The Girls With Games of Blood (3 page)

“I take it your mama’s not around anymore?” he said sympathetically.

She shook her head, then smiled. “Ah, but that’s a dull story. Yours is fascinating. So what did you do?”

“I found out that Patience only played the Human Bean one night a week . . .”

. . . and no one at the club had any idea what she did with the rest of her time. She also had no listed phone
number. So late that afternoon I drove down her street, parked my car at the derelict church next door, and sneaked through the weed-infested cemetery to get a better look at her house.

I saw no sign of life, or even recent habitation. I scotch-taped a Xerox reproduction of the song lyrics to the front door, along with the admonition to meet me at the Human Bean that night.

I waited at the coffeehouse, breathed its pot-saturated air, and ate five packs of Twinkies, two bags of chips, and all the peanuts the waitress could find. And at sunset, just as the college crowd began to drift in, I looked up and saw Patience Bolade next to me.

“Hi,” I said, and stood. She watched me with a neutral expression. “Sorry, if I don’t stand when a lady approaches my table, my mother turns in her grave. Would you like to sit down?”

She wore almost the same outfit, a simple black sleeveless dress and big dangly earrings that looked like Christmas tree ornaments. She sat in the offered chair, back straight, hands in her lap.

I lit a cigarette — a regular one — and offered the pack to her, but she shook her head. “I never smoke . . . cigarettes,” she said, and after a moment added, “So how did you find out about me?”

“Well, to be honest, I used a private detective.”

She nodded. “I see.” She closed her eyes and her shoulders sagged a little. “I guess I should be relieved. I knew it couldn’t last, that if I did it long enough, someone would notice. Still, I hate to see it end.”

“See what end?”

She gestured at the coffeehouse. “This. This . . . sanctuary. In the time I’ve been playing here, no one has had to
die
. If I write the songs well enough, and perform them with enough honesty, I can live off the energy of the crowd. It’s such a relief
not to have to be” — and she shuddered at the thought— “bloodthirsty. You have no idea.”

“Apparently not,” I agreed. “Just what are you talking about?”

She stared at me. “I . . . what are
you
talking about?”

“
I’m
talking about signing you to my label.”

She sat very still for a long moment. “Wait . . . what do
you
think that song means? ‘The Girls with Games of Blood’?”

I shrugged. “Hell, honey, I don’t think it means a thing. You want to name yourself after a dead girl, dress in black, and sing songs about how miserable you are, that’s great. It might even start a trend. All I know is, your effect on a crowd is amazing, and I think you, and me, and my company can all make an awful lot of money.”

She leaned close to me, and her full lips turned up with just the hint of a smile. “You’re serious, aren’t you? That’s all you’re interested in.”

“It’s my job.”

Now she really grinned. “Yes. It surely is. But I’m afraid my previous answer has to stand. What I do can’t be broken down into vinyl grooves or magnetic tape strips.” She stood and offered her hand. “Thank you for your kind words. I wish you luck.”

I took her hand. It was ice-cold. Then she left, swallowed by the hazy night. And neither I nor anyone else ever saw Patience Bolade again.

The story finished, he watched Fauvette for a reaction. The girl’s face was impassive, but neither amused nor doubtful. He’d expected to be gently mocked, as he was every other time he told the story. “So,” he said after a moment, “what do you think?”

“I think you were probably well shed of her,” Fauvette said.

He looked at his watch, sighed, and put some bills on the
counter. “The Next Big Thing waits for no man. Thanks for listing to me . . . Foovette?”

“FAW-vette,” she corrected.

“Fauvette. Hope to see you again soon.”

He stood and walked out of the empty bar. When he opened the door, afternoon sunlight blasted in, overcoming the air-conditioning with no effort. Fauvette instinctively winced and looked away, even though she knew by now that sunlight was nothing to fear. Old habits died hard, and hers were older than most.

She bent to retrieve a fallen stack of napkins, which took several moments after she dropped them a second time. When she stood the door opened again and a woman carrying a guitar case was silhouetted against the sun, her long hair swaying as she looked around.

“You’re letting out the air-conditioning,” Fauvette called.

“Oh. Sorry,” the woman said, and stepped inside. She walked to the bar, propped the guitar case against it, and climbed onto a stool. “Is the manager in?”

Fauvette started to answer, then stopped. The woman appeared to be in her early twenties, with long black hair parted in the middle. She had heavy eyebrows and wore dark lipstick. Her face was pleasantly round, and a low-cut peasant blouse showed white cleavage and pudgy upper arms. And despite the heat outside, she showed no signs of sweat.

The woman frowned uneasily at the scrutiny. “Is something wrong?”

“Did you see the man who just left? In the baby-blue leisure suit?”

“No. Why?”

Fauvette bit her lip thoughtfully before speaking. “This is a weird question, but is your name by any chance . . . Patience?”

“Yes,” the woman said guardedly. “Do we know each other?”

Fauvette leaned her elbows on the bar and rested her chin on her hands. For a long moment the two women looked at each other. What they saw went beyond their mutual gender, and into the realm of unmistakable recognition that comes when one vampire recognizes another.

“Do you believe,” Fauvette said at last, “in absolutely out-of-this-world, mind-boggling coincidence?”

A
T THE MOMENT
Fauvette met Patience, two other vampires drove an old Ford pickup with a camper shell along a county road to the east of Memphis. The vehicle’s worn shocks transmitted each pothole and asphalt irregularity, and the scalding summer heat made the road shimmer ahead of them. Cornfields filled with rows of drought-stunted plants rippled past.

The vampire in the passenger seat looked like a typical urban black teenager. He wore a Memphis State tank top, faded denim jeans, and Converse high-top sneakers. He carried a pick comb tucked into the back of his Afro. But his eyes were cold, distant, and ancient, the only visible sign that Leonardo Jones had been the walking dead for over half a century.

At the moment Leonardo’s attention was entirely focused on the vampire behind the steering wheel. This one wore a black shirt buttoned to the wrist and neck, crisp new jeans, and black leather boots. His long dark hair was tied back in a ponytail. He appeared to be around thirty years old, slender, and physically rather small. Yet like Leonardo, his true nature shone in his dark eyes.

Finally Leonardo spoke. He almost had to shout above the engine and the wind through the open windows. “C’mon, man, ’fess up. You killed Mark, didn’t you?”

Rudolfo Vladimir Zginski shooed a fly from his face. The hot, sticky wind reminded him of a long-ago trip through Spain. “No,” he said simply, “I did not.”

“But you wanted to.”

“Why do you question my honor in this matter?” Zginski’s lilting middle-European accent had faded somewhat, but his archaic speech patterns remained.

“Come on. I seen the way you look at Fauvette. You and Mark both all broke out in monkey bites over her.”

“I did
not
kill him.”

“Oh, so he just conveniently left so you could be the only rooster in the henhouse? Awful nice of him. And he left you his wheels, too. Man knows how to treat his enemies, I’d say.”

“Mr. Luminesca left the keys to the truck in the warehouse,” Zginski said patiently. “I took them, but made no secret of it. If he wishes them returned, I will do so.”

“And in the meantime you get a sweet ride out of both things, right?”

Zginski glanced at him in annoyance, then looked back at the road. He had only been driving for a few weeks, and had yet to relax into it. His latest long-term victim had taught him in her newer, better automobile, and he could easily have used that vehicle instead of the decrepit truck. But someone might recognize it, and he did not want to risk being connected to her publicly.

“I do not know why Mark left,” he said. “I was not his confidant. If he told Fauvette, she has not mentioned it. But he was, and is, certainly free to go his own solitary way. Most of us do. The fact that we three remain companions is, in my experience, unique.”

Even as he spoke, the meaning of his own words struck
him anew. The uniqueness could be due to the fact that he’d shared his blood with Fauvette, Leonardo, and the now-vanished Mark in order to save them from destruction. It had been an impulsive thing in the heat of a crisis, and he’d waited for the ramifications to appear ever since. Perhaps his growing tolerance of Leonardo, whose Negro blood and peasant’s attitude should have infuriated him, was the first real sign.

“And you had a lot of experience being a vampire, right?” Leonardo said. “All that time over in Europe, running around like Count Dracula?” He laughed and shook his head. “Shit, man. Sometimes I think you just tell us stuff to see what you can make us believe.”

“You are free to think so.”

Leonardo tapped his fingers on the side-view mirror. The wind blew down his arm and inside his tank top, causing it to ripple against his skin. After a moment he said, “So when you going to tell me how to do that wolf trick?”

“What makes you think it is a trick?”

“ ’Cause, ain’t no way a man can turn into a wolf. So I figure you know how to make folks
think
they seeing a wolf. Is that right?”

Zginski smiled. “You are free to think so.”

As Leonardo laughed, Zginski watched the trees flash by, the summer sun cutting through the branches in stripes of debilitating heat. When Zginski first met these vampires, they had been convinced the sun would destroy them, just as the movies and television shows depicted. They lived in an abandoned warehouse and still slept in coffins, with grave dirt for mattresses. They acted, in fact, more like parasites than predators, roaming the Memphis shadows and lurking like cockroaches just beyond the light.

He had traded his understanding of their true nature for their knowledge of this era. He had spent sixty years in limbo, from the time a golden stake pierced his heart in 1915 to the
time it was removed in 1975; in addition to driving, which now fascinated him the way electricity once had, he had learned much about this new time. Most ironically, he had discovered people were just as greedy, cowardly, and pathetic as they had always been, despite the great leaps in technology. He would fit into this world just fine once he mastered its devices.

Leonardo looked at the directions written on the back of an old envelope. “Okay, that’s the third time up and down this stretch of road. We lost.”

Zginski slowed the truck. There was no traffic in either direction. He took the envelope from Leonardo and perused it. “We traveled the correct highway into Appleville, and made the proper turn onto this county road. If there is an error, it is not in our diligence.”