Blood Groove

by Alex Bledsoe

  For a long moment nothing happened. The only sounds were the labored breathing of the room’s two living occupants and the wet trickling of the blood down Zginski’s poisoned throat. He showed no reaction or response. Finally Reynolds said, “Too late. I warned you. He is gone to what I truly hope is his just reward.”

  Lee Ann began to sob.

  With a snarl Zginski suddenly wrenched free of Leonardo and Fauvette, seized Lee Ann’s head, and drove his fangs deeper into her neck. Tissue and bone crunched together between his jaws. Still growling, he drew the blood in long draughts, oblivious to its source. Like the day he’d awakened in the morgue, he knew only overwhelming physical need, and this was the closest way to satisfy it. The blood dissolved the gray powder he’d ingested, restoring him as his body absorbed it.

  Lee Ann cried out but did not struggle. He fed so intensely that she grew pale almost at once. Her eyes opened wide and she stared, not at the ceiling, but at something only she seemed able to see. She reached up with one hand as if to touch something in the air above her. Then her eyes closed. Zginski pulled his red-coated mouth away with a wet, satisfied gasp and let her lifeless body fall to the floor. Her head landed with a loud thud.

  The noise broke through his confusion. He blinked and stared at the others like a sleepwalker awakened far from his bed. Then he realized Lee Ann sprawled motionless at his feet.

  He looked down, puzzled, and knelt to tentatively touch her. Blood trickled from his mouth and splattered softly on her cheek. He wiped his lips, stared in confusion at his hand, and looked up at the others.

  “Are you all right?” Fauvette asked softly.

  He nodded, his eyes flickering around the room. “I seem to be somewhat confused, but . . .” Then he spotted Reynolds, fumbling to unlock a side door.

  None of the others saw Zginski move. One instant he was on his knees beside Lee Ann, the next he was in front of Reynolds, lifting the old man by the throat with one hand and ripping into his abdomen with the other. He hurled meat and tissue with feral ferocity, his arm cutting wide red arcs through the air. Pieces splattered around the room, and with a roar of fury he hurled the eviscerated body the length of the tables. It landed with a splat.

  Again the room was quiet, but this time the silence was total. Everyone remained completely still, and none left standing needed to breathe.

  Zginski wiped his bloody hands on a chamois cloth. Then he knelt and picked up Lee Ann’s body. Her head fell back with limp finality. Zginski pulled loose a strand of hair stuck to her lips, and his tenderness made Olive start to cry. Leonardo put his arm around her shoulders.

  Zginski looked down at Lee Ann’s face for a long moment. Then once again he said, “We are leaving.”

  Fauvette put her hand on his arm. “She didn’t want to come back. I promised her.”

  “She will not come back,” he said. “She will . . .”

  His face contorted, and for a moment Fauvette feared he was about to scream at her. Then he did scream: a long, loud, torturous wail of pain and fury. The anguish dredged up by the powder had not fully faded, and now it added to his surprisingly intense feelings at the loss of Lee Ann. He raged at the ceiling, at the night sky beyond it, and at the universe that left him without meaning or purpose, just a predator destined for no more than thinning the herd of oblivious mortals. He almost wished to return to the void to which Colby had sentenced him.

  The others remained respectfully silent. Olive and Leonardo exchanged a look, while Mark put his hand on Fauvette’s shoulder. She covered it with her own.

  At last he stopped with a long, drawn-out breath. He turned to them, his resolve restored. “I apologize for that outburst,” he said. “The powder’s effect was somewhat disorienting. I am, as you say . . . okay now.”

  “We’ll see about that,” Olive muttered.

  Mark gestured at the destruction. “Should we make some effort to maybe clean this up?” He nudged something wet and bloody with his shoe.

  “No,” Zginski said firmly. “This place, this whole building, is a place of death, and I no longer wish to be here.” He kissed Lee Ann lightly on the lips. “I have things to attend to.”

  “Ain’t like they got our fingerprints and address,” Leonardo said to Mark. “And likely nobody’ll find him ’til Monday. We’ll watch the papers.”

  Mark nodded. “Yeah. Okay.”

  They followed Zginski out of the basement. Lee Ann had broken in through a front window, cutting her arms in the process, and they used that to depart. The crowd from the planetarium had dispersed, and Mark’s truck was the only vehicle left in the parking lot. They all noticed that Lee Ann’s car was missing, but none of them felt the need to mention it.

  CHAPTER 33

  ZGINSKI AND FAUVETTE remained in the camper with Lee Ann’s body. He carefully crossed her ankles and placed her folded hands across her chest. Mark drove with extra care, and frequently glanced in the rearview mirror. He needn’t have bothered. Neither Zginski nor Fauvette moved or spoke during the trip back to the warehouse and no blue lights appeared.

  Leonardo and Olive rode in the cab with him. Mark was confused, or rather, uncertain. Although he and Fauvette had no spoken commitment, he’d always felt a bond between them, something that implied more in the future. Zginski’s presence had altered that, in ways Mark could not comprehend. He desperately wanted time alone with Fauvette to talk about the situation, but she seemed to have eyes only for Zginski. What exactly had they shared, beyond her stories of walking about in the daylight?

  “You all right, bro?” Leonardo asked softly. He was exhausted after the night’s tension and wanted only to return to his coffin and rest.

  Mark nodded. “Better than some.”

  “Never seen one of us care that much about someone they bleeding. Think it’s that powder shit got him all messed up?”

  Mark shrugged. “Maybe. He sure didn’t seem like the sensitive type before. Even a taste of that stuff can mess you up.”

  Olive said, “Should we have gotten rid of it, then?”

  “Ain’t nothing to anyone but us,” Leonardo said. “Cops’ll think it’s just dust. They probably throw it out when they clean up.”

  “Besides, only the four of us know about it,” Mark pointed out.

  “Five,” Leonardo corrected. “If you count Lord I’m-the-Shit.”

  “Yeah,” Mark said, and chewed his lip thoughtfully. It suddenly struck him that Zginski might, in fact, be around for a long while. The thought did not make him happy.

  When they arrived at the warehouse, Zginski carefully placed Lee Ann’s body on the loading dock, handling her as if she were a fragile treasure. It was almost as if the powder had changed his very nature, removing the cold arrogance and replacing it with something like compassion. They had seen his rage, though, when he ripped Reynolds apart; the powder had not mellowed that.

  Zginski turned to Mark. “Will a fire large enough to consume her corpse attract attention?”

  “I doubt it,” Mark said. “We’re pretty far out in the country. As long as it’s done before dawn, nobody should notice.”

  Zginski nodded. In the past, his desire for security would have precluded any such meaningless ceremony; a set of simple mutilations like the ones he used on the doctor who awakened him would have sufficed, and the body could then be disposed of anywhere. But when he looked at Lee Ann, he could not imagine defiling her in such a way. She had saved his life, or rather his existence, at the cost of her own, and specifically asked not to come back. Although his influence over her had no doubt been a factor, the final decision had been made when he was at his weakest, and her will given the most free rein since he’d met her. It had been, he understood, a gesture of love. For him.

  He could ignore the request, of course. He could be there the next night when she awakened and guide her into this new life. Lee Ann and Fauvette could be his brides, much like the Count’s consorts in the Stoker novel, and together they could prowl this nearby rive
r city.

  But he could not do that to her. Not against her will, not after what she had done for him. Honor, a concept he normally scorned, demanded otherwise. He looked at her pale, still face and recalled how mobile and alive she had truly been.

  “I’ll clear some space for you,” Mark said. “If we accidentally start a forest fire that burns down the woods around this place, people definitely will notice.”

  Zginski nodded. “Thank you, my friend.”

  “You’re welcome,” Mark said reflexively. He started to say more, but instead shook his head and walked away.

  Fauvette stood in the dark, uncertain and for some reason fighting panic. The immediate threat was over, and the mystery of Toddy’s death was solved. Soon she could tell Leonardo and Olive about the daylight, and lead them all into the sun. Hopefully Zginski would show them other things, like his ability to transform into animals or to vanish altogether.

  That was it, she realized. She was panicked, not at the thought Zginski might leave, but that he might stay. Because if he did return to his aloof former self, she feared she would beg him for another night like the last one. Toddy’s shadow goddess could easily become the mere concubine of this true shadow god.

  Zginski constructed Lee Ann’s funeral bower from saplings and dead branches. He placed her body on her back, hands clasped over her belly, across the slats. He removed her shoes and her jewelry. Then Zginski lit one end of a stick with Leonardo’s lighter and touched it to the summer-dry weeds that provided kindling. In moments the flames spread to the wooden frame and engulfed the body. “You, too, were groovalistic,” he murmured as a eulogy.

  The fire illuminated the entire back of the warehouse, and sparks rose into the windless sky. The smell of burning flesh filled the night. Olive cried again, and Leonardo stood beside her for comfort. Mark sat on the hood of his truck, while Fauvette stood alone, watching only Zginski.

  Zginski stood as close to the flames as he dared. He watched Lee Ann’s corpse blacken, then begin to shrivel. When the bower collapsed and fell into the coals, he clenched his fists against a sudden rush of despair. The idea of leaping in with her, of ending his existence by his own hand instead of waiting for someone else like Colby or Reynolds to appear, proved surprisingly powerful. It was what Blacula had done, after all, and the Polish driver. He was unsure if its source was the latent power of the poudre de la mort vraie, or something more personal and harder to define.

  At last the flames began to die. Lee Ann’s body was reduced to ashes. Dawn was a scant hour away, and the eastern sky had already grown visibly lighter. Fauvette at last approached Zginski and stood nearby, waiting to see if he would want to speak.

  He looked up at the stars. The trail of smoke was visible against them. “The stars are also suns,” he said at last. “Like our own. If sunlight were fatal, starlight should be as well. And the moon reflects the light of the sun; it should also destroy us.”

  “Never thought about it that way,” she said.

  He nodded. “We accept the rules as we’re given them, because the fear of being wrong is too great. It is ironic that those with no regard for their own lives as mortals will fight so desperately to remain in this kind of existence.”

  “I always wanted to go to the moon,” Fauvette said wistfully as she watched the smoke seem to encircle the mostly full orb. “Maybe after what you’ve showed me, I can. If we ever go back someday.”

  It took Zginski a moment to register this. “Go back?”

  “The Apollo program. I think it ended a couple of years ago, but . . .” She stopped when she saw the look on his face. “You didn’t know we’d been to the moon?”

  “By ‘we,’ you mean . . . ?”

  “Mankind. ‘One small step for man.’ You don’t know about that?”

  He slowly shook his head.

  “We sent astronauts to the moon for the first time six years ago. They landed, walked around, planted a flag.”

  “And they came back alive?”

  She nodded, unable to repress a smile. “Yes, they came back. And then we sent more.”

  “With . . . with technology?”

  “I guess. How else would you do it?”

  “In my time, black magic would have seemed the only possible way.” He shook his head in wonder. “This is almost too much to absorb in one night.”

  She stepped closer. The fire’s dying glow made him especially handsome. “You asked me once to teach you about this time. Things got too busy for many lessons. We need to make up for that.”

  He smiled. “That will not be necessary. I must return to Europe and attempt to recover my position there. This country, this culture, is too rapid for me.”

  She had to swallow hard to get the words out. “You’re leaving?”

  He looked at her tenderly. “Remember, time is an ocean for us, Fauvette, not a river. I may sail away, but the port remains.”

  “But . . . I don’t want you to go.”

  “Because of last night.”

  She looked away. “Not entirely.”

  His voice grew soft and, for the first time since she’d known him, fully kind. “It was not my power so much as your willingness to submit to it. Allow your former paramour Mark to learn your secrets. He will soon be able to provide the same pleasure.”

  “But he’s not you,” she said, forcing steadiness into words that wanted to whimper. She recalled the love in Lee Ann’s eyes at the moment she decided to sacrifice herself. The girl had been manipulated and used, yet at that instant she had been driven by feelings all her own. Or was Zginski simply such a master, both she and Fauvette truly believed the feelings belonged to them? Was there any way to be sure?

  “No,” Zginski said. She looked up sharply, unsure if he was responding to her spoken comments or her thoughts.

  Leonardo went, “Huh.”

  Olive said, “What?”

  “That’s gonna be some trouble.” He nodded at Fauvette and Zginski by the fire, then at Mark seated on the hood of his truck.

  Olive shrugged. “Maybe not. Fauvette ain’t no tease. She decides she wants one of them, she’ll tell them both. Nobody going behind nobody’s back.”

  “You think?”

  “Honey, we ain’t tied up by all the rules. If we want somebody, we say so. She try one for a few years, then the other. Hell, she can have both, long as all three of them are groovy with it.”

  He looked at her skeptically. “And you never want anybody, do you?”

  She shrugged. “Don’t know what to tell you. I know what goes where, just ain’t got no desire to know what it feels like. Seems kinda . . .” She shivered. “Icky.”

  He shook his head. “Wish I’d met you ’fore we turned. Had a chance to show you how much fun ‘icky’ can be.”

  “Me and you?” Olive said, eyes wide. “That’d be ‘icky,’ no matter what.”

  Leonardo laughed.

  Mark watched Zginski and Fauvette talk. If he’d concentrated, he could’ve heard their words, but it seemed rude. It was really none of his business. Then again, if Zginski was going to be around, maybe it was. He seemed like the kind of guy who would have many more unpleasant surprises to reveal.

  He hopped from the hood of the truck. “Getting toward daylight,” he said. “Might want to be heading indoors.”

  “Thanks,” Fauvette called, then said softly to Zginski, “We should tell them. And show them.”

  “Your knowledge gives you a tremendous advantage,” Zginski said. “You might be ill-advised to throw that away.”

  “These are my friends.”

  He nodded. “It is your choice.” He gestured for her to precede him, and followed her to the warehouse.

  Olive was first up the steps to the loading dock, so preoccupied with the night’s events that she didn’t see Danielle Roseberry waiting in the shadows just inside the door. With a scream of “You BITCH!” Danielle knocked Olive backward into the nearest wall. She jammed her left arm against Olive’s throat and d
rove an enormous cardiac hypodermic into her chest. Olive had time to exclaim, “Hey!” before Danielle shoved the plunger and injected several ounces of hydrochloric acid directly into Olive’s heart.

  Danielle stepped back. Olive clutched at the hypo and tried to pull it free, but the acid was already dissolving her heart, destroying it as surely as any stake. “Help,” she said simply, and bit her lip. Something inside her sizzled and gurgled. Tears filled her eyes. “Please?” she added plaintively.

  Leonardo leaped forward and caught her as she fell. The smell of corroding flesh filled the air and her body began to collapse in on itself. All the years that had passed since she became a vampire caught up with her in moments.

  “For all you did to me, for all you made me do,” Danielle hissed. “For what happened to my friends.” She drew her gun and turned to face the others. This wasn’t the confrontation she’d hoped for—she’d wanted to catch them in their coffins, inert and helpless, and thoroughly autopsy them while they slept—but she had contingency plans. “Now, you blood-sucking assholes,” she snarled, “it’s time to pay the check.”

  CHAPTER 34

  “IS SHE DEAD? ” Mark gasped. Blood and some sort of foam soaked the front of Olive’s tank top.

  “I sure hope so,” Danielle said triumphantly, proud of her professional insight. Once she’d thought analytically about it, she realized that the heart had to be the central organ in any biological system dependent on fresh blood rather than food for sustenance. It tallied with folklore, too: weren’t vampires always dispatched with a stake through the heart? So any method that destroyed a vampire’s heart would effectively destroy the vampire, for good.