The Girls With Games of Blood (35 page)

Was this emotional discomfort a result of the blood bonding he’d shared with Fauvette? Had he absorbed some of her weakness while she drew on his strength? Or was he belatedly coming to terms with his own greatest failure, his inability to see Tzigane—the woman, not the car—for what she truly was?

Like Fauvette she had appeared fragile, in need of his protection and kindness. The other peasants traveling with her, sullen Russians relocating to Ireland, treated her like a dangerous outcast. In his presence her dark eyes grew wet with tears at the slightest reproach. And she knew how to make a man feel powerful, using her moans and cries to bind him to her as surely as chains or locks.

Only it had all been an act that proved fatal for him and then for her. Was it even possible for Fauvette to be that devious
and
that deadly?

Suddenly a voice said, “You one of them mimes or
something?” A black man with a little girl in his arms looked quizzically at him. He realized that he’d remained absolutely still in the middle of the sidewalk, staring into space as he reminisced.

“Can you do that thing where you’re stuck in a box?” the man added.

He ignored this, walked away, and sat on a bench beneath a large maple tree. A squirrel approached him in jerky, furtive movements, seeking the handouts it usually received. It stopped several feet away, no doubt puzzled by what it sensed from him. Then it scurried up the nearest tree.

Everything runs away,
he thought bitterly. It was a feeling he could not recall experiencing before, and he had no idea what to do about it now.

Prudence kept watch through the grimy front window of the River City Pawnshop, located across the four-lane boulevard from the Ringside. Behind her, the store’s lone clerk sat on a bar stool behind the counter and stared at the floor, eyes glazed and openmouthed. His erection bulged visibly at the front of his tan polyester slacks. He was not dead, but neither was he conscious; Prudence had simply turned his mind to its own sexual fantasies, and he would stay that way until she released him. He certainly didn’t put up any resistance.

Her own mind was weak and fuzzy from the sun; it was difficult to exert her powers during the day. She had arrived at the Ringside before it opened, then spotted the clerk unlocking the barred door that protected the pawnshop entrance. She reached him before he could flip the sign to
OPEN
and made him lock up behind them.

A few people had come to the door, expressed their vulgar outrage that it was closed, and then stormed away. Had any
of them peered inside, they would have taken Prudence for one of the mannequins. Vampires could remain still longer and with more consistency than any living being. Prudence saw no reason to pace or otherwise expend energy, so she simply stood in the darkened shop and watched.

At last a big black car pulled into the Ringside’s lot and parked in the limited shade. Patience emerged, stretched, and spent a moment looking at Prudence’s old Thunderbird, left in the spot farthest from the building. She could not possibly recognize it, since Prudence had bought it a century after her sister left home. As Patience removed her guitar from the LTD’s trunk another woman joined her.

Prudence squinted through the glare. This newcomer was the same young woman she’d seen behind the Ringside’s bar. Prudence focused all her attention on them, and was able to read their lips as long as they faced her direction.

“Wow,” Patience said when she saw Fauvette’s expression. “You look pissed off.”

“I am,” Fauvette agreed.

“What happened?”

She raised her chin proudly. “I told Rudy Zginski to kiss my ass and go to hell.”

Patience’s eyebrows rose. “Really?”

She nodded. “I told him I didn’t want to see him anymore, or talk to him, or fuck him.” She punctuated this with a little nod of certainty.

It didn’t fool Patience. “Is that true?”

“That I said it?”

“That you
meant
it. Especially about that last one.”

“Hell, yes, I meant it. I have enough to worry about without sex getting in the way. Maybe I’m an eternal virgin for a reason.”

“So the Catholics can worship you?” Patience said
teasingly. “And hey, didn’t you say the first time with Zginski was also the only time it wasn’t agony?”

Fauvette scowled. “Yeah, but I’d damn well rather be celibate than fucked by someone who would kill me in an instant if it was convenient for him.”

Patience smiled and shook her head. “He’s not like that, really. He just wants you to think so.”

“You don’t know him like I do.”

“Maybe not in the same ways. But I know him.”

Fauvette was tired of this whole subject. “Can we drop this? I have to get changed for work.” She nodded at the Thunderbird. “Whose car is that?”

“Probably broke down and the driver went to get help,” Patience said.

“He better,” Fauvette said as they went around the building to the kitchen entrance, “ ’cause Gerry will for sure have it towed if it’s still around when he gets here.”

Across the street, Prudence released her hold on the pawnshop’s owner, who climaxed inside his trousers and collapsed to the floor. He lay there shaking, disoriented and confused, then began to cry at the vivid memory of making love to his dead wife.

She shielded her eyes as she went outside and dashed across the street through the midday traffic, eliciting only one horn honk of protest. She found the back kitchen door unlocked and opened it enough to peek inside. A cold blast of air-conditioning blew over her. She saw no one, but heard muffled female voices. She slipped inside and followed the sound to a door marked WOMEN. She stood close to listen.

Fauvette quickly undressed, her uniform on a stall door hook. She said to Patience, “I guess instead of chasing him off, I should try to be more like him. He definitely gets what he wants.”

Patience leaned over the sink and checked her eyeliner in the mirror. She watched Fauvette’s reflection; stripped down to her underwear, her physical youth was even more apparent. Fourteen years old forever, with the pert breasts and wide hips of maturity as well as the baby fat and touch of unformed softness still left from childhood. Patience often regretted being doomed to immortality with twenty extra pounds on her frame, but had long since realized that, for a vampire, appearance was entirely beside the point. Looking a certain way was useful only as camouflage. “Honey, do you
want
to be like that?”

“No,” Fauvette said wearily as she stepped into her skirt. “I
want
to be like you. I want to be able to move through the world without leaving a trail of death and destruction.” She pulled up the zipper and turned the skirt into place.

“I’m sorry, honey, I wish I could tell you more. I don’t
know
how I do it. I don’t even know how I became what I am, really.” She turned away from the mirror. “Maybe you and I aren’t even the same thing. I mean, maybe we just superficially
look
alike, but we’re actually completely different.”

Fauvette buttoned up her blouse. “You have fangs. You could drink blood if you wanted to. Just like me.”

“That’s true,” Patience agreed sadly.

Fauvette fluffed her hair from her blouse’s collar. “Did you know Gerry actually wants me to start going without a bra? ‘Nipples sell more drinks,’ he says. Can you believe that?”

“From what I know about men, yes. Are you going to do it?”

“I might. Not tonight, though.” She went to the mirror and applied some lipstick. “Tonight I’d like to hang on to just a little bit of dignity.”

When she finished, Patience went to her and wrapped her in her arms. “I’m
really
sorry, Fauvette. It seems like I’ve
been nothing but a source of disappointment to you. It might be better if I’d never come along.”

As always, Patience’s soft embrace reminded Fauvette of her long-dead mother. She closed her eyes and said softly, “Just don’t leave yet. I don’t care about the whole energy thing anymore, I just . . . please stay, okay? You’re my only friend.”

Patience stroked her hair. “I’m not going anywhere, little girl. I promise.”

At the words “little girl,” Fauvette felt the hot sting in the corners of her eyes from tears she could not actually produce.

Outside the door, Prudence smiled and had to bite her knuckle to keep from laughing with delight. Fate had conspired to give her the perfect way to get back at her sister, to start this campaign of retribution with a nuclear strike.

Fauvette reluctantly pulled away from Patience. “I’m sorry, I just got a little carried away. It’s been a difficult morning.”

“No need to apologize. I’m here if you need me.”

“Thanks.” She kissed Patience on the cheek.

“Well, I need to go see about this piano I have to use. If last night is any indication, it’s been spending its time in a whorehouse run by deaf people. I have to see if I can fix it up a little.”

She left, and in a few moments Fauvette heard her playing in the dining room. She smiled and applied eye shadow, then bent down to retrieve her hairbrush. When she stood back up, a blond woman was reflected in the mirror.

She turned, startled. How had she not sensed this woman’s approach? “Wow, I didn’t even hear you come in. Are you a new waitress? Gerry should be here pretty soo—”

Prudence grabbed Fauvette by the throat and pushed her back against the wall. She crushed the girl’s neck, feeling the bones snap against her palm. The spinal cord was also severed,
leaving Fauvette immobile, her body hanging limp in Prudence’s grasp. Her eyes opened wide and her mouth worked to try to speak, but she could make no sound.

Prudence smiled. “I should probably tell you this is nothing personal, but that’s really not true. It’s
very
personal. Just not to you.”

She drove her other hand, fingers first, into Fauvette’s belly, piercing the skin and grabbing a handful of intestines.

Fauvette was grateful for the numbness below her neck, although the wet sounds of the woman’s efforts were almost as bad. Whatever the woman did would be repaired after a night’s vampiric rest, but that did nothing to make the disembowelment any less terrifying.

“You should never get emotionally involved with someone like my sister,” Prudence said as she pulled a string of intestines out and tossed them aside. They landed with a wet smack on the tile. Then she reached up into Fauvette’s body cavity for her heart.

Fauvette realized what was happening, what the woman intended to do, and tried with all her strength to scream. Patience would rush to her if only she knew. A single cry, a lone shriek of terror, would summon rescue.

She made no sound at all.

“Only one person can get close to Patience, honey,” Prudence said as her fingers dug for the organ. “And that’s me.” Then she smiled. “A-ha. There you are.”

Prudence tore Fauvette’s heart free of her body.

Fauvette had time to see her own heart in the woman’s grasp. Then Prudence opened her mouth wide, bared her fangs, and sank them into the organ. She tore out a bitesize chunk and spat it into the sink.

Fauvette’s vision suddenly receded, and she sensed her hair crumbling and the skin of her face growing tight and parchmentlike. Over fifty years had passed since her biological
death, and all of it was catching up to her now that her heart had been destroyed. The last thing she saw, the last moment of consciousness she had before she finally, truly
died,
was the woman’s arrogant sneer.