The Girls With Games of Blood (24 page)

Dave ignored them and said, “Somebody put that bucket under the noose.”

Travis put the metal bucket in place. Dave tossed the rope over the branch, then put the noose around Leo’s neck. As he cinched it tight he said, “Beg for your life, nigger, and you might see the sunrise.”

Leonardo laughed. “I wouldn’t beg you to piss on me if I was on fire.”

Dave spat in his face. He pulled on the rope, forcing Leonardo to climb onto the bucket. Bruce tied the loose end of the rope around the tree trunk, and Leonardo stood on tiptoes to keep the pressure off his neck.

The boys silently watched him. The reality of their act registered on Tiny and Travis, but Dave was positively gleeful and Bruce remained enigmatic.

“Last chance, nigger,” Dave said. “Beg for your life, and we’ll let you down.”

Leonardo laughed, and directed his words to Bruce. “You know what your girlfriend told me about you, big man? She said, ‘Lordy, he got this thing between his legs that looks just like a man’s dick . . . only smaller.”

Bruce’s face went cold with rage, and he kicked the bucket out from under Leonardo’s feet. “That’s it, man!” Dave cheered.

The rope yanked tight. Leonardo gurgled and kicked.

“Hey, I think the joke’s, like, over,” Tiny said. “He’s gonna get hurt.”

“Fuck him,” Dave said, eyes alive with amusement.

“Yeah,” Bruce muttered. “Fuck him.”

Tiny and Travis exchanged a look, but neither had the courage to face Dave and Bruce.

Leonardo made the convulsions weaker, until he finally hung limp, his tongue hanging out. He swung in a slow arc, his feet grazing the bucket.

For a long moment the only sounds were insects and wind. Finally Dave stepped up to the hanging body and put his ear to Leonardo’s chest. He listened for a long moment, then said, “He’s dead, all right.”

“Shit,” Travis said, his voice trembling. “We gotta get outta here.”

“Just hold it right there,” Bruce commanded. “Nobody’s
panicking. We did this, and now we’re gonna walk away. Nobody seen us, there ain’t nothing to tie us to this boy, and believe me, the sheriff ain’t gonna look too hard at one more nigger suicide.”

“That’s right,” Dave said. He stepped behind Leonardo, uncinched his hands, and pocketed the twine. “So let’s just get back to our car and have a beer and a toke.”

“And if any of you say a word about it, remember we can all be charged as adults. Remember that.” Bruce glared at his two friends, trying for the expression his father used on recalcitrant informants. It seemed to work.

He went over to Leonardo and gave him a shove. His body swung in the night, the tree branch creaking under his weight. “Fuck you,” he spat. Then he walked away without a word. His friends quickly followed.

“Y
OUNG MAN
.
Y
OUNG
man!”

Vampires did not lose consciousness in the standard way, but their minds could wander so that it appeared to outsiders that they had, in fact, passed out. Leonardo’s mind had wandered that way, into memories of humid South Carolina nights and the terror of white-hooded figures moving through the Spanish moss. Now he was yanked back to the moment by a sharp blow from a stick.

“Ow!”
he said, startled rather than hurt. He opened his eyes, and for an instant his swaying view of the world disoriented him. Then he remembered.

“Don’t ignore me when I’m speaking to you,” the woman standing below him said in a thick drawl. She waved the stick like a rigid schoolmistress.

It was still dark, but Leonardo saw her clearly. She was white, and wore an antique black dress with lace at the collar and wrists. Blond hair was piled high on her head in an outdated style. Despite these antiquarian signs, she appeared around thirty years old, and was beautiful in that cold European way. He instantly knew that she, too, was a vampire. She
barked, “Now you come down from there this instant and tell me what in blazes you think you’re doing hanging there.”

Leonardo reached up, grabbed the rope holding him with both hands, and pulled until it snapped. He landed silently and tossed the noose aside. “Lady, some crackers
lynched
me.”

“I know, I saw that.”

“And you didn’t say anything?”

“You could easily have freed yourself, had you wished to do so. I’m wondering why you didn’t.”

He brushed detritus from his jeans and felt his neck. The rope left little ridges in his skin. “Seemed easier to just go along with it.”

“Really?” she asked dubiously.

“And I wanted to see if they’d actually do it.”

“You had any doubt?”

He looked up at the rope end still swaying above him. “I guess not. Just hope, maybe.”

She scowled, so that her face took on a pinched look as if she’d smelled something foul. “Hope for your kind is a misplaced and pointless indulgence.”

He turned to her. “
My
kind? In case you hadn’t noticed, we’re the same.”

She snorted. “Oh, hardly. You and I are very different, as anyone can see.”

So as he always suspected, even the undead had a color line. After what he’d just been through, it surprised him but didn’t enrage him as it might have otherwise. He managed a slight smile and said, “Right. I’ll just be on my way, then, Missus Massah.” He was glad he parked the truck in a different place, where perhaps the rednecks hadn’t found it.

“Wait,” the woman called after him. “I’m sorry, I’m not behaving like a lady. My etiquette tutor would turn in her grave. You’re right, making an issue of mortal demarcations is pedantic. You’ve been mistreated here, and it’s my duty to see that you’re taken care of.”

He stopped and looked at her skeptically. “Why yours?”

“This is my land. This old tree was planted the same year I was born.”

Leonardo started to reply, but something struck him anew. As she moved into a clear shaft of moonlight, the woman looked uncannily familiar. “Do I know you?”

She laughed at his presumption. “I don’t believe we move in the same circles.”

He took a hesitant step toward her.
Man,
she did look familiar. “My name’s Leonardo Jones. Ma’am,” he added, with fake but hopefully passable humility.

“I am Miss Prudence Bolade,” she said haughtily. “Owner of the Bolade mansion and plantation you see through the trees.”

They looked at each other for a long moment. Each was ready to fight should the other attempt to exert any vampiric influence, but neither did so. Finally Prudence said, “To make amends for your treatment on my property, Mr. Jones, why don’t you come in for a cup of tea?”

“You drink tea?”

“No, of course not. But I find the aroma delightful.”

He smiled. “You inviting me in to sniff your tea?”

“I’m inviting you in to get to know you. Since you and I are distinctive creatures operating in the same area, it behooves us to be civil, and to understand each other. The tea just provides a social structure.”

“I got a friend uses big words like that,” Leonardo said. He sensed no danger, and if he was wrong, he deserved whatever happened. “Sure, I’ll sniff your tea.”

She curtsied. “I am truly obliged.”

He followed her through the woods to the back of the big, dark house. It sent shivers of memory through Leonardo as he recalled similar houses of his mortal youth, and the fear associated with them. Even though most white people were kind to him, or at least benignly indifferent, the knowledge that
they
could
mistreat him with impunity poisoned all relationships. This night’s experiences brought all that vividly back.

Suddenly he realized where he was. This was the very house where he and Zginski had gotten directions that day they picked up his car. Now he knew why the woman looked familiar: she had answered the door that day, and even though she’d been old and wrinkled, he knew it had been her. Vampires didn’t age in the traditional sense, but if they went too long without feeding they withered, which often looked the same. And because it had been broad daylight, when his powers were weak, he hadn’t realized what she was. And because he was a Negro and thus beneath her notice, she didn’t recognize him now.

He kept all this to himself. Zginski would be proud.

They entered through the kitchen door, which would’ve been the servants’ entrance in earlier times. Leonardo was totally on guard, but nothing appeared from the darkness to attack him, and Prudence puttered around the kitchen exactly as she might have had she been mortal. She did not offer him a seat, however, and he stood by the door, hands in his pockets.

“You know, there was a time when a young man of your race wouldn’t have been allowed in this house as a guest,” she said as she put the kettle on the stove. “Times have certainly changed for your people.”

“I’m real tired of that whole subject for tonight,” Leo said wearily. He noted that here among the faded finery, her clothes looked appropriate. “So how long you been in this house?”

“I was born here. This house is over a hundred years old, and I can remember when different things were installed in it. The spiral staircase in the foyer? My daddy had it shipped from a plantation in Murfreesboro. It doesn’t quite fit, so he had to cut one corner off the door that opens under it.”

She handed Leonardo a saucer and cup. She took her own, closed her eyes, and inhaled the steam rising from it. “Nothing like the smell of mint tea on a summer night,” she said.

Leonardo sniffed his. There was a coincidental similarity to the cologne one of his erstwhile murderers wore, but he ignored it. “Not too bad. You do this a lot?”

Prudence laughed. “You must cultivate a taste for the small, gentle things, Mr. Jones. The gross and vulgar are so easy for our kind. We could become animals, rending flesh and bone indiscriminately. Our human traits need constant nurturing.”

“Maybe.” He put down his saucer. “Look, I got to ask you something. Have you been keeping company with a tall redheaded white girl named Clora?”

Prudence made a great show of putting down her own cup, which gave her time to choose her words. So it had
not
been Patience after all. “As a matter of fact, Mr. Jones, I have. She visited me the other night, and I confess to noticing your presence as well. I’m known as a bit of a seer to the local folks and she came to me to ask about her future. I saw in the tea leaves that a lover would be her murderer. Now I understand why it was so clear.”

Leonardo pondered this. “Well . . . yeah, I figure she’ll die eventually because of me.”

“I suppose I should apologize for trespassing on
your
property, then. Will you make her one of us when her time comes?”

“Naw. There’s enough of us running around.”

Prudence smiled. “Then we agree, at least, on that. Come, let’s sit in the parlor. It’s so much more comfortable.”

Leonardo followed her into the lush, musty front room, still alert for any trap or danger. They passed through the door modified by her father, beneath the unwieldy spiral staircase
and into the once-luxurious sitting room. Here the faded, dissipated quality of everything felt stronger, and he worried that the ancient furniture might be dry-rotted and fragile.

Prudence turned on a light and gestured to one of the big wingback chairs. “That’s the seat of honor. It belonged to my daddy; it was where he received obeisance from his sharecroppers.”

Leonardo settled carefully into the seat. “And his slaves?”

“Now, Mr. Jones, that borders on the crude. I am showing you hospitality and kindness, and you wish to provoke me. Those are not the manners of a gentleman.”

Leonardo couldn’t hold back a smile. It was like talking to a female version of Zginski. “I apologize, ma’am. My mama did teach me better, it’s just a long time since I had need of it.”

“Your gracious apology is accepted.”

“So do you live here alone?”

“Oh, yes. Very little needs tending, and I maintain just enough contact with the outside world to avert suspicion of my true nature.”

“How long have you been here?”

“Since my dear sister made me what I am.” Her words grew cold as she spoke. “We were in love with the same man, a handsome young colonel of the Confederacy. He chose me, and as revenge she chose eternal damnation. She murdered him, and left me to rise after my death.”

“No one can hurt you like family.”

“A true thing, Mr. Jones.”

She sniffed her tea again. “A man once wrote a song about us, did you know that? It was quite the popular tune for a brief time.” She cleared her throat and sang in a low, flat voice:

“Listen to what I tell you, son, every word is true

The sisters haunt the night, and might fight over you

Nothing can steal your soul and stamp it in the mud

Like being the new play-pretty for the girls with games of blood.”

“I don’t know that song,” Leonardo said.

“I didn’t expect you would. Its moment of notoriety was brief.”

“So where’s your sister now?”

Prudence shrugged. “She left. She saw her damned state as a license to become a libertine. She always loved music, so I imagine somewhere she’s parading her flesh to the ‘lascivious pleasings of a lute,’ as the Bard says.”