by Alex Bledsoe
Danielle sagged against the door frame. She could barely breathe. Leslie had killed Skitch, then herself, because of Danielle. Because of what her best friend had made them do.
If any man ever rapes me, Leslie had told her more than once, I’ll kill him, then myself. Neither of us would deserve to live.
That’s insane, Danielle always said. You’d be blaming yourself for being a victim.
Maybe, but that’s how I feel. Call me old-fashioned.
“This is unfortunate,” Zginski said behind her.
She threw herself at him with a shriek of fury, but he easily wrapped her in his arms and immobilized her. “They’re dead,” she whimpered. “My friends are dead.”
“Yes,” he said with no emotion. “If you wish to join them, continue to be difficult. If you would like to survive this night, then listen to me and be quiet.”
She was in shock, so it took very little for her to nod in agreement. She was also freezing cold, but his embrace gave her no warmth at all.
Mark stood on the loading dock and looked out into the night, following the flights of bats as they swooped and dove after insects. They were a constant, and it was nice to see them on a night when so many things had apparently changed.
After his brush with the powder, he no longer wondered why it attracted first Toddy, then Fauvette. For a brief time under its influence, he actually lost the craving for blood that defined his existence. It wasn’t easy for an inherently decent person to accept a new identity as a blood-sucking fiend from beyond the grave, and the powder took away his need to do so.
But the powder also seemed to magnify the latent guilt he felt over his existence. He saw himself as something disgusting and repulsive, something evil living on those good and pure enough to embrace the sunlight. He had chosen to become a vampire, after all, and that decision marked him as one of the bad guys. An indefinite, meaningless living death followed by either the torments of hell or the horror of nonexistence was all he could look forward to.
Whatever Zginski’s doctor friend discovered, Mark already knew enough to understand some things. The powder somehow acted to bring out the weakest parts of their personalities, where all the self-doubt and loathing festered; coupled with the way it killed the desire for blood, it was a miracle Toddy lasted as long as he did. Then again, Toddy probably didn’t have any guilt to bring out; depth wasn’t his overwhelming trait.
So where had he gotten it? Who knew about vampires, and hated them so much, and was smart enough to come up with this stuff?
And what had happened between Zginski and Fauvette? If he was honest, that was what really bothered him. Watching her gaze adoringly at Zginski made him want to start breaking things. Were those bite marks on her neck? Surely not . . .
Like a shadowy breeze summoned by his thoughts, Fauvette appeared beside him. “Hi. Want some company?”
He was, as always, glad vampires didn’t blush. “Sure. I was just thinking about you, anyway.”
“Good things?” she said shyly. “Or are you mad? Because I couldn’t blame you.”
“Nah, I’m not mad. Just thinking about stuff, watching the bats.”
She took his hand. His long fingers threaded between her much smaller ones. “I really am sorry about the powder and everything. I never expected you to try it. You’re always so . . .”
“What?”
“Well . . . careful.”
“Yeah.” He saw Zginski’s bite on her neck, two dark punctures in pale unbruisable flesh. They would remain until she slept again, then they would vanish. Would the newcomer’s influence over her go away so easily? “Learned it the hard way, though. Did I ever tell you how I became a vampire?”
She shook her head. “Just that you were from the Midwest originally.”
“You remember the Dust Bowl in Oklahoma in the thirties? Well, my family were farmers, so it wiped us out. I was buddies with this guy we called Praline, because he was crazy about the candy. He skipped out on his family real early in things, right after the stock market crash in ’29. His dad eventually went nuts and killed the rest of his family, so maybe Praline did the right thing. My family hung on to our land as long as we could, but eventually the dust got us. We were starving, homeless, getting ready to head to California, when one night Praline shows back up. He tells me he knows a way out of all my problems, and makes it sound really good: live forever, always young, super strength, everything. Since I hadn’t eaten in a week, I didn’t need much convincing.”
“Reckon not,” Fauvette agreed. The Great Depression had also hit Kentucky just before she died, and her extended family had spoken of it in the same reverent, terrified whispers as they did God.
“But he left out two things. One, being a blood-sucking demon isn’t real good for your conscience. And second, he had some snake-handling Bible thumpers on his tail, convinced he was the devil who had brought all this famine down on us. Between the time he took me, and the time I woke up as a vampire, they caught him.”
“What did they do?”
“Well, he’d buried me a long way off, which was lucky. They dragged him out of his coffin while he was still sleeping and nailed him to a wagon wheel. When he woke up, they set him on fire before he could get away.”
He scowled at the memory. “It wasn’t so much the fact that they killed him that got to me, it was the way they waited for him to wake up so he’d know it. So I ran. Never really stopped, I guess. And I became very, very careful.” He turned and smiled at her. “Okay, now you have to share one of your secrets.”
Fauvette bit her lip indecisively, then took a deep breath. “You know . . . I haven’t told any of the others this . . . but Zginski can walk in daylight.”
Mark looked at her sharply. “You’re kidding.”
She shook her head. “Nope. I’ve seen it.”
“And how did you see it?”
She took a deep breath. “Because, Mark . . . I did it, too.”
He stared. “Fauvette—”
“Mark, I’m serious, I saw the sunrise this morning. After forty-five years, I saw squirrels, and birds, and colors. And he told me we can summon the powers of the storms, and turn ourselves into things.” She shook her head. “He knows so much more about what we are than we do.”
“Yeah, and he’s a jackass.”
She took both his hands and gazed intently into his eyes. “He can teach us, Mark. He may be the only one left who can. What if there are no other vampires around who know this stuff?”
“Then we’ll just plod along on our own. I don’t trust him.” He paused. “You really went into the sun?”
She nodded. “And I didn’t die. But I would recommend sunglasses.”
He smiled. But he recalled the moment, days before, when he’d contemplated the ability to become a mist, and then thought he saw himself transparent on the shoplifting mirror. Was it possible? And was learning it worth putting up with Zginski?
Fauvette snuggled back against him and pulled his arms around her. He didn’t resist. The bats continued to dance in the air.
CHAPTER 24
“WHAT ARE YOU doing here?” Lyman Newlin asked.
Danielle looked up from the mortar and pestle. The rest of the building was deserted except for old Mallick, the elderly security guard who watched the main entrance and alerted staff to “deliveries.” She had entered through the side door unnoticed and gone directly to the lab while trying to avoid all the signs of Skitch’s recent presence: new Sports Illustrated in the lounge, half-full cup of coffee on the examining table, his desk calendar with his wife’s birthday encircled by a heart drawn in heavy red marker. She had immediately set up the lab to run basic tests on the gray powder, not even stopping to put on her lab coat and hoping no deliveries arrived before she finished. She looked awful, her hair askew and nose red from crying, but she couldn’t very well step over Leslie to take a quick shower.
And now, out of the blue, Newlin. After driving two of her friends to murder and suicide i
n her own apartment, the sight of a homicide investigator almost made her giggle.
“I usually stop in to shoot the bull with Skitch when I’m up this late,” he said. “I thought the whole point of being the boss was that you didn’t have to work graveyard.”
“I’m not the boss, Jerry Francisco is,” she said wearily. “And this is all graveyard shift, remember?”
“You’re Skitch’s boss.” He idly walked through the lab, tapping various glass and metal objects with his fingernails. “Where is he?”
“Indisposed,” she said, trying for flippant.
“If that wife of his finds out he’s been indisposing around, she’ll give him a permanent attitude adjustment.” He pulled one of the stools up to the worktable and sat. “His car’s still out there in the lot.”
Faced with the choice of taking Skitch’s or Leslie’s car, Danielle had chosen the one she had never ridden in before so it would contain no memories. “Is it? Maybe his date picked him up.”
“I heard they found your car down by Elmwood Cemetery.”
“Yeah,” Danielle said with forced casualness. “Broke down on me. Meant to get it towed. Were there any hubcaps left?”
“Do I look like a traffic cop? I didn’t see it, I just heard about it.” He picked up a pair of tweezers and clicked them experimentally. “Not a part of town where you find many educated professional white women. Would it be out of line to ask why you were down there? And how you got back here?”
She looked at him. Had the bodies in her apartment been discovered? Zginski promised to take care of them, but what if he didn’t? Was Lyman just trying to trip her up, catch her in a lie before arresting her? Or was she just that much closer to paranoid delusions? “It would be rude, Lyman, but nothing’s out of line for a cop, is it?”
“Getting more and more wealthy white folks interested in smack. Causes them to cross a lot of socio-economic lines to get it.”
She barked a single, loud laugh. “Lyman, be serious. If I was on heroin, would I be at work in the middle of the night?”
He shrugged. “Can’t say. Never tried the stuff myself, and by the time I meet ’em, most junkies tend to be unemployed.”
“Lyman, that’s sweet. But there’s no mystery. The truth is, I’m a coroner, and sometimes I just . . . visit cemeteries.” She pretended to be embarrassed. “You can understand why I wouldn’t talk about it a lot. And I got a cab home, and then took the bus down here to work. I’ve been sick, so I’m pretty far behind.”
He looked at her steadily. Finally he said, “I reckon. Well, tell Skitch I’ll catch him later.” He sauntered out as casually as he entered. Danielle remained absolutely still until his footsteps faded and she heard the distant front door slam shut.
She had to try three times to get her hand to stop shaking enough to light the burner beneath the test tube. But as she watched the prepared solution of gray powder begin to boil, everything receded except her considerable scientific curiosity. What the hell was this stuff? It had the physical texture of cremation ash that had been granulated, but the spectrum analysis was all wrong. Well, not all wrong, but definitely off-kilter.
She quickly prepared another sample. Where had she seen a similar response before? Not since working here, certainly. Very seldom did she get called on to verify that ash remains were human. It had been years ago, while she was in school . . .
It was a simple matter to confirm her suspicion. Then she sealed up the bag and dumped the evidence of her tests down the sink. She stood in the shadows just outside the side door and made sure Lyman Newlin wasn’t staking her out before scurrying to Skitch’s blue Gran Torino and heading back to her apartment. Despite every awful thing that had happened, she was genuinely intrigued by the mystery she’d discovered. Her conscience could damn well sit in the corner.
Leonardo perched on a beam near the warehouse ceiling. It was his favorite spot, high above the world and among the bats, birds, and other flying things. If he could’ve thought of a way to get his coffin up here, he would have.
Through a gap in the roof, he saw a band of stars occasionally blotted out as bats flitted in and out of the building. He wondered if the asshole Zginski could also turn into a bat, like the vampires in movies. If so, Leonardo might spot him and crush the life out of him before he could transform back. Yeah, that would show the stuck-up mofo.
He smiled, amazed at his own prejudices. Did skin color really matter to vampires? Mark, Fauvette, and Toddy were all white, yet none of them had ever made him or Olive feel less than equal. The human world, of course, continued to beat blacks down, offering them drugs and violence instead of education and jobs. But as a vampire, he was immune to drugs. And he didn’t need a job, just victims who had one. So what else did he need to know? The troubles of mortal blacks shouldn’t concern him at all.
And yet here was Zginski, also a vampire, who seemed determined to maintain the mortal world’s racial attitudes. His arrogant perpetual sneer made Leonardo want nothing more than to pound his face with his bare hands, and normally nothing would stop him.
But the man had turned into a wolf right in front of him. A wolf. A real, physical animal. And then turned back. No matter what, Leonardo wanted to know how that had happened. If it meant biting back the urge to kick ass and take names, he supposed he could do it.
He snatched a bat out of the air and held it for a moment, admiring the perfection of its tiny, needle-sharp teeth as it fought his grip. Then he released it.
Yeah, he could keep his cool. That’s a natural fact. Until it wasn’t needed anymore.
Below on the loading dock, Fauvette suddenly trembled in Mark’s embrace. “What?” he said.
“We have to go,” she said. She walked to the edge of the platform and stood there, fists clenched, as if something unseen might pull her over. “Zginski needs us in town.”
“Why?”
She shook her head. “I can’t tell. Just . . . it’s urgent.”
He frowned. “Has something gone wrong?”
She whirled and snapped, “Fuck, Mark, I don’t know! We just have to go!”
Olive emerged from the warehouse and put her hands on her wide hips. “Whoa, Ms. Got-the-Body, what’s up with you?”
“Her new paramour has sent out the signal,” Mark said dryly. “We’re being summoned.”
Olive frowned. “What the hell is a ‘paramour’?”
“A really classy boyfriend,” he said with all available sarcasm.
“Oh, stop it,” Fauvette snapped. Then she added, “Can we go? Now?”
Leonardo appeared beside Olive. “Where we going?”
“To hell, most likely,” Mark said as he headed toward his truck. “Did he tell you the address before he left?”
She nodded. “But I won’t need it.” The urge grew stronger the longer she denied it, and by the time they were actually driving away she was ready to scream.
• • •
Danielle turned the key in her lock an hour before sunrise. She entered tentatively, hyper-conscious that when she’d left, two dead bodies had been present.
Nothing in the living room appeared out of place or disturbed. A single lamp glowed over the kitchen table where Zginski sat. He appeared unruffled and nonchalant. The half-light made him devastatingly handsome. “I assume you have answers?” he prompted casually.
“I . . .” She kept glancing around. Surely something was different. “I found out some stuff. But it sort of raises more questions.” She put her keys on the hook beside the door. “Did you—?”
He gestured around the apartment. “Please, inspect the place. I insist.”
She stood in the bedroom door, and noted that fresh sheets covered the bed. She walked into the bathroom, took a deep breath, and turned on the light. The place was spotless, cleaner even than it had been before. Zginski had kept his word. She went back into the kitchen and poured herself a glass of wine.
“Does it meet with your approval?” Zginski said.
She nodded. “Yeah, looks great. What did you do with . . . ?”
“Do you truly wish to know?”
She nodded.
“They will be found in situ together in the backseat of her automobile outside. I have it on good authority that such illicit trysts are commonly held in such places. There will be no indication of any ‘foul play,’ as it is termed. When the lightning strikes the vehicle and sets it ablaze, the authorities will be satisfied.”
“How do you know lightning will strike?”
“Because I summoned the storm. It will do my bidding.” As if for emphasis, lightning and thunder crashed almost simultaneously.
“That’s a good trick,” Danielle said sourly. The sky had been entirely clear as she drove home fifteen minutes earlier. “Can you do it on command?”
Without smiling, Zginski snapped his fingers. Lightning and thunder struck immediately, just outside the window.
Something icy and cold clutched Danielle’s heart. “Do you have to burn them?”
“The less clear evidence, the better. As a medical examiner, would you not agree?”
Danielle closed her eyes. Leslie’s father and Skitch’s wife appeared before her, their faith broken, their idealism shredded. “Please,” she said softly. “Don’t burn them. Allow them some dignity.”
“As you did?” he said with just a hint of amusement.
She looked up at him and forced herself to meet those cold, depthless eyes. “What’s happening to me?” she asked, so quietly he barely heard.
“Nothing,” he said. “Those of my kind who took you were clumsy and reckless. They inadvertently imparted a hint of our nature to you. It has fully faded by now. Not,” he added with a shrug, “soon enough for your friends.”
“Don’t burn them,” she said, big tears welling in her eyes. She’d seen many burned corpses, and knew what it would do to them.