The Girls With Games of Blood (10 page)

“In what way?”

She gazed steadily at him. “If you don’t know, you’re not as sharp as I thought.”

“Fauvette and I have no exclusive arrangements. We are not, I believe the term is, ‘going together.’ ”

She pressed a hand to her mouth to muffle her giggles. “I could listen to you all day,” she said. “Except that I have to go shopping with Fauvette to get my dressing room ready. But remember, you promised to be there Friday night.”

“And I shall.”

“I think,” she said with a wink, “you’ll find it a real eye-opener.” Then she walked back around the building, deliberately swaying her hips.

Zginski stood in the shade beside his car and stared after her for a long time.

F
AUVETTE TURNED ON
the light. The little room was filled with boxes of napkins and toilet paper, and the sink in the corner looked as if it hadn’t seen water in a decade. “This is where Gerry wants to put you. I’ll make sure it’s fixed up and presentable. I hope it’s okay.”

“I’m sure it’ll be fine,” Patience said. The erstwhile dressing room opened onto the hall that went along the back of the building from the kitchen, past the exit to the Dumpster, to the door that would become the stage entrance. “Where have you put the other acts?”

Fauvette scooted a heavy box aside with her foot. “There haven’t been any since I started here. Gerry’s been pretty content to just have people eat and drink.” She paused before asking, “So . . . do you think you’ll be staying long?”

“I don’t know,” Patience said as she sat atop one stack of boxes. “I have a lot of history in this area. I’ll have to see how much it weighs on me.” She looked at Fauvette seriously. “Do you
mind
it if I stay?”

“No,” Fauvette replied. “In fact . . .”

“What?” Patience gently prompted.

Fauvette looked up at the ceiling. “Well, while you’re
here, do you think you could, maybe, I dunno . . . teach me to do what you do?”

“Sing and play the guitar?”

“No, the thing . . . the way you feed on the energy of people.”

“Fauvette —”

Fauvette couldn’t stop herself. The words had been building up inside her. “I didn’t believe it when that guy told me about you, but I could feel it in the air, flowing out of Gerry and into you. I even
saw
it for a second. The thing is, I
hate
the hunt, the physical contact with people I don’t know, the need to get rid of the body later. But even if I
know
the person, I still hate it. I shared a girl with Zginski for a while, and I got to be . . .
friends
with her, almost. Like sisters, even.” Fauvette swatted at the chain hanging from the light fixture. “It’s just so easy, and it feels so good when I’m doing it, that I never believed I could stop. But watching you, I thought . . .” She trailed off, looking down at her shoes.

Patience sat quietly for a moment, then said, “Fauvette, I can appreciate how you feel. I feel the same way. The thing is . . .”

“You don’t know me, and you don’t trust me,” she said without looking up.

“No, that’s not it. I’m not like your friend Zginski. The thing is, I don’t know exactly how it works.”

Fauvette looked up sharply. “You don’t?”

“No. It happened by accident the first time. And I know how to do it for myself, but I can’t imagine trying to teach it. I can barely
describe
it.”

“Will you try?” Fauvette said in a small, demure voice. “Please?”

Patience smiled. The poor girl’s desperation was heartbreaking. From her appearance, Patience guessed she’d been barely out of childhood when she’d been turned. Did her
long-ago mortal youth somehow still inform her feelings? “All right, honey, I’ll try. But I can’t promise anything.”

Fauvette nodded. Patience impulsively hugged her, and felt the girl melt, childlike, into the embrace. “Shh, it’s all right,” Patience said, and Fauvette snuggled even closer. As she stroked Fauvette’s soft hair, Patience wondered if this, more than any future indiscretion with Zginski, would be her biggest mistake.

In his office, Gerry Barrister slept on the battered old couch. The furniture had seen some wild times, but now he used it strictly for sleeping. It perfectly fit the contours of his aging, battered body. He had one arm thrown over his eyes and one foot on the floor, while his snores could almost be heard over the window-unit air conditioner.

He sensed the door opening, and turned toward it. Fauvette stood silhouetted against the brightly lit kitchen. “Hey, Fauvy,” Gerry muttered sleepily, and started to rise.

Almost at once he grew weak and immobile. The door closed, plunging the room back into the dim, amber illumination that penetrated the blinds.

Gerry blinked and tried to stay awake. Was that really Fauvette removing her blouse, showing him those sweet little boobs? She came toward him now, tits swaying, her face in shadow. She knelt beside the couch, chilled fingers unbuttoning his shirt, then crawled on top of him. The rest of her was as cold as her hands.

He barely found the strength to put one hand on her ass. “You’re like ice, baby,” he whispered.

“Then warm me up,” she sighed, writhing against him, her lips moving up his chest to his shoulder, and finally his neck. And then a sharp pain, and sudden, deep blackness . . .

Fauvette fed with efficient, rapid ease. She knew Barrister was already weakened by Patience, but it had been two days since Fauvette had taken from him, and she was desperate as well. He was
her
victim, anyway; like Zginski said, she took only what she needed, whereas Patience had drained as much as she could.

She felt his erection through his slacks as she straddled him, his limp hand resting on her buttocks. Holding back the tide of blood from his neck was the real trick, and she realized with new irony that it forced her to purse and pucker her lips like a kiss.

She broke away from his skin and licked the tiny trickles that escaped before the bite closed up. Would this be the last time she’d have to taste blood, she wondered; was this her final act of will, breaking off before she was glutted like a woman willfully resisting an orgasm?

She quickly dressed and slipped out of the office. Vander the cook would arrive soon to get the kitchen ready for the dinner crowd, and she didn’t want to start any gossip.

“Boss?”

Vander stood in the doorway. He was black, middle-aged, and a veteran of places like the Ringside. Here, at least, he was given the respect his skill deserved, even if Barrister still referred to him as “the colored cook” when talking to people. “Got a bread shipment you need to sign for.”

“Humszah?” Barrister said. He sat up, shaking his head to clear it. “Sorry, boy, can you repeat that?”

Vander sighed. “Bread. Truck. Out. Back.”

“Okay, I’ll be right there.” Barrister got to his feet, leaned against the desk until the dizziness passed, and started tucking in his shirt. He was still rock-hard from his recurring
dream about Fauvette, and he had to shift himself a couple of times to find a comfortable position that didn’t also make it obvious to anyone looking at him.

He washed his face in his little private bathroom. He found it really strange that the Fauvette of his subconscious was so wanton and uninhibited, while the real one seemed almost virginal. More than once he’d wondered if she actually
was
a virgin; but virgins didn’t apply for jobs in bars, did they?

He checked himself out in the mirror. He looked exhausted; he would have to give himself more time to rest. After all, he was the public face of the Ringside. And would those two places where he’d nicked himself shaving
ever
heal?

As the sun set across the Mississippi River, sinking into the distant Arkansas farmland, Zginski parked his new car in the driveway of a big home in Germantown. This area east of Memphis was where the wealthiest people lived, in big houses shaded by old, stately trees. The residents were all white, and many had lived in these houses for two or three generations, a millennium here in the New World.

He sat behind the wheel for a long time, fighting the weakness that had settled on him. He was seldom this active during the day, when the rays of the sun soaked up all his strength and weakened his powers. But buying the car, and then meeting the woman Patience, had distracted him and now he was paying the price.