The Girls With Games of Blood (17 page)

The interstate highway loomed ahead, passing over the street on which he traveled. At the last moment he accelerated and cut across two lanes, eliciting horn blasts and unmistakable hand gestures. He shot up the ramp, barely avoided rear-ending a pickup, and quickly merged into traffic. In the rearview mirror he watched Cocker make a similar maneuver, barely missing a Trans Am that blared its disapproval. In moments Cocker was behind him again, this time making no attempt at pretense.

Zginski grew anxious. What was this all about? Surely not just the car. He began weaving again, and Cocker stuck to him as if attached by a string. He would have to try something unexpected, and the thought filled him with a frisson of fear.

Another exit was ahead, and as he approached he saw that the grassy shoulder extended down a gentle slope to the bottom of the ramp. He turned the wheel hard to the right and gunned the engine. The Mustang hopped the curb, dug ruts as it shot down the hill, and finally bounced into the traffic passing under the interstate. Almost at once he cut back onto the next ramp and ended up back on the highway, headed in the opposite direction. He took the next exit at sixty miles an hour, barely avoiding collisions when he merged into traffic on Airways Boulevard.

He parked in the lot beside a shuttered building that had formerly been a barbecue restaurant and waited. He neither saw nor sensed any pursuit, and after half an hour decided he had, indeed, lost his pursuer.

But that was only the immediate problem. Somehow Cocker had tracked him down at Barrister’s establishment, and considering his investment of both money and time, this presented a problem. He would have to phone Fauvette and tell her to report any of Cocker’s further visits.

And, he realized with surprising disappointment, discretion might force him to miss Patience’s show the next night.

Cocker sat at the red light fuming, both from the heat and his temper.

The fucking foreign dipshit asshole had
lost
him. That insane turn down the grassy ramp had completely surprised him, and by the time he’d reached the street below Zginski had vanished. He spent thirty minutes searching for the Mustang parked in some lot or driveway. He had not found it.

Finally he pulled in at a convenience store and bought a quart bottle of Miller. He sat in his hot car and drank it, feeling his tension dissipate as his head grew fuzzier. He ate the still-warm steak with his bare hands. Eventually he had to pee, so he went inside to use the restroom.

As he stood at the urinal, reading the graffiti scratched on either side of the condom machine, he decided on his next move. He might not be able to follow Zginski, but the man had been talking to Gerry’s new musical act, and Cocker knew where to find
her.
She would lead him to Zginski, either willingly or otherwise. He had ways of making women talk.

He stopped urinating as his penis stiffened at the thought.

W
HEN HE ARRIVED
at Alisa’s, Zginski parked the car in the backyard and came in through the kitchen. As always, it made him pause for a moment. He had been in some of Europe’s gaudiest dwellings, from the palace of Versailles to London’s Hyde Park mansions, but even these paled in comparison to the sheer audacity of common home furnishings in this new era. It seemed that the ability to decorate in a manner previously reserved for royalty had bred an utter lack of restraint in the populace. When every home looked like a palace, none of them were.

Alisa’s kitchen was a prime example. The wooden cabinets were painted orange and lacquered over so that they gleamed like plastic. The wallpaper was a cubist pattern of interlocking black, brown, orange, and yellow blocks, while the ceiling used the same colors, but in a different pattern. The floor’s tile was cream-colored, with hexagonal starburst patterns in each square. The overall effect, he mused, was what it must feel like to stand inside a tangerine.

He went into the living room, where he found her at work. From behind her desk Alisa looked over her glasses at
him and almost gasped in surprise. She had never seen him look
worried
before. “Rudy?”

“I have put my car in the rear,” he said as he drew the curtain across the front window, then peeked out around the edge. The late-afternoon sun was golden and intense. “I apologize if I have damaged the lawn, but the grass is so dry it seems unlikely.”

She stood and put her notebook aside. She wore sweatpants and a Memphis State T-shirt too large for her, which made her look even more wan and wasted. “Why?”

Zginski took off his sport coat and draped it across the back of the recliner. “The drought, most certainly.”

“No, I mean, why did you put your car back there?”

He debated whether or not to tell her, and finally decided in favor of it. “I found myself pursued earlier today.”

Her eyes opened wide. “By who? The police?”

“No.”

She said more quietly, “It wasn’t a vampire hunter or anything, was it?”

Zginski smiled. She asked with such seriousness that it became absurd. “No. I believe my pursuer was once with the police in some capacity, but is no longer in their employ.”

“Why?”

“Why does any man leave a job? Perhaps he was dissatisfied, or wished more payment for his services.”

She swatted his arm. “
Stop
that. You know what I mean. Why were the ex-police chasing you?”

He undid the top button of his shirt. Fashion in this era may have been simpler, but it remained just as uncomfortable. “I believe it was the man who attempted to buy the car. I told you about him before.”

Alisa’s eyes opened even wider. “Byron Cocker?
Byron Cocker
was chasing you?”

“Indeed.” He sat on the couch and unzipped the leather stack-heeled boots.

She looked out the window herself at the empty residential street. “That’s
insane.
He’s not a sheriff anymore, he lost the last election. I remember reading about it. That movie embarrassed everyone in McHale County, so they elected one of his former deputies instead.”

Zginski sat back with a sigh. “Then perhaps he is merely a man who reacts badly when he feels wronged.”

Alisa sat down beside him. “He’s trouble, Rudy. Back when he
was
sheriff he pulled over a pair of my black students, and beat them so badly one lost the sight in his right eye.”

“I am not worried about his physical prowess.”

“No, but he also doesn’t give up. Ever. Even after his wife was murdered and his face was blown off, he didn’t give up.”

He looked at her suspiciously. Had Cocker found him through Alisa? “How do you know so much about him? Is he an acquaintance?”

“No, I saw the movie.”

“Ah, yes. The gentleman who sold me the car mentioned it.”

Alisa nodded.
“Swinging Hard.”

Zginski picked up the newspaper from the ottoman. “Perhaps I may learn something by seeing the same film.”

“It’s probably not playing anymore; it came out a couple of years ago. My point is, the man is
crazy.
I don’t know how you got him on your trail, but he’s a good one to avoid. Especially for a man like you, with so many secrets.”

Zginski found the movie listings, but as Alisa predicted there was no mention of
Swinging Hard.
“What is the plot of this movie?”

“Well, Cocker was the sheriff over in McHale County. There were a bunch of bootleggers and crooked gamblers settled in along the state line, and they tried to bribe him to look the other way. When that didn’t work, they ambushed
him, killed his wife, and shot him in the face. He survived, and then beat the main villain to death with a baseball bat. Hence the title.”

“And this is a true story?”

“I’m sure they simplified it so it was pure good-versus-evil. The real Cocker was—is—a racist redneck thug, by all accounts. But his wife
was
killed, he
was
shot in the face, and he
did
clean out the gang.”

Zginski went back to the window and watched a car pull into a driveway on the opposite side of the street. There was still no sign of Cocker, and his sense of pursuit told him he’d made good his escape.

“Is he out there?” Alisa asked.

“No, I have eluded him.” He turned to face her. “And I will deal with him, so you do not have to worry.”

“Right,” she said wryly.

Zginski, annoyed by her sarcasm, reached out with his power. Softly but with great fury he said, “If I say you should not worry, you will do as I say.”

Alisa swallowed hard, her priorities instantly realigned. She ached for him now, both intimately and emotionally. The pure sexual lust he first inspired in her had now, with time, become something she could only classify as love. It left her craving more, even the moment after an orgasm. There was never enough to satisfy her. She reached for the bottom hem of the T-shirt to pull it off.

He held up his hand. “I must rest. I will attend to you when I return.”

Alisa hated the pleading whine in her voice. “What? You’re just
leaving
me this way?”

“The next time I give you an assurance, you would do well to accept it without the irony.” He headed toward the cellar door.

Alisa stared after him, her body on fire with sexual need. She could minister to herself, she knew, and it would dim the
intensity a bit. But only the touch of his icy skin, and the sensation of his teeth penetrating her neck, would cause this arousal to dissipate.

She slid her hands beneath the T-shirt and squeezed her breasts. “Oh, you
bastard,
” she breathed, and sank back onto the couch. Not since she’d been a teenager had she so wantonly touched herself.

As she endured the effects of his power, she also felt absurdly grateful. He’d completely removed the pain from her consciousness.

Zginski padlocked the cellar door behind him and descended the stairs. The basement was a small concrete room containing the water heater and assorted boxes of miscellanea belonging to Alisa’s late husband. The one small window had been boarded over, which rendered the room pitch-black. For Zginski that was not an issue.

A faux Oriental screen separated the rest of the room from the cot where Zginski slept. On the back of the screen, and the concrete wall opposite, he’d taped up pictures from various magazines of the devices that seemed central to his new era. It was a silly affectation, but somehow waking among these images helped him grow more acclimated. He still did not understand all of them, such as the “pet rock,” or why “linear tracking” made a modern gramophone work more efficiently. But most of them were of automobiles, and the shiny surfaces and exposed engines filled him with energy whenever he awoke to them.

He settled onto the cot, feet crossed at the ankles and hands folded across his chest. A vampire’s sleep rendered him indistinguishable from a corpse: his joints would stiffen like rigor mortis, he had no pulse or respiration, and his skin was cold to the touch. If discovered in this state he would be helpless, so finding a secure spot was crucial.

Folklore said that vampires must return to their graves to rest, and for some he knew that was true. Many simple peasants, disoriented and confused by their new vampiric state, did exactly that. It took a certain mental sophistication to accept that one had become a vampire, and not everyone could accomplish it. Many embodied every vampire cliché because they thought they were
supposed
to behave that way. Fortunately, because of this they were often quickly destroyed. As Leonardo once said in his peasant patois, play by the rules and you’re sure to lose.