The Girls With Games of Blood (26 page)

Patience lifted the girl’s chin. “I’m no classical beauty either, hon. Nothing quite like realizing you’re stuck for all eternity with those twenty extra pounds that the world now considers unattractive. But
how
we look has nothing to do with it. It’s about being . . .” She searched for the word. “Compelling.”

Fauvette stepped around her, gathered her clothes, and began dressing. On the night she died, she was traveling home through the woods alone because Junior Caldwell ignored her at the revival. That humiliation, like her virginity, seemed doomed to repetition. “I don’t know that I can ever master that. I’d probably be a dried-up old maid by now if I hadn’t become what I am.”

Patience knew better than to push the issue. Despite the years and experiences, something in Fauvette remained
fundamentally childlike and easily hurt. And much like feeding on energy, no one could be taught how to overcome that; you either matured, or you didn’t.

On the couch, Gerry Barrister moaned and rolled onto his back. His erection pressed firmly against his olive sans-a-belt slacks. To Patience, it seemed pitiful and sad.

Zginski looked down at Alisa asleep on her bed. She wore a sheer nightgown, and her skin glistened with unhealthy sweat. The cancer had begun to eat into vital organs, and her body tried desperately to communicate its agony through the haze of Zginski’s influence. So far, it was unsuccessful, but he knew that soon he would be forced to finish her. Their contract said he would let her feel no pain.

A book lay open on her chest. The spine read
Looking for Mr. Goodbar.
He picked it up and read the page where she had stopped. He grimaced; this modern American fiction struck him as more gynecology than literature. And when the body, the instrument of love, held no mystery, love would inevitably become as base an emotion as jealousy or hate.

He unbuttoned his patchwork shirt and stepped out of the platform shoes. The footwear made him two inches taller, which secretly pleased him; he had once been of average height, but during his time in limbo people had grown taller in general. A short man stood out almost as much as a tall one, and the shoes helped him blend in.

It was almost dawn, and now that he was on his traditional schedule he should descend to the basement to rest. Yet something kept him at Alisa’s bedside. She moaned softly, and intermittently tossed her head. He knew what was happening in her mind, and felt oddly sad at its pathetic unreality. Chad would never be beside her when she awoke.

At last he said firmly, “Alisa, awaken.”

She opened her eyes at once, and stared up at him with
the desperate, on-the-verge look of a woman distracted at the worst possible moment. Her surroundings gradually replaced the landscape of her dreams. “Rudy,” she whimpered, tears welling in her eyes. He touched her cheek. She swallowed hard, emotions churning within her.

“I wish to feed,” he said.

She nodded and turned her head to display the bite marks over her jugular.

He felt the tug of her blood, but held back. When she finally noticed she said, “What?”

He shrugged out of the shirt and stood bare to the waist. He put his thumbnail to his chest and dug it deeply into the skin. When he finished, a three-inch gash cut across his pectoral muscle.

Alisa gasped and with difficulty rose on her elbows to stare at the wound. “What are you doing?”

“The vampire in that Irishman’s famous book did this,” he said. “I thought you would appreciate the literary allusion. It allowed him to control one of the female characters.”

“You already control me pretty well,” she said.

“It was also the first step in transforming her into a vampire.”

Alisa said nothing. A thick drop of blood, so deeply crimson it was almost black, seeped from the wound and poised, tearlike, for descent down his torso.

“We have discussed this numerous times,” he continued. “Your answer has never wavered, and I respect your consistency. But I have never presented you with the reality of the option.”

She watched the play of light on the drop’s surface. “Drink from you and live forever?”

“I cannot promise ‘forever.’ But I can insure you will not die of your disease, and that your pain will end. And you will have free will.”

Alisa sat up slowly. The drop swelled; surely it must fall soon. “Why are you doing this now?”

“I fear it may be the last time for you to consider it with a clear mind.”

She understood his meaning. He could sense the cancer’s progress from the qualities in her blood. She got to her knees on the bed and leaned close to his chest. The drop began its slow track down his skin, and another swelled behind it. “I swore I wouldn’t. I don’t want to be a corpse walking around. I don’t want to live off death.”

“As I do?”

That got her attention. She finally looked into his eyes. “You could make me do this, couldn’t you?”

“Yes.”

She licked her lips, suddenly torn. She had made the decision after their first night together, when he had consumed her blood and left her wet, and drained, and sated. It had been their agreement ever since, and although he occasionally inquired, he never demanded a choice until now. “I’d be alone forever.”

“Loneliness and solitude are not the same.”

“Are you alone?”

“I was. I am no longer.” Even as he said this, though, he wondered where the idea came from.

She had no illusions that he referred to his time with her. She knew there must be other vampires, but she never inquired, and he never offered.

She sat back on her heels. She was weak with disease and desire, and the decision seemed so plain, so obvious. Yet she could not do it. “No,” she said. “I won’t.”

He said nothing.

“It’s not that I can’t,” she continued, speaking as much to herself as to him. “It’s that I choose not to. Death is natural. I don’t fear it.”

He nodded. “I will respect your decision and not offer again.”

She was about to say thank you. But before she could form the words she was suddenly back in that mental realm where orgasmic lust overwhelmed her, and she barely noticed when Zginski sank his fangs into her neck.

Later, as the sun rose, Zginski stopped at Alisa’s desk on his way to the basement. He perused the copies of the
Festa Maggotta
pages, marveling anew at their intricate, impenetrable script. The author, known only by the odd name Kiniculus, was as much a mystery as his tome: some sources called him a necromancer, others a charlatan, still others a fallen angel or risen demon. Certainly his mastery of the world’s tongues, and his ability to combine them to both convey and protect arcane information, implied a more-than-human knowledge. Zginski often wondered if he were a vampire, not necessarily more intelligent than men but simply longer-lived, able to absorb more information over a longer period of time.

He picked up the latest bit of completed translation.
The vampire,
it said,
does not exist in time as mortals do. Unless he possesses extreme will, his new state traps him in the moment of his death, unable to move forward or back in his existence. If he does possess the will, he may become more cunning than any mortal man by virtue of his ability to experience more, and thus learn more than a normal life span allows.

Zginski smiled. Kiniculus indeed understood why some vampires became shambling mindless revenants, while those like Zginski found their own path in the world. Fortunately this information would never become public; he would make certain Alisa’s notes were never published, but instead hidden where only he might refer to them.

At the thought of her impending death, he felt an
uncharacteristic and unexpected pang of regret. Where were these emotions coming from? The only possible source was the blood-bond he’d used to save Fauvette and her friends. When his strength bolstered them, some of her empathy and morality must have infected him.

That had to be it. The alternative, that these were somehow his own feelings, was absurd.

He winced at the first full ray of sun through the window. He was tired, and the cut on his chest continued to ooze despite the towel he pressed against it. It would heal as he slept, and be gone when he rose, so he checked the locks on all the doors and descended into the cool darkness.

T
HE APARTMENT WAS
in run-down public housing covered by the new Section 8 provisions, where Zginski stood out far more prominently than he liked. He was about during daylight again, but only barely; it was late afternoon, and while the sun baked everything with a final surge of intensity, it also steadily sank toward the horizon. It would not debilitate him much, or for long.

Fauvette’s new home was affordable on her limited income, and a logical first step away from the decrepit warehouse. When she was ready to move into a real house, it would be simple enough. Her pale skin and odd demeanor drew attention, but suspicious onlookers no doubt thought she was a drug user spiraling toward her end, or a runaway trapped by circumstances. The truth would by its nature be very far down the list, and her uneducated neighbors seemed the last ones likely to divine it.

Four black teenage boys sat on the broad hood of a Cadillac listening to a song urging them to be a “shining star.” To Zginski their sullen stares were very much the opposite of “shining.” He nodded to them as he passed, aware that their gazes followed him.

A boy sporting an enormous Afro slid off the car, belligerently stuck his chest out, and called to Zginski’s back, “What you looking at, honky?”

“Man, you better shut up,” another said seriously. “I bet he going to see that creepy-ass white girl.”

“Aw, I ain’t afraid of her,” the first boy said. “I don’t believe in all that voodoo-witchcraft jive.”

Zginski paused, his back still to them. He concentrated and sent a wave of terror-inducing power into their psyches, ferreting out whatever scared them most. He sensed their antagonism turn to fear so quickly it was almost comical. He smiled as he entered the four-story building.

The hallway smelled of urine and dust. Various sayings and symbols marred the walls, some painted over and then remarked. Somewhere a TV blared, “Today on
Donahue,
” only to be drowned out by a crying baby.

Fauvette lived on the ground floor, in the back beneath the stairwell. She opened the door wearing only a white bathrobe. It made her normally death-pale complexion look almost normal. Her wet hair hung past her shoulders. “I’m just about ready,” she said. “Come in.”

He did so, closing and bolting the door behind him. The living room was entirely bare, its walls pockmarked and stained. Drawn blinds covered the single window. He followed her down the equally Spartan hallway to the single bedroom.

She went into the bathroom and began brushing her hair. “Thanks for offering me a ride to work. Cabs get expensive, and some won’t even come into this neighborhood. So what did you want to talk to me about?”

He looked around the bedroom. The door had four dead bolts on the inside and the heavily curtained windows were closed with three enormous latches. In the movies vampires used mortal slaves to guard them during their rest, but Fauvette preferred to rely on strong locks. The bed was a saggy single mattress and box spring with only a sheet and thin
blanket; she had not yet acquired even a pillow. “I have not seen your friend since she stood me up,” he said. “I wondered if you had.”