Blood Groove (4 page)

As he dressed, he examined his surroundings in more detail. The tables and general cleanliness spoke of a medical atmosphere consistent with the dead woman’s title. On the ceiling, long metal tubes glowed with an uncomfortable intensity and scalded his weakened eyes. The room had no windows, and evidently only a single metal door with a large handle. He opened some of the square hatches in the wall, and behind each found a dead body on a sliding metal tray. All appeared to have been cut open again and sewn shut as if
by a vivisectionist. He examined the cabinets, with their drawers of carefully arranged surgical instruments.

Then he opened the refrigerator. A dozen bottles of distinctive reddish liquid rested there, behind a small box marked “pizza.” He took one out, fiddled with the lid until it opened, then inhaled the aroma of something he’d never experienced before—
chilled blood
.

He dipped his finger into it and touched it to his tongue. He scowled; the liquid tasted odd,
wrong
at this temperature. He could wait for the real thing. But it gave him an idea. He took the bottle and poured its contents into the coffin, around the woman’s body. A bloodless victim would arouse suspicion, and perhaps this way whoever found the body would believe she had been attacked and subsequently bled to death.

He regarded the empty bottle in his hand. If the authorities found it, his ruse would be immediately discovered. He looked around for a place to discard it, and noticed a garbage can with a newspaper crumpled in it. He picked up the paper and sought the date on the masthead.

Zginski stared. 1975.
Sixty years
had passed.

He vividly remembered the fearful look on Sir Francis Colby’s face as if he’d seen it no more than a few minutes ago. In the space of a blink, he’d missed half a century. What would the world be like?

He flipped past the news to the advertisements; what people bought would tell him more than any political information. He recognized clothes and food, and vehicles that clearly descended from the horseless carriages he’d known. But what were these other strange devices? 8-track, hi-fi, C.B. . . . what was a “mo-ped” and why was the family in the ad so happy to have one?

Finally he turned back to the front page. He was in America, in Memphis, a Southern city he’d read of in the works of Mark Twain. How had that happened? And why
had his sixty-year-old supposed corpse been in a hospital? Conventional medicine certainly could not help someone dead as long as he’d been. Had resurrection become commonplace in the last half century?

He skimmed stories that mentioned public cruelty that both excited and repulsed him, then stopped. At the bottom of the front page ran a story about a “teen racial slaying.” A bloody body lay on a stretcher similar to the ones stacked against the wall beside him now. Men in uniforms held back the crowd, mostly young Negroes. But there, at the front of the crowd, behind the barricade, was a vampire.

The girl, also a Negro, dressed no differently than the others, but Zginski could instantly tell. There was an indefinable weariness, a way of standing that conveyed maturity that far outreached the physical appearance of youth. The eyes, cold and lifeless, reflected light like polished tin. And if this colored
child
was a vampire, here in the American South, then there had to be others. He’d need shelter until he acclimated to this new world, and they would know where to find it, even given their inferior race.

He tossed the paper aside. He’d committed a murder, so the first thing was to distance himself from the scene of the crime, along with any evidence that might implicate him. He put the empty bottle into one of the jacket’s voluminous pockets and started for the door. Light glinted off the crucifix dagger that had held him in demonic limbo for sixty years, where it rested on the main examining table. He pocketed it as well.

He was about to turn away when he noticed the faded manuscript pages. He skimmed through them, and when he realized what they were he smiled for the first time.
This
would make interesting leisure reading; how much credit had the old man given himself for his cleverness? Did he acknowledge that it was Zginski’s own overconfidence that ultimately did
him in, or had he shaded events to make himself out to be the hero? He added the sheets to the bulging pocket.

And then Baron Rudolfo Vladimir Zginski stepped out of the morgue and into the polyester era.

T
HE BELL OVER
the door jingled and Mark Luminesca looked up from the small black-and-white TV behind the counter. Mr. Wiggly’s, the only all-night bait and tackle store in Memphis, seldom got customers in the dead time between 1:00 and 3:00
A.M.
, and those that did wander in usually wanted alchohol or cigarettes, which the store didn’t sell.

The man who entered was black, with an enormous Afro and a large black pick comb stuck in the back of it. He wore burgundy pants flared at the bottom, a wide white belt, and a yellow shirt with the collar unbuttoned halfway down. His eyes were red from drinking or smoking dope, and he weaved a little when he tried to stand still. He looked around the small store with the kind of dangerous, intimidating swagger Mark had seen on punks of all races. “Y’all need some help?” Mark called.

“Naw, man,” he said, conveying both superior cool and insecurity. He strolled slowly down the short aisles, examining the fishing lures and rolls of line with exaggerated care. His dance-club getup didn’t automatically mean foul play; perhaps he intended to greet the sunrise by reeling in a channel cat from the river.

Mark settled back behind the counter. If the guy became trouble, he’d worry about it then. Another car pulled up outside and parked beside the black guy’s Cadillac.

At last the man approached the counter with a pack of hooks. “Gimme a box of crickets, too,” he mumbled. To fetch the bait Mark would have to leave the cash register, and suspected the other man knew it, too. He stepped around the counter to the big wooden box. Through the screen-covered hole in the top, he heard the soft chirping of the crickets. He scooped up a handful into one of the cardboard containers. It was more than he was supposed to give, but he had no desire to spend time winnowing it down. He closed the box and went back behind the counter.

The man had his right hand in his pocket. The pants were far too tight to hide a gun, but he might be going for a knife. Mark waited patiently.

Instead, he brought out a wad of bills and peeled a couple off. “How much?”

Mark told him. If he was a robber, maybe he wanted to see the cash register open, to gauge if it was worth the effort. He took the man’s money, punched the heavy keys, and pulled the handle to open the drawer.

As he reached for the change, the door burst open and a tall white teenager with torn jeans, shaggy hair, and a sad beard burst in, handgun already pointed. “Gimme all your money, motherfucker!” he shouted, his voice high.

The black man casually raised his hands. “Whoa, just be cool, dude,” he said. His red-rimmed eyes tried to open in astonishment, but lacked the juice.

“Yeah, y’all be cool,” Mark said. “Here, check this out.”

When he knew he had the robber’s full attention, he picked up a stray cricket and, slowly and deliberately, stuck it in his mouth.

The gunman stared. Mark grinned, which ordinarily gave an unobstructed view of his fangs. But in this case, all
the gunman saw was the live cricket squirming between his teeth. When he was certain the man was riveted, Mark bit down, squirting the insect’s juice out of his mouth. “Yowsah, yowsah, yowsah,” he said and swallowed it.

The gunman turned even paler, muttered, “Oh, fuck this!” and ran out of the store. In a moment tires squealed out of the parking lot. With his vampire vision Mark had no trouble seeing the license plate through the front glass, but of course he would never call the police.

He heard a thump. The big black man had passed out cold. Mark wondered if it was from fear of the gun or the sight of him eating a live cricket. He wiped his chin and lips with a Kleenex. Either way, the unconscious man had just won the lottery, in the Shirley Jackson sense.

Mark locked the door and flipped the
CLOSED
sign over. Chances were slim anyone would come by, see the sign, and complain to his boss. Then he effortlessly tossed the unconscious man over his shoulder and carried him out back into the alley. The bait store was next to an auto repair shop, and Mark had no trouble jumping the security fence and forcing open the door of one of the broken-down cars. He placed the man in the backseat, then searched his pockets. Sure enough, there was a butterfly knife tucked in beside his wallet.

Mark twirled the knife open and efficiently made three slashes down the length of the man’s nearest wrist. Blood flowed at once, and Mark forced himself to let the first few pulses splatter on the car seat. Then, when he was sure there was enough to convince people the man had bled to death, he pulled the sliced arm to his mouth and began to feed.

It did not take long to drain the body, and he spit the last mouthful on the ground outside the car door for good luck. Since he had not actually bitten the man, there was no danger
he would come back as a vampire. He dropped the knife beneath the other limp hand, easily jumped the fence, and returned to the bait store. The whole procedure had taken only ten minutes. He flipped the sign to
OPEN
, unlocked the door, and settled back behind the counter. On TV, the Channel 3 late movie was over, and the late-late one was beginning.

He picked up the phone and dialed the warehouse number. On his own, he’d installed a phone in the boiler room where everyone rested during the day, tapping into the wires that ran along the seldom-used nearby road. He’d worked for the phone company for three years and knew how to set it up so no one would ever know. He wanted to alert the rest to the fact that he’d already fed in this area, and they should choose another part of town for their own excursions. Too many bloodless bodies in the same part of town, even minority thugs disguised as suicides, would draw unwanted attention.

After sixty years, forty of those with his immortality reasonably certain, Mark assumed he’d develop some sort of calm center; but despite all that time, people who weren’t where they were supposed to be still made him crazy. Of the five vampires who used the warehouse, he was the only one who made any effort to pass in the real world. He held a job and paid his taxes. He had a checking account. And he tried to teach the others how to blend in, not stand out. It wasn’t altruism; he remembered the death Praline had suffered at the hands of that Oklahoma mob, and knew that if any vampire drew attention,
all
vampires would be in danger.

So he got a phone, and at first it worked. Leonardo, Olive, and even Toddy picked up faithfully. But lately, no one answered. He knew Fauvette was there—she hadn’t hunted in months, and the strain was starting to show on her, but that was her business. He just wished she’d answer the phone.

Toddy was the one that worried him, though. The little bozo would go out in public clad in nothing but that stupid
trench coat, and would actually give people his real name when he met them. He was known among the street people and the really dangerous downtown gangs as a psycho because he’d demonstrated his strength by lifting the front end of a car one-handed. He also once tried to have a mortal girlfriend, but it only lasted a week; the police investigation lasted much longer, until most of the body parts were found.

Mark sighed, ran hands through his short brown hair, and closed his eyes. After a half century, he was really tired of his existence, not because it was hard, but because it was complicated. He never asked to be den father, especially to loonies like Toddy or Quaalude cases like Fauvette; he just wanted to quietly exist at the fringe of the mortal world, exploring and taking as he needed. But he was the one the others looked to for guidance, for leadership, and it wore him down. Sometimes he wished he’d just crumble to dust and blow away, embraced by the death he consciously abandoned at the height of the Dust Bowl. He almost felt the wind blow through him, carrying him away, spreading him thin . . .

He opened his eyes and, by coincidence, saw himself in the curved shoplifting mirror.

He was transparent.

It was only for an instant, but he knew he had seen it, the floor and the wall behind him visible through his
Happy Days
Fonzie T-shirt, as if for just a moment the wind
had
blown part of him away. Then he blinked, and everything appeared normal again.

What the hell—

“Hey, Mark-o Polo,” Gwinny called as she came through the door. “How’s business?”

“It’s Friday night in a dang bait shop,” he said easily; luckily he had a knack for appearing nonchalant. “How much business do you think we’re getting?”

“Hey, where’s that tall hunk of man who belongs to that Cadillac out front? He looked good in those pants, I tell you what.” Gwinny was a big-breasted black woman with two children, and so full of life that at times she felt to Mark like a giant blood-filled carrot dangled before him. But she also worked in the fast-food drive-through across the road from Mr. Wiggly’s, and had been seen talking to him many times. So he kept himself under tight control around her, and tried to seem like just another down-and-out white boy with a crummy job in a bad part of town.

And now he felt particularly dumb, since he’d completely blanked on the dead man’s car. Maybe he deserved a stake through the heart for stupidity. “Don’t know, he just looked around and then left.”

“Oh, well, his loss. Might’ve missed out on a trip to Gwinnytown.” She winked and tossed him a paperback book. “And thanks, by the way. Great book, even if he does call us ‘niggers.’ ”

“I warned you about that.”

“Yeah. And I didn’t get the ending.”

This was the other reason Mark never turned Gwinny into dinner. “What about it?”