Read Blood Debt for Free Online Page B

original creases. Why is that so difficult?”
    Vulnerable, exposed, and in a really bad mood. Meeting Celluci’s astonished glower with a half-apologetic wave of the map, she growled, “All this scenery is beginning to get to me.”
    Recognizing that on a perfectly straight, completely flat stretch of road no one was going to drive at one hundred kilometers an hour, the speed limit through Saskatchewan was one hundred and ten. Almost everyone did one twenty. Considering his cargo, Celluci compromised at one fifteen.
    A lifetime’s worth of wheat fields later, at 7:17 P.M. local time, he pulled into a truck stop just outside Bassano, Alberta, and turned off the engine wondering if there was a Sonny and Cher revival going on he hadn’t heard about. If he had to listen to “I Got You, Babe” one more time, he was going to have to hurt someone. Parking the van so that Vicki could exit without being seen, he walked stiffly across the asphalt to the restaurant. Sunset would be at 8:30, so he had little better than an hour to eat.
    Soup of the day was beef barley. He stared down into the bowl and remembered all the meals he and Vicki had eaten together, all the gallons of coffee, all the stale sandwiches grabbed on the run. All at once, the thought that they’d never again go out for dim sum, or chicken paprikas, or even order in a pizza while they watched
Hockey Night in Canada
left him feeling incredibly depressed.
    â€œIs there something wrong with the soup?” A middle-aged woman in a spotless white apron peered down at him with some concern from behind the counter.
    â€œThe, uh, the soup’s fine.”
    â€œGlad to hear it. It don’t come out of a can, you know. I make it myself.” When he couldn’t find an immediate response, she shook her head and sighed. “Come on, buddy, cheer up. You look like you’ve lost your best friend.”
    Celluci frowned. He hadn’t exactly lost her. Vicki remained everything to him she ever had been, except a dinner companion and weighed against the rest that shouldn’t mean much. But, right now, it did.
I thought I’d dealt with this
. . . .
    He barely noticed when the waitress took the empty bowl away and replaced it with a platter of steak and home fries.
    Vampire, Nightwalker, Nosferatu—Vicki was no longer human. Granted, she’d made a commitment to him in a way she’d never been able to before the change, but, given immortality, how important could the few years of his life be?
    The rhubarb pie tasted like sawdust and he left half of it on the plate.
    Shoulders hunched and hands shoved into his jacket pockets, he headed back across the parking lot toward the van. Vaguely aware he was wallowing in self-pity, he couldn’t seem to stop.
    When the van’s engine roared into life, it took him completely by surprise. Standing three feet from the front bumper, Celluci stared through a fine film of bug bodies smeared over the windshield and into the smug face of a young man in his late teens or early twenties. He didn’t realize what was happening until the young man backed the van away from him, cranked the steering wheel around, and laid rubber all the way out to the highway.
    The van was being stolen.
    Instinct sent him racing after it, but halfway across the parking lot, the fact he didn’t have a chance of catching up penetrated and he rocked to a halt. He checked his watch. 8:27.
    Vicki would be awake in three minutes.
    She’d know immediately that something was wrong, that he wasn’t driving. She’d pull open the partition behind the seats . . .
    . . . and their young car thief was about to be in for one hell of a surprise.
    Watching the grimy back end of the stolen van disappear into the sunset down a secondary road, Celluci started to laugh. His only regret was that he wouldn’t be there to see that punk’s face when Vicki woke up. He was