Invidia
by Mojave Dragonfly

First story in the Seven Deadly Sins series

Invidia—envy, one of the seven deadly sins

It started when Vicki asked Mike along while she and Fitzroy went to interview Joe Kraavitz, a disgraced Toronto policeman, who was living in a seedy pay-per-week motel. Mike knew Kraavitz from their time together in another precinct. Neither he nor Vicki had given much thought to the fact that even with his gun and badge relinquished, any cop or ex-cop could have had access to untraced firearms. It wasn't supposed to be that kind of a visit.

"We just want to talk to you," Vicki had called from the walkway outside the upper level room, after Kraavitz had ordered them away.

"He's watching you out the window," Fitzroy said quietly.

Mike seethed. Fitzroy's abilities were invaluable to detective work, and it cost the—cartoonist nothing. Fitzroy could see better, hear better, hell, smell better than anyone human; he was faster and stronger and could intimidate a witness into talking with only a look. And all with no sacrifice on his part; no academy hell, no examinations, no hazing from the veterans, no training at all. Worse yet, Fitzroy did not have what Mike and Vicki had, what any seasoned officer had—a history of making and surviving the tough decisions. Scars on flesh and psyche, that toughened and bonded. Mike's hard won vocation was a lark to the man. Fitzroy should be the greenest of rookies, yet his abilities gave him skills at interrogation, tracking and intimidation beyond any rookie skills. It was unfair; it was unearned. Mike hated it.

"Oh yeah?" said Vicki. She moved to in front of the window and yelled through it, clearly accepting Fitzroy's report. "Kraavitz! This is nothing to do with the shooting."

"Gun!" Mike heard someone cry. He would have thought it was Fitzroy, were Fitzroy still standing where the sound had come from. Faster than the eye could see, Fitzroy had somehow moved Vicki aside as a gunshot shattered the normal sounds of the night and also shattered the window. Mike and Vicki reflexively plastered themselves to either side of the window, weapons in hand. Fitzroy, his black peacoat flapping like the bat he ought to be, flew backward, impacted the railing with a sickening sound, and tumbled over it. Mike glimpsed the red on his impeccable turtleneck, red that shouldn't have been there, just before he fell from sight.

Mike's own training made some decisions easy. With three of them and a man down, one partner stayed with the injured and called for medical and backup while the other pursued. As soon as Mike heard movement in the motel room, he intended to leap through the window, shooting, but Vicki—hadn't moved. Armed only with her collapsing baton, she held her position, tense and ready. Damn her. Did she expect Mike to go see to Fitzroy? Well, he wasn't doing it. He was the one armed, for Christ's sake. Hell, he was the only cop.

"Joe," he called, anger shaking his voice. "Give yourself up. What the fuck do you think you're doing?" He glared at Vicki, but he realized she probably couldn't see him in the light of the scarce low wattage bulbs the place used for walkway lighting. She gestured at him to keep Kraavitz talking. Meanwhile, what was happening to Fitzroy? He was bleeding possibly to death on the asphalt below, and Vicki wouldn't get her ass down there and get herself to safety. Couldn't that woman find a nurturing bone in her body, at least for her fucking lover?

"I don't want to shoot you, Mike," Kraavitz yelled, hysterically.

Shit, Mike realized. The guy was on something. Now Vicki was gesturing at him to back away. He knew what she wanted; they'd worked with each other longer than either had worked with anyone else. And if Mike was now Kraavitz's focus, it could be the only thing that would keep Mike from being the next guy over the railing.

Still, it took every ounce of courage he had. "All right, Joe." he called, holstering his gun, raising his hands and stepping back from the shattered window. "Don't shoot me. I'm backing away." Please don't shoot me.

"Get out of here, Mike. And don't come back. Never, ever, you hear me?"

"I'm going, Joe, see? I'm going." Mike continued to back up, praying.

Sure enough, the stupid fool moved to the shattered window in order to keep an eye on Mike as he moved toward the stairs. Completely unaware of Vicki.

Vicki hit him with her metal baton with all the force and momentum she could whip up with her 5'5" frame and 120 lbs. Probably cracked his skull.

Mike and Vicki were both through the window, heedless of cuts, in bare seconds.

Vicki pinned his arms. "Cuffs."

Mike already had them out. "What the fuck were you thinking? You're supposed to be down there with Fitzroy."

"I know," Vicki said with glee. "And so did Kraavitz."

She had sped to Fitzroy, of course—her delay probably no more than a minute, once all was said and done—while Mike called it in and reassured the panicky patrons of the motel. He kept himself occupied in order to not think about what Vicki was likely doing in order to make the—cartoonist's boo-boo all better. In fact, Mike managed to stay so busy that he didn't even have time to inquire how Fitzroy was. Imagine that. But with sirens in the distance, Vicki found him and drew him away from the bathrobe and underwear-wearing crowd. If she looked paler than usual, Mike couldn't tell.

"Is he all right?" he asked, because he knew he was expected to.

"No, he's not all right. What do you think? But he'll live. Mike, I've got a cab. I'm taking him home."

"What do you mean? I need you here. And I've called an ambulance."

"An ambulance? Mike, he can't go to a hospital. And he can't give an official statement, either. I have to get him away from here."

"What? Vicki, you can't do this to me. What am I supposed to tell them? And there's a motel full of witnesses."

"Hey! Don't yell at me; I'm not the doofus who called for an ambulance. Leave Henry out of it. Tell them Kraavitz shot at you—it's close enough to the truth, and it's sure enough for the collar."

"You stay and make a statement. You are not leaving me holding this bag."

"I—" Vicki actually looked confused, which was better than the anger he'd expected. Vicki seldom responded well to being told what to do. "I'm not sending him home alone and he can't have anything to do with an official report. I admit, Mike, I never thought of this, but Henry's in a state. He can't make a statement; he doesn't dare. What if they want to depose him? Jesus, Mike, what if he had to appear in court? He can't come in during the day."

Mike could see her mental cogs whirring. "Kraavitz needs the ambulance, so that's okay," she said. "Tell the guys another one already took me to the hospital. I'll make a statement in the morning for them; I'll even go to the hospital so there's a record of me."

She looked at her cut hands and back up at him. "But don't you see? Henry can't have anything to do with the courts. You have to leave him out of everything."

Mike seized her hands in his equally bloody ones. "Jesus, I bet he loved that. Tell me one thing, Vicki. Is he drinking your blood?"

Vicki snatched back her hands and spat, "It's none of your Goddamned business."

"You're making it my business," he spat back. "You're asking for a major cover up for that—that thing. I'm the one with my ass in a sling here. Why should I keep his fucking secret?"

"He took a bullet for me tonight, Mike. Isn't that good enough?"

"For now," he said through gritted teeth.

---

So that's what started him thinking. How hard would it be to roust Fitzroy from his home during the day? On official police business, of course. He'd need a warrant, so he'd have to work on that. Even trickier, he'd need it to have nothing to do with him. He could feed information to the Drug Squad, or to Organized Crime Enforcement, and let them get the warrant.

It wouldn't be that hard.

Mike squashed those thoughts viciously and went to lunch a few days later with Vicki, careful not to ask anything about Fitzroy but what she would expect. He volunteered further information about Kraavitz—that it turned out he was drunk, not high, and yes he did remember three people at his door, not two, but had been relieved to learn he remembered it wrong, so he didn't have to add homicide to his crimes. They discussed the details of their cover-up at their favorite deli, and Mike was entirely cooperative.

"You know," Vicki said between bites of her Reuben sandwich, "if we have to, if there's someone who realizes any contradictions in our story, I think Henry can, like, erase it from their memory."

"He can do that?" Wouldn't that be handy?

She nodded. "But he's gotta be with them. I don't think he can do it, you know, from a distance. Pass that mustard there. Thanks."

"What about computer records and files and things?"

She shook her head and swallowed her food. "I don't think so. You'd have to take care of that. But people he can do."

"I don't doubt it for a second," he said dryly. "So—we'd have to arrange a meeting at night, right?" His heart sped up at a question that touched on his forbidden thoughts. He thought he kept his voice normal, but he'd have spiked a polygraph right then.

"Yeah. Why? You got someone in mind?"

"No, no, just wondering. I mean, he can't do anything in the daytime? Is it the sunlight, or—" Mike allowed his real confusion into his speech to distract from anything else that might be there.

Vicki grinned. "I had a lot of those questions, too. Hell, I still have them. You ever see Buffy the Vampire Slayer?"

Mike's mind flashed to a visit to his brother's—watching TV with the nephews. "Not that I'll admit to," he said. "But it does seem like I've seen scenes of vampires prancing around during the day with heavy coats over their heads or something."

"Apparently not. He's completely comatose the second dawn hits, and he'd better be out of the sunlight, or..." she paused and shook her head.

Really. How very interesting.

Time to make nice. "So, how is your favorite cartoonist? Fix the hole in his shirt yet?"

Vicki gave him a squint-eyed look as she slurped the last of her drink through the straw, but she didn't correct him with "graphic novelist." "He's fine. We managed to close the case without Kraavitz, and now he's got some publishing deadline." Something flickered on her face that Mike couldn't read and was gone.

"So, recovering from bullet wounds is on his list of superpowers," Mike said, crinkling up the paper wrapping on his sandwich.

"He does it better than I would have," she said with warning in her tone.

"Which just makes what he did not that big a sacrifice." It was childish, Mike knew, but he didn't care.

"Oh, please." Vicki glared. "He's not immune to pain."

Mike shrugged. "So he was in pain until he could get his next meal, right? And that was you."

"Mike, could you be any more uncouth?"

"Oh, don't get 'more couth than thou' on me, Vicki, I've seen you pick your toenails at dinner."

To his surprise, she laughed—a startled, pleased laugh—and he remembered loving her. She threw a pickle at him. Whatever he did to Fitzroy, she must never, ever know it was him.

It kept getting easier to plan. The mayor declared Toronto's own "war on drugs," and the Drug Squad suddenly had an infusion of money and manpower, and expanded powers to bring in and hold suspected drug and crime lords. Warrants fell like leaves in autumn. Mike knew just the tip to leave and just the Drug Squad officer to leave it with. Jay Thompson, working class homophobe. Resented the hell out of the rich and hated fancy-boys with a passion. If Fitzroy crossed his path, Thompson'd be on his scent with his pack of wolves.

And all it would take would be for them to kick down his door in the daylight.

What you're contemplating is murder, you know, a voice in his head told him. He looked out the office window at the city, the orange sun sinking behind his building. Fitzroy would wake up soon, and do whatever it was he did.

But is it murder if he's not a man? Who could he ask? Often the police consulted the university faculty. They and the press seemed to be the only ones who realized the university had a charge to provide information to the public when asked. But he didn't need folklore—that he could find on the internet. He needed someone who knew about real vampires. Should he try the city's occultists? Charlatans and wannabees, in his opinion, like that idiot kid who murdered people to try to raise a—well, anyone could get lucky. Clearly the occult existed, but how could he know who to trust? He needed someone with an accumulation of lore, collected throughout history, knowledge of good and evil, and with hands-on experience. He needed what's-his-name Van Helsing.

Or—he had another idea.

Mike stood in front of Our Lady of Lourdes, on Sherbourne Street, just south of Bloor. A stately church, one of the few in Toronto with a dome, it had once graced a prosperous neighborhood. Now it was surrounded by the St. James housing project and a neighborhood of South American and Philippino immigrants. His own parish priest had sent him here, to speak to a Fr. Bernard. Bernard was one of the priests who had been the inspiration for the characters in The Exorcist. He now resembled the old priest in the movie instead of the young one, but he had never waivered in his belief in demon possession, and had performed many exorcisms, even after they had gone out of vogue with the Church. Not surprisingly, he had never risen in the ecclesiastical ranks.

Evening mass was just finishing, so Mike waited at the back as the congregants gathered their things and crowded into the aisles.

"Detective-Sergeant Celucci," said a most unwelcome voice, right beside him. Mike nearly jumped out of his skin.

To his memory, Mike had never stammered in his life. "Fitz—Fitzroy! What the—" He choked back the obscenity and just stared. The—cartoonist was dressed in his customary black and white, his clothes made of expensive materials and cuts. Heavy jeweled rings flashed on a number of his fingers, and around his neck he wore a tarnished silver crucifix. His wavy hair curled and wafted in almost a halo effect, though the evil gleam in his eyes contravened it. Oh, yeah, Thompson'd be all over this guy. How did he not get mugged in this neighborhood?

Mike pulled himself together. "What are you doing here?" he demanded.

The man's eyes widened. "Mass," he said innocently. "What are you doing here?"

Mike's thoughts whirled. Though he'd seen the—cartoonist wear a crucifix before, so he knew that part of the legends were false, he didn't believe for a minute that someone—like Fitzroy—came to a poor part of town to go to Mass. My God, just think of the meals he can get here. Immigrant population—less likely to report attacks, even less likely to be believed if there was something weird in the story. There could be unreported bodies...

"There are half a dozen churches closer to you," Mike said.

Fitzroy shrugged, looking out the doors into the night. "Old habits. So what are you doing here? Keeping the streets safe from wine and wafers? Or was there a murder in the confessional?"

"It's none of your damned business."

"Tsk, Detective," Fitzroy said, the gleam in his eyes now amused. "Profanity."

Mike pushed away from Fitzroy, rudely elbowing his way through the crowd, past the door where the priests stood, shaking hands, to reach the outdoors. He would have had to tell Fitzroy something, and he didn't know the extent of the man's mind-reading powers. Could he tell that Mike was lying? Because Mike certainly wasn't going to say, "I'm here to ask a man of God who actually believes in your kind if it's okay to kill you." Better if Fitzroy believed Mike's departure related to their—their—disagreements.

Mike stood on the stairs outside the church as Philippino women flowed around him giving him dirty looks. If Fitzroy was a regular here, at the only parish with a priest who took demonology seriously, he'd probably already corrupted Bernard. The thought of that—vampire, preying on these marginalized people, using his powers to keep retribution from the Church at bay, made him see red. He headed for his car.

He didn't need any permission to do this.

Mike called the Drug Squad tipline and left his tip; he also planted just the right corroborating evidence in the files to give the tip weight. Something that would be meaningless and forgotten when Fitzroy was found dead. Then he waited, sweating.

A day went by without his corroboration being checked. That night Mike declined to get together with Vicki (he didn't dare call it "canceling a date" even in his own mind), because she knew him too well. Also that night, unable to sleep, he said bedtime prayers for the first time since—God only knew. He couldn't think what else to do. It didn't help.

The next day Thompson pulled the file. Mike did his work in a haze, like waiting for the doctor to call with lab results. He hung around, dropped by, kept his ears open. Nothing. The Drug Squad was busy; he knew that. Hell, the whole city knew that. Vicki called, asking him to run a name for her. He managed to learn from her that Fitzroy was still working full time to meet a deadline, not helping her. It didn't make him feel any better.

That night he slept, but fitfully, with many unpleasant dreams. He spent the next day in the field with Dave, groggy and cut off from news at the office. He got in late and chatted up a few of the guys. Drug Squad had made some busts, but nothing unusual that day. Thompson wasn't around, and Mike didn't know if he dared talk to the guy, anyway. God, he wished this was over.

As he was filling out his own paperwork, he happened to get a glimpse of the arrest log—handwritten on paper before being entered into the computer. There, third from the bottom was Henry Fitzroy; arresting officer, Jay Thompson.

Mike's heart leaped into his throat. They'd arrested Fitzroy alive? Time, time, he checked the log-in time: 1805 hours, a good 50 minutes after sundown. Damn, he hadn't thought of this. Of course they didn't have to go to Fitzroy's place during daylight.

He headed for a bathroom in order to get out of sight and think. Why had Fitzroy let himself be brought in? He'd pitched a fit at the motel rather than make a formal statement. He could have easily overpowered the officers, or mind-controlled them or whatever.

He looked at his own haggard face in the mirror. Vicki had told him why, he realized. Fitzroy had no magic powers over an arrest warrant in his name. Assignment logs that showed the Drug Squad guys dispatched to his address, things like that. Unless he wanted to go permanently on the lam from the law over a charge that had no basis, he had to resolve it somehow. The arrogant bastard came in because he trusted he could fix things if he came to the station.

And maybe he could. Mike splashed water on his face, grateful that no one else had come into the bathroom for a few minutes. A good lawyer could have Fitzroy sprung before sunrise, and the cartoonist probably had a good lawyer. But there was one thing he might not have counted on: Thompson's use and abuse of his expanded powers under the city's "War on Drugs." Suspected drug lords could be denied their phone call for up to twelve hours. They could be held in isolation for two, and even in a crowded detention cell, they could be denied any visitors. It helped make them less cocky, which was perfect for Fitzroy. But had Thompson done it? And where was Fitzroy detained? That made all the difference.

With a sudden surge of—hope? Fear? Mike headed back to the duty desk. A detective perusing the arrest log was commonplace; it wouldn't be remarked on.

The new detention facility had been built, logically enough, with holding cells that had no windows. But the old one, the one in Mike's own building, had high, heavily barred windows that looked out, not to freedom, but to an interior sunlit courtyard. Even had someone escaped through those windows, they would still be in the precinct building. Sunlight, however, shone directly in.

Mike returned to the arrest log. Henry Fitzroy was in detention block A, the one in Mike's building. He was labeled "high influence" which meant Thompson had denied him visitors or a phone call until tomorrow morning. Even guards stayed out of the halls after the ten o'clock lockdown, monitoring the prisoners by camera. Fitzroy would have no one but his fellow prisoners to use his mojo on.

Mike couldn't believe it. It was too easy. And if it did turn out that the man could turn into mist or something and escape, there was nothing to connect any of this to Mike. Mike was off duty and didn't work for the Drug Squad anyway.

Off duty. He'd worked overtime and hurried now to clock out, so there'd be no reason to believe he was even in the precinct building. Then he knew exactly where he'd go.

The cameras in facility A were piped to two locations. One was the bank of monitors behind the duty officer up front. The other location was unmanned, after budget cuts. This bank of monitors was in a hall corner, behind a small counter. The monitors were visible to anyone walking down either hallway that met at that corner. The penny-pinchers felt that was sufficient surveillance to provide backup to the busy duty officer. Mike could sit there all night and watch the monitors.

He approached them slowly, with a kind of fearful reverence. There was a man on one of those monitors under sentence of death.

Assuming Fitzroy showed up on camera.

He did. Mike found him easily, standing apart from the other men—bottom feeders scraped from Toronto's streets—a profoundly serious expression on his too-young face. Instead of a white shirt, he wore a burgundy colored silk shirt tucked into perfectly tailored black trousers. As with all the prisoners, he wore no shoes or jewelry. His feet were bare, so he hadn't put on socks tonight. He must have still been cooperative as they were processing him. He hadn't heard then that he was "high influence."

Mike opened an adjacent door to the cable room that fed the monitors, and set the chair just inside the door. He could see the monitors, but he wouldn't be seen. He had sentenced the creature to death, he would stay and see the sentence carried out.

The room Fitzroy was in was entirely bare of furniture, but for a commode in one corner. A pile of army blankets and flat pillows was in another, the only provision made for the prisoners' comfort. Most of the men had already claimed some floor space, either sitting or lying. Mike noted, though, that no one had chosen a spot very near where Fitzroy stood, despite the crowded conditions. Had Fitzroy threatened them? He'd play the tape later to see. Maybe they instinctively recognized something more dangerous than themselves. It occurred to Mike that he might have put these other prisoners in jeopardy, locking a hungry vampire in with them. How often did Fitzroy need to feed anyway? So many things he just didn't know. He would have to keep watch.

Later in the night Fitzroy moved to the door and placed his hands and an ear to it, like a safecracker. He even closed his eyes. Mike waited for the door to fall off its hinges, or to vanish in a puff of smoke, but neither happened. Fitzroy opened his eyes and moved his hands slowly over the door, as if he were feeling for something. By now, Mike could tell some of his cellmates were taunting him, but of course Mike had no sound.

Fitzroy completed whatever he was doing at the door, after running his hands over every inch of it. His cellmates were getting braver with their taunts, Mike could tell by their gestures, but Fitzroy ignored them. The vampire dropped his hands and turned his back to the door, slumping back against it. It was the first movement Mike could remember seeing him make that didn't look completely poised and controlled. On his face Mike finally saw what he had wanted—worry, apprehension, something not smug and self-assured. Mike smiled.

Fitzroy made his way toward the window, stepping over the other men. One man tried to trip him, but the vampire avoided the swipe easily, his gaze still fixed on the window. To Mike it looked like Fitzroy was looking right at him, since the camera was positioned outside the window looking in. Mike's heart beat faster as he watched Fitzroy's face loom large on the screen as the vampire apparently lifted himself effortlessly to study the window close up. Looking as cool as if he were standing on a table, while actually holding his body's weight, Fitzroy hung there scrutinizing every juncture of the window, the mesh and the bars beyond. This close to his face, Mike saw, not just apprehension, but growing fear. Mike no longer smiled.

Finished inspecting the window, Fitzroy dropped almost off camera. Two men below grabbed him as he fell, evil expressions on their faces, but before they could implement whatever they had in mind, Fitzroy shrugged them off and spoke. Looking ill, both men stumbled away from him, one of them getting tangled in the blanket of someone on the floor.

Fitzroy returned to the door and placed one hand gently on it. It was an odd gesture, like you would put a comforting hand on a friend's shoulder. He lowered his head as if thinking, and remained that way for a long time. Mike rubbed his eyes and yawned. He was fatigued but not really sleepy—too keyed up. He stood and stretched. For a moment he considered taking a stroll in the courtyard and peering down the window well at Fitzroy. He was sure the vampire would see him, even in the dark night. Mike had him by the short hairs, now, and it would be so delicious to let him know. Abruptly he was flooded with shame. It was enough that the creature would die; Mike didn't need to be sadistic about it.

He stretched his legs with a trip to the bathroom. On the way he wondered how it would actually happen. Would he have tape footage of a man spontaneously combusting? Good Lord, could that be what was really behind those crazy stories? Vampires combusting in daylight? What—what would that feel like? He tried not to think about it, but a compulsion as he returned from the bathroom sent him into a darkened office to get on the internet. When exactly would dawn be?

In one hour. One hour to live.

When Mike returned to the monitors, he found Fitzroy studying every inch of the walls in the room, the way he had studied the door and window—with hands, ears and even nose. He pushed aside any men curled against the wall as he moved, and rather than object, those men pulled blankets over their heads. The vampire's movements were still controlled, but were swift and, to Mike's eyes, frenzied. Fitzroy was close to panic; he wouldn't find any way out, and by now, he knew it.

Mike's cell phone rang and he gasped as he snatched it from a pocket. The caller ID said V. Nelson. He froze, staring. Vicki would have called his home phone first, assuming he was fast asleep. What could she want at this time of night? He raised his gaze to the frightened face on the screen before him and slowly put the ringing phone back in his pocket. The back of his neck went damp and cold. Half an hour to dawn.

On the screen before him, Fitzroy stood, his sheer presence making it look as if he was alone in the room, looking directly at the window, which meant at Mike's camera. He looked excruciatingly young and utterly despairing. Then, to Mike's astonishment, he knelt in the middle of the room, made the sign of the cross with his right hand, and said some words. Mike didn't need to read lips to know what he said. "In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti. Amen."

Stunned, Mike watched the vampire pray. Next came the Ave Maria, but in English, not Latin. Mike mouthed the words with him. When Fitzroy reached "pray for us now, and at the hour of our death," he faltered, unclasped his hands, and fell forward, his hands on the cement floor. He dropped his head and his long hair draped forward. Even on a monitor, Mike could see him trembling.

Mike's hands ached from how hard he had been gripping the chair. Fifteen minutes.

Fitzroy lifted his head, not bothering to push aside his hair, and raised his dread-filled gaze back to the window, back to Mike. He sat back on his heels, slowly clasped his hands again, and started another prayer. Mike might have had difficulty lip-reading this one had it not so clearly started with "Oh, my God."

Mike stood, shaking. "Oh my God, I am heartily sorry for having offended Thee, and I detest all my sins..." The Act of Contrition.

Mike couldn't take it anymore. He fled the room.

He fled straight to the duty desk, and pushed in ahead of the line of day officers reporting for their oh dark hundred briefings. "I need an immediate prisoner release," he told D'Amico, the duty officer. He reached over the counter for the right yellow form. Without it, the facility wardens would never open up for him.

"Detective," Trish D'Amico, said, startled. "You know I can't—"

"I know you can. We need him immediately for a sting. C'mon, Trish." Mike pushed the filled in form at her.

"Fitzroy," she read, "but he's not yours."

"Thompson'll sign him over to me tomorrow. Please, Trish. Now." Mike was trying not to shake.

"Okay," D'Amico said, uncertainly, signing and shoving the form in the time stamp machine. Mike saw the time. Ten minutes.

Mike snatched the form, hurled a thanks over his shoulder and sped to the detention facility. The single night warden was studying for an exam, and Mike flapped the yellow form in front of his book. "Prisoner release. Not a full outprocessing; he'll be in my custody."

"Fine," snapped the man, and, as Mike had hoped he would, he flipped Mike a spare key card. "You need me?" he inquired.

"Nope," said Mike already at the door, elated. Ah, we're pretty lax with the protocol on the mid shift. Thank God.

He was alone in the hall outside the cells. Seven minutes. At Fitzroy's door he paused, somehow certain the vampire crouched on the other side, ready to spring. "Fitzroy," he called. "It's me, Celucci." Then he keyed the code and swiped the card. As the door opened, a dark blur flew through it, and Mike slammed it shut without looking for him. He knew who it was.

There was Fitzroy, standing behind him, looking each way down the hall, holding tight to panic. "This way." Mike said, sprinting for the exit at the far end of the hall. Either door would open into the interior of the precinct, but this route avoided the duty desk and was closer to the parking lot. He knew Fitzroy could move at inhuman speed, but he clearly couldn't go through the coded exit without Mike. "Take my car, once we're through this door. Can you get home in time?" They were at the door, Mike's hand shaking as he hit the number pad.

"I'll find shelter closer. Keep your car," said the bastard son of Henry VIII. Then the door was open and Fitzroy was gone.

Mike stood, gasping, as the heavy Facility door moved shut behind him with a pneumatic hiss. Around him the arriving day shift bustled, no one taking special notice of him, or of any superhuman blur they didn't really see. Everything normal. Except I am in so much shit.

Mike watched the dawn from the top of the Civic parking structure, shivering. He really hoped Henry Fitzroy was alive out there somewhere, because the only salvation he could see for his career involved a lot of memory wiping.

Salvation for his soul, however—that he didn't care to examine yet.

He was completely wiped and couldn't think straight enough to plot, so he'd called Vicki. She was good at it. And any ass-kicking she'd give him, he deserved, if only he could keep the darkest truth from her. She hadn't waited to talk much on the phone, so she had only the basics.

A cab crawled through the parking structure and stopped. Vicki alighted and joined him after a moment. Something in Mike's chest ached when he saw her.

"Mike, you asshole," she called, as a greeting, and punched him in the arm. "Tell me you got Henry out in time."

"I told you, I think so," he said wearily. "He couldn't get home, but he said something about shelter."

"Shelter. Shit. Okay, now tell me what you did."

"What I did?" Mike's heart stopped.

"Yeah. What do we have to cover up?" She rummaged in her voluminous bag and produced a thermos.

"Coffee," he said, worshipfully.

"Coffee," she said.

So Mike explained about releasing Fitzroy, Thompson's collar, into his custody with no reason and an off-the-cuff story about a sting. Vicki listened closely, and Mike kept expecting her to intuit the rest of the story. She gave him a few bad moments.

"What do you think Drug Squad had on him for probable cause?"

"I don't know." Liar.

"You're supposed to say, 'Vicki, you don't really know anything about the guy.' C'mon Mike, you're going soft."

Mike swallowed coffee and forced himself to reject temptation. "Vicki, you don't really think Fitzroy is a drug dealer, do you?"

Vicki frowned. "He's awfully rich. But I figured compound interest must really accrue over 400 years." He watched her struggle with her experience at profiling versus her feelings. "Did Thompson find anything at his place when they searched?" she asked, reluctantly.

"I don't know. But Vicki, I really, truly doubt it." Here Vicki was, finally admitting it might be possible to suspect Fitzroy of something, and it was all wrong. Mike refused to profit from his crime. "I don't think Fitzroy deals drugs." He wanted to say more, remind her about the dangers he did believe in from the—cartoonist, but this was penance. He left it at that.

Vicki gave him a pleased look mingled with suspicion. "How very loyal of you."

"It's just the truth," he muttered, pouring more hot solace.

"Are you all right?"

"I told you. I haven't been sleeping."

"Why not?"

"Because I haven't been able to sleep," he snapped.

"There's the Celucci I know," she said, satisfied. "One thing you haven't explained, though," she said. "How did you just happen to be on the scene in time to get Henry released? You're not on mids."

There it was. The question he'd been dreading. The one he hadn't found an answer for.

"Vicki, I don't know what to tell you—"

She punched him in the arm again; that was starting to hurt. At least it wasn't the arm holding the coffee. Even Vicki wasn't that blasphemous. "All right, all right, don't admit it then. But it's pretty obvious, you got my message and rode to the rescue. For Henry Fitzroy. There's not much point in pretending you aren't the hero in this. Henry was there, remember?"

Her—message? Mike would really have to listen to his voice-mail later. "Yeah," he said, weakly.

In the end, Vicki and Fitzroy cleaned it up fairly well. Vicki, by deciding what sabotage Mike needed to do, and Fitzroy—Fitzroy did employ a good lawyer, and was also quite willing to erase himself from any number of memories. When Vicki explained that he needed to use his memory mojo on Mike's behalf, too, he was disgustingly gracious. He even bowed and said he was in Mike's debt or some such. Mike was miraculously off the hook, but felt like shit.

And when Henry asked cautiously if Thompson was a friend of either of them, and commented "Good," when they both said no—Mike knew that whatever was going to happen to Thompson was his fault, too.

He wondered if Fr. Bernard still heard confessions.

The End.

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