Blood Groove (33 page)

“You’re welcome,” Mark said reflexively. He started to say more, but instead shook his head and walked away.

Fauvette stood in the dark, uncertain and for some reason fighting panic. The immediate threat was over, and the mystery of Toddy’s death was solved. Soon she could tell Leonardo and Olive about the daylight, and lead them all into the sun. Hopefully Zginski would show them other things, like his ability to transform into animals or to vanish altogether.

That was it, she realized. She was panicked, not at the thought Zginski might leave, but that he might
stay
. Because if he did return to his aloof former self, she feared she would beg him for another night like the last one. Toddy’s shadow goddess could easily become the mere concubine of this true shadow god.

   Zginski constructed Lee Ann’s funeral bower from saplings and dead branches. He placed her body on
her back, hands clasped over her belly, across the slats. He removed her shoes and her jewelry. Then Zginski lit one end of a stick with Leonardo’s lighter and touched it to the summer-dry weeds that provided kindling. In moments the flames spread to the wooden frame and engulfed the body. “You, too, were groovalistic,” he murmured as a eulogy.

The fire illuminated the entire back of the warehouse, and sparks rose into the windless sky. The smell of burning flesh filled the night. Olive cried again, and Leonardo stood beside her for comfort. Mark sat on the hood of his truck, while Fauvette stood alone, watching only Zginski.

Zginski stood as close to the flames as he dared. He watched Lee Ann’s corpse blacken, then begin to shrivel. When the bower collapsed and fell into the coals, he clenched his fists against a sudden rush of despair. The idea of leaping in with her, of ending his existence by his own hand instead of waiting for someone else like Colby or Reynolds to appear, proved surprisingly powerful. It was what Blacula had done, after all, and the Polish driver. He was unsure if its source was the latent power of the
poudre de la mort vraie
, or something more personal and harder to define.

At last the flames began to die. Lee Ann’s body was reduced to ashes. Dawn was a scant hour away, and the eastern sky had already grown visibly lighter. Fauvette at last approached Zginski and stood nearby, waiting to see if he would want to speak.

He looked up at the stars. The trail of smoke was visible against them. “The stars are also suns,” he said at last. “Like our own. If sunlight were fatal, starlight should be as well. And the moon reflects the light of the sun; it should also destroy us.”

“Never thought about it that way,” she said.

He nodded. “We accept the rules as we’re given them, because the fear of being wrong is too great. It is ironic that those with no regard for their own lives as mortals will fight so desperately to remain in
this
kind of existence.”

“I always wanted to go to the moon,” Fauvette said wistfully as she watched the smoke seem to encircle the mostly full orb. “Maybe after what you’ve showed me, I can. If we ever go back someday.”

It took Zginski a moment to register this. “Go back?”

“The Apollo program. I think it ended a couple of years ago, but . . .” She stopped when she saw the look on his face. “You didn’t know we’d been to the moon?”

“By ‘we,’ you mean . . . ?”

“Mankind. ‘One small step for man.’ You don’t know about that?”

He slowly shook his head.

“We sent astronauts to the moon for the first time six years ago. They landed, walked around, planted a flag.”

“And they came back alive?”

She nodded, unable to repress a smile. “Yes, they came back. And then we sent more.”

“With . . . with technology?”

“I guess. How else would you do it?”

“In my time, black magic would have seemed the only possible way.” He shook his head in wonder. “This is almost too much to absorb in one night.”

She stepped closer. The fire’s dying glow made him especially handsome. “You asked me once to teach you about this time. Things got too busy for many lessons. We need to make up for that.”

He smiled. “That will not be necessary. I must return to Europe and attempt to recover my position there. This country, this culture, is too rapid for me.”

She had to swallow hard to get the words out. “You’re leaving?”

He looked at her tenderly. “Remember, time is an ocean for us, Fauvette, not a river. I may sail away, but the port remains.”

“But . . . I don’t want you to go.”

“Because of last night.”

She looked away. “Not entirely.”

His voice grew soft and, for the first time since she’d known him, fully kind. “It was not my power so much as your willingness to submit to it. Allow your former paramour Mark to learn your secrets. He will soon be able to provide the same pleasure.”

“But he’s not you,” she said, forcing steadiness into words that wanted to whimper. She recalled the love in Lee Ann’s eyes at the moment she decided to sacrifice herself. The girl had been manipulated and used, yet at that instant she had been driven by feelings all her own. Or was Zginski simply such a master, both she and Fauvette truly believed the feelings belonged to them? Was there any way to be sure?

“No,” Zginski said. She looked up sharply, unsure if he was responding to her spoken comments or her thoughts.

   Leonardo went, “Huh.”

Olive said, “What?”

“That’s gonna be some trouble.” He nodded at Fauvette and Zginski by the fire, then at Mark seated on the hood of his truck.

Olive shrugged. “Maybe not. Fauvette ain’t no tease. She decides she wants one of them, she’ll tell them both. Nobody going behind nobody’s back.”

“You think?”

“Honey, we ain’t tied up by all the rules. If we want somebody, we say so. She try one for a few years, then the other. Hell, she can have both, long as all three of them are groovy with it.”

He looked at her skeptically. “And you never want anybody, do you?”

She shrugged. “Don’t know what to tell you. I know what goes where, just ain’t got no desire to know what it feels like. Seems kinda . . .” She shivered. “Icky.”

He shook his head. “Wish I’d met you ’fore we turned. Had a chance to show you how much fun ‘icky’ can be.”

“Me and you?” Olive said, eyes wide. “That’d be ‘icky,’ no matter what.”

Leonardo laughed.

   Mark watched Zginski and Fauvette talk. If he’d concentrated, he could’ve heard their words, but it seemed rude. It was really none of his business. Then again, if Zginski was going to be around, maybe it was. He seemed like the kind of guy who would have many more unpleasant surprises to reveal.

He hopped from the hood of the truck. “Getting toward daylight,” he said. “Might want to be heading indoors.”

“Thanks,” Fauvette called, then said softly to Zginski, “We should tell them. And
show
them.”

“Your knowledge gives you a tremendous advantage,” Zginski said. “You might be ill-advised to throw that away.”

“These are my friends.”

He nodded. “It is your choice.” He gestured for her to precede him, and followed her to the warehouse.

Olive was first up the steps to the loading dock, so preoccupied with the night’s events that she didn’t see Danielle Roseberry waiting in the shadows just inside the door. With a scream of “You
BITCH
!” Danielle knocked Olive backward into the nearest wall. She jammed her left arm against Olive’s throat and drove an enormous cardiac hypodermic into her chest. Olive had time to exclaim, “Hey!” before Danielle shoved the plunger and injected several ounces of hydrochloric acid directly into Olive’s heart.

Danielle stepped back. Olive clutched at the hypo and
tried to pull it free, but the acid was already dissolving her heart, destroying it as surely as any stake. “Help,” she said simply, and bit her lip. Something inside her sizzled and gurgled. Tears filled her eyes. “Please?” she added plaintively.

Leonardo leaped forward and caught her as she fell. The smell of corroding flesh filled the air and her body began to collapse in on itself. All the years that had passed since she became a vampire caught up with her in moments.

“For all you did to me, for all you made me do,” Danielle hissed. “For what happened to
my friends
.” She drew her gun and turned to face the others. This wasn’t the confrontation she’d hoped for—she’d wanted to catch them in their coffins, inert and helpless, and thoroughly autopsy them while they slept—but she had contingency plans. “Now, you blood-sucking assholes,” she snarled, “it’s time to pay the check.”

“I
S SHE DEAD
? ” Mark gasped. Blood and some sort of foam soaked the front of Olive’s tank top.

“I sure hope so,” Danielle said triumphantly, proud of her professional insight. Once she’d thought analytically about it, she realized that the heart had to be the central organ in any biological system dependent on fresh blood rather than food for sustenance. It tallied with folklore, too: weren’t vampires always dispatched with a stake through the heart? So any method that destroyed a vampire’s heart would effectively destroy the vampire, for good.

“Aw, man,” Leonardo said plaintively, “you didn’t have to kill her.” He stroked her hair; clumps of her now-brittle Afro came loose in his fingers.

Danielle’s rage surged anew. “After what she put me through? After what she cost me? You bet I did.” She looked them over and snapped, “Where is he? That long-haired jackass Rudy.”

They looked around. Zginski had disappeared.

Fauvette felt a chill. Either he would save them, or he’d fled and would never return. She could not predict which would happen.

Danielle pointed the gun at Mark. “You. Move away from everyone. You’re next.”

Mark took a slow step away from Fauvette. He knew the look in this woman’s eyes; he remembered it from the mob that killed Praline. There would be no talking her out of this, and he couldn’t really blame her. Indirectly, they
had
caused the death of her friends. That didn’t mean he’d just stand there and let her shoot him, though.

He reached out with his nosferatic ability. It had no effect: she had smeared herself with a solution made from the gray powder, allowing it to soak into her pores and intimate areas until it permeated her. She also lined her underwear with it for extra protection, which had seemed incredibly silly until this very moment, when it suddenly became brilliant.

“Wait,” Fauvette said, moving between Mark and Danielle. She just managed to keep her voice low and even. “Please, let’s talk. Just what do you think we are?”

Danielle narrowed her eyes. “I know what you are.”

“We’re just people, ma’am,” she said, going for her best helpless act. “Just like you, no matter what our slightly loony friend told you. You can see he didn’t stick around once things got serious. I don’t know exactly what happened at the cemetery, but you followed Mark of your own free will, and if things got out of hand later, well, you have to share some of the blame.”

“No,” Danielle hissed. “I
know
what happened.”