The Girls With Games of Blood (23 page)

She pulled on a clean T-shirt, grateful for the crisp coolness against her skin. She wanted a shower, but needed to wait until her head stopped spinning. And the place on her neck continued to throb, the way it did when
he
was near.

Something scratched softly at the open window. “It’s me,” a voice said.

Leonardo was right outside, perched on the roof and running his fingernails lightly along the glass. He smiled when he saw her. She hurriedly opened the window the rest of the way, and he gracefully slithered in.

She threw her arms around him. “I’m so glad to see you,” she cried. “I was so afraid you wouldn’t come tonight.”

He held her loosely, surprised and disconcerted by her intensity. “Why? What happened?”

She shook her head. She couldn’t possibly tell him. “Nothing, honey. I’m just glad to see you.” She raised her face to him, eager to kiss his cold lips again.

And then suddenly they were in bed. She was naked, on her stomach, and he sat shirtless on the edge of the mattress. She was breathing heavily, and tingles ran through her muscles indicating she’d experienced a strong climax. But she couldn’t remember it.

She rose on her elbows. Her hair was matted with sweat,
and the hot little room smelled of bodies. He’d left the light on again, which meant he must have watched her as they . . . whatever they did. She blushed with shame at the thought.

He smiled down at her. For just a moment, the image of his extra-long canine teeth and the sudden tingle in her neck made her think something so absurd she almost laughed aloud. But it passed in a wave of fresh weakness.

“How was that?” he said, and kissed the tip of her nose.

She couldn’t speak for a moment. “I never knew I could feel all those things.”

He laughed. “That’s what they all say.”

She blushed and said pitifully, “Don’t laugh at me.”

“Why not? If it’s funny, why shouldn’t I laugh?”

“Because it’s
not
funny. I love you!” Immediately she looked away, unable to believe the words had just burst forth like that. She didn’t see the sadness cross his face, or regret battle with indifference. She only heard him say, “Man, you white girls. You get a little taste of chocolate and it’s all she wrote.”

Clora’s eyes filled with tears and she scooted away from him. “Why are you being so mean to me? I gave you everything.”

He looked at her clinically, as if her emotions were somehow alien to him. He had no real desire to hurt her, but at the same time it was oddly fascinating to witness her crumble this way. In the past his victims only had time for one emotion: terror. Then they died. He said, “I best be going.”

She grabbed frantically at him. “No, please, not yet.”

He untangled her hands and said firmly, “Yeah.”

He pulled on his shirt while she sat up and clutched her girlish, lace-edged pillow to her chest. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said that. Please don’t go.”

He smiled. “Don’t worry, Snow White, I’ll be back.”

Still clutching the pillow with one hand, she grabbed his arm. “Then take me with you.”

He looked into her desperate eyes. Death hovered there now, nearby and patiently biding its time. “No,” he said.

Tears poured down her face. “Why are you doing this? How can you not believe I love you after all the things I did for you?”

He kissed her lightly, perfunctorily. “I believe you, Snow White. Maybe I just don’t care.”

She collapsed to the floor, her face buried into her pillow, sobbing. Leonardo crawled out the window and closed it behind him.

L
EONARDO LEAPED FROM
the roof to the closest tree and quickly shimmied to the ground. Through the open living-room window he saw Clora’s father passed out in his chair, the dog asleep beside him. The TV displayed a carrier signal, its whine low and insistent.

Leonardo was confused now, and that annoyed him. As a human, he’d hated white folks, a simple and clean emotion that was neither unique nor unjustified. He’d seen the results of carpetbagger racism, watched it feed the self-pity of the poor whites around him, and experienced firsthand the violence that sprang from it. His hatred spared neither young nor old, rich nor poor, male nor female. He hated pretty white girls as much, and for the same reasons, as ugly white boys.

After becoming a vampire, though, his hatred had changed. No longer needing to fear for his life, he prowled the night with an arrogant confidence that often drew the ire of whites. His own brutal revenge on any who dared accost him was one reason he’d ended up in Memphis so far from his birthplace in rural South Carolina. In the city, a single death drew little attention. But eventually the hatred had, if not faded, become something that was more amusement than anything else. How
could he
not
laugh at the certainty that he could quickly and easily kill any of the so-called superior race? How could that not be funny?

And yet Clora stirred something unfamiliar inside him. He had no doubt the girl was as racist as those white-sheeted community leaders he’d witnessed as a child, but he wondered if there was something more to it. Perhaps the racism was just a sense of isolation, expressed the only way she knew how. It wasn’t, he pondered, that different from his own existence. He, too, was isolated, and spoke only in the language of his kind, which in its view of the living was every bit as prejudiced.

But was that a valid comparison? And if it was, what did it explain about his confused, and confusing, feelings for the girl?

He was so engrossed in this that he walked right into the ambush.

The blow across the back of his legs knocked him down, and he tasted dirt as he landed face-first. There was no real pain, just the odd sense of being suddenly out of control. He lay still for a moment, listening as the attackers left their hiding places. There were four of them, and they had him surrounded.

“I got him,” an excited male voice cried, almost cracking with excitement. “Did you see that? I got him!”

“Shut up, Tiny,” a more authoritative voice said.

“Holy shit, it’s a fuckin’
coon,
” said a third.

“She’s banging a nigger,” the last one said with more surprise than anger.

Leonardo got to his knees, but was struck across the back with the bat. “Stay down in the dirt, nigger, where you belong!” the one called Tiny said.

Leonardo did as ordered. It was so dark a normal person would make out only shadowy forms, but he had no trouble
seeing their faces. They were all teenage white boys. Leonardo even recognized one of them: Bruce Cocker.

“What you want to do with him, Bruce?” a tall, acne-spotted boy said. He had the swagger of a schoolyard bully, and the smile of someone who enjoyed hurting people.

“Yeah,” added the fat one called Tiny. “If he needs another smack, let me know.”

Bruce crouched in front of Leonardo. The boy’s gaze was cold and completely sober. “Depends on his attitude, I suppose.”

Leonardo had seen that look before, the gaze of a white man certain his woman had crossed the color line. He smiled. “Hard for me to tap-dance for you while I’m down here, massah.”

Bruce didn’t change expression. The acne-ridden boy appeared over his shoulder and whispered in his ear like some devil. “You’ve eyeballed him enough. Let’s teach him a lesson, like we planned.”

“Clora’s my girl,” Bruce said to Leonardo. “And you been putting your hands all over her, haven’t you?”

Leonardo raised one hand, the palm dirty from the ground, and looked at it in mock surprise. “This hand? Lordy, massah, I swear I ain’t.”

Bruce smacked him openhanded. The blow wasn’t particularly powerful, and Leonardo absorbed it with ease. But he acted as if it hurt, and yelled in mock pain.

“Integration was the worst thing ever happened to this country,” Tiny said in disgust. “These stuck-up darkies need a fucking lesson. Ain’t that right, Travis?”

“You know it, Tiny,” the bespectacled one named Travis said, and slapped hands with the fat one.

“Tie him up, Travis,” Bruce said as he straightened. “But don’t use the long rope. We’ll need that later.”

Travis grabbed Leonardo’s hands and crossed his wrists
at the small of his back. He tied him badly, using multiple pointless loops. Even if he’d been bound well, Leonardo could’ve easily broken free; but now he was curious to see if they’d really go through with what they clearly intended.

“Get up,” Bruce said, and nudged him with his foot. Leonardo got to his knees, his eyes open extra wide to convey mocking minstrel-style fear. Bruce nodded to his pimply friend. “Dave?”

“All the way up on your feet, you stupid tar baby,” Dave said, and kicked him for emphasis.

Leonardo complied, head down to hide the attack of giggles building in him at the situation’s absurdity.

Bruce grabbed a handful of Leonardo’s Afro and jerked his head back. “Something funny, nigger?”

“Not a thing,” Leonardo managed to say with a straight face.

“So how’d you meet Clora, anyway? Her daddy don’t let her out of his sight.”

Leonardo’s lip trembled as he tried not to laugh. To Bruce it looked like terror.

“Don’t matter how,” Dave said. “He knew not to cross the line. Your daddy never told you what used to happen to niggers who even looked cross-eyed at a white girl?”

“Oh, lawsie, sir, I never knew who my daddy was,” Leonardo said with a grin.

Dave punched him awkwardly over Bruce’s shoulder. Again Leonardo reacted quickly, rolling with the slap to keep from breaking the boy’s hand. Dave then spat in his face.

Leonardo clenched his teeth and fought the desire to rip his hands free. He glared at Dave and said, “You mighty tough when you’re in a bunch. How about you untie me and try that one on one?”

Dave just grinned. “Fuck you, nigger.”

Leonardo wrenched his head free from Bruce’s grip. This game was quickly losing its charm. “Yeah, I been all over
your pretty little Snow White up in her tower. I wrung her out so good, she begs me not to go every time I leave. She ever beg
you
?”

Bruce stared at him, his expression more hurt than angry.

“Cut his nuts off, Bruce!” Travis urged.

At last Bruce asked calmly, “Do you know who I am?”

“Just some pasty white asshole with a dick the size of my pinkie finger,” Leonardo said with a grin.

“C’mon, quit talking, let’s teach this jungle bunny a lesson,” Dave said, jumping around in his fury.

Tiny smacked the bat against his open palm. “Let me work on him some more.”

Bruce stepped close to Leonardo and said, just loud enough for him to hear, “I’m Bruce Cocker. My daddy is Byron Cocker. That means I can pretty much do anything I want in this county and get away with it. You understand me?”

Equally soft, Leonardo said, “Takes a big man to hide behind his daddy.”

Bruce scowled, then spit in Leonardo’s face. Dave howled with laughter, while Travis and Tiny slapped high fives. Bruce whirled and said, “Keep it down, you dumb-asses. And bring him on.”

They pushed Leonardo through the woods until they reached a clearing where a large oak tree rose into the night sky. “You know what this place is?” Dave asked Leonardo. “My daddy told me they used to hang uppity niggers from this-here tree. If you look close, you can see the scar in the branch where the ropes dug in.”

With his vampiric night vision Leonardo had no trouble seeing the mark. He’d seen plenty of them on old trees throughout the South. He looked around at the boys. None of them was out of high school, and only Dave seemed to really be motivated by genuine racial hatred. Bruce acted out of jealousy, and the other two simply wanted the approval of their cool friends.

Dave took the long rope and began expertly tying a hangman’s noose. “My daddy showed me how to do this. Said sometimes a man has to take the law into his own hands, because some folks just need killing. Know what I mean, nigger?”

Leonardo stared at the noose, recalling the swinging bodies of slain men from his childhood. The reality of the situation drained the last bit of the humor from it. He stood up straight, looked Dave in the eye, and said coldly, “My name is Leonardo.
You
can call me Mr. Jones.”

Dave smacked him across the face with the rough noose. “Your name is whatever I call you, boy. I am a white man, and you will
respect
that.”

This time Leonardo did not pretend the blow hurt. “I don’t see a
man
anywhere around me. Just a bunch of chicken-shit cracker boys.”

The rage in Dave’s face was something to see, but before he could respond Bruce got right in Leonardo’s face. “We’ll see how funny this is when you’re dancing in midair.”

“Hey, y’all, wait a minute,” Travis suddenly said. “You know where we are? This is old Mama Prudence’s property. That’s her house over yonder.” He pointed to a dark house through the trees. “They say she’s a witch. Maybe we should, I dunno, go somewhere else?”

“Jesus Christ, are you six years old?” Bruce said. “She’s just an old lady. My daddy has to take her groceries to her.”

“Maybe this ain’t a good idea in general,” Tiny said, his voice trembling. “I mean, he’s colored and all, but this is still, like,
murder,
ain’t it?”