripping tap, the distant hum of the hydro substation across the street, and noted a faint mechanical whir. It sounded like . . .

    She almost had it when a sudden noise drove off all hope of identification. The horrible crunching, grinding, smashing, continued for about ten seconds, then muted.

    "I'II grind his bones to make my bread . . ." It was the closest she could come to figuring out what could possibly be happening.
    And all things considered, I'm not denying the possibility of a literal translation. After demons, werewolves, mummies, not to mention the omnipresent vampire in her life, a Jack-eating giant in her living room was less than impossible no matter how unlikely.

    She shrugged the huge, black leather purse off her shoulder and caught it just before it hit the floor. With the strap wrapped twice around her wrist it made a weapon even a giant would flinch at. Good thing I hung onto that brick . . .

    The sensible thing to do would involve closing the door, trotting to the phone booth on the corner, and calling the cops.

    I am way too tired for this shit. Vicki stepped silently into the apartment. Four in the morning courage. Gotta love it.

    Sliding each foot a centimeter above the floor and placing it back down with exaggerated care, she made her way along the short length of hall and around the corner into the living room, senses straining. Over the last few months she'd started to believe that, while the retinitis pigmentosa had robbed her of any semblance of night sight, sound and smell were beginning to compensate. The proof would be in the pudding; although she knew the streetlight outside the bay window provided a certain amount of illumination in spite of the blinds and the apartment never actually got completely dark, as far as her vision was concerned, she might as well be wearing a padded blindfold.

    Well, not quite a blindfold. Even she couldn't miss the blob of light that had to be the television flickering silently against the far wall. She stopped, weapon ready, cocked her head, and got a whiff of a well known after-shave mixed with . . . cheese?

    The sudden release of tension almost knocked her over.

    "What the hell are you doing here at this hour, Celluci?”

    "What does it look like?" the familiar voice asked mockingly in turn. "I'm watching an incredibly stupid movie with the sound off and eating very stale taco chips. How long have you had these things sitting around, anyway?”

    Vicki groped for the wall, then walked her fingers along it to the switch for the overhead light. Blinking away tears as her sensitive eyes reacted to the glare, she gently lowered her purse to the floor. Mr. Chin, downstairs in the first floor apartment, wouldn't appreciate being woken up by twenty pounds of assorted bric-a-brac slamming into his ceiling.

    Detective-Sergeant Michael Celluci squinted up at her from the couch and set the half-empty bag of taco chips to one side.
    "Rough night?" he growled.

    Yawning, she shrugged out of her jacket, tossing it over the back of the recliner. "Not really. Why?”

    "Those bags under your eyes look more like a set of matched luggage." He swung his legs to the floor and stretched. "Thirty-two just doesn't bounce back the way thirty-one used to. You need more sleep.”

    "Which I had every intention of getting," she crossed the room and jabbed a finger at the television control panel, "until I came home to find you in my living room. And you haven't answered my question.”

    "What question?" He smiled charmingly, but eight years on the force with him, the last four intimately involved… Now that's a tidy label for a complicated situation, she mused …had made her pretty much immune to classical good looks used to effect.

    "I'm too