The Girls With Games of Blood (12 page)

She sat up just as Zginski came from the kitchen with a glass of wine in his hand. He wore a white shirt and khaki slacks, and his hair was loose. Having recently fed, and now empowered by the night, he radiated confidence and authority. The thought of denying him anything seemed absurd.

She smiled. “I thought you never drank . . . wine.”

“I do not. But it will do you good.”

She nodded and gratefully took the glass. She swung her feet to the floor and waited for the dizziness to pass. “That was intense. How long was I out?”

“Four hours, approximately. My apologies. I had spent too much time in the sun.”

She took a long drink. “I’ve barely seen it. I’ve been hunched over the
Festa Maggotta
all day. But I think I may have found the sort of thing you were looking for. Would you like to see?”

He lightly brushed her hair. The dark circles under her eyes, usually hidden by her tan, were more prominent now. “Are you sufficiently recovered?”

She smiled wryly. “I’m dying of cancer, Rudy. I am as recovered as I’m ever going to get.”

She walked with his aid over to her desk, where photocopies lay scattered next to spiral notebooks. The facsimiles
reproduced pages of the
Festa Maggotta,
“The Feast of Maggots,” an ancient alchemical tome from the university’s Sir Francis Colby collection. Zginski had, in fact, met Alisa thanks to this book: when he requested it, he was told that it was not available for casual lending, but the leading expert on it was in fact working with it at the moment. He introduced himself as a fellow scholar, and knew within fifteen seconds that she was deathly ill. Luckily she knew it, too.

She pointed to the image of a page, with a word in an unknown language at the top as a header. “That word
vrykopilo
translates as, I believe, ‘vampires.’ ”

“Indeed. In what language?” The
Festa Maggotta
was notoriously difficult to translate; sections were written in a mishmash of known languages, interspersed with unknown and possibly made-up tongues.

“Two, actually. Greek and Italian. The first two syllables, ‘Vryko,’ are from the Greek word
vrylolakes.
The last two, ‘piro,’ could be either Italian or Portuguese. I’ll know more when I’ve translated some of the surrounding text. I could be completely off, but it’ll be interesting either way.”

He took the empty wineglass and put it aside. He had taken her that first night, seducing her with his powers and gaining immediate entrance to all aspects of her life. She was a widow, a full professor of linguistics who specialized in ancient and lost tongues. She was also dying of ovarian cancer. “Do you feel strong enough to discuss something with me?”

“As long as it’s not my impending death.”

“I believe we have exhausted that topic. Today I encountered another of my kind who claims she can feed, and survive, on merely the energy she draws from other people. Without touching or injuring them.”

He paused, until she prompted, “And you don’t believe her?”

“I do not know. It seems an absurd thing to lie about, and yet if it were true . . .”

“Then you wouldn’t have to kill people to survive.”

He smiled. She had discerned the truth about him that first night, and despite her initial disbelief had now fully embraced it, and him. He deadened the agonizing pain of her disease, and reawakened the erotic desires that she feared had died with Chad. “I do not kill to survive. I kill when necessary. All creatures do that.”

“I think your body count’s a bit higher than most.”

“You are familiar with the world’s many folklores,” he said, returning to the topic. “Does such a thing sound possible?”

She yawned. “I’m no biologist, Rudy. I don’t know how your body works. You have no pulse, no respiration, yet you don’t physically decay. You can take no sustenance from traditional food, yet human blood not only allows you to survive, but makes you superhumanly strong.”

“Perhaps it is not the blood itself,” he said slowly, thinking aloud. “Something contained
in
the blood. An energy of some sort. Is
that
possible?”

“Maybe. If you draw essentially the same energy from blood that she draws in some other way, that would explain it. Like a person getting her calories from either a steak or a candy bar.”

“How would she be able to do this?”

“You’d have to ask her,” Alisa said wryly. Then she smiled and softly laughed. “It’s funny to find out there are things about being a vampire that you, a vampire, don’t know.”

“Much of your own body’s workings are mysterious to you as well.”

“Yeah,” she agreed with momentary sad irony. “I just thought that, given what you’ve endured—all those years in limbo, I mean—that you might know more than the average person, vampire or otherwise.”

With no warning he slapped his hand over her mouth and nose, then leaned close to her and whispered, “Imagine you
are in the middle of taking a breath, and suddenly you can neither finish inhaling nor exhale and take another. That is what it feels like. There is no enlightenment, no gift from a benevolent deity.”

Her eyes were wide, and she tried to force his hand away. When he released her she took a deep, gasping breath and sat back in the chair.
“Fuck!”
she yelled at him. “What the hell was
that
for?”

“A hint of what I experienced,” he said with no remorse.

“I’ll be dead soon enough, you know. I don’t need a sneak preview.” Furious, she stood and started to walk away.

He caught her by the wrist. “Ask me,” he said simply.

She tried to pull away, but his grip was like iron. “Ask you what?”

“To make you as I am.”

“I don’t
want
to be what you are. I’m just willing to give you what you need, in return for you making me forget what
I
am.” She winced as a fresh stab of agony shot through her, and leaned against the desk to keep from falling.

He sent a surge of power at her and smiled with perverse enjoyment as the blazing fury and pain in her eyes was suddenly swamped by a wave of sexual desire. He released her wrist, and with a helpless moan she began unbuttoning her nightshirt.

C
LORA HAD NO
idea what had happened, or how she’d ended up this way. One moment she was on her feet, Leo’s palm against her breast, and the next she was naked, facedown on her bed, too weak to even move. Her body felt both heavy and light, and the dull throb inside her told her she’d been thoroughly satisfied. But somehow she couldn’t
remember
it.

Finally she opened her eyes and turned her head. Leonardo stood shirtless, looking at a poster on her wall. “Who is Vincent Van Patten?” he asked.

“An actor,” she said, her voice a rasp. Had she been screaming? Surely not, or her father would’ve burst in with the shotgun. Unless, of course, he was passed out drunk again in front of Johnny Carson.

Leonardo picked his tank top off the floor. “Better be splittin’.”

“No, please, don’t go,” she said, jumping up. Sudden awareness of her nudity made her flush red; she’d never been naked in front of a boy before, not this way, not under bright lights and standing up. But at that moment keeping him with her meant infinitely more than her modesty.

She put her arms around his neck and pressed herself to him. “God, why are you so
cold
?” she said, then began kissing his neck.

He took her by the shoulders and pushed her back. “Why you so anxious to keep me here?”

“Because . . .” She choked, the words she wanted to say logjamming in her throat. How
could
she love him? Yet what else but love could inspire the physical need she felt?

He smiled. “Don’t worry, baby, I ain’t leaving you for good. I’ll be back.”

“When?”

“Tomorrow night. Or maybe the next. Leave your window open for me?”

She nodded. She felt more vulnerable than ever in her life.

He kissed her, his hands running all over her body. She moaned and could not imagine denying him anything.

Then he pulled away and slipped out the window. As silently as he’d entered, he was gone.

Clora stood in the middle of her bedroom, stark naked, fighting back tears. What had just happened to her? How could she ever face . . . well,
anyone
again? For the first time she was grateful for her isolation. She’d let a black boy have her
body,
have access to all the intimate parts she was supposed to save for her true love. Hadn’t she?

She paused. She really could not remember. She did not feel sore inside, the way she did when Bruce made love to her. But if she and Leo hadn’t had sex . . . what
had
they done?

She turned and saw herself in the mirror. Something caught her eye, and she walked closer, tossing her hair aside as she did so.

On the right side of her neck were two tiny punctures. They were tender, and when she tried to daub them with a wet rag they began to bleed again. It looked like a
bite,
like
some smaller version of the gory vampire marks she’d seen on Channel 3’s late show.

The warm blood trickled down her neck, and showed no sign of stopping. She looked around for clothes. She’d have to go to the downstairs bathroom to get the Band-Aids.

Leonardo leaped from the edge of the roof and landed silently thirty feet below. He stood immobile, listening for any sign he’d been spotted. Through one of the big porch windows he saw the blue light of a black-and-white TV. Clora’s father sprawled asleep in a recliner, the less-than-vigilant dog asleep at his feet.

Leonardo smiled in satisfaction. The night had gone better than he ever anticipated. As Zginski said, the thought of draining the throbbingly alive girl of her life a little at a time was infinitely more appealing that just killing her outright. When he watched her choke down the words “I love you,” he felt more powerful than ever before.

He moved silently through the woods toward Mark’s truck. Just as he reached it, another vehicle turned into the same isolated tractor path and stopped behind the pickup. Leonardo immediately leaped twenty feet up into the branches of a tree, careful not to rustle the leaves when he landed.

The car’s headlights illuminated Mark’s truck. It was no police vehicle, but Leonardo couldn’t imagine who would be out this late, looking to use this spot. The door opened, emitting a blast of “Jackie Blue” and a tall, muscular teenage boy. He had long blond hair and bangs that fell down over his eyebrows. He walked around the truck, peered inside the cab and the camper shell, then examined the license plate. Finally he shut off his car and headed through the woods with the certainty of someone who knew the way.

When he was out of sight, Leonardo dropped to the ground
and went to the car. The boy hadn’t locked it, so Leonardo opened the door and quickly put his hand over the dome light. He found the registration in the glove compartment. He suspected that this boy was the “Bruce” Clora had expected on her roof, but the name on the certificate startled him.

The vehicle was registered to
Byron Cocker.

He climbed out and shut the door. There was enough room to maneuver the truck around the car and get away, but he felt a surge of possessiveness when he thought about Clora in the Cocker boy’s arms. It was as if another child had taken his favorite toy on the playground.

He dashed through the forest back to the house. By the time he reached the edge of the yard, the young man was climbing awkwardly up the drain that led down to the ground from the gutter.

Leonardo paralleled him up the branches of a tall oak. He had a clear view of Clora’s bedroom window as the newcomer tapped on the glass, and his vampire senses had no trouble hearing their conversation.

“Jesus, what are you doing here?” the girl hissed as she opened the window. She wore a terry-cloth robe bundled up to her neck, as if she were freezing despite the heat.

“I told you I might come by,” the boy said. His voice had a high, whining quality. “Come on, let me in.”

“I’m not in the mood tonight, Bruce.”

“Oh, come
on,
Clora,” he whined, “I came all the way out here.”