The Girls With Games of Blood (31 page)

“Donny Osmond. He’s a singer.”

“Man, I hope nobody ever turns him into a vampire.” He sat on the edge of her bed. “So how’s Rudy’s one-victim-at-a-time thing working for you?”

“Fine,” Fauvette said as she undressed. Leonardo had seen her naked many times, and it felt no more erotic than undressing in front of a sibling. “The hardest thing was training myself to stop just when the blood really started to flow.” She let a huge T-shirt drop over her, falling to her knees.

“Training,” Leonardo said ironically. “That’s what it feels like he’s doing sometimes, ain’t it? Training us. But are we his partners or his guard dogs?”

She sat on the bed beside him. “You sure seem to like it. You two are best buds now.”

“What does
that
mean?”

“You couldn’t stand him six weeks ago. Now you follow him around like he’s got a ring in your nose.” She paused. “Sorry, that was thoughtless.”

“Yeah. Why are you so pissy tonight?”

She drew her knees to her chest and wrapped her arms around them. “Am I?”

“Yeah, and since you ain’t got monthlies to blame, there must be something else.”

“I’ve been trying to learn to do what Patience does.”

“Sing and play the piano?”

“No, draw energy from people without . . . you know . . . hurting them.”

“Why?”

She closed her eyes. “Because I’m tired of death, Leo. Toddy, Olive, maybe Mark . . . I’m tired of it.”

“Looked at yourself in the mirror lately? You dead, too.”

She smacked him on the arm. “Why are
you
being so mean?”

“I don’t know.” He sighed, and lay back on the bed. The plaster ceiling above him sported a huge water stain. “Maybe because I was lynched a couple of nights ago.”

It took a moment for the words to register. Fauvette’s eyes opened wide. “What?”

He told her the story. “I still don’t know why I went along
with it. I think it was mainly to see how far they’d go. I could’ve gotten away at any point, but I didn’t.”

“What if they’d set you on fire or something?”

“Then I would’ve done something. I think.”

“You
think
?”

He shrugged. “Fuck, Fauvette, I don’t know. Between you and me, I’ll tell you a secret. It wasn’t entirely bad. I mean, yeah, being strung up by those dumb crackers was a pisser, but once I was there, I got to thinking about how it would feel to be really dead, and . . .” He trailed off into silence. Before Zginski came along, he never would’ve spoken these thoughts aloud. Hell, he never would’ve
thought
them. Had a few days’ sunlight changed him that much?

Fauvette lay down beside him and caressed his cheek. “Do you think that we may have finally outlived our time? That this world has changed to the point there’s no place for people like us?”

“Not as long as the sun still goes down every day and brings back the dark.”

“Even though we know now that we were never tied to the dark?”

“Personally, I like the shadows.” In an exaggerated minstrel voice he said, “If I don’t smile, I’m invisible.”

She grinned despite herself.

He said, “So if you learn to get by without killing people, will that make it all better?”

“It’ll make me more like most of the people I pass on the street.”

“Except you don’t get older and you don’t have a heartbeat.”

“Well, one thing at a time.”

He kissed her on the forehead, they hugged, and Leonardo left. Fauvette looked at herself in the bathroom mirror, wondering if death did lurk in her eyes. Certainly it could
put in an appearance when she was feeding, but was it always there?

There seemed to be no death in Patience, though. Her eyes sparkled with life, and humor, and kindness. Surely if she could shed it, Fauvette could do the same.

Z
GINSKI PARKED OUTSIDE
the decrepit old house, amazed at the utter coincidence. He and Leonardo had stopped here to ask directions on the day he bought Tzigane, the same day he met Patience Bolade. He must have glimpsed Prudence then, hidden by the harsh summer shadows. Neither he nor Leonardo had spotted her for a vampire, no doubt due to their own sun-weakened state.

He went to the garage and peered inside. The same big LTD he’d seen driving away from the Ringside sat inside. He put one hand flat on the hood, and found it still warm.

He opened the Mustang’s trunk and hoisted the dead Sammy Jo onto his shoulders. He carried her onto the porch and rang the doorbell. Many minutes went by before he sensed movement within. Finally a single lamp came on inside, a key turned laboriously in the lock, and the door swung open.

She wore an old-fashioned robe and nightgown, in a style Zginski recognized from the previous century. Its neckline revealed smooth shoulders and the hint of a firm bosom. A strand of blond hair fell down her forehead, and she seemed cool and confident. She also looked barely older than Fauvette.

Zginski dropped Sammy Jo to the porch. She landed with a loud thud.

Prudence looked at the girl, then up at him. She said in her thick, genteel Southern accent, “I thank you for the gift, sir, but I believe that girl is dead.”

“Indeed. As a result of your actions.”

One of Sammy Jo’s hands had fallen across the door’s threshold. Prudence scooted it back outside with her foot.

“You left a corpse with the clear marks of our kind where it could be easily found,” Zginski continued. “That trash receptacle is used frequently, and discovery was almost guaranteed.”

Prudence’s expression, like her voice, remained bland. “I simply threw away my garbage. The girl was unbearably rude to me, something I cannot abide. It seemed fitting that after failing to serve me inside the establishment, she then provided refreshment outside.”

Zginski was annoyed. Her lilting, honey-heavy drawl indicated she thought herself superior to him. “There were others of our kind inside, including me. Your action jeopardized us all.”

“The only one
I
was aware of was my sister, the evening’s entertainment.”

“Even if that is true, your conduct does not speak well of your discretion or intelligence.”

Her eyes flashed angrily. “Sir, I will not stand here and be insulted on my own property. Good evening to you.”

She tried to close the door, but he blocked it easily, pushed her back inside, and locked it behind him. “I will leave when I am certain there is no further danger. Your best course is to convince me.”

She glared at him. “Who are you, sir?” she demanded.

“I am Baron Rudolfo Vladimir Zginski.”

Her lips curled up slightly as her anger turned to
amusement. “My heavens, that’s a mouthful. What do your friends call you?”

He did not answer, but tried to sense if anyone else lurked in the house. The paintings and furniture spoke of both antiquity and wealth, although the money could have run out long ago. Still, at one time these were the best things money could buy, and they’d been maintained so that most of their value remained.

“We are quite alone, I assure you,” she said.

“Then let me get to the point. You must prove to me that your continued existence poses no danger. If you do not, your existence will end. That is the simple truth of it.”

She smiled, her fangs prominent. “Sir, I always presume upon the
kindness
of strangers, not their malevolence.”

“That is foolish.” He looked around the foyer. “How long have you been here?”

“Since I was born,” she said and turned on the chandelier. The light was dim and burnished.

“Does this estate have a name?”

“You mean like Dark Willows over yonder? No, the Crabtrees in their prime were far wealthier than we Bolades. Nor did we share their taste for ostentation. We simply called this place home.”

He spotted the portrait of Patience over the mantel. “Your sister is a most unusual creature.”

For an instant Prudence’s anger flashed like lightning in her blue eyes. Then her calm returned. “She always has been so. When we were children, she would do anything to be the center of attention. From what I saw tonight, the centuries have not altered that.”

“You sound envious.”

Prudence touched his arm and met his gaze steadily, with no malice. “Do you truly wish to hear about my sister, Baron Zginski? Or would you rather hear about me? I have not had
a handsome gentleman caller in ages, let alone one with the manners to present his arrogance in such a charming way.”

Zginski felt a twinge of something very like nervousness; first Patience’s blatant interest, and now her sister’s. He was entirely comfortable being the pursuer, much less so being pursued. It was how the original Tzigane had gotten past his defenses. “I wish to know as much as possible about you both.”

She fingered the sleeve of his jacket. “So you can decide which of us merits your, shall we say, amorous interest? There’s no need for beings like ourselves to play coy, now is there?”

It took all his effort to maintain his normal cool. “You do not seem to appreciate the danger you are in.”

She laughed, loud and musical. “Any danger you present is easily negated.”

“Indeed?” he said, now fully alert to attack. “And how would you negate it?”

“In the time-honored tradition of men and women,” she said, and with no warning stepped close and kissed him.

Before he could react it was over. He stayed perfectly still, expecting an attempt to exert her vampiric influence as well. But nothing happened.

She understood his thoughts. “Sir, I would not try to make you feel anything against your will. I hope you will extend the same courtesy to me.”

He saw her anew, her angular, lean beauty the opposite of her comfortably curved sister. He had no real preference in physical types, but certainly could not fault Prudence as a beauty. Both Bolade sisters posed challenges, but only Prudence, with her antique etiquette and mixture of demureness and aggression, seemed to understand him. “Do you feel,” he said, “that you have in fact removed me as a danger with a single kiss?”

“I am certain of it,” she said.

He smiled. Then he grabbed her and pulled her against him. He kissed her with the unrestrained fury of a being unconcerned with damaging his partner, an aspect he had last released on that night in the warehouse with Fauvette. Then he had been the undisputed master, reducing her to a state of almost unbearable desire to protect her from the intimate pain she would inevitably feel.

Here, though, it was a clash of equals. Their bodies surged with power, and their mouths struck together so hungrily their fangs clacked off each other. The gnawing kiss went on for minutes and when they broke apart, they each gasped even though neither could be out of breath.

“My goodness,” Prudence said. One side of her mouth was torn. “I stand corrected.”

He grabbed her by the neckline of her gown. “I will open myself to you,” he hissed. “Will you do the same?”

She nodded. “It has been quite some time for me, though,” she said breathlessly. “Will you be gentle?”

“No.”

She smiled, the rip in her flesh adding a slightly demonic quality to her face. “Then neither will I.” She flung herself at him again as he tore open the front of her nightgown.

An hour later they stood naked in the moonlight outside the wrought-iron fence that protected the small family plot. One tombstone bore Patience’s name, the other Prudence’s. Their mortal deaths were only one day apart.

Prudence turned to face him, her extraordinary form on display. Her breasts were pert and perfect, the tiny nipples upturned; her waist was narrow, and her hips wide and smooth. The soft hair between her thighs glistened. She nodded at a particular tombstone. “That is the grave of the man who had both Patience and me. He was also my first and, until this night, only lover.”

The waist-high marble pedestal sported a bas-relief of a thin-faced man with side whiskers.
COLONEL VINCENT DRAKE
, the marker proclaimed, 1830–1862.

Zginski’s body bore the marks of her enthusiasm. “What sort of man was he?”

“He was a handsome, dashing officer in the Confederate Army,” she said, her arm linked through Zginski’s. “His hair was so blond it often appeared white, and his voice was so seductive he could talk his way out of, or into, anything. His family pressured him to wed Patience, and he dutifully proposed, but he was truly in love with me.”