Blood Groove (25 page)

“We have to go,” she said. She walked to the edge of the platform and stood there, fists clenched, as if something unseen might pull her over. “Zginski needs us in town.”

“Why?”

She shook her head. “I can’t tell. Just . . . it’s urgent.”

He frowned. “Has something gone wrong?”

She whirled and snapped, “
Fuck
, Mark, I don’t
know
! We just have to go!”

Olive emerged from the warehouse and put her hands on her wide hips. “Whoa, Ms. Got-the-Body, what’s up with you?”

“Her new paramour has sent out the signal,” Mark said dryly. “We’re being summoned.”

Olive frowned. “What the hell is a ‘paramour’?”

“A really classy boyfriend,” he said with all available sarcasm.

“Oh, stop it,” Fauvette snapped. Then she added, “Can we go? Now?”

Leonardo appeared beside Olive. “Where we going?”

“To hell, most likely,” Mark said as he headed toward his truck. “Did he tell you the address before he left?”

She nodded. “But I won’t need it.” The urge grew stronger the longer she denied it, and by the time they were actually driving away she was ready to scream.

•  •  •

   Danielle turned the key in her lock an hour before sunrise. She entered tentatively, hyper-conscious that when she’d left, two dead bodies had been present.

Nothing in the living room appeared out of place or disturbed. A single lamp glowed over the kitchen table where Zginski sat. He appeared unruffled and nonchalant. The half-light made him devastatingly handsome. “I assume you have answers?” he prompted casually.

“I . . .” She kept glancing around. Surely something was different. “I found out some stuff. But it sort of raises more questions.” She put her keys on the hook beside the door. “Did you—?”

He gestured around the apartment. “Please, inspect the place. I insist.”

She stood in the bedroom door, and noted that fresh sheets covered the bed. She walked into the bathroom, took a deep breath, and turned on the light. The place was spotless, cleaner even than it had been before. Zginski had kept his word. She went back into the kitchen and poured herself a glass of wine.

“Does it meet with your approval?” Zginski said.

She nodded. “Yeah, looks great. What did you do with . . . ?”

“Do you truly wish to know?”

She nodded.

“They will be found in situ together in the backseat of her automobile outside. I have it on good authority that such illicit trysts are commonly held in such places. There will be no indication of any ‘foul play,’ as it is termed. When the lightning strikes the vehicle and sets it ablaze, the authorities will be satisfied.”

“How do you know lightning will strike?”

“Because I summoned the storm. It will do my bidding.”
As if for emphasis, lightning and thunder crashed almost simultaneously.

“That’s a good trick,” Danielle said sourly. The sky had been entirely clear as she drove home fifteen minutes earlier. “Can you do it on command?”

Without smiling, Zginski snapped his fingers. Lightning and thunder struck immediately, just outside the window.

Something icy and cold clutched Danielle’s heart. “Do you have to burn them?”

“The less clear evidence, the better. As a medical examiner, would you not agree?”

Danielle closed her eyes. Leslie’s father and Skitch’s wife appeared before her, their faith broken, their idealism shredded. “Please,” she said softly. “Don’t burn them. Allow them some dignity.”

“As you did?” he said with just a hint of amusement.

She looked up at him and forced herself to meet those cold, depthless eyes. “What’s happening to me?” she asked, so quietly he barely heard.

“Nothing,” he said. “Those of my kind who took you were clumsy and reckless. They inadvertently imparted a hint of our nature to you. It has fully faded by now. Not,” he added with a shrug, “soon enough for your friends.”

“Don’t burn them,” she said, big tears welling in her eyes. She’d seen many burned corpses, and knew what it would do to them.

He looked vaguely regretful. “The time for decision is past.”

Another flash, much brighter and more intense, flared through the window. The muffled
whump
of an explosion rattled the glass, and she heard other residents moving around and opening doors.

“Oh, God,” Danielle said softly. Wine splashed on the floor as her hand began to shake. “Oh, sweet Jesus, Leslie . . .” She leaned on the kitchen counter and, through the
little window over the sink, saw the reflected orange glow of something burning around the building’s corner. In the parking lot.

“And now to your report,” Zginski said.

Before she could answer, someone knocked on her door. Startled, she dropped the wineglass into the sink. The police couldn’t be here already, could they? Perhaps one of her neighbors had come to alert her to the fire.

Zginski calmly held up a hand. “I believe this will be my associates. I took the liberty of inviting them to hear your findings, as they have as much interest as I.”

He opened the door. Mark entered, followed by Fauvette, Olive, and Leonardo. Zginski shut the door behind them and said, “Welcome, my friends.”

“We his friends now,” Leonardo muttered to Olive.

“There’s a car on fire in the parking lot,” Mark said. “And your girl chauffeur is out there with the crowd watching it.”

“Yes, I know,” Zginski said. “Your arrival is timely. Dr. Roseberry was just about to share her findings with me.”

Danielle remained frozen at the sink. Even after everything these monsters had done to her, this felt like the greatest violation of all. The whole ghastly assault had occurred in
their
space, but now they were here, in her home. She felt fresh disgust and fury.

She stared at Mark. “You.”

He smiled a little uncomfortably. “Uh . . . hi.”

Her gaze shifted to Olive. “And you.”

“What you eyeballing me for?” Olive said with a defiant head bob.

“What you . . .
creatures
. . . did to me . . .” Danielle spat.

“I know,” Mark said. “Listen, believe it or not, I’m real sorry about what happened at the cemetery.”

“ ‘Sorry’?” she repeated.
“Sorry?”
Suddenly she ran at him, brandishing a Ginsu knife from the rack beside the sink.

“Actually, yeah,” he said wearily, calmly catching her wrist and twisting until the pain made her drop the knife.

“Manners, Dr. Roseberry,” Zginski said smoothly. “He is your guest.” He took her hand and pulled her away from Mark. Leonardo emitted a sharp “huh” of amusement.

Danielle said nothing, but her glare took in Fauvette, who looked away; then Leonardo, whose expression was unreadable; and finally Olive again. “I swear to God,” Danielle snarled, “if any of you
touch
me again—”

“Spare us,” Zginski said coldly. “Any one of us can kill you with the effort it would take you to swat a fly. Or reduce you to the same quivering helplessness you felt before, and draw the life from you slowly. Would you prefer that?”

She looked down, defeated. “No.”

“Good. Now. What can you tell us about the gray powder?”

She walked back into the kitchen, got a fresh glass, and poured some more wine. “Well, without going into a lot of technical detail, I can tell you that most of it is made of cremated human bodies. The ash is ground into powder which makes it heavier.”

“Really?” Zginski said, surprised.

She nodded. “But there were some other trace elements I couldn’t identify right away. Organic preservatives, of a very specific type.”

“Which means what?” Mark prompted.

She raised her glass in a mock salute. “Well, my blood-sucking friends, it means whoever manufactured this powder made it from cremated Egyptian mummies.”

A
FTER A MOMENT
of silence Zginski repeated, “
Mummies?
”

Danielle nodded. “I studied them in school. The Egyptians were some of the finest embalmers in history. Their compounds keep corpses intact for thousands of years.”

For the first time since any of them, human or vampire, had known Zginski, he seemed genuinely at a loss. “Is it . . . are you absolutely certain?”

“If I’m lyin’, I’m dyin’,” Danielle said sarcastically. “Yes, I’m sure.”

“So how come powdered mummy dust makes us not want blood?” Mark asked.

“It does what?” Danielle said. “You mean you
eat
this stuff?”

“It has the effect of eliminating our immediate need to consume blood,” Zginski said. “There are, unfortunately, undesirable side effects.”

“Always are,” Danielle said dryly. “And I’m sorry, I only know about dead people who have the courtesy to stop moving. I don’t know anything about how you people work internally.”

“Is there any other possible use for such powder?” Zginski asked.

She shrugged. “Maybe as fertilizer. But it wouldn’t be very good.”

“Then somebody made it specifically to fuck with us,” Leonardo said. “Maybe the FBI, like they did black folks about ten years ago. Started selling heroin in the ghetto to keep us quiet.”

“Oh, the FBI wants to get vampires hooked so we won’t have a revolution?” Olive said. “That’s just
dumb
. How we gonna revolt when we drop dead every morning?”

Zginski shook his head and paced to the patio doors. Now the red lights of a fire truck swept across the trees, and he heard the crowd gathered around the burning car on the building’s opposite side.

He could not rationalize Danielle’s findings. Mummies had been around for millennia, yet he’d never heard of them used in this way. As the Negro said, someone had to be manufacturing the powder with this particular effect in mind. This mysterious pharmacist evidently knew a great deal about vampires, including their physiognomy. Even Zginski didn’t know much about that, because vampires never needed medical attention, and thus never visited doctors. And no one could acquire that sort of knowledge, unless—

“It must be another vampire,” Zginski blurted as the thought hit him. “It is the only explanation. What other vampires do you know of in this city?”

“I’ve been here the longest,” Fauvette said, “and I’ve never seen anyone other than us.”

“These others may not be as unconcerned with detection as you are,” Zginski said. “Most vampires wish to remain unknown even to others of our kind. Our power works best in isolation; when we join together, we attract too much attention.”

“He mean us,” Leonardo said to Olive, making sure everyone else heard. “We cramping his style.”

“Hey, I
dig
attention,” Olive said.

Zginski ignored them. “If only we knew where your friend Toddy initially acquired that powder. That would give us a starting point.”

“Yeah, well, that sounds like your problem, not mine,” Danielle said. She was bone-tired, and the wine had cut through her tension just enough to let her really feel it. “So now that you’ve done my favor and I’ve done yours, why don’t you folks get out of my apartment and leave me alone with my hysterics, okay?” The memory of Leslie’s tear-stained face kept floating before her.

Zginski turned and scrutinized her. “Yes . . . you kept your part of our bargain.”

“Thanks. If I ever open my own practice, I’ll call for an endorsement.”

“But we may not be done with you.”

Fear chilled Danielle from her spine to her heart. “Yes, you are,” she said, but it didn’t come out with nearly the force she intended. “Now leave.”

“No, Dr. Roseberry. As this substance and its effects are complete unknowns to me, your medical training may again prove valuable. I may need to summon you at a moment’s notice.” He fixed his eyes on her. “Come to me.”

“No, no more,” she said in rage and horror, but the same sexual compulsion that immobilized her before rose inside her. Her heart pounded, her knees grew weak and her body wet and quivery. This time it was even more powerful, and made the feelings Mark and Leonardo conjured in her seem mere shadows of lust. A soft “Oh!” escaped her clenched teeth.

She grabbed the back of the couch for support, grateful for any physical barrier, however slight, between herself and Zginski. “Stop it,” she hissed, and summoned all her willpower. “Stop it, no more, just stop it—” But her body
surged toward him seemingly on its own, and her hands slipped from the couch as she rushed into his arms.

Touching him did nothing to ease the desire she felt, though; it quickened it, made it even hotter and more raw. She clung to his shoulders to keep from falling.

Zginski held out his left hand and, with the nail of his right index finger, cut a deep slice into it. Dark fluid oozed out, thicker than human blood. He held the hand out to Danielle, the liquid slowly pooling in his palm.

She gently cupped his hand with her own, and a tingle of something humiliating and delicious shot through her as their skin touched. Her whole body trembled with resistance, but she was losing, and she shuddered with anticipation as she delicately brought the oozing wound up to meet her lips.