Blood Groove (32 page)

Reynolds ignored the question. He looked at the others and pointed a gnarled finger. “Olive, correct? Who is so smart and lovely.”

“He thought I was
smart
?” Olive said, eyes wide.

“Well, it
was
Toddy,” Mark said.

“And Mark, who thinks he’s everyone’s big brother. Or should that be
blood
brother?” Reynolds laughed, but it quickly devolved into a wheeze. “And
this
lovely creature would be Fauvette. Toddy thought you the most beautiful thing in the world. He called you his ‘shadow goddess.’ ”

“We shall waste no more time on this,” Zginski said. “What is the purpose of this charade?”

Reynolds smiled. “Charade? This is no charade, I assure
you. I have invented a way to rid the world of your kind’s pestilence by providing you with an irresistible way of destroying yourselves. And the purpose? Why, I should think it clear. I mean to avenge my wife’s untimely demise and prevent others from sharing her fate.”

Zginski evaluated his options. Killing the old man was the most expedient resolution, and would certainly take little effort. Yet the man’s continued existence seemed a fitter punishment. There was no way this feeble creature could be a threat to him. He would never become addicted to Reynolds’s gray powder, the
poudre de la mort vraie
; his elaborate scheme had come to nothing. “We are leaving,” he said to the others.

Reynolds’s doddering suddenly vanished. With a snarl of contempt he snatched one of the compressed-air sprayers from the rack and shoved the nozzle into Zginski’s mouth. A loud emphatic
hiss
followed and a cloud of the gray dust filled the air, most of it forced straight down Zginski’s throat. Reynolds fell back against the table, his limited energy spent in that one forceful action.

“No!” Fauvette shouted and pushed Reynolds across the room. He struck the wall between the tables and slid to the floor.

Zginski gagged and clawed at his throat. The powder had been injected down his inert windpipe into both lungs and stomach, and was already doing its damage. A numbness spread within him like a ball being inflated. Worse was the growing emotional turmoil, dredging up every cowardly, base, or demeaning feeling he’d ever experienced. He
was
a walking corpse, feared and unloved, and his diabolical existence was an affront to everything good and beautiful. The memory of all those he had killed, used, or injured rose with lifelike vividness; the women of Passelwaithe swarmed around him, screaming their pain and fury from the hell to which he had condemned them. He
deserved
this dry, desiccating death.

Fauvette and Leonardo grabbed him as he collapsed. Mark yanked all the air nozzles free of their compressor and threw them aside. Olive just stared, hands clapped to her face.

Reynolds laughed as he slowly stood. A trickle of red streaked his white hair, and his eyes gleamed with demented triumph. “He is already dead,
truly
dead. Only living blood can save him, and none of
you
can provide it!”

Leonardo glared at the old man. “
You
full of blood, honky. Don’t make me chase you down.”

Reynolds pushed up his sleeves to reveal scabbed needle tracks. “My blood is laced with the powder. Drinking from me would only hasten the inevitable. His arrogance has doomed him at last.”

He stumbled past Mark and Olive and stared into the vampire’s fading, dull eyes. “Your soul will be free, Rudolfo Vladimir Zginski. It is more than you deserve. As to where it ends up, that is between you and the devil.”

“Rudy!” a new voice cried.

Lee Ann stood in the doorway. She was disheveled, wide-eyed, and sported cuts on her arms. She dashed into the room, pushed Fauvette aside, and ran her hands over Zginski’s stiffening body. “Oh, God, Rudy, what’s happened?”

“No!” Reynolds screeched. “No, no,
no
!” He grabbed Lee Ann’s shoulders and feebly tried to push her away. “Get out of here! This doesn’t concern you!”

Zginski’s head lolled back. His eyes were now cloudy and blank.

“It would take all your blood to save him,” Reynolds cried desperately to Lee Ann. “You would
die
! You would become one of
them
! Run, while you can!”

Mark pulled Reynolds away. Lee Ann brushed Zginski’s hair back from his face. His skin was stained gray from the burst of powder. “Rudy, please, say something, tell me what to do!” Tears ran down her cheeks. “Please, don’t leave me, I
need you!” Zginski’s body grew rigid and immobile. His mouth gaped in a static, silent cry.

Lee Ann looked at Fauvette. In her desperate eyes, Fauvette saw the last thing she expected: real love. “Will my blood save him?” she demanded.

Fauvette shook her head. “I don’t know.”

Lee Ann whirled to Reynolds. “Will it?”

“Moments to go,” Reynolds cackled. “Mere moments. The dose he got was a thousand times what killed Toddy. No one can save him. Look, he’s not even struggling. He
wants
this!”

Lee Ann took Fauvette’s face in her hands. “Don’t let me come back,” she said softly.

Fauvette nodded. “I promise.”

Then Lee Ann tossed her long hair to one side, exposing Fauvette’s bite. She worked her neck against Zginski’s mouth until she felt his fangs slice into the flesh over her carotid. She pressed against him, driving the teeth through her skin down to the artery. It burned like a branding iron. Then she gasped as blood burst from her neck into his slack mouth.

For a long moment nothing happened. The only sounds were the labored breathing of the room’s two living occupants and the wet trickling of the blood down Zginski’s poisoned throat. He showed no reaction or response. Finally Reynolds said, “Too late. I warned you. He is gone to what I truly hope is his just reward.”

Lee Ann began to sob.

With a snarl Zginski suddenly wrenched free of Leonardo and Fauvette, seized Lee Ann’s head, and drove his fangs deeper into her neck. Tissue and bone crunched together between his jaws. Still growling, he drew the blood in long draughts, oblivious to its source. Like the day he’d awakened in the morgue, he knew only overwhelming physical need, and this was the closest way to satisfy it. The blood dissolved the gray powder he’d ingested, restoring him as his body absorbed it.

Lee Ann cried out but did not struggle. He fed so intensely that she grew pale almost at once. Her eyes opened wide and she stared, not at the ceiling, but at something only she seemed able to see. She reached up with one hand as if to touch something in the air above her. Then her eyes closed. Zginski pulled his red-coated mouth away with a wet, satisfied gasp and let her lifeless body fall to the floor. Her head landed with a loud thud.

The noise broke through his confusion. He blinked and stared at the others like a sleepwalker awakened far from his bed. Then he realized Lee Ann sprawled motionless at his feet.

He looked down, puzzled, and knelt to tentatively touch her. Blood trickled from his mouth and splattered softly on her cheek. He wiped his lips, stared in confusion at his hand, and looked up at the others.

“Are you all right?” Fauvette asked softly.

He nodded, his eyes flickering around the room. “I seem to be somewhat confused, but . . .” Then he spotted Reynolds, fumbling to unlock a side door.

None of the others saw Zginski move. One instant he was on his knees beside Lee Ann, the next he was in front of Reynolds, lifting the old man by the throat with one hand and ripping into his abdomen with the other. He hurled meat and tissue with feral ferocity, his arm cutting wide red arcs through the air. Pieces splattered around the room, and with a roar of fury he hurled the eviscerated body the length of the tables. It landed with a splat.

Again the room was quiet, but this time the silence was total. Everyone remained completely still, and none left standing needed to breathe.

Zginski wiped his bloody hands on a chamois cloth. Then he knelt and picked up Lee Ann’s body. Her head fell back with limp finality. Zginski pulled loose a strand of hair stuck to her lips, and his tenderness made Olive start to cry. Leonardo put his arm around her shoulders.

Zginski looked down at Lee Ann’s face for a long moment. Then once again he said, “We are leaving.”

Fauvette put her hand on his arm. “She didn’t want to come back. I promised her.”

“She will not come back,” he said. “She will . . .”

His face contorted, and for a moment Fauvette feared he was about to scream at her. Then he did scream: a long, loud, torturous wail of pain and fury. The anguish dredged up by the powder had not fully faded, and now it added to his surprisingly intense feelings at the loss of Lee Ann. He raged at the ceiling, at the night sky beyond it, and at the universe that left him without meaning or purpose, just a predator destined for no more than thinning the herd of oblivious mortals. He almost wished to return to the void to which Colby had sentenced him.

The others remained respectfully silent. Olive and Leonardo exchanged a look, while Mark put his hand on Fauvette’s shoulder. She covered it with her own.

At last he stopped with a long, drawn-out breath. He turned to them, his resolve restored. “I apologize for that outburst,” he said. “The powder’s effect was somewhat disorienting. I am, as you say . . . okay now.”

“We’ll see about that,” Olive muttered.

Mark gestured at the destruction. “Should we make some effort to maybe clean this up?” He nudged something wet and bloody with his shoe.

“No,” Zginski said firmly. “This place, this whole building, is a place of death, and I no longer wish to be here.” He kissed Lee Ann lightly on the lips. “I have things to attend to.”

“Ain’t like they got our fingerprints and address,” Leonardo said to Mark. “And likely nobody’ll find him ’til Monday. We’ll watch the papers.”

Mark nodded. “Yeah. Okay.”

They followed Zginski out of the basement. Lee Ann had broken in through a front window, cutting her arms in the
process, and they used that to depart. The crowd from the planetarium had dispersed, and Mark’s truck was the only vehicle left in the parking lot. They all noticed that Lee Ann’s car was missing, but none of them felt the need to mention it.

Z
GINSKI AND
F
AUVETTE
remained in the camper with Lee Ann’s body. He carefully crossed her ankles and placed her folded hands across her chest. Mark drove with extra care, and frequently glanced in the rearview mirror. He needn’t have bothered. Neither Zginski nor Fauvette moved or spoke during the trip back to the warehouse and no blue lights appeared.

Leonardo and Olive rode in the cab with him. Mark was confused, or rather, uncertain. Although he and Fauvette had no spoken commitment, he’d always felt a bond between them, something that implied more in the future. Zginski’s presence had altered that, in ways Mark could not comprehend. He desperately wanted time alone with Fauvette to talk about the situation, but she seemed to have eyes only for Zginski. What exactly had they shared, beyond her stories of walking about in the daylight?

“You all right, bro?” Leonardo asked softly. He was exhausted after the night’s tension and wanted only to return to his coffin and rest.

Mark nodded. “Better than some.”

“Never seen one of us care that much about someone they bleeding. Think it’s that powder shit got him all messed up?”

Mark shrugged. “Maybe. He sure didn’t seem like the sensitive type before. Even a taste of that stuff can mess you up.”

Olive said, “Should we have gotten rid of it, then?”

“Ain’t nothing to anyone but us,” Leonardo said. “Cops’ll think it’s just dust. They probably throw it out when they clean up.”

“Besides, only the four of us know about it,” Mark pointed out.

“Five,” Leonardo corrected. “If you count Lord I’m-the-Shit.”

“Yeah,” Mark said, and chewed his lip thoughtfully. It suddenly struck him that Zginski might, in fact, be around for a long while. The thought did not make him happy.

When they arrived at the warehouse, Zginski carefully placed Lee Ann’s body on the loading dock, handling her as if she were a fragile treasure. It was almost as if the powder had changed his very nature, removing the cold arrogance and replacing it with something like compassion. They had seen his rage, though, when he ripped Reynolds apart; the powder had not mellowed
that
.

Zginski turned to Mark. “Will a fire large enough to consume her corpse attract attention?”

“I doubt it,” Mark said. “We’re pretty far out in the country. As long as it’s done before dawn, nobody should notice.”

Zginski nodded. In the past, his desire for security would have precluded any such meaningless ceremony; a set of simple mutilations like the ones he used on the doctor who awakened him would have sufficed, and the body could then be disposed of anywhere. But when he looked at Lee Ann, he could not imagine defiling her in such a way. She had saved his life, or rather his existence, at the cost of her own, and specifically asked not to come back. Although his influence
over her had no doubt been a factor, the final decision had been made when he was at his weakest, and her will given the most free rein since he’d met her. It had been, he understood, a gesture of love. For
him
.

He could ignore the request, of course. He could be there the next night when she awakened and guide her into this new life. Lee Ann and Fauvette could be his brides, much like the Count’s consorts in the Stoker novel, and together they could prowl this nearby river city.

But he could not do that to her. Not against her will, not after what she had done for him. Honor, a concept he normally scorned, demanded otherwise. He looked at her pale, still face and recalled how mobile and alive she had truly been.

“I’ll clear some space for you,” Mark said. “If we accidentally start a forest fire that burns down the woods around this place, people definitely
will
notice.”

Zginski nodded. “Thank you, my friend.”