Blood Groove (26 page)

“This isn’t right,” Mark muttered.

“Don’t get involved, please,” Fauvette whispered.

“Screw it, this isn’t right,” Mark repeated, and put a hand on Zginski’s arm. “Whoa, wait a second, here.”

Zginski blinked, his concentration broken, and Danielle felt a rush of relief, followed by a wave of nausea. She stumbled away from him and grabbed the couch again for support. The intensity of the emotions he called up in her, and the willpower it took her to fight even for those few moments, nearly exhausted her, and their sudden cessation left her disoriented. The odor of his ancient, rancid blood churned what little remained in her stomach.

Zginski whirled on Mark. “How dare you!” he snarled, his voice a whisper.

Mark was not intimidated. “Look, don’t you think she’s been through enough? You got that other girl outside on your leash, just leave this one alone.”

Zginski grabbed Mark and rammed him into the nearest wall so hard the plaster cracked. Pictures fell all over the apartment. Then he yanked Mark down until the taller man was on his eye level. “These mortal beings are nothing to us.
The death of any of them should affect us no more than the sight of someone’s mongrel dead along your roadways. We use and discard them as we do any of our inferiors.”

Mark slapped Zginski’s hands away, and blood splattered the wall from the wound on his palm. “Yeah, well, wake up and smell the diesel, blue blood, ’cause this is the twentieth century and you’re not in a position to act like damn royalty.” Then Mark rose to his full height. “And if you ever touch me again, you’ll wish you were still back across the pond, or wherever the hell it is you come from.”

Fauvette and the others stared; it was wholly out of character for Mark to lose his temper. For a moment it seemed Zginski would press the issue, but he closed his eyes, seemed to sink inward as he calmed, and then turned to the group.

“I apologize,” he said flatly. It was impossible to tell if he was sincere. “I sometimes forget how much time has passed, and how much things have changed.” He turned to Danielle. “My apologies, Dr. Roseberry. You have indeed honored your agreement, and I thank you.” He pulled a white silk handkerchief from his pocket and pressed it to his palm. The cut would, of course, be gone by tomorrow. “We have completed our business here,” he said to the others.

“Completed, hell,” Leonardo said. “We still don’t know where Toddy got that shit. We supposed to run around town looking for some vampire pusher?”

Before Zginski could reply, Olive volunteered, “I know where he got it.”

Everyone looked at her. “You do?” Mark repeated.

“Sure enough I do,” she said coyly. “Toddy used to tell me stuff he never told nobody else. Most of it was dumb-cracker talk, but that don’t mean I didn’t pay attention.”

“Then why didn’t you say something?” Zginski said tightly.

She shrugged dramatically. “Because none of you ’nilla wafers
asked
me.”

Mark rubbed his forehead. With weary contriteness he said, “That was thoughtless of us, Olive. I’m real sorry. Where does the gray powder come from?”

Olive smiled, looked up at the ceiling, and clutched her hands under her chin. “From the stars above, baby.” Then she batted her eyes and hummed an off-key rendition of
Also Sprach Zarathustra
.

“What does that mean?” Mark asked.

“You just keep that to yourself for now,” Leonardo said suddenly. “It’s almost dawn, and I want to make sure we don’t get left to burn up in the daylight.” He looked at Zginski as he spoke to Olive. “Fella figures he got no more use for somebody, he might not take very good care of them.”

Zginski smiled. “Very well. I do not wish to cause dissent. We will continue this conversation tonight, when no one feels pressed for time.”

Fauvette started to say something, but thought better of it. There was enough tension in the room. Waiting one more day wouldn’t hurt anything.

   They emerged from the building into a madhouse of flashing lights, screeching horns, and murmuring voices. Almost all the apartment building’s residents, many in robes and pajamas, watched as the fire department continued to soak the burnt-out wreckage of Leslie’s car. An ambulance drove away with the bodies, lights twirling but sirens silent. The night was humid, and the sky overhead shone with stars past the city lights’ haze.

Lee Ann stood beside the fire truck watching the blasé firemen hold the hose steady. Water stood two inches deep beneath the car, overwhelming the few storm drains around the parking lot. It was lucky, she thought, that this car had been parked far enough away from everyone else so none of the other cars caught fire, too.

She stared at the uniformed police officers, and especially the one older man in a rumpled suit who looked so sad and kind. Surely if she approached him and told him she was being held against her will, he would help her. Zginski couldn’t overpower all of them and drag her away, could he?

Then she turned, saw the others as they came out of the building, and ran to Zginski as if she might leap into his arms. At the last second, seeing his expression, she skidded to a stop and stood beside him, head down and hands clasped. “Did you do that?” she asked demurely, nodding toward the car.

“Why would you think so?”

“Lightning came out of nowhere. The storm lasted about a minute. Like it was brought here just to blow up that car.” She raised her eyes to his. “That’s what I told the police happened, because it’s true. I answered all their questions honestly, just like you said. Now please, tell me: can you do that?”

He smiled. “That would make me very powerful, wouldn’t it? And I would need replenishment after expending so much energy, wouldn’t I?”

She gasped a little as the implications, and his power, took hold of her. She could feel his weakness, although he was still plenty strong enough to incapacitate her will. But a stronger woman might be able to resist him at this level. Maybe.

He put his arm around her shoulders. Grateful for the implied permission to touch him, she snuggled into the embrace, trying not to whine or whimper at the base need he had called up in her. “We have many things to discuss, Lee Ann. And we will need your help.”

“Sure,” she said, lacing her fingers together around him. He was cold as always, but she was hot enough for them both.

“We should get out of here,” Mark said quietly. “We don’t want to attract that attention you talked about.”

“Very true. Lee Ann, come with us. We will attend to your vehicle later.”

Zginski opened the hatch over the tailgate and gestured for Lee Ann to climb in. He followed her, and after a glance from him, Fauvette joined them. Mark scowled as he got into the driver’s seat, while Olive and Leonardo piled in beside him. He headed back toward the warehouse, the thin light on the eastern horizon already stinging his eyes.

L
EE
A
NN SAT
cross-legged with her back to the cab. Fauvette reclined against one side, her arm across a wheel well. Zginski knelt before Lee Ann and looked into her eyes, his fingertips brushing her cheek. The engine was loud in the hot, confined space.

“You have done very well,” he said. “I am impressed with your resourcefulness.”

“Thank you,” she whispered. Then she noticed the bloody handkerchief in his hand. “Oh, you’re hurt.”

“It is nothing,” he said. “It will be gone once I have rested.” He ran his thumb over her lips. “Your concern is appreciated, however. And will be properly rewarded.”

As if responding to an unspoken signal, she began to undress. Her movements were awkward in the tight camper, made more so by Mark’s mad driving to beat the sunlight, but in moments she was nude. She spread her clothes over the truck bed’s metal ridges and lay down on her back, her toes toward the tailgate. Then she raised the leg on which Zginski had fed before, exposing his scab-covered bite marks. All the while her eyes never left him.

Zginski smiled at her compliance. “Beautiful. But do not forget our friend.”

Lee Ann obligingly turned her face away from Fauvette, displaying her earlier neck bite.

“Do you like her this way?” Fauvette said. “All passive and weak?”

“I prefer order. She knows her role. That makes it easier for everyone.”

“Not for her.”

“I don’t mind,” Lee Ann said. “Really.”

“You do know eventually this will kill you,” Fauvette said.

“I’m not afraid of that.”

Fauvette scowled at Zginski. “Wonder why that is?”

“Her fate is sealed, to use a cliché,” Zginski said. He stroked Lee Ann’s nearest breast, and she let out a long, shivering sigh. “Sympathy for her is misplaced.”

“What about kindness?”

The truck rattled over a particularly rough stretch of road, but Zginski stayed balanced. He ran his hand along Lee Ann’s side and raised thigh. “I am kind to her,” he said the way a man might refer to a pet. “She is in no pain.”

“Please,” Lee Ann said, her breath fast and shallow, “both of you, just . . . do it.”

Zginski smiled triumphantly at Fauvette.

Fauvette stretched out beside Lee Ann, turned the girl’s face to her, and kissed her lightly on the lips. “Thank you,” she said sincerely.

“You’re welcome,” Lee Ann replied, looking away to Zginski.

Fauvette turned the girl’s chin back to her. “No. He has nothing to do with this. It’s
me
thanking you.”

Zginski braced himself against the side of the camper as the truck turned off the highway and onto the secondary
road. Fauvette looked up at him and said, “You could show them the day, like you did me. They might trust you more.”

“When the time comes,” he said. Then he crawled down to reach the bite in Lee Ann’s thigh and, after a preliminary lick to soften the scabs, sank his fangs into the holes. Lee Ann sighed with contentment.

Fauvette turned the girl’s head again and descended to her own bite, letting the warm fluid flow into her. Normally she would have closed her eyes, but this time she positioned herself so she could watch Zginski as he fed.

He held Lee Ann’s soft thigh delicately with his strong, long fingers, and did not seem to be hurting her. If anything, her soft little moans implied she enjoyed being their mutual victim. But that could not really be the case; anything she felt was because Zginski caused her to respond that way. If her mind was clear, would Lee Ann still consent?

Lee Ann reached up and stroked Fauvette’s hair. The gesture was so sisterly, so tender that Fauvette responded in kind. “Yes,” she heard Lee Ann sigh, “oh, yes . . .”

Suddenly they all bounced off the truck bed and slammed back down as the vehicle jumped the ragged track and skidded to a halt behind the warehouse. As he jumped from the driver’s seat Mark slapped the camper shell and said, “Get a move on!” Through the narrow plastic window, Fauvette saw the sunrise now truly coming from the east.

“Let them go,” Zginski said languorously. “We will stay”—he rested a hand on Lee Ann’s bare stomach, just above her navel, and caressed her slowly—“here with her.” Then he settled into his bite again. Fauvette did likewise.

Mark, Leonardo, and Olive rushed into the warehouse. The faint hint of the sun seemed to scald the air around them. As Mark climbed into his coffin, his last moments of consciousness worked around Olive’s mysterious comment about the powder coming from “the stars.”

Shit, he thought, had Toddy gotten the powder from
aliens
?

•  •  •

   An hour later, Danielle huddled in the corner behind her rocking chair, where it was dark and no one could see her. Her arms clutched her knees to her chest. She still smelled the awful blood from the older vampire’s (
They really were vampires! Oh, God!
) hand, the one called Zginski. The odor seemed to permeate everything. She knew she was safe only as long as they did not need her, and with the slightest effort any one of them could reduce her to quivering servitude, which was far, far worse than merely drinking her blood. If Zginski had wanted to take her on the floor in front of his friends, she would’ve been on her back in an instant.