Then he snapped her neck. She went limp, eyes wide, and he threw her into the wall.
Mark managed to stay on his feet. The bullet’s numbness spread, but it wasn’t as intense this time, and he wobbled a bit but didn’t fall. Maybe he was developing some sort of immunity to this stuff, or—
“Mark . . .” a small voice said behind him. He turned.
The bullet had passed completely through him and struck its target. The ragged hole between Fauvette’s breasts still smoked as she stared down at it. Then she toppled backward, her legs twisted awkwardly under her.
“Fauvette—!” Mark croaked and stumbled over to her. The bullet had pierced her heart, and she stared blankly at the ceiling. But as his face moved over hers, her eyes focused on him.
“That . . . stings . . .” she sighed. But the pain was fading into the numbness she knew so well from the gray powder,
and she understood that her death—her second death, her final death—would be painless. She smiled.
Mark plunged his fingers into the hole, trying not to do any additional damage to her heart. He felt past the shivering cardiac flesh to where the bullet had impacted against the tough muscles that expanded the lungs, and pulled the slug free. The top of the nearest auricle was torn and shredded, though, and he felt the blood—thicker than humans, jellylike due to their colder body temperature—oozing out. There was nothing he could do.
With the last of his strength, Leonardo crawled to her. “Hey, Fauvy, looks like we’re going on the same trip,” he managed.
“It’s so . . . peaceful . . .” she sighed.
Mark looked at her helplessly. “Fauvette, damn,” he said desperately.
“Just stay with me while I go,” she whispered. “So many things I wanted to find out . . .”
“Here,” a new voice said. Mark and Leonardo looked up.
Zginski dropped Danielle’s limp body next to them. “Feed,” he said in his most arrogant, commanding tone. “This bitch is not dead yet, and the fresh blood may save you.”
Danielle’s eyes looked around wildly. She felt nothing from her shattered neck down, and when she tried to speak she seemed to have no air in her lungs. She saw Zginski over her, and his hands turned her head. Something else audibly snapped in her neck, but she didn’t feel it. Then he lifted Fauvette and placed her mouth against Danielle’s throat. The vague sense of pressure was all she felt as the girl’s fangs sank home.
Leonardo took one limp wrist and slid his fangs into her weak, fluttery pulse. Mark did the same with the other wrist. Danielle’s head thundered with pain as her blood was quickly and efficiently drained.
Zginski leaned down. “You should have let us vanish
from your lives. You survived the first time you sought us out; you will not survive this.”
“I don’t care,” Danielle croaked wetly. “They’re all . . . already gone . . .”
Zginski looked at the others. She was right; there was not enough blood for the three of them to overcome the damage, and Danielle would die within minutes anyway. He thought for a moment, weighing options. Then with a smile of irony, he raised his left wrist to his mouth and bit into his own veins. As the blood began to flow, he pressed the wound to Danielle’s lips.
She tried to resist, but lacked even the strength to close her mouth against this invasion. The warm salty liquid trickled over her teeth, oozed around her tongue as she tried to push the vile fluid from her mouth, drained down her throat past the threshold of numbness and into her,
into
her.
Her last conscious thought was of the thunder in her ears as her heart pounded desperately, then went silent.
F
AUVETTE OPENED HER
eyes. Everything was dark, still, and quiet. Was this true death?
She slowly sat up, and stopped when her head encountered a familiar barrier. She lay back down and, using her hands, carefully pushed aside the lid of her coffin. There was no light outside, but her vampire senses told her everything was as she remembered. If this was the afterlife, it was rather mundane.
She climbed slowly from the box. She wore only her jeans, and on the floor found her tank top, the neckline ragged and burned from the bullet. She immediately felt between her breasts for the hole, but none was there, only smooth cold flesh.
Her last memories were of Mark and Leonardo looking down at her. No, there was more, a vague recollection of feeding on someone, except the blood tasted incredibly different, almost bitterly strong, and it seemed to make her insides itch. But it was more of a sense memory than a true conscious one, and she could recall no details about whose blood it had been.
She pulled on another T-shirt and her flip-flops. Carefully she opened the door and crawled out of the boiler.
The coffins belonging to Leonardo and Toddy were where she remembered them, although Toddy’s stood open and Leonardo’s was closed. She ran her fingers along the edge of the lid, wondering what she would find if she opened it. Leonardo had been shot, too; was he also good as new? Or was he crumpled to a pile of bones and dusty clothing, like Olive? One simple action and she would know.
She decided to wait. Either way, it seemed the more respectful option.
She went up the stairs. It was night again, or still; either she’d been asleep for minutes, or the whole day. She saw no one in the warehouse proper, so she went into the office where Mark’s coffin rested. Its lid was also closed. She rushed to it and was about to open it when a familiar voice said, “Not yet.”
She turned. Zginski stood in the office doorway.
“They will join us shortly,” he said. “I would like the opportunity to speak privately to you.”
She stepped away from the coffin, her fists clenched. Anger and confusion battled for supremacy. “You let that woman . . .” She trailed off, uncertain how to finish. What exactly
had
the raging Dr. Roseberry done to them?
Zginski nodded. “Let us step outside. I will offer no excuses, but will attempt an explanation.”
She seriously considered refusing, but ultimately knew she wouldn’t. She had to know what had happened.
They crossed the warehouse floor. By the door, Fauvette paused beside what was left of Olive. The rock-dumb but beautiful girl had vanished, replaced by a dusty, sagging cadaver that already bore evidence of rat damage. The hole burned in her chest was big enough for a softball.
“We will deal appropriately with her remains,” Zginski said softly, taking her arm and pulling her along.
Outside, Fauvette saw that Lee Ann’s funeral pyre was now no more than a blackened patch of bare ground. Low clouds scudded across the stars. The intermittent wind was hot with the promise of the late summer.
Zginski turned to face her, arms crossed. “Your injuries were the most severe, so if you have recovered, I have no doubt your friends will as well.”
“Except Olive.”
“Yes. I was unable to help her.”
“You didn’t even try,” she hissed, fury rising.
“No,” he agreed. “When the good doctor attacked her, I left.”
“You
ran
.”
He nodded. “As you say. Old habits. I have always considered only myself worthy of my concern.”
“Good for you.” Her anger rose again, mixing with shame at her own gullibility. “You made us trust you. We helped you.”
He shrugged. “Yes. That is a useful skill to develop.”
“I’ll work on it,” she almost spat.
“I will not lie to you. When I saw the confrontation begin, I had every intention of leaving. I believed myself quite willing to sacrifice you and your friends in order to, as the common folk say, ‘save my own skin.’ ”
He looked away, and wind blew his long hair back from his face, as if exposing something previously hidden. “And yet . . . something pulled me back. Do you recall the denouement of the film
Blacula
? He chose destruction rather than being alone, and in a way, I did the same. I was unable to leave you at the mercy of that woman, so I destroyed my former selfishness. I will not descend into maudlin cliché, but I find that I have grown more attached to you than I expected. As I did with the late Lee Ann. I could not save her without violating her wishes. But you . . .”
“How
did
you save us? Leo and I were shot in the heart.”
“Unlike your friend Olive, the bullet damaged your heart but did not destroy it. Just as we can heal ourselves if given time, we can aid the healing of others. If we are willing to do so. You had fresh blood, but lacked the strength to fully feed due to your injuries. I mixed my own blood with that of the late Dr. Roseberry, to bolster your healing abilities. Thankfully, it was successful.”
“I didn’t know we could do that,” she said softly.
He nodded, looking down at his shoes. “This ability is not commonly known, and even less frequently used. We tend to be very solitary creatures, so the opportunity seldom arises. When it is used, it binds the injured party and the savior at a very deep level.” He sighed as if he could not believe it himself. “We are now bound in such a way. All of us.”
“What exactly does that mean?”
He shook his head. “I truly do not know. I have made the acquaintance of only one other vampire who ever used the ability. He refused to speak of it.”
“I don’t feel any different.”
“Nor do I, in any way that can be . . .” He smiled with ironic detachment. “Quantified.”
They stood in silence for a long moment. A pair of bats flitted from the warehouse into the sky. Behind her she heard movement as Mark and Leonardo stirred. The wind picked up, blowing a strand of hair into her eyes.
Finally Fauvette said, “So . . . you’re staying.”
He nodded.
She couldn’t hide a smile. “So what happens next?”
He plucked the hair from her eyes and tucked it behind her ear. “We move from the shadows into the light. We join the world. And we feed on it.”
D
ANIELLE
R
OSEBERRY AWOKE
encased in fresh cement, deep in the foundation of a new building. Above her, oblivious crews continued erecting the structure.
Her first sensation was of the confining, obscenely claustrophobic pressure all around her head. The wet concrete had sent tendrils up her nose, into her ears, and past her slack lips into her mouth, where they had solidified. When she tried to work her jaw her skin peeled free from the concrete surrounding it, and her teeth painfully struck the cement protrusion.
Next she realized she could not feel her body past her shattered neck.
And then she felt the
thirst
.
Trapped and paralyzed, unable to call for help, she managed a pathetic, gagged squeak of a scream when she realized she would now discover how long it took a vampire to starve to death.