The Girls With Games of Blood (18 page)

Even Fauvette and her friends were gullible enough to believe what the movies, the modern equivalent of folklore, told them: sunlight would destroy them, they must kill each victim, and the universe’s morality damned them for all eternity simply for being what they were.

Zginski, too, had fallen prey to these delusions—for about a minute. He had been disoriented and puzzled after he clawed free of his coffin and emerged from his grave, but never once believed the superstitious nonsense about the moral state of his new condition. He had changed, irrevocably and permanently, but he was no more bound by the laws of God and man than he had been as a mortal human being. He quickly realized the advantage, though, in using these superstitions for his own ends, such as revenge on the woman who had inadvertently turned him.

Until Sir Francis Colby, and that night in Wales sixty years earlier.

He would adjust his schedule, he decided. Overconfidence had been his downfall before, and now it led him to move about more and more in daylight, when his powers were weakest. Now he would resume a mainly nocturnal existence, and prowl the day only when it was unavoidable.

His mind drifted as his body transitioned into corpse-sleep. As always, for just an instant before he lost consciousness, he felt a jolt of terror that he might in fact awaken in
that ghastly limbo again, that his resurrection had been simply a vast cosmic hallucination or dream. It was one of the few things that completely and utterly terrified him. But then the usual nothingness took him over, and like all dead things, he had no worries at all.

Alisa, her naked body soaked with sweat, stood just outside the cellar door and pressed her cheek to the wood. This was her house, hers and Chad’s, but since Zginski took over her life she felt like a guest in her own home. He used her car, her money, her resources, and especially her body whenever he felt like it. And he made her
want
it.

She wanted it now, that was certain. She wanted to feel his weight on her, wrap her legs around his wiry form, and pound up against him until the need within her was sated. But try as she might, she could never conjure an actual memory of them having sex. Surely they must have; whenever she awoke after he’d fed on her, she felt satisfied and a little sore in that unmistakable way. But why couldn’t she actually
recall
it?

She had been working frantically on the
Festa Maggotta’
s section on vampires, but progress was slow. For most of the years she’d plugged away at the translation, she considered the book a mere collection of folk tales. Now that her worldview included undead lovers, though, she saw it as a source of useful, practical information. If she learned more about vampires, she might be able to adjust the balance of power, which at the moment tipped entirely in Zginski’s favor. She would love to see him as desperate as she was, just once before she died.

She scratched her fingernails on the wood. It sounded pitiful and plaintive, like a trapped kitten. He was down there, immobile and asleep, as helpless in his way as she was. She could free her life from this parasite simply by knocking down the door and driving a stake through his heart. Would he wither and crumble as she watched?

But she knew she wouldn’t do that. If he left her, the pain would return. Her death was a foregone conclusion, and she didn’t fear it; but she dreaded the deep agony as her body devoured itself. Since he arrived she’d lost weight and grown weak, but her hair was back and she was able to work with a reasonably clear head. Without him she would be bedridden, bald, and so doped on morphine she would barely know day from night.

The wooden door felt cool against her heated skin, and she squirmed against it with an unmistakably sexual rhythm. “Please,” she whispered, “wake up soon.”

B
ARRISTER UNPLUGGED THE
jukebox, stepped up to the microphone, and said, “Howdy, everybody. Hope you’re enjoying your drinks and dinners, and don’t forget to tip your servers, they work mighty hard.”

“Then you ought to pay ’em more,” someone called out.

Barrister chuckled, enjoying this brief return to the spotlight. Here at least he didn’t have to worry about being blind-sided with a folding chair. “I’ve got a special treat for you tonight. The Ringside is about to start featuring live music with our drinks and world-class steaks, and tonight I want you to see the reason for that. She’s an amazing performer, and I can almost guarantee you’ve never seen or heard anything like her. She’ll flat-out take your breath away. Folks, I give you Patience Bolade.”

He gestured to the side of the stage. Patience stepped up to polite applause. She wore a macramé vest with a palm tree pattern on the back, and tight-fitting dark blue slacks. A Native American-style choker encircled her throat. Her pale face sported deep blue eye shadow. She carried her acoustic guitar, and as she put the strap over her head she said, “I’m not sure I
can live up to that introduction, Gerry. But I’ll sure do my best.”

She strummed once and said, “Like Gerry said, my name is Patience. And it’s true, I have a lot of it. But you know what they say.” She smiled, sly and sophisticated and totally in command. “That’s a lot of patience to
lose.
”

There was some laughter, but she didn’t wait for the joke to settle in. Instead she began to play rapidly and confidently, barely glancing at her hands. She hummed, loud and deep, and it was like a signal going out that locked the attention of every person in the room on her.

Then she began to sing.

Barrister watched from the bar, and Fauvette had to peer around him. Every face was rapt and attentive; no one looked away or spoke, and no silverware clinked. Even the waitresses and busboys stood immobile, a couple of them in midmotion. She felt a tingling as the energy from the crowd found its way to Patience. No one supplied very much, but the combined surge was strong enough to make the air shimmer in her vampire vision, like waves of summer heat over a highway. There was no question of seeing it now, it was as plain as trees waving in a storm.

“Holy shit,” Barrister whispered. “She’s
amazing.
”

“She’s built like a brick shithouse, ain’t she?” another man at the bar said admiringly. His friend immediately shushed him.

Fauvette grew more excited at the prospect of learning to do this herself. Except. . . how? Would she have to sing or perform in some way? Or could she learn to do it by just willing people to send energy her way?

When the first song ended there was a moment of total, complete silence. The air conditioner, the compressor on the refrigerators beneath the bar, even the traffic outside could all be heard. Then as if someone threw a switch, every person in
the bar began to clap, whistle, and cheer. Most of them got to their feet. Patience stood with a shy smile, accepting the approval with apparent bemused delight.

Only Byron Cocker did not join in. He stood in the shadows at the back of the room, fighting to keep his attention on the task at hand and not the enchanting Patience. He could not explain why he was suddenly so exhausted, since he’d deliberately had no alcohol. But he knew Zginski would show up, and he was not about to let the man slip past him this time.

Zginski placed the bouquet of roses in Patience’s dressing room, making sure the note was plainly visible. He went back into the hall and opened the door to the dining room just enough to catch a glimpse of her onstage. From this angle he saw both her and the rapt faces of the crowd. She was telling a story to introduce her next song, and it was as if everyone in the audience was hypnotized by her words; they stared, some with bites of food halfway to their mouths.

Her voice needed very little amplification to fill the room, and she played the guitar expertly. Halfway through she stopped singing and admonished, “It’s okay to clap along, you know,” and everyone immediately did.

Zginski smiled. He was well rested, well fed, and at his full power. He had slept through the day and emerged with all his vampiric abilities at their strongest. Nothing happened around him of which he was unaware, so he knew that Cocker was in the restaurant, no doubt with his eyes peeled for him. The ex-lawman would end the evening sorely disappointed.

Something moved in the corner of his vision, and he squinted. For a moment the air seemed to tremble and swirl around Patience, as if she stood in the eye of a storm. He wondered if it was indeed the strange energy effect Fauvette had described, or just the result of the rumbling air conditioner sending its vibration through the building.

Zginski closed the door and returned to the kitchen. Vander the cook waved at him as he went out the back door. “Float on, Mr. Z.,” he called.

“And you as well,” Zginski replied. He’d gone out of his way to befriend the cook, because he intended to keep Vander when he took over from Barrister. He wanted as little discontinuity as possible; change drew attention.

He found Cocker’s car in the lot and considered sabotaging it; an automobile accident might end this nuisance once and for all. But he should be able to avoid the big man long enough for him to abandon his vengeance, and that would be the most discreet way to handle it.

A premonition of danger had caused him to park Tzigane down the street, in the lot of a convenience store. When he returned to it he found three black teens walking around the car, looking it over. They started to behave belligerently as he approached, but he sent a wave of fear at them and they quickly backed off.

He drove away into the night, to await Patience at the appointed location. On the radio, a sultry female singer enumerated the many promised pleasures of some oasis at midnight. Zginski smiled at the irony.

Mama Prudence, carrying a candle through the dark mansion, opened the front door. “Goodness, who’s banging on my door at this time of night?”

The pale redheaded girl stood demurely, hands twisting before her. She wore cutoffs and a faded blue T-shirt, with an incongruous orange scarf tied around her neck. She swatted at the mosquitoes. “I need your help, Mama Prudence.”

Prudence put the candle on the table beside the door. “Clora Elaine Crabtree, does your daddy know you’re out prowling on a night like this?”