by Alex Bledsoe
“Not as long as the sun still goes down every day and brings back the dark.”
“Even though we know now that we were never tied to the dark?”
“Personally, I like the shadows.” In an exaggerated minstrel voice he said, “If I don’t smile, I’m invisible.”
She grinned despite herself.
He said, “So if you learn to get by without killing people, will that make it all better?”
“It’ll make me more like most of the people I pass on the street.”
“Except you don’t get older and you don’t have a heartbeat.”
“Well, one thing at a time.”
He kissed her on the forehead, they hugged, and Leonardo left. Fauvette looked at herself in the bathroom mirror, wondering if death did lurk in her eyes. Certainly it could put in an appearance when she was feeding, but was it always there?
There seemed to be no death in Patience, though. Her eyes sparkled with life, and humor, and kindness. Surely if she could shed it, Fauvette could do the same.
CHAPTER 25
ZGINSKI PARKED OUTSIDE the decrepit old house, amazed at the utter coincidence. He and Leonardo had stopped here to ask directions on the day he bought Tzigane, the same day he met Patience Bolade. He must have glimpsed Prudence then, hidden by the harsh summer shadows. Neither he nor Leonardo had spotted her for a vampire, no doubt due to their own sun-weakened state.
He went to the garage and peered inside. The same big LTD he’d seen driving away from the Ringside sat inside. He put one hand flat on the hood, and found it still warm.
He opened the Mustang’s trunk and hoisted the dead Sammy Jo onto his shoulders. He carried her onto the porch and rang the doorbell. Many minutes went by before he sensed movement within. Finally a single lamp came on inside, a key turned laboriously in the lock, and the door swung open.
She wore an old-fashioned robe and nightgown, in a style Zginski recognized from the previous century. Its neckline revealed smooth shoulders and the hint of a firm bosom. A strand of blond hair fell down her forehead, and she seemed cool and confident. She also looked barely older than Fauvette.
Zginski dropped Sammy Jo to the porch. She landed with a loud thud.
Prudence looked at the girl, then up at him. She said in her thick, genteel Southern accent, “I thank you for the gift, sir, but I believe that girl is dead.”
“Indeed. As a result of your actions.”
One of Sammy Jo’s hands had fallen across the door’s threshold. Prudence scooted it back outside with her foot.
“You left a corpse with the clear marks of our kind where it could be easily found,” Zginski continued. “That trash receptacle is used frequently, and discovery was almost guaranteed.”
Prudence’s expression, like her voice, remained bland. “I simply threw away my garbage. The girl was unbearably rude to me, something I cannot abide. It seemed fitting that after failing to serve me inside the establishment, she then provided refreshment outside.”
Zginski was annoyed. Her lilting, honey-heavy drawl indicated she thought herself superior to him. “There were others of our kind inside, including me. Your action jeopardized us all.”
“The only one I was aware of was my sister, the evening’s entertainment.”
“Even if that is true, your conduct does not speak well of your discretion or intelligence.”
Her eyes flashed angrily. “Sir, I will not stand here and be insulted on my own property. Good evening to you.”
She tried to close the door, but he blocked it easily, pushed her back inside, and locked it behind him. “I will leave when I am certain there is no further danger. Your best course is to convince me.”
She glared at him. “Who are you, sir?” she demanded.
“I am Baron Rudolfo Vladimir Zginski.”
Her lips curled up slightly as her anger turned to amusement. “My heavens, that’s a mouthful. What do your friends call you?”
He did not answer, but tried to sense if anyone else lurked in the house. The paintings and furniture spoke of both antiquity and wealth, although the money could have run out long ago. Still, at one time these were the best things money could buy, and they’d been maintained so that most of their value remained.
“We are quite alone, I assure you,” she said.
“Then let me get to the point. You must prove to me that your continued existence poses no danger. If you do not, your existence will end. That is the simple truth of it.”
She smiled, her fangs prominent. “Sir, I always presume upon the kindness of strangers, not their malevolence.”
“That is foolish.” He looked around the foyer. “How long have you been here?”
“Since I was born,” she said and turned on the chandelier. The light was dim and burnished.
“Does this estate have a name?”
“You mean like Dark Willows over yonder? No, the Crabtrees in their prime were far wealthier than we Bolades. Nor did we share their taste for ostentation. We simply called this place home.”
He spotted the portrait of Patience over the mantel. “Your sister is a most unusual creature.”
For an instant Prudence’s anger flashed like lightning in her blue eyes. Then her calm returned. “She always has been so. When we were children, she would do anything to be the center of attention. From what I saw tonight, the centuries have not altered that.”
“You sound envious.”
Prudence touched his arm and met his gaze steadily, with no malice. “Do you truly wish to hear about my sister, Baron Zginski? Or would you rather hear about me? I have not had a handsome gentleman caller in ages, let alone one with the manners to present his arrogance in such a charming way.”
Zginski felt a twinge of something very like nervousness; first Patience’s blatant interest, and now her sister’s. He was entirely comfortable being the pursuer, much less so being pursued. It was how the original Tzigane had gotten past his defenses. “I wish to know as much as possible about you both.”
She fingered the sleeve of his jacket. “So you can decide which of us merits your, shall we say, amorous interest? There’s no need for beings like ourselves to play coy, now is there?”
It took all his effort to maintain his normal cool. “You do not seem to appreciate the danger you are in.”
She laughed, loud and musical. “Any danger you present is easily negated.”
“Indeed?” he said, now fully alert to attack. “And how would you negate it?”
“In the time-honored tradition of men and women,” she said, and with no warning stepped close and kissed him.
Before he could react it was over. He stayed perfectly still, expecting an attempt to exert her vampiric influence as well. But nothing happened.
She understood his thoughts. “Sir, I would not try to make you feel anything against your will. I hope you will extend the same courtesy to me.”
He saw her anew, her angular, lean beauty the opposite of her comfortably curved sister. He had no real preference in physical types, but certainly could not fault Prudence as a beauty. Both Bolade sisters posed challenges, but only Prudence, with her antique etiquette and mixture of demureness and aggression, seemed to understand him. “Do you feel,” he said, “that you have in fact removed me as a danger with a single kiss?”
“I am certain of it,” she said.
He smiled. Then he grabbed her and pulled her against him. He kissed her with the unrestrained fury of a being unconcerned with damaging his partner, an aspect he had last released on that night in the warehouse with Fauvette. Then he had been the undisputed master, reducing her to a state of almost unbearable desire to protect her from the intimate pain she would inevitably feel.
Here, though, it was a clash of equals. Their bodies surged with power, and their mouths struck together so hungrily their fangs clacked off each other. The gnawing kiss went on for minutes and when they broke apart, they each gasped even though neither could be out of breath.
“My goodness,” Prudence said. One side of her mouth was torn. “I stand corrected.”
He grabbed her by the neckline of her gown. “I will open myself to you,” he hissed. “Will you do the same?”
She nodded. “It has been quite some time for me, though,” she said breathlessly. “Will you be gentle?”
“No.”
She smiled, the rip in her flesh adding a slightly demonic quality to her face. “Then neither will I.” She flung herself at him again as he tore open the front of her nightgown.
An hour later they stood naked in the moonlight outside the wrought-iron fence that protected the small family plot. One tombstone bore Patience’s name, the other Prudence’s. Their mortal deaths were only one day apart.
Prudence turned to face him, her extraordinary form on display. Her breasts were pert and perfect, the tiny nipples upturned; her waist was narrow, and her hips wide and smooth. The soft hair between her thighs glistened. She nodded at a particular tombstone. “That is the grave of the man who had both Patience and me. He was also my first and, until this night, only lover.”
The waist-high marble pedestal sported a bas-relief of a thin-faced man with side whiskers. COLONEL VINCENT DRAKE, the marker proclaimed, 1830–1862.
Zginski’s body bore the marks of her enthusiasm. “What sort of man was he?”
“He was a handsome, dashing officer in the Confederate Army,” she said, her arm linked through Zginski’s. “His hair was so blond it often appeared white, and his voice was so seductive he could talk his way out of, or into, anything. His family pressured him to wed Patience, and he dutifully proposed, but he was truly in love with me.”
The man’s date of death was the same as Patience’s. “How did he die?”
“Patience killed him. He was her first victim after she became what she is. I insisted he be buried in the family plot, since by all rights he would’ve been part of the family, one way or another.”
He turned her to face him. Her body was bone-white in the moonlight. “And you worry,” he said as he raised her chin, “that I might promise my hand to her and then dally with you, as he did?”
“Oh, I don’t worry any such thing. I simply insist that you respect this line of demarcation. I make no claim on you at all, sir, except that now that you have had me, you make no attempt to also have biblical knowledge of my sister. That seems, all things considered, a fairly reasonable request.”
“Do you want my word of honor?” he said.
“That is satisfactory.”
“Then I want something as well.”
“Which is?”
With a growl of desire and domination, he carried her over the fence and took her again, from behind, atop the grave of her departed lover. He put one hand on the back of her neck, forcing her face down into the dirt.
Later, still unclothed, they stood together on the widow’s walk overlooking the forest and, beyond that, the soybean fields. The black lightless hulk of Dark Willows was visible in the distance. Heat lightning shimmered across the now-cloudy sky. “That is how I knew she was back,” Prudence said. “When a new vampire appears in an area, an unnatural drought may result.”
“That is superstition,” Zginski said.
“So, dear sir, are we. And you cannot deny the result.”
“Then why was there no drought when I appeared?”
She shrugged, almost with delight. “I don’t know, kind sir. Perhaps like people, we are all different as well, with various talents and effects on the world.”
He said nothing. She walked to the railing and leaned out, gazing up at the sky. “Do you ever wish,” she said wistfully, “we truly could turn into bats and flit through the night?”
He stood with his back against the roof. “I have no desire to do so.”
“Can’t you imagine the freedom, though? On the earth we’re limited to two dimensions. To travel in the third, even in the most basic way, we need ungainly things like stairs and airplanes.” She raised her arms. “I used to try. I would stand on this very spot, naked as I am now, and try to change my form. I willed myself to sprout wings, and grow small, and then I would leap into the night.”
“And?”
She laughed. “And, I ended up flat on the front yard, bare-assed and staring up at the moon.”
“It is a logical impossibility for one creature to change into another, especially one that is so much smaller.”
She crossed to him and snuggled against his chest. “It’s a logical impossibility to live on after death by drinking human blood.”
“No, that is a mystery. Clearly it is not an impossibility.” He brushed her hair with his fingers. “I should go.”
“Why? If you’re hungry, I can summon someone. I have compounds that will put them fast asleep so that they never know what happened. They will awaken weak and confused, but the truth would never occur to them.”
“I appreciate the offer, but I have other business to attend to as well.” He kissed her. “But I would like to visit you again.”
“Is that a fact?”
“Yes . . . ma’am.”
She laughed and pressed herself to him. She drew his tongue into her mouth and raked it with her fangs.
The Impala didn’t have a spotlight like his old sheriff’s cruiser, so Cocker had to make do with a flashlight. It played across the back end of Bruce’s beat-up Chevy Nova, parked down a tractor path far enough to be hidden from the road unless you were specifically looking for it.
Cocker switched off the light and sighed. He knew exactly why the car was here; the shadowy form of Dark Willows rose above the trees, black against the sky. Bruce was in there somewhere tomcatting around with that nubile, white-trash Crabtree girl, who probably knew just how to make a boy feel like a man. He felt a mixture of parental disapproval and pure masculine jealousy, but reminded himself that he had a date with that little waitress in Memphis before too long.
He turned the car around and headed back toward town. As he neared the driveway leading to old Mama Prudence’s place, a car pulled out onto the highway and passed him in the other lane. He slammed on his brakes, unable to believe what he just saw.
The Mustang. That goddamned Zginski was leaving Mama Prudence’s at three o’clock in the morning. What the hell was that about?
He considered following Zginski, maybe even trying to catch him and force the confrontation here in McHale County. But that would mean never getting ahold of the doe-eyed Fauvette, and he’d already invested too much time and energy in that scheme to back out now.
He took a deep breath, then drove slowly and within the speed limit back home. He parked behind his own car, went inside, and lay down on the couch. He wanted to know what time Bruce got home, and he left his coiled belt on the end table to help provide the proper greeting.
Zginski drove quietly back to Memphis, without even turning on the radio. The competing voices in his head provided plenty of stimulation.
One chastised him for leaving, accusing him of being a weakling and a coward. That voice had the shrill tone of his father, a man who hadn’t crossed his mind in a century.
Another berated him for lowering his guard and deigning to have intimate relations with one woman while secretly coveting her sister. This one sounded like the priest he’d known as a young man, who made it his business to turn all the male youth of his parish away from licentious women. Everyone knew, of course, that he actually wanted to turn them toward his own bedchamber.
But the oddest one, and the one that surprised him most, scolded him for ignoring and casting aside Fauvette. If any of their kind was truly capable of love, she was, and she deserved better treatment. And this voice sounded like his own.
CHAPTER 26
AT THE SAME moment Zginski knocked on Prudence Bolade’s door, Bruce Cocker finished his beer, climbed from his car, and urinated on a tree. He was not drunk, but the combination of several joints at home and a couple of beers on the way definitely put him in a mellow, and am
orous, state of mind. He crept through the woods toward Dark Willows.
His hazy brain found it easy to ignore what might still be hanging from that nearby tree. He was well on his way to convincing himself it had just been an elaborate prank, that the boy had not been killed and that they’d all have a big laugh over it later. Yeah, that was it. He wasn’t about to go see for himself, because knowing for certain would do him no good at all.
He paused at the edge of the Crabtrees’ yard. The house was dark, except for the light up in Clora’s window. Her shadow passed across it, and his blood raced as much as the dope and alcohol allowed. He needed to get laid, to relieve some of the pressure and dispel the sense of doom enveloping him. He needed to touch her soft flesh, to hear her say she loved him, to lay back while she sucked him off.
As he stepped into the open yard, a voice said, “Hey, cracker.”
Bruce froze. The voice cut through all the illicit substances and instantly sobered him. As he slowly turned, his eyes first spotted the figure’s moon-cast shadow stretching across the damp grass toward him. He followed it to the still silhouette that stood between him and the house, as unmistakable as its voice and twice as horrifying.
“You done fucked up big time, peckerwood,” Leonardo said. He fought down his amusement and made his voice rumble the way his preacher uncle used to do when he spoke about eternal damnation. “You sent me to hell the other night, and now I’m back to claim your soul.” For effect he raised his right arm and pointed one finger; the shadow on the ground reached all the way from Leonardo to Bruce.
Bruce could not move, and could barely breathe. He’d never hallucinated from marijuana before, but maybe the dire things his father said about dope were true after all. “You ain’t real,” he whispered, his voice trembling as much as his body.
Leonardo laughed. He picked up a stick and bounced it off Bruce’s head. “Real enough for you?”
Bruce winced, rubbed absently at his temple, and thought, This is just the grass fucking up my head. Maybe his stash was polluted by government pesticides. “Fuck you,” he choked out.