Free The Dragon Done It by Mike Resnick, Eric Flint Page A

Vicki, be careful!"
    "Sorry. Sometimes I forget how sharp they are."
    "Terrific." He wove his fingers through her hair and pulled just hard enough to make his point. "Don't."
    "Don't what?" She grinned up at him, teeth gleaming ivory in the moonlight spilling across the bed. "Don't forget or don't—"
    The sudden demand of the telephone for attention buried the last of her question.
    Detective-Sergeant Michael Celluci sighed. "Hold that thought," he said, rolled over, and reached for the phone. "Celluci."
    "Fifty-two division just called. They've found a body down at Richmond and Peter they think we might want to have a look at."
    "Dave, it's . . ." He squinted at the clock. ". . . one twenty-nine in the a.m. and I'm off duty."
    On the other end of the line, his partner, theoretically off duty as well, refused to take the hint. "Ask me who the stiff is?"
    Celluci sighed again. "Who's the stiff?"
    "Mac Eisler."
    "Shit."
    "Funny, that's exactly what I said." Nothing in Dave Graham's voice indicated he appreciated the joke. "I'll be there in ten."
    "Make it fifteen."
    "You in the middle of something?"
    Celluci watched as Vicki sat up and glared at him. "I was."
    "Welcome to the wonderful world of law enforcement."
    Vicki's hand shot out and caught Celluci's wrist before he could heave the phone across the room. "Who's Mac Eisler?" she asked as, scowling, he dropped the receiver back in its cradle and swung his legs off the bed.
    "You heard that?"
    "I can hear the beating of your heart, the movement of your blood, the song of your life." She scratched the back of her leg with one bare foot. "I should think I can overhear a lousy phone conversation."
    "Eisler's a pimp." Celluci reached for the light switch, changed his mind, and began pulling on his clothes. Given the full moon riding just outside the window, it wasn't exactly dark and given Vicki's sensitivity to bright light, not to mention her temper, he figured it was safer to cope. "We're pretty sure he offed one of his girls a couple weeks ago."
    Vicki scooped her shirt up off the floor. "Irene Macdonald?"
    "What? You overheard that too?"
    "I get around. How sure's pretty sure?"
    "Personally positive. But we had nothing solid to hold him on."
    "And now he's dead." Skimming her jeans up over her hips, she dipped her brows in a parody of deep thought. "Golly, I wonder if there's a connection."
    "Golly yourself," Celluci snarled. "You're not coming with me."
    "Did I ask?"
    "I recognized the tone of voice. I know you, Vicki. I knew you when you were a cop, I knew you when you were a P.I. and I don't care how much you've changed physically, I know you now you're a . . . a . . ."
    "Vampire." Her pale eyes seemed more silver than grey. "You can say it, Mike. It won't hurt my feelings. Bloodsucker. Nightwalker. Creature of Darkness."
    "Pain in the butt." Carefully avoiding her gaze, he shrugged into his shoulder holster and slipped a jacket on over it. "This is police business, Vicki, stay out of it. Please." He didn't wait for a response but crossed the shadows to the bedroom door. Then he paused, one foot over the threshold. "I doubt I'll be back by dawn. Don't wait up."
    Vicki Nelson, ex of the Metropolitan Toronto Police Force, ex private investigator, recent vampire, decided to let him go. If he could joke about the change, he accepted it. And besides, it was always more fun to make him pay for smart-ass remarks when he least expected it.
    She watched from the darkness as Celluci climbed into Dave Graham's car. Then, with the taillights disappearing in the distance, she dug out his spare set of car keys and proceeded to leave tangled entrails of the Highway Traffic Act strewn from Downsview to the heart of Toronto.
     
    It took no supernatural ability to find the scene of the crime. What with the police, the press, and the morbidly curious, the area seethed with people. Vicki slipped past the constable stationed at the far end of the alley and followed the paths of