Blood Groove

by Alex Bledsoe

  “Aw, man,” Leonardo said plaintively, “you didn’t have to kill her.” He stroked her hair; clumps of her now-brittle Afro came loose in his fingers.

  Danielle’s rage surged anew. “After what she put me through? After what she cost me? You bet I did.” She looked them over and snapped, “Where is he? That long-haired jackass Rudy.”

  They looked around. Zginski had disappeared.

  Fauvette felt a chill. Either he would save them, or he’d fled and would never return. She could not predict which would happen.

  Danielle pointed the gun at Mark. “You. Move away from everyone. You’re next.”

  Mark took a slow step away from Fauvette. He knew the look in this woman’s eyes; he remembered it from the mob that killed Praline. There would be no talking her out of this, and he couldn’t really blame her. Indirectly, they had caused the death of her friends. That didn’t mean he’d just stand there and let her shoot him, though.

  He reached out with his nosferatic ability. It had no effect: she had smeared herself with a solution made from the gray powder, allowing it to soak into her pores and intimate areas until it permeated her. She also lined her underwear with it for extra protection, which had seemed incredibly silly until this very moment, when it suddenly became brilliant.

  “Wait,” Fauvette said, moving between Mark and Danielle. She just managed to keep her voice low and even. “Please, let’s talk. Just what do you think we are?”

  Danielle narrowed her eyes. “I know what you are.”

  “We’re just people, ma’am,” she said, going for her best helpless act. “Just like you, no matter what our slightly loony friend told you. You can see he didn’t stick around once things got serious. I don’t know exactly what happened at the cemetery, but you followed Mark of your own free will, and if things got out of hand later, well, you have to share some of the blame.”

  “No,” Danielle hissed. “I know what happened.”

  “I understand you’re upset,” Fauvette pressed, not wanting to give Danielle time to think. “You did some grubby things, maybe took some drugs, and your friends also died. I’m very sorry, that is a big couple of blows, but to try to blame us, to convince yourself that we’re some kind of monsters just to ease your own guilt . . . that’s not very sensible, ma’am.”

  Danielle’s resolve crumbled just a bit, but the gun didn’t waver. Could it all really have been drugs? Had the pot been laced with some hallucinogen? “Wait . . . how old are you?”

  That caught Fauvette off guard. After a moment’s hesitation, she blurted, “Fourteen, ma’am.”

  “You sound awfully grown-up for fourteen. What music do you like?”

  Fauvette drew a blank. She never listened to music except in passing. “Uh—” she said, unable to come up with anything.

  “Yeah,” Danielle said triumphantly. “A teenager who hangs out on the street and doesn’t know the latest music. Right. Now get out of my way, or I start with you.”

  “For God’s sake, you shot some kind of acid into Olive’s heart, didn’t you?” Fauvette said desperately. “That doesn’t prove she was a vampire, that would kill anybody.”

  “It wouldn’t kill them that way,” Danielle said with certainty. “I’m a coroner, bitch, I know a lot about how people die.”

  “Please . . .” Fauvette started helplessly.

  Danielle smiled, stepped to one side, and before Fauvette could again block her, shot Mark in the heart.

  Mark grunted at the impact, and it knocked him back a step. But it felt just like any other time he’d been shot, and that brought a rush of relief. He covered the smoking opening with his hands and managed to stand straight.

  Danielle narrowed her eyes, and continued to smile. “So much for your bullshit excuses. A normal human being wouldn’t be standing there after that.”

  “Mark?” Fauvette asked warningly.

  “It’s okay,” he said. Then he felt numbness spreading from the injury, burrowing through his body. He recognized it, too: the same sensation the mere taste of the gray powder gave him earlier, but much stronger, wiping out his energy, his ability to move, to think . . .

  He fell to his knees, and looked helplessly at Fauvette. “Ah, hell,” he said, disgusted with his own weakness. This was even less dignified than Praline’s destruction or Olive’s death. He toppled face forward onto the warehouse floor.

  “Mark!” Fauvette shrieked. When she raised his head, his eyes had the same glassy look as Zginski’s back at the museum. Fauvette glared at Danielle. “You maniac, what did you do?”

  She’d dipped a whole box of cartridges in a gelatin solution liberally spiked with what was left of the gray powder Zginski gave her for analysis, but saw no need to explain that. “Doesn’t matter. Now it’s your turn. Stand up.”

  “No,” Fauvette snarled. “Kill me right here, if you’re going to. Next to him.” Fate had decided her loyalties, and in these last moments she would honor them.

  Danielle grabbed Fauvette by the hair and yanked her to her feet. “I said move! You bastards will do what I say this time!”

  Leonardo said calmly, “Hey, y’all, wait a minute.”

  Danielle released Fauvette and turned to look at him.

  He stood beside Olive’s remains, his hands spread in a gesture of supplication. “All right, let’s look at this mathematically,” he said in what he hoped was the most reasonable tone in the world. “You had two friends get killed ’cause of us, and now you done killed two of ours. Ain’t that enough? Ain’t we even now?”

  Danielle shot him in the heart. The impact knocked him back into the wall, and he slid to the floor. She shrieked, “ ‘Even’? You freak, I’m not doing this for me, I’m doing it so nobody else has to go through that! Do you know what it feels like? Do you have any idea what being one of your . . . your victims is like?”

  “Yes,” Fauvette said quietly. “We all do.”

  Danielle struck Fauvette hard across the face with the gun. Fauvette snapped her head back up, glaring.

  “We were all victims once,” Fauvette continued through clenched teeth, and felt gingerly around the torn, unbleeding skin on her cheek. “That’s how we became what we are.”

  “And what about your victims?”

  She lowered her eyes. She lacked the energy to continue this, even without the powder. “Hell, maybe you’re right. Maybe we should all die. We are what we are.” All the elation, all the hope Zginski had brought, disappeared along with him. He’d abandoned them, she realized with certainty. There would be no rescue, no moment when he would charge forward to save them; he was, after all, only interested in himself. How could she have dared to believe the world of daylight would be hers again, that her existence as a demonic killer could coexist with the sun?

  “No,” Danielle said as she aimed the gun at Fauvette’s chest, “what you were.”

  They both heard a soft, metallic tap and turned toward it. Mark had vanished; a single bullet rested on the floor where his body had sprawled a moment ago.

  CHAPTER 35

  DANIELLE SPUN IN place. “Where are you?!” she called. “Come out, or I’ll blow her damn head off! I mean it!”

  Fauvette scooted over to Leonardo, who was barely conscious. “I don’t feel anything,” he whispered. “My legs don’t work, my arms . . .”

  Danielle looked around the warehouse. There was no handy place for Mark to hide, and he couldn’t have made it all the way to any of the doors . . . could he? She glared at Fauvette. “All right, you slippery bastard,” she called to Mark. “You want to hide while your girlfriend dies? Fine.”

  Mark, now no more than a thin layer of dust hanging in the air, hovered insubstantially in front of Danielle. Transforming into mist had taken all his remaining strength, and he wasn’t even sure he could change back. He felt distant, above it all, numb to the reality that this woman was about to kill Fauvette. At one level he wanted to watch, to see if death looked different from this weird perspective.

&n
bsp; The bullet had almost completely overwhelmed him when he suddenly recalled the way he’d felt back in his store, when for a moment he believed he actually turned transparent. If Zginski could do it, he should be able to as well.

  Fighting the numb apathy, he tried to bring that mind-set back. And then, like some switch being thrown, it worked: he dissolved into a fine cloud of mist. Even his clothes vanished, but because the bullet was coated with the gray powder, it did not, slipping through his misty form and hitting the floor. He rose above them, amazed that everything looked so crystal-clear and peaceful. He moved just by thinking, and drifted slowly in front of Danielle, in position to do . . . what? He couldn’t physically act in this state. And now the woman had her gun aimed at Fauvette, who looked helpless and dejected and so very beautiful . . .

  Danielle cocked the gun.

  With all his strength of will, Mark concentrated on reconstituting himself, dragging his diaphanous form into a single cloud, connecting molecules again to form bones and muscles and skin and hair and clothes. A wave of nausea struck him, and he was conscious of the obscene sense of his own bodily processes as they re-formed and jumped into action all at once . . .

  Danielle sighted along the barrel at the spot where Fauvette’s cleavage began just above the neckline of her shirt.

  • • •

  Now he felt disoriented, suddenly unsure what was up or down, which way he was falling, if he was falling or just standing still, and the nerve endings fired in an agony of sensation as his feet contacted the floor . . .

  Danielle pulled the trigger.

  Mark appeared directly in front of Danielle, coagulating out of the dust in the air. The bullet struck him under his left collarbone. He slapped the gun out of her hand, and then grabbed her by the throat. He lifted her and roared his pain and fury. She kicked madly and tore at his face.

  Then he snapped her neck. She went limp, eyes wide, and he threw her into the wall.

  Mark managed to stay on his feet. The bullet’s numbness spread, but it wasn’t as intense this time, and he wobbled a bit but didn’t fall. Maybe he was developing some sort of immunity to this stuff, or—

  “Mark . . .” a small voice said behind him. He turned.

  The bullet had passed completely through him and struck its target. The ragged hole between Fauvette’s breasts still smoked as she stared down at it. Then she toppled backward, her legs twisted awkwardly under her.

  “Fauvette—!” Mark croaked and stumbled over to her. The bullet had pierced her heart, and she stared blankly at the ceiling. But as his face moved over hers, her eyes focused on him.

  “That . . . stings . . .” she sighed. But the pain was fading into the numbness she knew so well from the gray powder, and she understood that her death—her second death, her final death—would be painless. She smiled.

  Mark plunged his fingers into the hole, trying not to do any additional damage to her heart. He felt past the shivering cardiac flesh to where the bullet had impacted against the tough muscles that expanded the lungs, and pulled the slug free. The top of the nearest auricle was torn and shredded, though, and he felt the blood—thicker than humans, jellylike due to their colder body temperature—oozing out. There was nothing he could do.

  With the last of his strength, Leonardo crawled to her. “Hey, Fauvy, looks like we’re going on the same trip,” he managed.

  “It’s so . . . peaceful . . .” she sighed.

  Mark looked at her helplessly. “Fauvette, damn,” he said desperately.

  “Just stay with me while I go,” she whispered. “So many things I wanted to find out . . .”

  “Here,” a new voice said. Mark and Leonardo looked up.

  Zginski dropped Danielle’s limp body next to them. “Feed,” he said in his most arrogant, commanding tone. “This bitch is not dead yet, and the fresh blood may save you.”

  Danielle’s eyes looked around wildly. She felt nothing from her shattered neck down, and when she tried to speak she seemed to have no air in her lungs. She saw Zginski over her, and his hands turned her head. Something else audibly snapped in her neck, but she didn’t feel it. Then he lifted Fauvette and placed her mouth against Danielle’s throat. The vague sense of pressure was all she felt as the girl’s fangs sank home.

  Leonardo took one limp wrist and slid his fangs into her weak, fluttery pulse. Mark did the same with the other wrist. Danielle’s head thundered with pain as her blood was quickly and efficiently drained.

  Zginski leaned down. “You should have let us vanish from your lives. You survived the first time you sought us out; you will not survive this.”

  “I don’t care,” Danielle croaked wetly. “They’re all . . . already gone . . .”

  Zginski looked at the others. She was right; there was not enough blood for the three of them to overcome the damage, and Danielle would die within minutes anyway. He thought for a moment, weighing options. Then with a smile of irony, he raised his left wrist to his mouth and bit into his own veins. As the blood began to flow, he pressed the wound to Danielle’s lips.

  She tried to resist, but lacked even the strength to close her mouth against this invasion. The warm salty liquid trickled over her teeth, oozed around her tongue as she tried to push the vile fluid from her mouth, drained down her throat past the threshold of numbness and into her, into her.

  Her last conscious thought was of the thunder in her ears as her heart pounded desperately, then went silent.

  CHAPTER 36

  FAUVETTE OPENED HER eyes. Everything was dark, still, and quiet. Was this true death?

  She slowly sat up, and stopped when her head encountered a familiar barrier. She lay back down and, using her hands, carefully pushed aside the lid of her coffin. There was no light outside, but her vampire senses told her everything was as she remembered. If this was the afterlife, it was rather mundane.

  She climbed slowly from the box. She wore only her jeans, and on the floor found her tank top, the neckline ragged and burned from the bullet. She immediately felt between her breasts for the hole, but none was there, only smooth cold flesh.

  Her last memories were of Mark and Leonardo looking down at her. No, there was more, a vague recollection of feeding on someone, except the blood tasted incredibly different, almost bitterly strong, and it seemed to make her insides itch. But it was more of a sense memory than a true conscious one, and she could recall no details about whose blood it had been.

  She pulled on another T-shirt and her flip-flops. Carefully she opened the door and crawled out of the boiler.

  The coffins belonging to Leonardo and Toddy were where she remembered them, although Toddy’s stood open and Leonardo’s was closed. She ran her fingers along the edge of the lid, wondering what she would find if she opened it. Leonardo had been shot, too; was he also good as new? Or was he crumpled to a pile of bones and dusty clothing, like Olive? One simple action and she would know.

  She decided to wait. Either way, it seemed the more respectful option.

  She went up the stairs. It was night again, or still; either she’d been asleep for minutes, or the whole day. She saw no one in the warehouse proper, so she went into the office where Mark’s coffin rested. Its lid was also closed. She rushed to it and was about to open it when a familiar voice said, “Not yet.”

  She turned. Zginski stood in the office doorway.

  “They will join us shortly,” he said. “I would like the opportunity to speak privately to you.”

  She stepped away from the coffin, her fists clenched. Anger and confusion battled for supremacy. “You let that woman . . .” She trailed off, uncertain how to finish. What exactly had the raging Dr. Roseberry done to them?

  Zginski nodded. “Let us step outside. I will offer no excuses, but will attempt an explanation.”

  She seriously considered refusing, but ultimately knew she wouldn’t. She had to know what had happened.

  They crossed the warehouse floor. By the door, Fauvette paused beside what was left
of Olive. The rock-dumb but beautiful girl had vanished, replaced by a dusty, sagging cadaver that already bore evidence of rat damage. The hole burned in her chest was big enough for a softball.

  “We will deal appropriately with her remains,” Zginski said softly, taking her arm and pulling her along.

  Outside, Fauvette saw that Lee Ann’s funeral pyre was now no more than a blackened patch of bare ground. Low clouds scudded across the stars. The intermittent wind was hot with the promise of the late summer.

  Zginski turned to face her, arms crossed. “Your injuries were the most severe, so if you have recovered, I have no doubt your friends will as well.”

  “Except Olive.”

  “Yes. I was unable to help her.”

  “You didn’t even try,” she hissed, fury rising.

  “No,” he agreed. “When the good doctor attacked her, I left.”

  “You ran.”

  He nodded. “As you say. Old habits. I have always considered only myself worthy of my concern.”

  “Good for you.” Her anger rose again, mixing with shame at her own gullibility. “You made us trust you. We helped you.”

  He shrugged. “Yes. That is a useful skill to develop.”

  “I’ll work on it,” she almost spat.

  “I will not lie to you. When I saw the confrontation begin, I had every intention of leaving. I believed myself quite willing to sacrifice you and your friends in order to, as the common folk say, ‘save my own skin.’ ”

  He looked away, and wind blew his long hair back from his face, as if exposing something previously hidden. “And yet . . . something pulled me back. Do you recall the denouement of the film Blacula? He chose destruction rather than being alone, and in a way, I did the same. I was unable to leave you at the mercy of that woman, so I destroyed my former selfishness. I will not descend into maudlin cliché, but I find that I have grown more attached to you than I expected. As I did with the late Lee Ann. I could not save her without violating her wishes. But you . . .”