Blood Groove (34 page)

“I understand you’re upset,” Fauvette pressed, not wanting to give Danielle time to think. “You did some grubby things, maybe took some drugs, and your friends also died. I’m very sorry, that
is
a big couple of blows, but to try to blame us, to convince yourself that we’re some kind of monsters just to ease your own guilt . . . that’s not very sensible, ma’am.”

Danielle’s resolve crumbled just a bit, but the gun didn’t
waver. Could it all really have been drugs? Had the pot been laced with some hallucinogen? “Wait . . . how old are you?”

That caught Fauvette off guard. After a moment’s hesitation, she blurted, “Fourteen, ma’am.”

“You sound awfully grown-up for fourteen. What music do you like?”

Fauvette drew a blank. She never listened to music except in passing. “Uh—” she said, unable to come up with anything.

“Yeah,” Danielle said triumphantly. “A teenager who hangs out on the street and doesn’t know the latest music. Right. Now get out of my way, or I start with you.”

“For God’s sake, you shot some kind of acid into Olive’s heart, didn’t you?” Fauvette said desperately. “That doesn’t prove she was a vampire, that would kill
anybody
.”

“It wouldn’t kill them
that
way,” Danielle said with certainty. “I’m a coroner, bitch, I know a lot about how people die.”

“Please . . .” Fauvette started helplessly.

Danielle smiled, stepped to one side, and before Fauvette could again block her, shot Mark in the heart.

Mark grunted at the impact, and it knocked him back a step. But it felt just like any other time he’d been shot, and that brought a rush of relief. He covered the smoking opening with his hands and managed to stand straight.

Danielle narrowed her eyes, and continued to smile. “So much for your bullshit excuses. A normal human being wouldn’t be standing there after that.”

“Mark?” Fauvette asked warningly.

“It’s okay,” he said. Then he felt numbness spreading from the injury, burrowing through his body. He recognized it, too: the same sensation the mere taste of the gray powder gave him earlier, but much stronger, wiping out his energy, his ability to move, to think . . .

He fell to his knees, and looked helplessly at Fauvette.
“Ah, hell,” he said, disgusted with his own weakness. This was even less dignified than Praline’s destruction or Olive’s death. He toppled face forward onto the warehouse floor.

“Mark!” Fauvette shrieked. When she raised his head, his eyes had the same glassy look as Zginski’s back at the museum. Fauvette glared at Danielle. “You maniac, what did you do?”

She’d dipped a whole box of cartridges in a gelatin solution liberally spiked with what was left of the gray powder Zginski gave her for analysis, but saw no need to explain that. “Doesn’t matter. Now it’s your turn. Stand up.”

“No,” Fauvette snarled. “Kill me right here, if you’re going to. Next to him.” Fate had decided her loyalties, and in these last moments she would honor them.

Danielle grabbed Fauvette by the hair and yanked her to her feet. “I said
move
! You bastards will do what
I
say this time!”

Leonardo said calmly, “Hey, y’all, wait a minute.”

Danielle released Fauvette and turned to look at him.

He stood beside Olive’s remains, his hands spread in a gesture of supplication. “All right, let’s look at this mathematically,” he said in what he hoped was the most reasonable tone in the world. “You had two friends get killed ’cause of us, and now you done killed two of ours. Ain’t that enough? Ain’t we even now?”

Danielle shot him in the heart. The impact knocked him back into the wall, and he slid to the floor. She shrieked, “ ‘Even’? You freak, I’m not doing this for me, I’m doing it so nobody else has to go through that! Do you know what it feels like? Do you have any idea what being one of your . . . your
victims
is like?”

“Yes,” Fauvette said quietly. “We all do.”

Danielle struck Fauvette hard across the face with the gun. Fauvette snapped her head back up, glaring.

“We were all victims once,” Fauvette continued through
clenched teeth, and felt gingerly around the torn, unbleeding skin on her cheek. “That’s how we became what we are.”

“And what about
your
victims?”

She lowered her eyes. She lacked the energy to continue this, even without the powder. “Hell, maybe you’re right. Maybe we should all die. We are what we are.” All the elation, all the hope Zginski had brought, disappeared along with him. He’d abandoned them, she realized with certainty. There would be no rescue, no moment when he would charge forward to save them; he was, after all, only interested in himself. How could she have dared to believe the world of daylight would be hers again, that her existence as a demonic killer could coexist with the sun?

“No,” Danielle said as she aimed the gun at Fauvette’s chest, “what you
were
.”

They both heard a soft, metallic tap and turned toward it. Mark had vanished; a single bullet rested on the floor where his body had sprawled a moment ago.

D
ANIELLE SPUN IN
place. “Where are you?!” she called. “Come out, or I’ll blow her damn head off! I mean it!”

Fauvette scooted over to Leonardo, who was barely conscious. “I don’t feel anything,” he whispered. “My legs don’t work, my arms . . .”

Danielle looked around the warehouse. There was no handy place for Mark to hide, and he couldn’t have made it all the way to any of the doors . . . could he? She glared at Fauvette. “All right, you slippery bastard,” she called to Mark. “You want to hide while your girlfriend dies? Fine.”

   Mark, now no more than a thin layer of dust hanging in the air, hovered insubstantially in front of Danielle. Transforming into mist had taken all his remaining strength, and he wasn’t even sure he could change back. He felt distant, above it all, numb to the reality that this woman was about to kill Fauvette. At one level he wanted to watch, to see if death looked different from this weird perspective.

The bullet had almost completely overwhelmed him when he suddenly recalled the way he’d felt back in his store, when for a moment he believed he actually turned transparent. If Zginski could do it, he should be able to as well.

Fighting the numb apathy, he tried to bring that mind-set back. And then, like some switch being thrown, it worked: he dissolved into a fine cloud of mist. Even his clothes vanished, but because the bullet was coated with the gray powder, it did not, slipping through his misty form and hitting the floor. He rose above them, amazed that everything looked so crystal-clear and peaceful. He moved just by thinking, and drifted slowly in front of Danielle, in position to do . . . what? He couldn’t physically act in this state. And now the woman had her gun aimed at Fauvette, who looked helpless and dejected and so very beautiful . . .

   Danielle cocked the gun.

   With all his strength of will, Mark concentrated on reconstituting himself, dragging his diaphanous form into a single cloud, connecting molecules again to form bones and muscles and skin and hair and clothes. A wave of nausea struck him, and he was conscious of the obscene sense of his own bodily processes as they re-formed and jumped into action all at once . . .

   Danielle sighted along the barrel at the spot where Fauvette’s cleavage began just above the neckline of her shirt.

•  •  •

   Now he felt disoriented, suddenly unsure what was up or down, which way he was falling, if he was falling or just standing still, and the nerve endings fired in an agony of sensation as his feet contacted the floor . . .

   Danielle pulled the trigger.

   Mark appeared directly in front of Danielle, coagulating out of the dust in the air. The bullet struck him under his left collarbone. He slapped the gun out of her hand, and then grabbed her by the throat. He lifted her and roared his pain and fury. She kicked madly and tore at his face.