Blood Groove (12 page)

“If I told you I was a demon, with the fires of hell in my heart, would you run away?”

“No,” she said raggedly. She wrapped her arms around herself, but continued to stare into his eyes.

“If I told you I intended to take the life from you slowly,
and that as you grew weaker I would grow stronger, would you flee my presence?”

“No,” she repeated. Her eyes shone with tears now.

He brushed a strand of hair from her face. “Lee Ann, by your own word I have taken possession of you this night. I will summon you at a moment’s notice, and the pain of not responding will be more than you can bear. I may debase and demean you, and use you in any way I choose. There is nothing you can do to resist me, because I have claimed part of your soul. Do you understand this?”

“Yes,” she replied promptly, in a child’s voice. The tears spilled forth down her face as she continued gazing up at him.

He touched her cheek with his fingertips, and again she gasped. His first estimate of her had been correct: beneath the sophisticated trappings of her modern world she was a simple peasant girl, lacking the intelligence and will for even a token resistance. He smiled, now making no secret of his elongated canines.

“Are y’all really gonna kill me?” she asked softly.

“Not tonight,” he said. “Now rise, and disrobe.” He wanted to feed before setting out to find the other vampire from the warehouse.

Lee Ann stood and pulled her loose paisley blouse over her head. She let it fall to the floor, followed by her bra. Zginski sat on the foot of the bed and watched with detached interest, comparing her to the dozens of other women he’d put through similar rituals. It struck him that despite the amazing technical advances society had made while he was in limbo, a naked woman remained the same treasure to be uncovered. At least no corsets were now involved, nor those voluminous layers and hoop skirts that required teams of servant women to remove. Nor was that horrendous makeup apparently in favor anymore; the girl’s eyelids and lips were
painted, but little else. He found he preferred that simpler look. And he’d always hated wigs.

Finally Lee Ann stood naked before him, sniffling with barely suppressed tears. She kept her hands flat against her thighs, shoulders hunched and head down. The red glow from the sign outside shone through a gap in the curtains and cast a line of crimson light across her throat. He smiled at that. Somewhere another car squealed tires, and voices raised in disagreement momentarily rang out. Lee Ann jumped at the sounds, but otherwise did not move.

“Stand up straight,” he said.

She put back her shoulders and raised her chin.

“Come here,” Zginski said softly.

As if her feet weighed a ton, she moved to stand in front of him, her navel at his eye level. He put his hands on her waist, and she gasped. He looked up into her face, framed by her falling hair.

“Do you know what I am, Lee Ann?”

She shook her head; the ends of her hair brushed her nipples.

“I am a vampire. Do you know what that is?”

She nodded. “I seen movies about ’em on TV.”

He was unsure what she meant by the terms “movies” and “TV,” but clearly she knew what he was. “I have lived for centuries, Lee Ann, and will exist for centuries more.” He brushed her hair back behind her shoulders, displaying her pale breasts. “Tonight I will drink your blood. Not all of it, but enough to replenish my strength. It will not take long. It will weaken you, but not kill you. Do you understand all that?”

She nodded.

“I can make you endure it, or enjoy it. The choice is yours.”

She had to swallow hard before speaking. “I don’t know what ‘endure’ means.”

He smiled. His hands traveled up her back. “Then I will make certain you enjoy it,” he said, and pulled her down onto the bed.

As he’d promised, the tryst was brief, and he sent her away with a look of anguish on her young face; he had taken more than mere blood from her, and he knew she would ache for him until he deigned to summon her again.

Once she’d gone, he quickly hurried through the night to intercept the girl vampire from the warehouse. He was freshly fed and at the height of his powers; she dared not oppose him. And she would serve a purpose very different from Lee Ann’s.

T
HE ARM AROUND
Danielle might have been a metal band, for all that her frantic struggles did to move it. The palm clamped over her mouth was cold to the touch, like the touch of the boy Leo, but whoever held her now was considerably taller. Reflexively she tried to scream, and the hand clenched until it felt as if it would crush her jawbone. She froze, all buzz from the dope gone.

   “What the
hell
, Olive?” Mark demanded, effortlessly holding the struggling woman. He shouldn’t be surprised; if the air depended on Olive’s good sense, they’d all suffocate in five minutes. “I can’t leave you alone long enough to park the fucking truck?”

She shrugged and nodded at Billy. The boy’s mouth worked silently, and his erect penis bounced up and down on its own, pumping out white fluid. “He’s out of it, don’t worry.”

“Yeah, what about this one?” Mark nodded at Danielle. “Are you just totally blind? She
saw
you, and if I hadn’t been here she would’ve screamed her head off by now.”

Olive shrugged. “I was gonna have her join us, if you
hadn’t come along.” She wiped the semen from her hand with the tail of Billy’s T-shirt. “I’d be the fudge between two vanilla wafers.”

Danielle controlled her panic enough to evaluate her situation. She was a doctor, after all, and knew better than anyone where the human body was vulnerable. She took a deep breath, then with all her strength brought one heel down on the man’s foot while her right hand clutched and then twisted his genitals.

He did not react.
At all
. It was like she had grabbed mere leather, or something that felt no pain.

“Quit that,” he hissed, and squeezed her face hard for emphasis. Her TM joint clicked inside her head as it popped and she immediately stopped fighting. To Olive Mark said, “Where’s Leo and Fauvette?”

“Leo’s back with his white boys. I thought Fauvette was with you.”

He frowned. “No, she left before we did, said she wanted some alone time and she’d meet us here.” Her absence was a surprise and, after what happened to Toddy, seriously worried him. “I think just to be safe we better get out of here.”

Olive stamped like a petulant child. “But we just got here! I’m not through!”

Mark sighed. “Christ on a stick, Olive, you’ve still got that guy in the back of the truck to go through. And we’ll bring this one,” he added with chilling casualness; Danielle knew he meant her. She renewed her fruitless struggles and tried to scream.

“Dammit,”
Mark muttered as she fought him. As if he didn’t have enough to worry about. He spun her to face him, holding her by the shoulders. She drew a deep breath for a shriek. But it never emerged.

Instead she looked up into the boy’s eyes and simply, completely, froze. He was handsome, sure, if young and rather soft-looking. But something seemed to reach inside her and
wrench feelings that had been completely untouched for too long. It was a level of response Danielle never thought she could experience, and it hit so hard she was thoroughly incapacitated.
Aroused
didn’t capture the feeling, nor did merely
horny
. It was desire that went beyond merely physical response, although it certainly included that as well, to an embarrassingly wet degree. Somehow, with no warning or explanation, pleasing this total stranger had become not only the most important thing to her, but the
only
thing. She had instantly become his willing slave, and the certainty was so total she wanted to cry.

“Not a word out of you,” Mark warned when he saw the change in her expression. Danielle nodded eagerly, like a child trying to win a brutal parent’s approval. She stood with her fists against her thighs as he pushed past Olive and with a single motion slammed Billy’s skull back against the stone mausoleum wall. The hollow
thwock
sound made Danielle wince, and clinically she wondered if he’d seriously injured that sweet, clueless boy. But considering the lust raging inside her for her captor, she could spare no more than a passing thought about Billy. She wanted to throw herself on this tall stranger and beg him for it, but that might annoy him, and she didn’t want that. No, not that, ever. Perhaps if she
crawled
to him . . .

“Hey!” Olive whined as Billy slid to the ground. “He was mine! I caught him!”

Mark grabbed Olive by the ear and lifted her onto her toes. “Go get Leo,” he hissed. “We’re getting out of here.”

“Why?” Olive said, drawing it out in a petulant whine and swatting at him. “Because of Fauvette?”

“No, because of Toddy. Something’s going on, and I don’t want to be caught out in the open.”

Olive pushed out her lower lip in a pout; blood trickled down her chin. “Okay, fine,” she said, and Mark released her. She turned to go, but Mark spun her back and wiped
her bloody lips with his hand. She grinned, delighted, and took off into the night.

Then he returned his attention to Danielle. She looked so pitiful to him, wracked with a need she could neither comprehend nor identify, that he felt sorry for her. “Look, you’ve really caught a bad break here,” he said as he touched her cheek. She sighed, a shuddering cry that left no doubt what the contact had done to her. “You’re going to die before sunrise, probably slowly and painfully, and believe it or not I’m really sorry about it. But it can’t be helped.”

Danielle swallowed, her breath shallow. She’d never experienced an orgasm like the one that just shot through her, and she could barely stay on her feet. “Please,” she pleaded, although she could not be sure if it was for her life or for another climax like the last one.

“Yeah,” he sighed. Forty years of seeing this should’ve rendered him more immune to it, but he still felt like a heel. Maybe someday it would no longer bother him.

Olive returned with Leonardo. “What?” Leo demanded belligerently, hands loose at his sides.

“Nobody’s seen Fauvette,” Mark said. “She should be here. After what happened to Toddy—”

“Will you shut up about that?” Leo said, annoyed. “That little cracker deserved what he got. No loss, if you ask me. And it
sure
ain’t a good enough reason to call me off before dinner.”

“Leo, think about it. Remember what the paper said? He just dropped over in an alley. Nobody staked him, nobody dragged him into the sun. And he didn’t catch up on his lost years. Something weird is going on.”

Even over the roar of her hormones, Danielle understood enough of the conversation to be astonished. Found in an alley, the reference to “lost years” . . . the coincidence was gigantic, but could this “Toddy” really be Todd Crealey? She gritted her teeth against the desire to touch the boy she helplessly
lusted after and tried to summon the courage to speak aloud, to confirm her suspicions. She failed.

Leo scowled. “Yeah, I know,” he said, his anger fading. “Crossed my mind, too. You think maybe somebody killed him in some new way?”

“I don’t have a fucking clue. But until we know more, and until Fauvette shows up, I say we get back to the warehouse, take care of this girl”—he nodded at Danielle—“and lay low for a while.”

Now Leo turned and looked at Danielle, far more intently than he had at the gazebo. The scrutiny terrified her anew. “Hey, who the hell are you, anyway? I know Billy and his pals. Never saw you before.”

She swallowed hard. “My name’s Danielle,” she said.

“And what you doing here?”

She said nothing. Mark ordered wearily, “Answer him.”

She struggled against the urge to blurt the truth; again she lost. “I’m looking for a new kind of drug.”

Leo chuckled. “One more rich honky chick thinking she can get high with the niggers,” he said darkly. “Or maybe you
are
a narc.” He looked at Mark. “Ask her.”

Mark met her eyes. She could deny him nothing. “Are you with the police?”

She shook her head.

“What are you?”

She tried with all her will not to speak, to lie, to do anything but tell the truth. “I’m a doctor,” she said.

“Bullshit,” Olive said. She patted Danielle’s behind. “She ain’t old enough to be a doctor, she’s just a baby.”

Mark sighed. This just got better and better. He rubbed his temples. “Are you really a doctor?”

“Yes.”
Now please touch me
, she wanted to scream. “I’m thirty-one.”

“Are you married? Boyfriend, family?”

She shook her head.

“Hell, with knockers like that?” Leo said. “She’s bluffing. Somebody’ll be looking for them. I mean, for her.” He grinned.

“Either way, that’s one more reason to get off the street,” Mark said. “Come on, Doc.”

They moved so quickly through the dark that if Mark hadn’t taken her hand, Danielle would’ve never been able to keep up. As it was, she had to run, and she was too out of shape to do so easily. By the time they reached another gap in the fence and slipped through it she was drenched with sweat and her chest was on fire. If she survived this, she’d never smoke again.