by Alex Bledsoe
“I understand, and I will not keep you,” he said. “I wish to simply say one thing.”
“What’s that?”
He might’ve said he loved her. But he never got the chance.
CHAPTER 33
SOMEONE GRABBED ZGINSKI violently from behind and threw him out the back door. He soared over the asphalt and bounced off the side of the green Dumpster. As he got to his feet he saw Prudence Bolade’s Thunderbird parked haphazardly beside the building, the driver’s door still open. A haze of smoke drifted from the interior.
That is not possible, he told himself.
“You all right, mister?” a child’s voice said. He turned to see three preteen black children on bicycles staring at him.
“I am fine,” he said. “Now run along.”
They continued to stare. He was about to do something to frighten them away when, from inside the building, Fauvette screamed.
Zginski stopped just inside the door. Prudence Bolade indeed awaited him, but it was a far different Prudence than the one he remembered. She was burned along one side of her body, the skin blackened and leathery, while the rest of her countenance had aged so that she resembled a child’s dried-apple doll. Her nightdress was also burned in places, and one foot had charred so badly it resembled a hoof. There was a hole in her garment torn by his fist, but he saw no evidence of the gaping wound that should’ve been beneath it.
She clutched a blackened, cracked table leg in one hand, the jagged point still smoldering. And that point was jabbed into the chest of Fauvette, who stood with her back pressed to the wall, eyes wide and terrified, straining on her tiptoes to keep the stake, already imbedded in her flesh, from piercing her heart. Blood ran down her legs and pooled at her feet.
When she saw Zginski she cried, “Rudy!”
“Oh, yes, Rudy,” Prudence growled, her voice dry and brittle. “You tried to destroy me, and you did burn down my house. That was my ancestral home, you know that? It had stood for over a century!”
Zginski said nothing. The door slammed shut behind him, leaving them in the dim hall. Prudence was a mere arm’s length away, but he doubted he could move fast enough to dispatch her before she drove the stake home.
Fauvette will not die again, he insisted to himself. I will not let her die again.
Fauvette watched little tendrils of smoke rise from the stake. The tip needed only a slight upward shove to find its mark. “What’s she talking about? Who is she?”
“She’s my sister,” Patience said. She came down the hall from the opposite direction. “Let her go, Prudence.”
“Patience,” Prudence said, drawing the last syllable out as a snakelike hiss. If she worried about being trapped between two other vampires, it didn’t show.
“Please, let me down,” Fauvette whimpered. “I don’t know you, I haven’t done anything to you.”
Prudence ignored Fauvette. “The game is still on, dear sister,” she breathed raggedly. “Your little friend here is our newest play-pretty.”
“She’s just some waitress, Prudence,” Patience said with faux annoyance.
“Ah, but you’re lying,” she drawled. “You haven’t asked what happened to me, or how I got here, or how I found you. Your first concern was for this adorable little tick. And that means she matters to you an awful lot.” She turned her remaining eye toward Zginski. “And to you as well. I’d have thought you had better taste.”
“What do you want?” Patience said.
“I want to see the look on your face when she crumbles to dust. And I want you, Mr. Baron Zginski, to try to rescue her, so I can see the look on your face when you fail.”
“Oh, God,” Fauvette whimpered. She could not physically rise on her toes any higher, and the stake was working its way toward its target. The tiny hallway had become the arena for her life, and she could do nothing to save herself.
“Can you wait me out, dear?” Prudence sneered at her sister. “How much of that vaunted patience do you possess?”
Zginski’s mind raced to comprehend all the forces at work. He was certain the blow he delivered should have destroyed Prudence; for it to fail, she would have needed a source of blood and power greater than any he could conceive. Certainly greater, he knew, than anything in the house, which he had thoroughly searched.
“I will take her place,” he said. Even he was a bit surprised by his words. He nodded at Patience. “I have used you both against the other. And I love neither of you.”
Prudence’s damaged face hid her reaction, but her eyes flickered to Patience and back to Zginski.
“Just like Vincent,” Patience added. “I’ll even help you kill him if you want.”
Zginski wasn’t completely sure this was a bluff, and for a moment he thought Prudence would accept the trade. Then she smiled. “Ah, he’s not like Vincent. Vincent loved me. He just diddled with you.”
Zginski clenched his own teeth in rage. And then, as if a light appeared in the darkness, he understood what needed to happen. It should have been obvious all along.
He said with all the contempt he could muster, “Prudence, do you realize how utterly pathetic you are?”
Prudence blinked in surprise.
Patience warned, “Rudy, please—”
Zginski continued. “You exist only because your sister does. You are no more independent of her than is her shadow. Your every decision, your every emotion, is merely a reaction to her behavior. You have no true reality of your own.”
Prudence said through clenched teeth, “That’s not true. She told you that.”
“No,” Patience said slowly as she comprehended his meaning, “I didn’t.”
“Guys, I don’t think this is helping!” Fauvette said. Prudence twisted the stake again and Fauvette froze, eyes scrunched shut.
Zginski saw it then: the slight tremble in the air, momentary but definite, just as he’d glimpsed it the night of Patience’s concert. It showed the energy flowing not just from one sister to the other, but between them. Thanks to Prudence’s hatred, they were now connected at a fundamental level of existence.
He looked at Patience and raised an eyebrow. Prudence might not sense the energy, but Patience could not avoid it. The next decision would be hers.
Patience smiled with the secret certainty of someone stepping off a cliff. She nodded, a century of weariness in the gesture. Then she spread her arms wide as if anticipating an embrace.
They were so close in the little hallway that it only took one step to put him within reach of her, and another to drive his fist through her body just as he’d done to Prudence. Her only sound was a slight whimper.
Fauvette opened her eyes and screamed in horror.
The injuries that should have proved fatal before, finally did. Without a sound Prudence collapsed, and the stake clattered to the floor. The suddenly freed Fauvette landed on top of Prudence and got to her knees in time to see Zginski withdraw his arm from the round hole he’d made through Patience. She collapsed as well, and within moments both sisters were withered corpses.
“Oh, my God!” Fauvette cried, and crawled to Patience. She tried to lift her head into her lap, but the skull came loose in her hands. She screamed again as it cracked in half, dislodging the dark, crumbling remains inside.
Zginski stood absolutely still. His arm from fingertip to elbow was once more red with Patience’s blood.
Fauvette wailed at his feet. “You bastard!” she screamed, and threw herself viciously at him.
Zginski caught her wrists. “Behave,” he snapped, and enveloped her in his influence.
Her eyes opened wide as the unbidden lust took her over, and she gasped. She choked out, “How dare you . . . make me want you . . . after what you did?” But there was no denying the effect, which made her press herself to him and slowly writhe, desperate for him.
She had not seen Patience assent to her own death, he realized. Her eyes had been closed in anticipation of the stake. “Please,” he said, “allow me an explana
tion.”
She was too aroused to notice his uncharacteristic tone. “No,” she moaned, her rage still evident. “I’ll fuck you right now because you make me want to. But I’ll never give you anything else willingly.”
He released her wrists and took her face in his hands. Even as she ran her own hands over his chest and arms, he saw a new strength in her, a certainty that she could resist something that had always overpowered her before. She might be susceptible to his power, but she was no longer a slave to his influence.
“Fauvette,” he whispered, and kissed her. She moaned and returned the kiss hungrily, but with a hollowness he could not avoid sensing. She raised one leg and wrapped it around his thigh, pulling him close to her.
“Fuck me, Rudy,” she sighed. “Or let me go.”
Tell her, something in him cried. Tell her what you did for her. But to do so would be to ignore all the skills, experiences, and intuitions that had preserved his existence. The last time he ignored them, Francis Colby sent him to limbo for sixty years. He could not risk that level of agony again, even if his silence brought him a whole different agony.
He released her, turned, and walked out the door.
The Bolade sisters were now mere dust and piles of clothing, with only a few bone fragments among them. Fauvette, her legs shaky, stepped over them and screamed after Zginski, “I don’t ever want to see you again, do you hear me? Never! You come near me, and I swear I’ll find a way to kill you. I swear it!”
The boys on their bicycles remained where they’d been, still watching. Zginski got into his car, started the engine, and turned up the radio. A man sang about whiskey, a levee, and pie. He drove away into the summer heat with no destination.
CHAPTER 34
NIGHT FELL ON Dark Willows. Leonardo had turned around at the Memphis city limit sign and driven back, his conscience chewing at him the whole way. He was ashamed of himself for losing his cool, and appalled that he hadn’t taken even the most basic precautions to either hide the cause of Clora’s death or insure she did not rise as a vampire. Now it was too late, and all he could do to make amends was greet her when she rose and give her the basics of what he knew of their nature. If she rose. He wasn’t even sure it would happen.
He arrived just before dawn, but spent the day resting in the dirt beneath the floor of one of the old slave buildings. The irony both amused and annoyed him.
When he rose, he immediately smelled smoke. Dark Willows was undisturbed, but smoldering tendrils still rose from the remains of the Bolade mansion, drifting above the trees into the twilight sky. He snuck close and saw a lone fire truck parked in the drive, with two men in distinctive gear seated in lawn chairs. Letters on the side of the truck identified it as the APPLEVILLE VOLUNTEER FIRE DEPARTMENT. They ate pizza from a common box and watched the ruins to insure the fire was truly out. He was able to catch some of their conversation, but they seemed to be talking only about baseball.
On his way back through the woods he came across the Crabtree family plot, and its fresh burial, just at sunset. It was no trick to figure out who occupied this new grave. He stretched out on the ground and put his ear against the dirt. Something moved below.
He sat down cross-legged beside the mound. Darkness fell, and the moon rose. An owl watched silently, and an opossum crawled through the leaves but gave him a wide berth. The Crabtrees’ dog appeared, but stayed at a respectful distance. Leonardo looked for a stick to throw at it.
Then the dirt began to move. Something struggled beneath it, dislodging clods from the top and sending them rolling down the sides of the mound.
The owl hooted in alarm and decamped for a safer perch. The opossum scurried away. For yards around, insects and tree frogs fell silent. Only the dog’s low growling broke the quiet.
Leo stood and backed away to get a better view.
A bone-white hand suddenly shot up into the air. A second followed, pushing the dirt aside. Between them rose the wriggling form he’d been expecting.
Clora Crabtree emerged into the moonlight and stood on wobbly legs. She wore only the T-shirt in which she died, now torn and covered with dirt. Her bones and musculature were still damaged from his inadvertent crushing, and she had a hard time maintaining her balance. Her tangled hair draped over her face.
The dog began to yelp in alarm, but it did not flee.
Leonardo did not move. He was both horrified and fascinated by what he’d wrought. She pulled her feet free of the grave and spun around, confused and disoriented. She made a sound like a wet rock scraping on concrete.
“Clora,” he said quietly.
Her head cocked as if she heard him distantly, like some voice carried on the wind. She stumbled awkwardly from the mound, fell in a heap, and thrashed there for a moment. Then she stood and tottered off toward the house.
The dog rushed forward, still barking. She paid it no mind.
“Clora,” he said louder. “Look at me.”
She turned toward him and croaked a wet gurgling sound. He vividly remembered the intensity of the thirst that beset him on his own first night, and knew she could easily run amok. The two firemen nearby wouldn’t stand a chance.
“I need you to listen to me. Please.”
She got close enough to touch him. He brushed the hair from her face, exposing her eyes. When he did, he knew the cause was lost: what he saw there was the empty, feral gaze of a creature operating entirely on instinct. Clora, the sweet sad princess in her tower, had not returned from the grave.
She looked him over, evaluating him the way a snake would a mouse. Then she walked away as if he didn’t exist; he had nothing she needed. The dog stayed at her heels, rushing forward and then leaping back.
“Clora!” he cried after her. “Clora, please, stop!”
She ignored his words and his presence as he followed her to Dark Willows. She used the side of the house for support as she staggered along it to the front.
Leonardo stayed a few steps behind. He should’ve expected this. She wasn’t the most sophisticated girl, and no doubt the experience of being resurrected in a crushed and imperfect body had wrecked her sanity. But he had hoped that she would at least recognize him, and that he could make some sort of peace with her.
Now, he knew, there could be none. She was a mindless revenant drawn to the nearest source of familiar, familial blood: her father.
She went around the corner to the front yard. He leaned against the wall and rubbed his temples. He’d have to finish what he started, but for some reason the thought repulsed him. He’d killed plenty of human beings, including her; but he’d never destroyed another of his own kind.
He smiled at the irony. His own kind. I guess now he knew what that meant.
He followed her, intending to make the end fast and neat. The sight that greeted him stopped him in his tracks.
Clora hunched over her father’s corpse. Crabtree’s head was missing, splattered across the porch, and the family dog busily licked at the dried chunks of brain matter. A raccoon crouched at the far end of the porch, awaiting its turn.
Clora stuck one hand into the stump of his neck, withdrew it, and licked the gummy blood from her fingertips.
Leonardo swallowed hard. He had seen many repulsive things, but this moved immediately to the head of the list. A big reason was his certainty that it was all his fault.
She looked up at him and snarled a warning.
“Shit,” he said, and did what had to be done.
CHAPTER 35
A MONTH LATER, Leonardo stood beside Zginski in the front yard of Dark Willows. The house had not been touched since that night; Leonardo had dismembered Jeb and Clora Crabtree and dumped the pieces in the Hatchie River. The county sheriff, at Zginski’s instigation, classified it as abandoned, and the register of deeds notarized the sale. Rudolfo Vladimir Zginski once again had a home.
“So you got it,” Leonardo said.
“Yes,” Zginski replied.
“Your victim left you all her
money, and you used that to buy the Crabtree place from the bank.”
“Yes.” He studied the dilapidated structure, wondering if repairs were best started from the ground up, or the roof down.
Leonardo was silent for a moment. “Can I ask you something? And if you say ‘you just did,’ I’ll get really pissed off. You got Fauvette draining Gerry Barrister so you can take over his club when he finally croaks, right?”
Zginski said, “Yes.”
“Did you sic me on Clora for the same reason, so you could get this house?”
Again Zginski said, “Yes.”
Leonardo sighed, and shook his head. “Well, fuck me.”
“It served both our purposes. You learned the value of a long-term victim, and I was able to acquire a home suitable for my needs.”
“You yanked my fucking chain,” Leonardo corrected.
“I did what was necessary to get what I wanted.”
“That’s cold-blooded, man, you know that? Really. And I was starting to like you.”
“I neither sought nor desired your approval or affection.”
Leonardo laughed. “No, you sure didn’t. Just like you never did with Fauvette, either.”
Zginski was in no mood to discuss that topic. Since the day at the Ringside Fauvette had not spoken to him or even really looked at him. There was a hardness to her now, a brittle rage that had replaced the ineffable kindness she used to possess. Still, he felt an odd relief each time he saw her, as if just knowing she still existed was enough, for now.
“Leonardo,” he mused, “do you recall the day we mingled our blood at that old warehouse?”
“Yeah, yeah, I know, you saved our lives, we owe you, blah-blah-fucking-blah.”
“That is not my meaning. Since that day, have you felt any change in your thinking?”
“What?”
Zginski shook his head. “It is no matter.”