by Alex Bledsoe
Leonardo moved toward him. “The devil’s gonna love your attitude, cracker. Might hang you up between Nathan Bedford Forrest and Adolf Hitler. Bet you’d feel right at home there, wouldn’t you?”
Now Bruce could make out the boy’s features. For a moment he wasn’t sure; after all, they did all look alike, especially at night. But when the ghost smiled, there was no doubt it was the one they’d lynched.
And when he opened his mouth wide, Bruce saw the long, sharp fangs of a demon.
Bruce’s heart pounded so loud he could barely think. In a small, pitiful voice he managed to get out the words, “Our Father, who art in heaven—”
“Your father ain’t in heaven,” Leonardo growled. “He ain’t even a pimple on God’s black ass. And neither are you. You think angels are coming down to save you? They got better things to do.”
Bruce’s lip trembled, and he began to cry as he continued. “. . . hallowed be thy name . . .”
Suddenly Leonardo was behind him, holding him by the throat and whispering in his ear. “You gonna like it deep down in the pit, son. Lots of folks just . . . like . . . you.”
It was too much. “Get away from me!” Bruce screamed, his voice going high like a girl’s. He wrenched himself free and fled back into the woods. Leonardo laughed big and fake-demonic after him.
“Bruce!” a distant voice cried. Clora leaned out her bedroom window, waving to the departed teen. Plaintively she added, “Bruce, wait, come back, he’s just joking!”
Leonardo scaled the building so fast that he reached Clora before she withdrew from the window. “Hi,” he said with a smile.
“Don’t you ‘hi’ me,” Clora hissed. She wore only a long T-shirt, but she crossed her arms over her breasts to hide her visible nipples. She no longer felt the least bit amorous; the sight of the two men in her life facing off, and the ease with which Leonardo chased away the only one who could take her out in public, infuriated her. The rage was so spontaneous and unexpected that she had no chance to control it. “What the hell do you think you were doing down there?”
Now Leonardo got angry. “Maybe you should ask your friend down there what he was doing the other night when he and his vanilla-wafer pals tried to lynch me.”
Her anger kept this from truly registering. “What are you talking about?”
“Bruce and Tiny and Travis and David. Those names ring a bell?”
“I don’t believe you. You’re just trying to cause trouble for white folks. Why would they do that, anyway?”
“They saw me coming out your window, I reckon.”
Her eyes opened wide. Her fury choked her to the point that she could only whisper. “What? They know I was with a . . .”
She stopped, but it was too late. The word hung in the air between them.
Leonardo held on to the window frame and leaned into the room, forcing her to back away. “A what?” he asked quietly.
Clora blushed. “You need to go, Leo. This has been fun, but it’s time for it to end.”
Something snapped deep inside him, a thread that had been holding him back for longer than he realized. He came through the window in what felt to him like slow motion, but to Clora it seemed as if he moved faster than thought. Suddenly she was pinned against the opposite wall, his hand around her throat.
The terror in her eyes made him feel oddly warm inside. “So now the white boys know you been spreading your legs for a nigger, is that it?”
“Please,” she choked out, trying to pull his hand away. She kneed him in the groin with all her strength, but it had no effect.
“Is that how you see me? You telling me even the white trash is too good to fuck a colored boy?”
His use of the term infuriated her anew, and her face wrenched into an ugly mask of fury. All the humiliation she’d suffered as the little girl with ragged clothes, the one with no lunch money who had to make do with slices of government cheese, the one who got her boobs and period long before her friends and endured the assumption by everyone that she was “loose” and “easy,” came out in one choked, gurgled, defiant syllable: “Yes!”
It was the last word she uttered.
He enveloped her in his influence so that even as she tried to scream for help, it was choked by lust that suddenly paralyzed her and made her legs buckle. His iron grip held her in place, though, and her feet kicked against the wall as she rode wave after wave of unwanted orgasm. He pulled her close and she saw his mouth open wide, displaying his long, sharp canine teeth. And suddenly everything made sense, and she came again, and she knew she was about to die.
He sank his fangs into her neck and drew her blood fully now, the way he used to do with his victims. It pulsed down his throat into his belly, sending warming tendrils throughout his body. Clora went limp almost at once.
You fucking honky bitch, he thought as her life coursed into him. You redneck white-trash whore. He squeezed her buttocks in one hand so hard he felt the tissue rupture.
Finally he drew the last of the blood from her body and let her fall. She landed in a pile of awkward limbs, and when he saw the odd way her torso seemed dented in places, he realized he’d inadvertently crushed her. Her eyes were open, coincidentally staring out the window as if she expected Bruce to come to her rescue.
He stood very still, his body absorbing the blood at its own pace. Beneath him, someone stirred in the house. The steps rattled as heavy, shuffling feet, no doubt belonging to Clora’s drunken lout of a father, climbed toward the attic.
Leonardo looked around to insure nothing remained to incriminate him. He had been scrupulous before to make sure he left no traces behind, but this time his anger had caused him to be loud and sloppy. Clora’s death throes must’ve reached the living room below.
That done, Leonardo leaped in utter silence out the window, far enough to clear the edge of the roof. He landed in the yard below with a muffled thump, his feet slamming onto the drought-hardened ground. In an instant he vanished into the woods.
At some point, as he drove back to Memphis with the music turned up loud, it occurred to him that he’d taken no precautions to stop Clora from rising as a vampire. But he did not turn back. On the radio, a singer described his mother’s relief when his cop father survived a Chicago gang war.
CHAPTER 27
JEB CRABTREE KNOCKED on Clora’s door. His head hurt, he needed to pee again, and his knees protested at climbing so far in the middle of the night. Whatever his daughter was up to, she would pay for rousing him from his fitful sleep.
He called out, “Girl? What’s all that banging about in there?” When he got no answer, he knocked louder. “You got them headphones on? I done told you about that before, you gonna end up needing a hearing aid before you’re twenty-five. Now open this door.”
There was still no response. He burped, tasted a mixture of beer and corn bread, and choked it back down. He pulled out his Case knife and snapped the blade into place; he wasn’t going to make this climb for nothing. “I’m picking the lock, girl. You better be decent.”
He slid it between the door and the jamb, then pushed the latch aside. His wife once showed him how to do that, in case Clora locked herself in the bathroom as a toddler. The door opened at once.
It took Crabtree a long moment to understand the tableaux before him. Clora lay on the floor, eyes open, her body unnaturally contorted. Her skin was even paler than normal. The T-shirt that was her only garment had gathered at her waist, exposing her hoo-ha for all to see. Wind through the open window billowed the curtain, and beyond it a hoot owl cried mournfully.
“Clora?” Crabtree said. His voice sounded unnaturally loud in the silence.
He nudged her with one foot. She did not respond.
“Oh, honey,” he breathed. He knelt and gently tried to scoop her into his arms. When he did, her shattered spine and torso caused her to bend unnaturally, and he screamed in revulsion. He scooted back against the wall, his own eyes now wide and staring. He intended to scream, “No!”
but the simple word dissolved into an incoherent cry of rage and loss, the kind that only a man who’s seen everything of importance leave him can muster. It filled the room and blazed out the window, startling the sleeping birds into flight and making his dog howl in sympathy far below. It only ended when his body forced him to finally take a breath again.
Then the next one came.
There was no conscious decision involved in any of his actions. As the gray dawn lightened the sky outside, he carefully picked up his daughter’s broken body and carried her downstairs, murmuring to her as if she were a baby with a tummy ache. When he brought her outside the dog rushed up and began barking at the smell of death.
He carried her up the hill behind the house and into the woods along the trail leading to the Crabtree family cemetery. The wrought-iron archway was all that remained of the once-immaculate landscaping. Beyond it were a dozen rows of tombstones, most too worn to be read, all overgrown with weeds and vines. Except one.
That one was still white and shiny, its name and dates plain. He placed Clora on the ground beside her mother’s grave, carefully arranging the T-shirt to protect her modesty. The dog continued to yap at the corpse.
Crabtree put his hand on his wife’s tombstone. “Your baby’s coming to see you, honey,” he said to the marble. “She shouldn’t be, but then again, you shouldn’t have been taken away from her, either. Reckon God’s to blame for everything.”
He knelt and kissed Clora’s already-cold cheek. “I’ll be right back, honey.” Then he kicked the dog as hard as he could, sending him yelping off into the underbrush.
In a few minutes he returned with a shovel. The sun was fully up by now, though it hadn’t yet cleared the treetops. Insects buzzed in the air as he dug into the hard, dry ground beside his wife. The difficulty did not register. His wife had died in a hospital, and a professional dug her grave with a backhoe, but there would be no hospital for Clora.
By the time he finished he was barely able to stand. Drenched in sweat and shaking from adrenaline, he climbed from the irregular hole and again picked up his shattered daughter. Humming “I’m a Little Teapot,” the song she most loved as a baby, he carried her into the hole and tenderly placed her on the ground. Belatedly he closed her eyes, having to chase away the gnats already swarming to them.
It took a fraction of the time to fill the grave. He shaped the fresh mound with the shovel, making it as neat as he could. Clora deserved that.
He leaned on the shovel and looked over his handiwork. The dog skulked up behind him and lay down at his feet.
He stretched and yawned. There was no time to rest yet. One more task remained, something only the father of a murdered child could appreciate. He knew who was behind this, knew where to find him, and knew what must be done. He grabbed the appropriate tool, let the dog jump into the truck’s passenger seat, and climbed behind the wheel.
A short time later he knocked on the door. He kept up a steady rhythm, and eventually he heard a voice say, “All right, just a minute, hold on.”
The door opened and Bruce Cocker stood there, eyes red from sleep and probably other things. He was shirtless, his tan torso gleaming with sweat in the heat, and his hair was a tousled mess. It was easy to see what Clora liked about him: even this way he was a handsome young man, and with a shower and some fresh clothes he must’ve been irresistible.
“You looking for my dad?” Bruce said through a yawn. His head pounded like John Bonham at a sound check. “He’s not here right now.”
Crabtree’s voice was soft and steady. “No, you little shit. I’m here for you.”
He slammed the two barrels of the shotgun into Bruce’s mouth so hard they dislodged most of his front teeth. He pushed him back into the nearest wall. Gagging, Bruce’s hands grabbed for the barrel.
“You killed my daughter,” Crabtree said, and pulled both triggers.
Later, Jeb Crabtree seemed to awaken from a dream. He found himself on his porch, the sun pounding down on him, his dog asleep beside him. He looked at the shotgun propped against one of the columns, then down at his own blood-spattered shirt and arms. When he touched his face, he felt dried blood beneath the stubble.
He stood and looked around. Oh, he thought calmly, now I remember. Bruce Cocker killed my Clora. I buried her, then I killed him.
There was one other thing to finish. It took barely a moment to reload the gun, and then another to complete his final task. His last sensation was surprise at the gun barrel’s flavor, and the realization that he now shared this final taste with the boy who killed his girl. The noise sent the dog scurrying under the porch, but he emerged shortly and began wolfing down the chunks of meat and bone scattered around the yard.
In the Bolade house, Prudence sat up at the sound of the shotgun blast, followed by the dog’s urgent barking. It wasn’t an unusual sound for the area, since someone was always hunting something regardless of what season it might be. But this sound carried a finality that got her attention.
She rose from the bed and padded to the open window. She squinted out into the late-morning sun and tried to get a sense of what had happened. She faintly smelled blood, but could not identify its source.
She felt the corner of her lip. The rip in her flesh had healed, leaving no trace of the passion that tore it. Baron Rudolfo Vladimir Zginski had awakened the desire she’d denied for over a century, and had shown her a mastery that she was all too eager to experience again. Certainly he had controlled her, but with the common goal of mutual satisfaction. And no doubt she had had a similar effect on him, given the way he’d driven himself into her.
She cinched her ruffled robe tight around her waist and blew a touseled strand of blond hair out of her eyes. Duty, she reminded herself, before pleasure. Patience would never return to the Bolade home now, not even after seeing Prudence at the bar. So the confrontation and score-settling would have to take place in the city.
She didn’t mind, though. It gave her a reason to dress up.
Byron Cocker got out of the beat-up tow truck and waved to the driver. “Appreciate the lift, Mr. Privitt.”
“No worries, Byron,” Herm Privitt said. His face looked distended from the massive chaw of tobacco tucked into his lip. “See you around.”
Cocker fluttered the front of his shirt against his sweaty chest. He’d returned the Impala and caught a ride home with Privitt, and now it was time to deal with Bruce. He’d either slept right through the boy’s return or—more likely—the little pissant had snuck in through a window or the back door. Either way, it was time to explain why the son of Byron Cocker shouldn’t be dipping his wick in a Crabtree honey pot. He was coming up on his senior year, and Cocker would be making damn sure the worthless shit kept up his grades and got into Union University in Jackson. It had been Vicki Lynn’s fondest wish.
He stopped as he was about to put his key in the front door. The hairs on the back of his neck stood up the way they always did in the presence of a serious offense. He looked around but saw nothing out of the ordinary; the neighbors’ houses were all quiet and still, the men gone to work and the women watching their stories on TV. There was no traffic at all.
He looked down at the door. The knob was intact and showed no sign of being jimmied. None of the front windows were broken. Yet experience had taught him this feeling was never wrong. A crime had been committed here.
He tried the knob. The door was unlocked. He had a gun in his car, but chose not to retrieve it. He mentally counted to three, then threw the door open and charged through with a bellow he’d learned as a novice wrestler.
He nearly tripped over his son’s headless corpse.
CHAPTER 28
ZGINSKI LOOKED OUT at the Mississippi River shimmering in the heat and said, “Do you remember this place?”
Fauvette peeked over the top of her sunglasses and said drily, “I think so.”
They stood in the riverfront park where he had taken her the morning he demonstrated that sunlight would not,
in fact, reduce her to dust. The night before he had knocked her unconscious and kidnapped her; she had never been so scared, either as a mortal or a vampire, as on that morning when he held her before the window and drew back the curtain.
The moment of revelation had been transcendent, and the sunrise walk afterward only slightly less so. Joggers had passed them, and in the distance a chain of barges drifted downstream surrounded by hovering seagulls. Other birds sang in the trees along with cicadas and stubborn crickets not yet ready for sleep. Buildings had shimmered in the sunrise; it hurt her eyes, but she had not looked away. It had been the most exhilarating and terrifying moment of her existence so far.
Seeing her dressed like any other teenager now, Zginski recalled the way she looked that morning. When he found her she was covered with dirt, filth, and grime. His victim at the time, a thick-headed beauty named Lee Ann, had bathed and dressed her so that she looked more like the child she had been at her death. Now, even though her physical form was unchanged, she radiated the weariness of a sad, mature woman. He felt another of those annoying twinges of conscience at the certainty he was a source of at least some of that sadness.
He hoped his smile was mockery-free. “And how go your feeding lessons?”
“Not so good,” she sighed. “Patience doesn’t really know how she does it, so that makes it hard for her to teach it. I can almost feel it during her shows, like the air is trembling, but I can’t make it happen for myself.” She shrugged. “I tried. It didn’t work. End of story.”
“It would seem to be a unique skill.”
“So you believe it now?”
“I believe you believe it. Or rather, that you did.”
She cocked her head at him. His tone was gentle, but his words implied the same old arrogance. The last time he’d been truly gentle with her was the night after they’d survived the attack at the warehouse, when he implied a future that had not come to pass. “Why did I think you’d say anything different? You already have all the answers, don’t you? Except you keep them to yourself.”