The Girls With Games of Blood (38 page)

“Of course it is. Time travel is an impossibility in the H.G. Wells sense. But this doesn’t work the way you think. It rewinds your inner existence, like a tape recording. So you essentially go back in your own consciousness, and yet keep all the memories of what has already happened. It gets rid of that whole being-in-two-places-at-once problem, because it all happens inside your head.”

Zginski leaned down and sniffed at the spout. The liquid smelled foul. “What does it contain?”

“Black tea, hemlock, datura, belladonna, and something called ricin. Along with some other things.”

He lifted the olive-green top. The substance was deep burgundy, like the color of a bruise. It even left a yellowish skim around the edge. “How far back is one able to go?”

“If I’ve translated it right, twenty-four hours. You drink it, and suddenly it’s yesterday, yet you remember everything that’s going to happen tomorrow.” She paused. “Would that give you time to save . . . what was her name?”

“Fauvette.”

“Yeah, Fauvette. Beautiful name.”

His eyes narrowed as his normal skepticism arose. He replaced the pitcher’s top and said, “And exactly
why
would someone develop this?”

“It’s to give a new vampire a second chance. If you simply can’t abide your undead condition, you drink this and change the circumstances that turned you into a vampire.”

“Then it takes you back to a mortal existence.”

“That was its purpose, yeah.”

“I have been a vampire far longer than twenty-four hours.”

She shrugged. “I don’t know what to say. It might work, it might not. The ingredients are all toxic to humans, but I don’t think it can kill
you
; you’re already dead, after all. And ultimately, it’s the only chance you have, isn’t it?”

“And why have
you
created this concoction?”

She laughed. “Why do you think?”

It took a moment, but he realized. “You believed that as your death neared, your conviction would waver.”

“That’s a very wordy way to say it.”

He smiled. “You worried that you might . . . ‘chicken up’?”

“Chicken
out,
” she corrected with a giggle. “Yeah.”

Despite himself, he was intrigued. “But what proof do you have that it works?”

“None. I just thought you might like to know about it.”

Again he gazed at the pitcher, wondering if this ridiculous claim could be true. Fauvette’s face, unbidden, sprang to his memory with a vividness only timeless beings like vampires possessed. A fresh wave of fury and, worst of all,
guilt
swelled in him. He could not believe he had judged things so badly that it resulted in Fauvette’s destruction.

“It is possible,” he mused, “that this concoction was simply
presented
as what you say. In reality it might be a means to destroy a new vampire, or compel one to destroy itself. I have encountered substances like that before.”

“That’s true. I guess the question is, how important is this Fauvette person to you? Is she worth that big a risk?”

The liquid’s surface stilled until it reflected a steady image of the ceiling light fixture. “What is the prescribed dosage?” he said at last.

“All of it. As fast as possible. In one swallow, if you can.”

He picked up the pitcher and raised it to his mouth. At the last moment he paused and lowered it. “You would not betray me at this moment, would you, Alisa?”

At one time this paranoia would have angered her, but now he seemed almost pathetic in his suspicion. “There’s only one way to find out. One choice, one chance. But just in case . . .” She kissed him on the cheek. “Thank you for making me forget the pain.”

He nodded. He touched the plastic spout to his lips. The fumes enveloped his face, stinging his eyes and making his flesh crawl. And in the brightly lit kitchen of a fancy Germantown home, a centuries-old revenant drank an elixir to send him back through time.

A
T FIRST NOTHING
happened.

Zginski drank the pitcher’s contents in one long swallow. It was the first time he’d consumed anything other than blood since he’d been turned, and everything about it felt wrong.

The taste was awful, like some industrial solvent obscenely mixed with an excess of citrus. It smelled like the surplus drippings of some offal collection tank. It slid down his gullet in slime-coated lumps and congealed in his belly like some sort of gelatin. He leaned against the counter as physical nausea swept over him. The whole ghastly contents threatened to leap back up his throat and splatter on the polished Formica.

“Rudy?” Alisa asked. Her voice seemed very far away.
Something
was happening to him.

It was stranger than he could’ve imagined. His body grew warm, then hot, radiating a sensation as if he were about to burst into flames. He heard sizzling as the caustic chemicals chewed into his flesh, and his vision grew blurry and indistinct. He attempted to place the pitcher back on the counter, but misjudged his strength and crushed it instead, cracking the countertop beneath it.
It
is
destroying me,
he
thought. He turned to Alisa, determined to make her pay for her treachery.

Suddenly everything went blank.

Not black,
blank.
Black was a sensation of color, and now there was nothing at all. He tried to move, shout, run. He tried to think. He felt himself drifting even as he stayed immobile, and the contradiction terrified him.

A roaring grew in intensity until his ears throbbed with the pain. He tried to cover them, but could not get his hands to move. He felt a rush of disorientation as he realized he had no physical form at all, just a consciousness stripped free of the corporeal world and sent into the void.

Then he recognized where he was. He
knew
this place.

It was the same nowhere, the same nothingness that Sir Francis Colby consigned him to in 1915 by driving a golden blade into his heart. He was back in it, and this time there would be no rejuvenation.

The realization triggered a rush of panic. Alisa had destroyed him as a final act before her own death. Women were treacherous, and he’d been a fool to ignore the danger. And now, like Fauvette, it was too late.

He cursed the universe for allowing this. He cursed Alisa for tricking him, and he cursed himself for falling for it. And he cursed Fauvette for being so beautiful and kind and alluring and perfect that he would risk his own existence in a pointless, doomed attempt to save hers.

The void swallowed him, burrowed into him, consumed him, and made itself part of him. He tried to scream. But he needed a mouth for that.

T
HEN, LIKE A
train ending its downhill run by slamming into a mountainside, he was suddenly back in his body and aware of his surroundings. He opened his eyes.

He stood on the porch outside Prudence Bolade’s door. It was night, and the trees and grass hummed with insects. The dead waitress Sammy Jo was draped across his shoulders. His legs wobbled from the unexpected weight, and he almost collapsed. He leaned against the door frame and waited for the dizziness to subside.

The reality of the moment overwhelmed him.
It worked,
he told himself.
I am where I was last night, before Fauvette’s death.
He recalled making certain Sammy Jo’s corpse was destroyed in the fire, so if it was here, intact, there could be no other explanation. He had indeed rewound his own life and traveled
back in time.

But now what? He could rush back to Memphis and protect Fauvette, but that would be awkward and uncertain. No, since he was here, the most efficient thing would be to eliminate the threat before it could strike. That would also spare him any uncomfortable explanations.

He silently put down the body and stood very still, listening. Nothing moved within. He had rung the doorbell before; had he done so yet?

He waited many long minutes. No lights appeared, and no one opened the door.

He turned the knob firmly until it stopped, then wrenched it so that the lock’s mechanism failed. In the silence the metallic breaking noise sounded like a cannon. He pushed the door open and peered into the darkened house.

Prudence slept in an upstairs bedroom; she’d shown it to him, or rather
would
show it to him had the night followed its original course. They had coupled on the ancient bed, their exertions sending clouds of dust into the air.

He ascended the steps in silence, opened the bedroom door, and found her lying still and immobile on the bed, a corpse for all intents and purposes. The mattress and bedclothes were permanently impressed with her form.

He shook his head. A vampire resting at night when she was most powerful was a sad mockery of her prior life. She held on to it the same way she clung to the grudge against Patience. She was so beautiful, like a china doll, with her hair softly arranged on the silk pillow. The lace at her bosom gave her a gentle, angelic countenance. Her lips, full and bowed, begged for a final kiss, like a storybook heroine awakened by Prince Charming.

Instead he drove his fist through her chest, out her back, and halfway through the ancient down mattress. Her heart was destroyed.

He did not stay to watch her body crumble. He searched the house from attic to cellar, using up time originally spent on sex to check for anything that might prove valuable to him. He found nothing; there were many antiques and pieces of artwork, but nothing that would aid the existence of a being like himself. Then he repeated the burning of her house. The Bolade homestead, like its undead occupant, had outlived its time.

He reached the end of the driveway only moments later than he had done in the original timeline, but it was enough. Another car approached on the dark highway, and instead of passing it slowed and stopped, blocking his way. The door opened, and Byron Cocker got out. He stood in Zginski’s headlights, one big fist clenched around a baseball bat.

Zginski emerged from his own vehicle. “This is an ill-advised course of action,” he said.