by Alex Bledsoe
“Help me?”
Even more deliberately she said, “Yes. You might still be able to save her. Fauvette.”
“Her heart is destroyed. No vampire can survive that. Her body has irretrievably decomposed.” The thought of it made him wince again. “If she could be saved, I would have done so. There was no way.”
“No way that you know.”
Some of the haze cleared, and with a hint of the old arrogance he demanded, “What are you saying? Speak plainly.”
She stood and offered her hand. “Come with me.”
When he touched her, she felt a surge of the old desire for him, and sucked in a sharp breath. He got to his feet and gestured for her to precede him. He followed her into the kitchen. As she washed the blood from her hands she said, “I finished translating the section of the Festa Maggotta that deals with vampires. A lot are things you already told me. In fact, because that spoke well of its accuracy, I believed the parts you didn’t confirm.”
She dried her hands, opened a cabinet door, and removed a plastic half-gallon pitcher. A dark liquid sloshed in it as she placed it on the counter. “And one of the things I believed,” she finished, “was the recipe for this.”
“What is it?”
She smiled wryly. “You won’t believe me.”
“You have never lied to me, either.”
“This is a time travel potion for vampires.”
He was silent for a moment, then said, “That is absurd.”
“Of course it is. Time travel is an impossibility in the H.G. Wells sense. But this doesn’t work the way you think. It rewinds your inner existence, like a tape recording. So you essentially go back in your own consciousness, and yet keep all the memories of what has already happened. It gets rid of that whole being-in-two-places-at-once problem, because it all happens inside your head.”
Zginski leaned down and sniffed at the spout. The liquid smelled foul. “What does it contain?”
“Black tea, hemlock, datura, belladonna, and something called ricin. Along with some other things.”
He lifted the olive-green top. The substance was deep burgundy, like the color of a bruise. It even left a yellowish skim around the edge. “How far back is one able to go?”
“If I’ve translated it right, twenty-four hours. You drink it, and suddenly it’s yesterday, yet you remember everything that’s going to happen tomorrow.” She paused. “Would that give you time to save . . . what was her name?”
“Fauvette.”
“Yeah, Fauvette. Beautiful name.”
His eyes narrowed as his normal skepticism arose. He replaced the pitcher’s top and said, “And exactly why would someone develop this?”
“It’s to give a new vampire a second chance. If you simply can’t abide your undead condition, you drink this and change the circumstances that turned you into a vampire.”
“Then it takes you back to a mortal existence.”
“That was its purpose, yeah.”
“I have been a vampire far longer than twenty-four hours.”
She shrugged. “I don’t know what to say. It might work, it might not. The ingredients are all toxic to humans, but I don’t think it can kill you; you’re already dead, after all. And ultimately, it’s the only chance you have, isn’t it?”
“And why have you created this concoction?”
She laughed. “Why do you think?”
It took a moment, but he realized. “You believed that as your death neared, your conviction would waver.”
“That’s a very wordy way to say it.”
He smiled. “You worried that you might . . . ‘chicken up’?”
“Chicken out,” she corrected with a giggle. “Yeah.”
Despite himself, he was intrigued. “But what proof do you have that it works?”
“None. I just thought you might like to know about it.”
Again he gazed at the pitcher, wondering if this ridiculous claim could be true. Fauvette’s face, unbidden, sprang to his memory with a vividness only timeless beings like vampires possessed. A fresh wave of fury and, worst of all, guilt swelled in him. He could not believe he had judged things so badly that it resulted in Fauvette’s destruction.
“It is possible,” he mused, “that this concoction was simply presented as what you say. In reality it might be a means to destroy a new vampire, or compel one to destroy itself. I have encountered substances like that before.”
“That’s true. I guess the question is, how important is this Fauvette person to you? Is she worth that big a risk?”
The liquid’s surface stilled until it reflected a steady image of the ceiling light fixture. “What is the prescribed dosage?” he said at last.
“All of it. As fast as possible. In one swallow, if you can.”
He picked up the pitcher and raised it to his mouth. At the last moment he paused and lowered it. “You would not betray me at this moment, would you, Alisa?”
At one time this paranoia would have angered her, but now he seemed almost pathetic in his suspicion. “There’s only one way to find out. One choice, one chance. But just in case . . .” She kissed him on the cheek. “Thank you for making me forget the pain.”
He nodded. He touched the plastic spout to his lips. The fumes enveloped his face, stinging his eyes and making his flesh crawl. And in the brightly lit kitchen of a fancy Germantown home, a centuries-old revenant drank an elixir to send him back through time.
CHAPTER 31
AT FIRST NOTHING happened.
Zginski drank the pitcher’s contents in one long swallow. It was the first time he’d consumed anything other than blood since he’d been turned, and everything about it felt wrong.
The taste was awful, like some industrial solvent obscenely mixed with an excess of citrus. It smelled like the surplus drippings of some offal collection tank. It slid down his gullet in slime-coated lumps and congealed in his belly like some sort of gelatin. He leaned against the counter as physical nausea swept over him. The whole ghastly contents threatened to leap back up his throat and splatter on the polished Formica.
“Rudy?” Alisa asked. Her voice seemed very far away. Something was happening to him.
It was stranger than he could’ve imagined. His body grew warm, then hot, radiating a sensation as if he were about to burst into flames. He heard sizzling as the caustic chemicals chewed into his flesh, and his vision grew blurry and indistinct. He attempted to place the pitcher back on the counter, but misjudged his strength and crushed it instead, cracking the countertop beneath it. It is destroying me, he thought. He turned to Alisa, determined to make her pay for her treachery.
Suddenly everything went blank.
Not black, blank. Black was a sensation of color, and now there was nothing at all. He tried to move, shout, run. He tried to think. He felt himself drifting even as he stayed immobile, and the contradiction terrified him.
A roaring grew in intensity until his ears throbbed with the pain. He tried to cover them, but could not get his hands to move. He felt a rush of disorientation as he realized he had no physical form at all, just a consciousness stripped free of the corporeal world and sent into the void.
Then he recognized where he was. He knew this place.
It was the same nowhere, the same nothingness that Sir Francis Colby consigned him to in 1915 by driving a golden blade into his heart. He was back in it, and this time there would be no rejuvenation.
The realization triggered a rush of panic. Alisa had destroyed him as a final act before her own death. Women were treacherous, and he’d been a fool to ignore the danger. And now, like Fauvette, it was too late.
He cursed the universe for allowing this. He cursed Alisa for tricking him, and he cursed himself for falling for it. And he cursed Fauvette for being so beautiful and kind and alluring and perfect that he would risk his own existence in a pointless, doomed attempt to save hers.
The void swallowed him, burrowed into him, consumed him, and made itself part of
him. He tried to scream. But he needed a mouth for that.
CHAPTER 32
THEN, LIKE A train ending its downhill run by slamming into a mountainside, he was suddenly back in his body and aware of his surroundings. He opened his eyes.
He stood on the porch outside Prudence Bolade’s door. It was night, and the trees and grass hummed with insects. The dead waitress Sammy Jo was draped across his shoulders. His legs wobbled from the unexpected weight, and he almost collapsed. He leaned against the door frame and waited for the dizziness to subside.
The reality of the moment overwhelmed him. It worked, he told himself. I am where I was last night, before Fauvette’s death. He recalled making certain Sammy Jo’s corpse was destroyed in the fire, so if it was here, intact, there could be no other explanation. He had indeed rewound his own life and traveled back in time.
But now what? He could rush back to Memphis and protect Fauvette, but that would be awkward and uncertain. No, since he was here, the most efficient thing would be to eliminate the threat before it could strike. That would also spare him any uncomfortable explanations.
He silently put down the body and stood very still, listening. Nothing moved within. He had rung the doorbell before; had he done so yet?
He waited many long minutes. No lights appeared, and no one opened the door.
He turned the knob firmly until it stopped, then wrenched it so that the lock’s mechanism failed. In the silence the metallic breaking noise sounded like a cannon. He pushed the door open and peered into the darkened house.
Prudence slept in an upstairs bedroom; she’d shown it to him, or rather would show it to him had the night followed its original course. They had coupled on the ancient bed, their exertions sending clouds of dust into the air.
He ascended the steps in silence, opened the bedroom door, and found her lying still and immobile on the bed, a corpse for all intents and purposes. The mattress and bedclothes were permanently impressed with her form.
He shook his head. A vampire resting at night when she was most powerful was a sad mockery of her prior life. She held on to it the same way she clung to the grudge against Patience. She was so beautiful, like a china doll, with her hair softly arranged on the silk pillow. The lace at her bosom gave her a gentle, angelic countenance. Her lips, full and bowed, begged for a final kiss, like a storybook heroine awakened by Prince Charming.
Instead he drove his fist through her chest, out her back, and halfway through the ancient down mattress. Her heart was destroyed.
He did not stay to watch her body crumble. He searched the house from attic to cellar, using up time originally spent on sex to check for anything that might prove valuable to him. He found nothing; there were many antiques and pieces of artwork, but nothing that would aid the existence of a being like himself. Then he repeated the burning of her house. The Bolade homestead, like its undead occupant, had outlived its time.
He reached the end of the driveway only moments later than he had done in the original timeline, but it was enough. Another car approached on the dark highway, and instead of passing it slowed and stopped, blocking his way. The door opened, and Byron Cocker got out. He stood in Zginski’s headlights, one big fist clenched around a baseball bat.
Zginski emerged from his own vehicle. “This is an ill-advised course of action,” he said.
Cocker pointed with the bat. “Looks like something’s on fire back yonder, and here I see you driving away. I think that merits a little looking into.”
“You are no longer an officer of the law.”
Cocker smiled. He was so ecstatic at this coincidence that he could barely keep from laughing aloud. He smacked the bat into his palm. “Son, this bat is all the law I need. You and me, we’re gonna settle things right now.”
“What is the basis of this enmity?” Zginski demanded. When he saw the confused frown crease Cocker’s face, he rephrased it as, “Why are you determined to do me harm?”
Cocker pointed the bat at the Mustang. “That should be my car. I deserve it, for what sheriffing in this miserable county cost me. And then you pop up, not even an American, and swipe it right out from under me. That just plain ain’t right.”
This had not happened in the previous reality, and Zginski was unsure how to proceed. Should he destroy the threat or try to avoid it?
“Got nothing to say?” Cocker taunted. “Why don’t you try begging me not to kick your ass? That’ll make it even sweeter.”
Zginski said nothing. Instead he simply got back in his car, put it in gear, and floored the gas pedal. Cocker barely jumped aside as the Mustang careened down into the ditch to avoid the Impala and bottomed out before bouncing back onto the road. Then it roared off toward Memphis.
“Get back here, you son of a bitch!” Cocker screamed as he flung the bat after Zginski. It clattered uselessly on the road.
“You’re not doing this to me,” Cocker seethed. He jumped back into the Impala, squealed tires in a U-turn, and left long black streaks before the rubber finally caught the road.
Zginski had a head start, and a faster car. Cocker knew this yet continued to chase him, the gas pedal slammed to the floor. He flew down the straightaways and took the curves on two wheels as the taillights ahead of him grew smaller and fainter.
“No,” he snarled at the universe, “this ain’t fair!”
The Impala left the pavement on the next curve at nearly a hundred miles an hour and hit an oak tree. The momentum split the car in half so that the tree trunk ended up in the center of the dashboard. Cocker was ejected through the windshield, smashed into the bank of a culvert, and rolled down into it. He was dead on impact.
Unaware of the crash, Zginski slowed down to the normal speed limit when he was certain he’d lost Cocker. He drove back to Memphis and, instead of going straight to Alisa’s as he’d done before, detoured to drive slowly past Fauvette’s apartment. He saw nothing, and the sunrise kept him from sensing anything. But just knowing she was in there comforted him more than he expected.
When he finally reached Alisa’s house, he carefully washed the soot and Prudence’s blood from his hands, and changed into a clean shirt before going in search of Alisa. She was asleep on the daybed in her study, the blanket pulled up to her chin despite the heat. The cancer’s bite was growing stronger, and she had little time left. He sat down on the floor beside her and touched her hand.
Instantly he knew she was dead.
He remained beside her for a long time. The sun rose until it no longer shone directly in the windows. At last he stood and gently tugged the blanket over her face. He turned to her desk, intending to gather her notes on the Festa Maggotta.
It was empty. Everything was gone: photocopies, notepads, all her pages and pages of translations. He checked the drawers, the filing cabinet, everywhere. Then he noticed the fireplace.
It was late summer, so a fire shouldn’t be necessary. But the ashes were fresh, and voluminous. And he found an un-burned scrap of paper that had come from her notebook.
She had burned everything.
He sat in her desk chair, stunned and confused. In the day’s original timeline, Zginski’s fury caused him to lose touch with her, and her pain returned full force. But in this new reality, he had been careful to maintain the link so that she would not suffer. Yet this time he had been so preoccupied he hadn’t felt her die.
He looked at the body on the sofa. Had she died of natural causes, or had she killed herself? If the latter, surely she must’ve left a suicide note. He searched the house from bedroom to garage, and found no trace of any of her work. The time-travel elixir was gone as well, because in this reality, she’d never concocted it; the pitcher she’d used remained dusty and untouched in the cabinet. He sat and stared at her dead face for a long time before it occurred to him to check his own resting place in the cellar.
A neat envelope lay on his bed. He opened it and found a note that read:
I’ve decided to end this now. What I’ve discovered
in the book convinced me to destroy my notes and translations. Some knowledge is too dangerous for man’s eyes. And I can’t take the chance of seeing you again. Thank you for all you’ve done.
He put the note back on the bed. Apparently the universe would have its pound of flesh, whether undead or otherwise. He had saved Fauvette from Prudence, at the cost of arriving too late to save Alisa from herself. If that was the barter, then he could accept it.
There was nothing to be done except remove the few traces of his presence and arrange for the body to be found. He had taken care of everything else.
It was past ten when he left Alisa’s. Fauvette would be arriving at the Ringside to prepare for the lunch crowd, and he wished to see her. He considered very briefly relating the truth about what had happened, and telling her that he loved her, but decided that moment could wait. Blurting it out like some adolescent would just make him look foolish. The right occasion would present itself. Their kind always had plenty of time.
He parked his car in the back and entered through the kitchen door. Patience tinkered away on the piano in the dining room, but otherwise the building was empty. He stopped outside the ladies’ room, recalling the other time and its ghastly surprises. This time he knocked softly and said, “Fauvette? Are you in there?”
The door was yanked open and she peered out. Her blouse was half-buttoned. “What?” she said coldly.
“May I speak to you?”
“Words are coming outta your mouth, so you must be speaking.”
He tried to push the door open, but she blocked it. “I have to get ready for work, Rudy. We can talk later.”
She had never been lovelier than at that moment. Her long brown hair, big eyes, and soft face were hardened by her anger. Her dishabille added a touch of sexiness that surprised and pleased him. Even though he would always bear the memory of holding her corpse as it fell apart in his arms, the relief he felt at seeing her, at knowing she’d avoided that awful fate, was stronger than any other emotion he could recall. He wanted to laugh from joy.
