2 Blood Trail by Tanya Huff Read Free Book Online Page A

coming.
    “Fuck it. Might as well walk while I can still see the sidewalk.” She kicked the newspaper box as she went by and stepped out onto the street, challenging a Camaro crossing Broadview on the yellow light. The driver hit the horn as she dodged the front fender, but the expression she turned toward him closed his teeth on the profane comment he’d been about to add. Obviously not all young men driving Camaros had a death wish.
    She crossed the Gerrard Street Bridge in a fog, fighting to keep her emotions under control.
    Until this morning she’d thought she’d come to grips with the eye disease that had forced her off the Metro Police. She hadn’t accepted it graciously, not by any means, but anger and self-pity had stopped being the motivating factors in her life. Many, many people with retinitis pigmentosa were in worse shape than she was but it was hard to keep sight of that when another two degrees of her peripheral vision had degenerated in the last month and what little night sight she had remaining had all but disappeared.
    The world was rapidly taking on the enclosed dimensions of a slide show. Snap on the scene in front of her. Turn her head. Snap on the scene in front of her. Turn her head. Snap on the scene in front of her. And could someone please get the lights.
    What bloody good am I going to be to a pack of werewolves anyway? How am I supposed to stop a killer I can’t see? The more rational part of her mind tried to interject that the wer were hiring her for her detective abilities and her experience, not her eyes, but she was having none of it. Maybe I’ll get lucky and one of them’s been trained as a guide dog.
    “Yo! Victory!”
    Frowning, she looked around. Her anger had carried her almost to Parliament and Gerrard, farther than she’d expected. “What are you doing in this part of town?”
    Tony grinned as he sauntered up. “What happened to, ‘Hi, how are ya?’”
    Vicki sighed and attempted not to take the day out on Tony. When she’d gone to him for help and together they’d saved Henry, their relationship had changed, moved up a level from cop and kid—not that he’d actually been a kid for some time. Four years ago, when she first busted him, he’d been a scrawny troublemaker of fifteen. Over the years, he’d become her best set of eyes and ears on the street. Now, they seemed to be moving toward something a little more equal, but old habits die hard and she still felt responsible for him.
    “All right.” She flicked a drop of sweat off her chin. “Hi. How are you?”
    “How come,” he asked conversationally, falling into step beside her, “when you ask, ‘How are you?’ it comes out sounding like, ‘How much shit are you in?’ ”
    “How much?”
    “None.”
    Vicki turned her head to look at him but he only smiled beatifically, the picture of wronged innocence. He was looking pretty good, she had to admit, his eyes were clear, his hair was clean, and he’d actually begun to gain a little weight. “Good for you. Now back to my first question, what are you doing in this part of town?”
    “I got a place here.” He dropped that bombshell with all the studied nonchalance a young man of almost twenty could muster.
    “You what!” The exclamation was for Tony’s benefit, as he so obviously wanted her to make it. Her mood began to lighten under the influence of his pleasure.
    “It’s just a room in a basement.” He shrugged—no big deal. “But I got my own bathroom. I never had one before.”
    “Tony, how are you paying for this?” He’d always turned the occasional trick, and she hoped like hell he hadn’t gone into the business full time—not only because it was illegal but because the specter of AIDS now haunted every encounter.
    “I could say it’s none of your business. . . .” As her brows drew down, he raised his hands appeasingly. “But I won’t. I got a job. Start on Monday. Henry knows this guy who’s a contractor and he needed a