Blood Groove (14 page)

“She is my . . . I believe the closest English word is ‘victim.’ You may share her tonight, if you wish.”

“Victim? You use the same victim more than once?”

Zginski frowned, then recalled the way he’d witnessed her feed on the boy in the bed of the truck. “Yes. It is not necessary to kill a victim each time you feed.”

“But . . . if you don’t, they’ll tell people.”

He smiled paternally. “I see there are things I may teach you as well. Your first lesson will begin tonight: you may feed on Lee Ann, but only enough to sustain your existence. I will be very upset if she is permanently harmed.”

Before Fauvette could reply, Lee Ann emerged from the bathroom. She leaned wearily on the doorjamb. “The water’s ready. I have lots of soap and shampoo.”

Fauvette scooted across the bed and went quietly into the bathroom. Zginski scowled at the imprint of grease, dirt, and insects left on the bed. Lee Ann looked at Zginski for a long moment, but said nothing. Then she followed Fauvette.

Lee Ann closed the bathroom door. It was tight in the little space, and the smell from Fauvette quickly filled it. Lee Ann turned on the vent fan, which whined like an electrocuted cricket. “Okay, first thing is to get you out of those clothes.”

Fauvette removed the jeans, then the tank top, and placed them in a plastic garbage bag Lee Ann held. She wore
no underthings. Lee Ann tied the bag, opened the door, and tossed it outside. Then she gestured at the tub. “Climb in.”

Fauvette tentatively stepped into the water, which came up to her ankles. Then she lowered herself all the way. A sheen of oil quickly covered the surface as it sluiced off her skin along with other debris, some of it still living. Lee Ann wrinkled her nose. “Christ, when’s the last time you had a bath?”

Fauvette drew her knees to her chest and wrapped her arms around them. “Cleanliness is next to godliness, so what’s the point?” When she looked up again, Lee Ann had pulled off her blouse and was stepping out of her jeans. “What are you doing?”

“I don’t want to get whatever’s in that water all over my clothes,” Lee Ann almost sneered. In bra and panties, she knelt on a folded towel beside the tub, soaped up a washrag, and began running it roughly over Fauvette’s back.

“I’m not another of his victims, you know,” Fauvette said after the fifth hard scrape of the cloth across her spine. “I’m not your competition.”

“Save it,” Lee Ann said. “I don’t know whether
I’m
feeling something, or he’s making me. Maybe he wants me to be jealous, I don’t know.” She squeezed out the rag and applied more soap. “Man, this time yesterday I never would’ve believed any of this. Now look at me. Boy, was my mom right.”

She rubbed the rag over Fauvette’s face, revealing the corpse-pale skin beneath the dirt. She made no effort to be gentle. Fauvette turned and glared at her. “He
told
you to take care of me,” she snapped.

The change that came over Lee Ann was extraordinary. She looked like a child just told her parents had died. “No, please, I’m sorry,” she said urgently. “Don’t tell him, okay? You can do anything to me, you can beat me up or cuss me out or piss on me or anything, just don’t tell him.”

Fauvette couldn’t help staring. She had seen victims
aroused by vampires, but never anything like this. Somehow Zginski had inspired not only mere physical lust in Lee Ann, but something that looked, and felt, very much like
love
. The girl’s expression conveyed such naked emotional need that it was almost painful to see. “I won’t,” Fauvette said, and looked away.

Lee Ann washed her with careful delicacy after that, even cleaning her toenails. She attended to her intimate parts with gentle discretion. Then she helped Fauvette to her feet and opened the drain, letting out water the color of slate. A gritty residue remained in the tub. “It’d be easier on you if we washed your hair in the shower,” she said.

Fauvette sat on the closed toilet wrapped in a towel while they waited for the shower to warm up. Lee Ann stripped all the way, and Fauvette noticed the girl’s neck was unmarked. “Didn’t he feed on you?” she asked curiously.

Lee Ann put one foot on the side of the tub. On the inside of her thigh, near her groin, were two small punctures that went straight into the femoral artery. A thin trickle of blood oozed from the scab over one of them.

At the sight of the fresh bite, Fauvette suddenly felt her own hunger surge anew. She stepped into the shower, and felt Lee Ann behind her. She closed her eyes as the water cascaded over her, and stood very still while Lee Ann shampooed and rinsed her hair. She felt the girl’s hot, blood-filled nude body brush against her own, and clenched her fists to keep control. Finally the water began to grow cool, and Lee Ann said, “I think we’re done.”

Fauvette turned to face her. “We’re not done,” she practically growled.

Lee Ann swallowed. She blushed beneath her sea of freckles. “He s-said not to hurt me.”

“I won’t,” Fauvette said, stroking the other woman’s face. She had not fed from a woman in years, but now the hunger, and a victim so young, beautiful, and helpless, made
her ignore such considerations. “Get on your knees,” she said.

Lee Ann knelt in the shower before her. With the now-icy water cascading down on her back, Fauvette tilted Lee Ann’s head to one side and exposed the delicious jugular.

T
HE DIRT DRIVEWAY
to the warehouse wound needlessly through the overgrown field around the building, a security measure so no one could approach unheralded. Scattered throughout the weeds were various bits of mechanical debris to disable any vehicles that tried a more direct approach.

Mark parked the truck in the back next to the loading dock. In its heyday workers piled cotton bales and produce onto lines of eager flatbeds. Age and weather had long ago collapsed the tin overhang, and Mark had carefully arranged it to hide the truck in a deep pool of shadow. The battered vehicle itself completed its own camouflage.

Mark turned off the ignition and watched the cavernous dock openings. He desperately wanted Fauvette to appear from the shadows, her white skin shining like ivory, with a perfectly reasonable explanation for her no-show in town. Then they could all enjoy the two victims in the camper in a vicious orgy of sanguinary consumption. But nothing moved except the wildlife that shared the warehouse with them.

Mark opened the truck’s door and climbed out. A possum
hissed at him, then scurried away into the crumbling foundation. “Fauvette?” he called.

“She ain’t here, bro,” Leonardo said quietly as he climbed out. He patted Mark on the shoulder with genuine sympathy. “Just accept it. She went her own way tonight, like always. It don’t mean nothing. You got to stop feeling so responsible for everything. We all plenty old enough to make our own decisions about things.”

Olive opened the window over the tailgate and peered inside. “Hello, my little giblets. Ready for the last night of your life?” She looked at the Hispanic boy and crooked her finger. He sat up and almost leaped from the truck, gazing rapturously at her. She cupped his groin and giggled.

“Well, most of us,” Leonardo corrected.

Danielle wanted to move, too, but that would mean disobeying her new owner, and she couldn’t do that.
Owner
, she thought in astonishment. The word had simply appeared in her consciousness with no forethought or choice. It certainly seemed appropriate, given how she was responding to him. Could she muster the strength of will to fight his influence?

She looked down at her foot, barely visible in the darkness, and willed it to move forward toward the open window. If she could do that, then she could move both feet, and maybe make a break for freedom. All she had to do was move her right foot, proving she could overcome her owner’s commands.

Nothing happened.

All she had to do . . .

Infinitesimally, her foot slid forward, the rubber sole squeaking softly on the metal.

Mark suddenly appeared in the window. “C’mon,” he muttered, and she jumped to obey, scrambling over the tailgate with the same humiliating alacrity. She stood outside the truck looking at him, desperate for his attention yet terrified of receiving it. She wondered breathlessly if he would
grope her as Olive had done with her captive, and the worst part was that she
wanted
it. She
had
to break this obscene hold; whatever these kids were, she knew that continuing to follow his orders would soon prove fatal.

Olive took her young man by the hand. “Can I play with her, too?” she asked, nodding at Danielle. “She’s pretty.”

“What? Oh. Sure,” Mark said distractedly. He turned to Danielle. “Go with Olive and do whatever she says. You’re hers as much as mine now.”

The sensation that followed these words was almost unbearable. Danielle felt something inside her, some emotion she never knew she possessed, wrench like a cramping muscle; suddenly the fascination she felt for this boy was now shared by the pudgy black girl, and it was both disorienting and nauseating. She knew some women enjoyed sex with other women, but she had never even considered it before, let alone with a black. Now, though, she had the same physical response for Olive that she did for Mark.

Olive knew it, too. “Ain’t that a sight,” she said with a grin; it displayed the elongated canines behind her full lips. “Come on, you two, it’s time for all of us to get better acquainted.”

Mark shoved the door aside, and it screeched on the track where he’d bent it earlier. The full moon cast long blue rectangles on the littered floor. He immediately headed toward the stairwell that led down to the boiler room. “Don’t forget,” he called over his shoulder, “leave some for me.”

“We won’t forget,” Leonardo assured him.

“Forget what?” Olive asked in all seriousness.

   Mark stepped into the boiler room. “Fauvette?” No response. He opened the door to the boiler itself. Fauvette’s coffin was empty.

He picked his way through the rubble around it, looking for some hint where she’d gone. It didn’t appear she’d taken
anything in preparation for a long trip. Then again, what did a vampire truly need except a small amount of grave dirt and a place to hide from the sun? But her coffin still rested on its cinder blocks, surrounded by piles of musty, crud-covered garments.

He noticed the dust on one particular pile of clothes had been disturbed. Finger marks were plain in the dirt and grime.

He carefully poked under them, ignoring the protesting screech from a mouse nursing her young somewhere in the folds of fabric. He felt the loose edge of a metal plate, hooked his fingers under it, and lifted. The mouse shrieked as she and her brood tumbled through a hole in the boiler floor.

This exposed a small cavity in the boiler bottom. He groped inside, dislodging two large roaches and a snake, and felt a plastic bag at the far reach of his fingers. Carefully he worked it forward until he got a good grip and pulled it out.

The bag held some sort of gray powder, so light it left an ashlike film on the inside of the bag. Yet it was clearly granular, with a consistency somewhere between baby powder and salt.

A dry, musty scent escaped when he unwrapped the metal tie. He sniffed carefully, intrigued by the odor, which seemed somehow both compelling and familiar. He licked his fingertip, touched it to the powder, lifted it to his tongue, and took a quick, experimental taste.

   Danielle and the boy followed Olive into the big open space of the warehouse, moving through the huge squares of moonlight on the floor. Olive danced to a nonsense tune she hummed, then stopped and looked at the two entranced victims. “Well. A pair of real beauties here, aren’t you? So let’s have a look at you.”

She nodded at the boy. “You first. Let’s see you.”

The boy quickly whipped off his shirt. His chest was
sharply muscled, and his abdominals stood out in cut relief. He slid down his pants and underwear all at once, allowing his erection to bob free. It cast a significant shadow, and Olive’s eyes opened wide. He kicked off his shoes and socks and stood naked except for a St. Christopher medal.