Blood Groove (29 page)

“Did you notice the eyeball that boy gave us?” Leonardo asked Mark.

“Yeah, like he knew us. Did you ever come here with Toddy?”

“Course not. You?”

“No.”

They milled about in the lobby, whose walls were painted with a panorama of the solar system. Tiny lights set within it twinkled to mimic the stars. The ceiling was domed in imitation of the actual planetarium, although it was decorated only with ridges that ran to a central point, like the vaulted ceiling of a church.

Zginski said to Fauvette, “The man who accepted our admission seemed unduly concerned with us. Do you think you can find out why?”

She shrugged. “Olive’s a lot better at getting men to—”

“Olive is a fool. I have more faith in your judgment.”

She shrugged again. “Okay, I’ll see what I can do. Save me a seat inside.”

The doors to the actual planetarium were opened by a middle-aged woman, who stepped wearily aside to let the kids enter. She had the same look of disdain for all of them, and paid Zginski and the others no special notice. They took up one whole row, with an empty seat between Zginski and Mark for Fauvette. The sweet-smelling odor grew stronger as homemade cigarettes flared to life all around them in the semidarkness.

Zginski sniffed, then softly asked Mark, “What is that?”

“Dope,” Mark said.

Zginski blinked in surprise, then fired back, “Muck-snipe.”

“No, they’re
smoking
dope,” Mark explained. A couple of people looked back and glared at him between tokes. More quietly he said, “Marijuana. It’s like tobacco, except it gets you high.”

“Ah,” Zginski said, and nodded. He studied the elaborate projector mechanism, unaware or unconcerned that Mark continued to stare at him.
Wow
, Mark thought,
he
has
mellowed out. Maybe
he’s
been smoking dope and just didn’t know what it was
.

   Fauvette leaned against the wall as the crowd entered the auditorium. She slipped her hands into her jeans’s pockets and pushed out her hip, maximizing her seductive pose. She wore a white sleeveless jersey with a daisy design, and tugged down the front to show off her cleavage. She waited for the young man to notice her.

He closed the front doors, rattled them to make sure they’d latched, then turned and stopped. The doors to the auditorium closed as well, leaving him alone with Fauvette.

“Uh . . . can I help you?” he said. He fidgeted in place, first crossing his arms and then sticking his hands in his own pockets. He had a pimply neck and the kind of greasy hair that no amount of washing could fully contain. If he’d worn
glasses he would’ve been a textbook nerd, but his eyes were big, green, and clear.

Fauvette pushed herself off the wall. His nervousness made her uneasy as well; she had exerted no power over him, and unless he was simply terrified of girls—which was possible—he had no reason to act this way. “I noticed you staring at me when I came in,” she said, careful to keep her distance. She reached out with her power tentatively, to see if she met any resistance. “I thought you were cute, too.”

He licked his lips, but did not appear to be succumbing; the front of his jeans remained resolutely unlifted. She took a step closer. “What’s your name?”

“David,” he said, and glanced toward the doors that led directly into the museum. A sign marked them for
AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY
. “My name’s David.”

“It’s okay if you’ve got a girlfriend, David. I won’t tell, and we can have plenty of fun.”

He took a matching step away from her. He knew what she was, that much was clear, and seemed to be immune to her nosferatic power. Trying to seduce him would not accomplish anything. She could call for help, or . . .

What would Zginski do?

She flew across the room and pressed him back into the wall. He was almost as tall as Mark, but she closed one hand around his neck, while the other clutched his genitals. Both grips were like iron. She pulled him down until his face was level with hers, his gawky knees splayed wide.

“You knew we’d show up, David,” Fauvette whispered. “Who told you about us?”

“Th-the old man,” he hissed, his hands flattened against the wall. He was covered in sweat, and she worried he would lose bladder control as well. She’d seldom seen anyone so afraid. He kept looking at the door to the museum.

“What old man?” she asked, her voice still soft.

And he told her.

•  •  •

   The lights inside the arena suddenly dimmed, and a sea of stars appeared on the ceiling above them. For a moment they were stationary, then they began to spin clockwise as music blared forth from hidden speakers. Someone yelled, “Yee-
hah
!”

The show was entrancing. From the zooming passage through stars and galaxies to the abstract patterns of narrow beams of light, Zginski watched with childlike delight. The music was tribal, primitive, and yet relentlessly upbeat, extolling the virtues of that mysterious “funk” and insisting that the band could “tear the roof off the sucker.”

He glanced at the other patrons. Some were awestruck, some giggled, and some, he was amazed to see, appeared to be asleep. One girl ate a bag of potato chips with such gusto, he wondered if she had been on a religious fast.

Several minutes into the show Fauvette appeared, climbed past Zginski, and settled into her seat. Mark turned to speak to her, but she ignored him and leaned close to Zginski.

“There’s some weird stuff happening,” she said over the music. “We need to get out of here so we can talk.”

He nodded. Although he hated to leave this spectacular presentation, he was far more interested in Fauvette’s report. He stood, she followed, and after a moment Mark and the rest did as well.

In the deserted lobby the music was still loud, but they could speak without shouting. “What have you learned?” Zginski asked.

“David, that’s the guy’s name, said he was told to watch out for people who had the same look as Toddy,” Fauvette said. “Pale, dark eyes, you know.”

“He knew Toddy?” Mark asked.

She nodded. “Said Toddy was a regular, and used to sneak out during the show and prowl the museum. At first
David would chase him out, but then he was told to leave him alone.”

“Told?” Zginski said. “By whom?”

“An old man who works nights in the antiquities collection. David only works here on the weekends to see the show for free and score some weed, so he doesn’t know the man’s name, just that he’s important.”

“Then I assume this old man in antiquities works weekends as well,” Zginski said.

She nodded. “David says he’s here every Saturday.”

“Think he’s our vampire pusher?” Mark asked.

“Possibly,” Zginski said. “Did your friend describe him?”

“Said he was old, really old. Could barely move around. He has a big mustache and long white hair.”

“And that is all?”

Fauvette paused. She’d read the story of Zginski’s imprisonment, and seen his reaction to the name on the plate, so she knew how he’d respond. “And he’s British.”

“British,” Zginski repeated softly.

“Yeah.”

Zginski could not speak for a long moment. Only one mustache-wearing Englishman could be smart enough to create this powder, and clever enough to distribute it so discreetly. An Englishman who had once destroyed a vampire long ago in Wales, and would no doubt know that this same vampire was now walking the night again.

“Hey,” Olive said suddenly, “where
is
this David dude?”

“I told him to walk home and not talk to anyone or I’d rip his balls off,” Fauvette said with a little smile. “He lives in Ellendale; it’ll take a while.” She looked at Zginski, hoping this would impress him. He had not even noticed.

“My friends,” he said at last, “this has become more dangerous than even I anticipated. If the man behind this plot is who I believe it to be, then not only is he capable of destroying us all, he will have anticipated our presence here.”

“Colby would have to be dead by now, wouldn’t he?” Fauvette said.

“One would assume,” Zginski agreed. And on his first day in this world, ensconced in the university library, the final fate of Sir Francis Colby was the first thing Zginski had researched. The sources told him Colby died in his sleep in 1950, at age eighty-five; were he alive now, he would be a staggering 110 years old. Yet if any man could cheat death it was Colby, with his arsenal of arcane tools, spells, and rituals. Perhaps he was merely hanging on to life until he could finish off Zginski once and for all. But that made no
sense
: he’d had Zginski under his power since that day in Wales. Was this an elaborate scheme of torture, then? An old Victorian cat playing with his vampiric mouse?

“So who is this guy?” Leonardo asked.

“A man wiser, cleverer, and more ruthless than you can imagine,” Zginski said.

“How do you know?” asked Olive.

“Because, my dear, sixty years ago he destroyed
me
.”

E
XCEPT FOR THE
music pounding through the walls from the show, the room was silent. Finally Leonardo pointed out the obvious. “But you ain’t dead. The real kind of dead, I mean. The kind where you don’t get up.”

“No. At the time, he chose not to eliminate me totally. Believe me, it was not a kindness.” He had no specific memories of his time in the void—it was a void, after all—but the sensations of isolation, ennui, and despair still hovered on the edge of his consciousness. “And after more than half a century, he may have changed his mind.”

Another moment of silence passed. Someone in the planetarium called out in awe, “I think it’s
God!
” followed by applause. At last Mark said, “So . . . let’s go find out if it’s the same guy. Then we’ll know, right?”

They all looked at Zginski. He neither moved nor spoke. In fact, he turned away and walked not toward the auditorium or the passage into the museum itself, but toward the doors to the outside. He stopped with his hand on them.

Another silent moment passed. A long, drawn-out
“Dude”
came through the wall.

“Wait here,” Fauvette said. She moved to stand beside Zginski and said quietly, “You’re afraid, aren’t you?”

He kept his eyes straight ahead. The door showed him an embossed vista of space. He tapped it with his finger. “This is a vacuum. Like the place into which Colby sent me. It is not somewhere I wish to return.”

“It may not be him.”

“But it may. He defeated me before. A moment or two of circumspection before I face him again seems appropriate.”

“He’s an old man,” she pointed out. “A
really
old man.”

“Perhaps,” he agreed. “But consider this: human beings rarely live to be older than a century without some sort of extraordinary aid.”

She frowned, then understood his meaning. “You think he’s become a
vampire
?” she whispered.

He shrugged. “I will not know until I encounter him.”

“Was he the kind of guy who’d turn himself into something he hated just to get revenge?”

Again he shrugged. “The answers you seek will not be found in discussion.”

“Then like Mark said, we should go find out,” she said. “He’s a danger to all of us, remember?”

Through clenched teeth he said, “If it is Sir Francis, he is a greater danger than you can conceive.” He looked back at the others, who now appeared pathetically fragile to him with their blasé concern and thin bravado. “You would do well to take your friends, flee this city, and resume your scurrying, darkness-seeking lifestyle somewhere far away.”

Fauvette was not about to be baited. “You made fun of that, remember?”

He smiled mordantly. “Perhaps that was an error.”

She stepped closer. “I won’t go.”

He looked into her eyes and saw not the silly infatuation he expected, but something deeper and harder to define. He suddenly felt an emotion he had not experienced in a century:
embarrassment. If this child could exhibit the courage she’d shown, how could he, Rudolfo Zginski, show fear? He managed a smile.