by Alex Bledsoe
“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.
CHAPTER 9
CLORA 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 vi
ew 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.”
She sighed and said, “All right, for a minute.”
He crawled into the window, and closed it behind them.
Leonardo sat with his back against the trunk. He could leave and be back in Memphis long before dawn. Or he could see what these two talked about, and what effect he’d had on Clora.
He tried to recall the sensation of being a live teenage boy. There must have been urgent feelings, and needs, and the kind of intensity only possible when emotions are new. He hadn’t experienced a new emotion in half a century.
He climbed higher to get a better view.
Clora had no patience for Bruce Cocker tonight. On a good day he was stuck-up, vaguely stupid, and treated her like a pet he owned. He refused to be seen with her in public, and she knew why: he was the son of a legend, and she was considered white trash.
Yet because of her aching loneliness, she had accepted his attention on his terms. Since the end of the school year she’d had no visitors, been nowhere without her father, and had spent far too much time alone with her thoughts. When Bruce first called her two weeks into the summer vacation and suggested a meeting, she could hear his friends snickering in the background. But the thought of another human being, whom she could talk to and touch and make laugh, was too much for her. So she agreed.
She suspected that on that first night, when she met Bruce out behind the barn, his friends waited in his car down by the highway. She thought she heard the distant sounds of laughter and car doors. But it didn’t matter: he’d kissed her, and touched her breasts, and told her she was beautiful. She was glad to let him bend her over the fender of the ancient Oldsmobile parked in the weeds. For those brief minutes she felt alive and not alone.
In the weeks that followed she allowed him to visit again and again, making him scale the outside of the decrepit house like a knight visiting an imprisoned princess in a tower. When they were alone, away from his friends, he became kinder, quieter, more vulnerable. He treated her gently, and she could pretend they were a real couple.
Now, though, something was different. She stared at him as he stumbled through her room, half-drunk already, and picked up her lighter. He wriggled his hand into the pocket of his tight jeans and emerged with a badly rolled joint, creased from his exertions. “Let’s relax a little, what do you say?”
“You do what you want, I’m not in the mood,” she said, deliberately sitting on the little stool in front of her vanity. He sat on the bed and patted the mattress beside him. She shook her head.
“What’s the matter?” he asked.
“I just don’t feel like it, is all.”
“Oh.” He nodded sagely. “On the rag.”
“I’m not on the rag, I just don’t feel like fooling around. And you’re not helping things. What are you doing here, anyway? You’re supposed to call first.”
Bruce lifted his shirt and displayed his back. A long red welt ran parallel to his spine. Clora gasped and said, “What happened?”
Bruce lowered his shirt. “My dad’s getting worse. He drinks all the time now, and then talks about how everyone’s out to get him.”
“Are they?”
“Some are, I’m sure. He pisses a lot of people off. Not getting reelected sheriff really hit him hard.” He kicked off his tennis shoes and they hit the floor with two loud thuds.
“Quiet!” Clora hissed. “My dad might hear.”
Bruce fell back on the bed, his hands behind his head. “Mom used to tell him that it didn’t matter what people thought about him, as long as they respected him to his face. I think he needed to hear that. Now there’s no one to tell him.”
“You can tell him.”
Bruce laughed coldly. “No thanks. He already smacks me enough for having a smart mouth.”
“My mom used to tell Daddy that we had all we needed here. I don’t think it was true, but she made him believe it.”
“Did she believe it?”
Clora shrugged. “I don’t know. I don’t. That’s why I can’t say it to Daddy. And he knows I just want to get out of here as soon as I’m old enough.”
“Does he hit you?”
“Daddy never hits me. He just gets this sad kinda faraway look and sighs a lot.” And asks me for favors I’ll never tell anyone about, she added in her mind.
“I wouldn’t mind that,” Bruce said. “Better than getting licks with a belt.”
Clora lay down beside him and slid her hand under his T-shirt. “It hurts worse than you think.”
“Worse than a two-inch-wide strip of leather across your bare ass?”
“Maybe not worse, then. But different.”
He fondled her nearest breast with a mechanical, proprietary grip. It did nothing for either of them. He said, “Will you suck me off?”
“I told you, I’m not in the mood.”
“Please, honey. I need it.”
She melted at the word “honey.” He seldom called her by name, let alone with any sort of endearment. She pushed his shirt up and kissed just below his navel, where the little trail of hair led down to his crotch. He unsnapped his jeans and slid them down to his knees.
As she moved to comply with his wishes, she tossed her long hair to one side. He sat up. “What’s that on your neck?”
She looked up at him. “Bug bites or something. Why?”
His face darkened with rising anger. “It’s a hickey, ain’t it? You’re seeing somebody else. Was that his truck parked down the road?”
She glared at him. “I’m about to give you a blow job, Bruce. Maybe you should pick the fight after.”
“Is it a hickey?”
She sat up angrily. “No, it’s not a hickey! Look!” She tore off the Band-Aids and tilted her head. “See? Something bit me. Twice.”
He scowled and muttered defensively, “Well, the way you people live out here, it’s a wonder I ain’t got the crabs from you already.”
She glared at him. “Get out of here, Bruce,” she said coldly. “I mean it.”
“Or what? You’ll call Daddy? My daddy’d kill yours without a second thought. And get away with it.” He fastened his jeans and stomped to the window. “You know why? ’Cause you’re trash.”
She felt tears in her eyes as he opened the window and clumsily crawled out onto the roof. He turned and stuck his head back. “If I find out you’re seeing somebody else, I’ll kick his ass, then yours. You just pass that along.” Then he was gone.
Clora sat on the bed, then scooted off the spot Bruce’s body had warmed. She cried openly, her emotions roiling out of control. And she was more tired than she could remember. She lay down and drew up her knees, then pulled a pillow over her head. The light switch by the door might as well have been in another town.
Leonardo watched Bruce totter across the roof and climb down the pipe. He felt no animosity toward the boy; he had simply behaved according to his nature, like an animal might. Nor did he experience any real sympathy for Clora. Instead, he wondered if the apparent change in her attitude toward Bruce was a result of his influence on her. It had to be; but exactly how?
He peered back in the window. Clora was curled on the bed, the pillow over her face. The soles of her bare feet were black with dirt.
When he returned to the truck, he discovered that Bruce had petulantly slashed one of the tires before he left. He sighed in annoyance, opened the tailgate, and retrieved the spare.
CHAPTER 10
TWO DAYS LATER, on Thursday,
Byron Cocker drove slowly up the Crabtree driveway at 8:15 A.M. He wanted to catch the man doing something wrong, something Cocker could then hold over his head. He was still steamed over the lost vehicle, and while he mainly sought revenge over the Russkie who’d stolen it from him, it was Crabtree’s lack of respect that allowed it to happen. That had to be rectified as well; he might no longer be sheriff of McHale County, but Cocker still had to live here.
Dark Willows appeared deserted as it came into view. He parked at the far end of the drive to keep anyone from leaving, and got out of the car. The dog galumphed from the house barking, but Cocker just snapped, “You git on outta here!” and it reversed course, dashing under the porch.
Cocker strode across the still-damp lawn. Midges danced in the sun, dispersing their clouds as he passed through them and immediately re-forming in his wake. He stamped loudly onto the porch and knocked on the edge of the screen door. “Open up!” he said in his best warrant-serving voice. “Jeb Crabtree, I know you in there!”
After a moment he heard the floorboards creek, and the inner door opened. Clora Crabtree, dressed in what appeared to be just a large red kerchief tied around her torso and a pair of worn denim short-shorts, squinted out at him. “Mr. Cocker,” she said in surprise, although her voice was too weary for much enthusiasm. “You’re here awful early.”
“I need to see your daddy, Clora.”
“I don’t know where he is,” she mumbled. “He was gone when I woke up this morning.”
“Open up, then. I need to use your bathroom.” It would give him a chance to plant something incriminating that he could return and “discover” later.
“I ain’t supposed to let anybody in when Daddy’s not here.”
His trained cop instincts immediately pegged her slurred speech and squinted eyes as something more than a reaction to the sun. “Clora Crabtree, are you stoned on the pot?”