Blood Groove (21 page)

“
Fuck
you!” Leonardo bellowed raggedly, clutching his throat. “Get your ofay-lookin’ ass off me!”

“Please!” Fauvette cried. “Leo, stop it. He’s not kidding, he can do it.”

“Assume your place and hold your tongue,” Zginski said. “Or perish. I have no preference.” For emphasis he pressed his finger against Leonardo’s sternum.

“All right!” Leonardo snapped. “Anything you say,
massah
. God
damn
.”

Zginski stood and Leonardo, glaring ferociously, got to his feet. He brushed off his T-shirt and stepped back to stand
beside Olive. “We’ll just wait over here at the back of the bus, honky,” he said. “But you best know I got a
long
memory.”

Zginski ignored Leonardo as he noticed Olive for the first time. “You.”

“What?” she said guardedly, and backed up a step.

“I know you. You are the one I saw in the paper, photographed in the crowd at the scene of some crime.”

“Oh, yeah, last week,” she said proudly. “My eye shadow looked really good, didn’t it?”

“Only a fool lets herself be photographed,” he said. A photo taken now could be compared with one taken in a hundred years, and the discrepancy—or lack of it—could prove fatal. In the days of painted portraits, it was much easier to raise doubts. “Vanity is a fatal indulgence.”

Olive sniffed haughtily. “Well, says
you
. I think I looked
bad
.”

Zginski turned to Fauvette. “You said there were three others. Where is this ‘Mark’?”

“Don’t you drop a dime on him, Fauvette!” Leonardo warned. “That boy’s been good to you.”

“Shut up, Leo, until you know what you’re talking about,” she said wearily. She pointed toward the offices, a walled-off section of the main room. “He sleeps in there.”

Zginski strode toward it. Fauvette rushed to catch up. “Let me talk to him first,” she said quickly. “He might get mad if—”

“His anger does not concern me,” Zginski said as he reached for the office door.

Suddenly a metal folding chair struck him with vehicular force across the back of his head. He fell to his knees, dazed by a blow that would’ve decapitated a mortal. Leonardo raised the chair again, but before he could strike Zginski shoved him against the nearest wall hard enough to crack the cement.

“No!” Fauvette screamed and grabbed for Zginski a moment too late.

Zginski hit Leonardo again at full speed, ramming him back into the wall. The crack traveled up to the ceiling and dislodged an old light fixture that crashed beside them. Leonardo’s hands were around Zginski’s throat, while Zginski held Leonardo under the arms, his feet off the ground.

“Stop it!” Fauvette shrieked. Neither acknowledged her.

Then Olive struck Zginski across the back with a two-by-four. The wood snapped like a dry twig, and Zginski pivoted, using Leonardo’s dangling feet to knock Olive aside. He then threw Leonardo the length of the huge room, this time into the sliding metal door. Olive rushed to his aid.

“Leo, please!” Fauvette cried. “He’s just playing with you. You don’t know what he’s
capable
of!”

“I don’t give a fuck,” Leonardo said coldly. “
I
ain’t playing, and he’s about to find that out.”

Zginski smiled at this. “You are right, Fauvette. They do not know. Let me demonstrate.”

And then suddenly he was gone, and a huge wolf stood in his place. There was no gradual change of shape, no moment of transition. One moment a man stood there, and the next an animal. Its fur was black, and its eyes reflected the moonlight. Its lips peeled back and it growled, a deep rumble that vibrated in their chests.

Leonardo and Olive froze under the animal’s gaze. Fauvette gasped, her eyes wide.

“This is some jive-ass trick,” Leonardo said, but his voice was barely more than a whisper. “It ain’t real.”

The wolf padded toward him. In the night’s silence, the sound of its paws on the concrete rang through the warehouse. A broken bit of PVC piping clattered as the wolf pushed it aside. It stopped again and growled low and deep.

“Can’t nobody turn into no wolf,” Leonardo said, his voice even softer. His eyes never left the animal, and he stayed pressed into the metal door where he’d landed.

Then, just as before, Zginski stood in place of the wolf:
no puff of smoke, no flash of light, just suddenly there. “
This
is some of what I am capable of,” he said calmly. “Do you need more?”

“That wasn’t real,” Leonardo insisted, his voice rising as he pulled himself free of the metal. “And I ain’t puttin’ up with this massah bullshit, even if he turns into goddam George Wallace. He best start treatin’ me with some respect.”

As Zginski opened his mouth to reply, Fauvette stepped between them and said, “He’s right. You treat Lee Ann better than this. Leo is my friend, and if you don’t respect him, then you don’t respect me.”

Leonardo snapped, “Hey, I don’t need no white honky bitch to—”

“You do right now,” she fired back.

Zginski nodded toward Leonardo. “To gain my respect, he must control his attitude.”

“Do you mean ‘shut up’?” she asked.

Zginski nodded. “That is a start.”

She turned to Leonardo. “Leo, I’m asking you as a personal favor to me, as payback for that time I shared that van full of hippies with you, to please stop talking for a while.”

“Leo, the man just turned into a goddam husky right in front of us,” Olive added.

“That was a
wolf
, Olive,” Leonardo sighed wearily. But he finally nodded.

Fauvette sighed with relief. “Thank you.”

“Hey, shouldn’t all these balls clacking together have woken up Mark?” Olive said. “He’s usually out here if one of us blinks too loud.”

“She’s right,” Fauvette said to Zginski. Without waiting for his permission, she opened the door to the old office.

The enclosed space was neater than anywhere else in the warehouse. Mark’s books were stacked on shelves, and his clothes arranged in the huge desk’s drawers. His coffin leaned against the wall at a forty-five-degree angle, blocked
from view by a filing cabinet. It wasn’t as secure as the coffins in the basement, but a casual look would not spot it.

“So this is where your leader lives,” Zginski said disdainfully.

“Yeah,” Fauvette said.

“Then I shall meet him.” Zginski pushed the coffin lid aside. Fauvette gasped.

Mark had vomited blood in his sleep, and the dark liquid had dried down the side of his face and soaked into his clothes. His cheeks were sunken and cadaverous. A vampire at rest mimicked a fresh corpse, but Mark looked truly, genuinely
dead
. Losing Toddy had been sad, but to lose Mark would be a genuine tragedy; in a tiny, trembling voice Fauvette said, “Mark?”

He slowly opened his eyes and turned his head as if the effort overwhelmed him. When he saw Fauvette, he smiled. His teeth were coated with dried blood.

“Hey,” he croaked. “You came back.”

“What happened to you?” she said, brushing disheveled hair back from his forehead.

He smiled again. “I was a bad boy. I went prowling and found your stash.”

She felt her stomach drop. “
No
, Mark . . .”

“I just took a taste, just a
taste
. . .”

“Of the gray powder?” Zginski asked.

Mark nodded, then frowned. “Hey, who’s this guy?”

Fauvette ignored the question and reached for his arm. “C’mon, you need to get cleaned up.”

He laughed weakly. “That’s a switch, isn’t it? You saying that to me . . .”

Fauvette helped Mark from his coffin and into the old desk chair. He slumped over, elbows on his knees, as if he’d pass out any moment. “That stuff is some heavy shit,” he said. “I never felt anything like that. It was
awful
. . . but
sweet
, too.”

“Where is the powder now?” Zginski asked.

Mark looked up suspiciously. “And exactly
who
are you?”

“He’s okay,” Fauvette said quickly. “And he’s smarter than us about some things.”

“I want to identify the powder,” Zginski said, “and find its source. Its properties are clearly a danger to us all.”

“I dunno . . . maybe it’s all for the best, Fauvette, like you said. We
are
dead, after all.”

Zginski started forward impatiently, intending to assert himself with Mark as he had with Leonardo, but Fauvette grabbed him by the collar and pulled him back.
“No,”
she hissed, “you will
not
hurt him.”

“I will have my answers,” Zginski said, and slapped her hand away.

“Yeah, you will, but first we’ll make sure Mark’s okay.” She trembled a little, but she’d finally had enough of his snotty continental attitude. “Unless you intend to throw me around like you did Leo.”

Slowly Zginski smiled and bowed his head. “Very well. Let us first attend to your friend.”

They stood him up and walked him around a little to clear his head. Fauvette got him a clean shirt, and he washed the dried blood from his face. He phoned the store to tell them he was sick. He would need to feed soon, but otherwise he appeared past the crisis.

Then he removed the bag of gray powder from his pocket and handed it to Zginski. “Don’t try it,” Mark warned. “Not even a taste.”

“I have no intention,” he said.

“Who are you again?” Mark asked.

“He’s Rudy Zginski,” Fauvette said. “He’s been around for centuries, and he knows a lot more about things than we do, trust me. A
lot
more.” She couldn’t wait to tell Mark about the sun, and the sweet taste of blood willingly given. But this was definitely not the time.

“That a fact,” Mark said, and weakly offered his hand. “Well, then, pleased to meet you.”

Zginski ignored him as he studied the texture of the powder in the bag. “I have never seen anything like this,” he said softly. “And none of you has any idea of its origin?”

“If you mean where it came from,” Leonardo said from the office door, “all I know is that cracker nut-job Toddy showed up with it about a month ago. Never said where he got it.”

“Then we must know its nature in order to know its source,” Zginski said, turning the bag in his hand and watching the flakes catch the moonlight.

“And how do we do that?” Mark asked. “Toddy’s dead. The
real
kind of dead. Who do we ask?”

Zginski smiled a little. “You will enjoy this, Fauvette. I am about to admit that I have made . . . an error.”

D
ANIELLE AWOKE FACEDOWN
again, only this time it wasn’t hard concrete beneath her but a soft familiar mattress. She rose up with a start, looked around, and saw that she was in her own bedroom, lit only by the glow from the streetlamp through the window. Her old teddy bear, complete with surgical mask, watched her from atop her dresser. For one brief, blessed instant she thought that perhaps the whole experience had been a dream inspired by a bad barbecue sandwich. Then she tried to move and felt the same tight, aching pain in the muscles of her rear end and knew it had been real. She clutched the lace-edged pillow and began to cry.

The bedroom door opened a crack, and a sliver of yellow light cut across the floor and the foot of the bed. Someone peered into the room and said softly, “Danny?”

“Leslie?” Danielle whimpered.

Leslie entered the room and turned on a lamp by the door. She was still dressed for work, which in her case meant she looked like a cross between Perry Mason and Foxy Brown. She placed a glass of wine on the nightstand before kneeling and taking Danielle’s hand.

“Hey,” she said gently. “Welcome back to the land of the living.”

Danielle looked around, as if the walls might dissolve into those of the awful warehouse. “How did you . . . ?”

“They found your car downtown. I’m friends with one of the patrol boys, so he let me know. Your office said you hadn’t been in today and hadn’t called in sick, so I came straight here. I found you passed out at your door and brought you inside. You looked like Evel Knievel had dragged you behind his motorcycle.”

Danielle nodded; Leslie did have the spare apartment key. “Did you see anyone else? A man with long hair, or a skinny teenage girl?”

Leslie shook her head. “No, you were alone.” After a moment she added, “I haven’t called an ambulance, but I think it’s a good idea. You’re hurt. Were you . . . ?”

The question hung for a moment before Danielle’s fuzzy brain deciphered it. “No, I don’t think so,” she said. “I mean . . . not how you mean.”

“It looks like you’ve been stabbed in the ass with an ice pick,” Leslie said. When Danielle looked at her in surprise she added, “I undressed you. Those punctures could be serious.”

“I’ll look at them in a little while,” Danielle said wearily.

Leslie picked up the glass. “I brought you a drink.”

The sight of the red fluid made her stomach churn. “No thanks.”

“You never drink . . . wine?” Leslie said in a Lugosi accent, trying to lighten the mood.

Danielle’s eyes opened wide, and she began to shake. Then she began to scream.

By the time she stopped, Leslie had crawled onto the bed with her and held her tight, trying to calm her down. A neighbor pounded on the wall for silence. “Whoa, Danny, it’s okay, it’s me, no one can hurt you now,” Leslie repeated
firmly, stroking her friend’s hair. When she saw Danielle’s eyes had lost their glassy look she said, “Shit, girl, what was
that
all about? I’m calling that ambulance.”

“No!” Danielle cried, and clung tightly to her. “Don’t leave me, please.”

“I’m not leaving you, sweetie, but you need medical help. Then we can talk about whatever happened to you.” She reached for the phone beside the bed. “Every cop in Memphis will want in on this. Whoever did it won’t get far.”

“No!” Danielle repeated, only this time with an inexplicable edge of anger. Leslie jumped, then looked at her friend with shock.

“Wow,” she said softly. “I’m just trying to help, you know.”

“Jesus, will you just shut up?” Danielle said. She untangled herself from the sheets and climbed off the bed. “Just wait here, I’m going to go inspect the damage.”