The Girls With Games of Blood (32 page)

The man’s date of death was the same as Patience’s. “How did he die?”

“Patience killed him. He was her first victim after she became what she is. I insisted he be buried in the family plot, since by all rights he would’ve been part of the family, one way or another.”

He turned her to face him. Her body was bone-white in the moonlight. “And you worry,” he said as he raised her chin, “that I might promise my hand to her and then dally with you, as he did?”

“Oh, I don’t worry any such thing. I simply insist that you respect this line of demarcation. I make no claim on you at all, sir, except that now that you have had me, you make no attempt to also have biblical knowledge of my sister. That seems, all things considered, a fairly reasonable request.”

“Do you want my word of honor?” he said.

“That is satisfactory.”

“Then I want something as well.”

“Which is?”

With a growl of desire and domination, he carried her over the fence and took her again, from behind, atop the grave of her departed lover. He put one hand on the back of her neck, forcing her face down into the dirt.

Later, still unclothed, they stood together on the widow’s walk overlooking the forest and, beyond that, the soybean fields. The black lightless hulk of Dark Willows was visible in the distance. Heat lightning shimmered across the now-cloudy sky. “That is how I knew she was back,” Prudence said. “When a new vampire appears in an area, an unnatural drought may result.”

“That is superstition,” Zginski said.

“So, dear sir, are we. And you cannot deny the result.”

“Then why was there no drought when
I
appeared?”

She shrugged, almost with delight. “I don’t know, kind sir. Perhaps like people, we are all different as well, with various talents and effects on the world.”

He said nothing. She walked to the railing and leaned out, gazing up at the sky. “Do you ever wish,” she said wistfully, “we truly
could
turn into bats and flit through the night?”

He stood with his back against the roof. “I have no desire to do so.”

“Can’t you imagine the freedom, though? On the earth we’re limited to two dimensions. To travel in the third, even in the most basic way, we need ungainly things like stairs and airplanes.” She raised her arms. “I used to try. I would stand on this very spot, naked as I am now, and try to change my form. I willed myself to sprout wings, and grow small, and then I would leap into the night.”

“And?”

She laughed. “And, I ended up flat on the front yard, bare-assed and staring up at the moon.”

“It is a logical impossibility for one creature to change into another, especially one that is so much smaller.”

She crossed to him and snuggled against his chest. “It’s a logical impossibility to live on after death by drinking human blood.”

“No, that is a
mystery.
Clearly it is not an impossibility.” He brushed her hair with his fingers. “I should go.”

“Why? If you’re hungry, I can summon someone. I have compounds that will put them fast asleep so that they never know what happened. They will awaken weak and confused, but the truth would never occur to them.”

“I appreciate the offer, but I have other business to attend to as well.” He kissed her. “But I would like to visit you again.”

“Is that a fact?”

“Yes . . . ma’am.”

She laughed and pressed herself to him. She drew his tongue into her mouth and raked it with her fangs.

The Impala didn’t have a spotlight like his old sheriff’s cruiser, so Cocker had to make do with a flashlight. It played across the back end of Bruce’s beat-up Chevy Nova, parked down a tractor path far enough to be hidden from the road unless you were specifically looking for it.

Cocker switched off the light and sighed. He knew exactly why the car was here; the shadowy form of Dark Willows rose above the trees, black against the sky. Bruce was in there somewhere tomcatting around with that nubile, white-trash Crabtree girl, who probably knew just how to make a boy feel like a man. He felt a mixture of parental disapproval and pure masculine jealousy, but reminded himself that he had a date with that little waitress in Memphis before too long.

He turned the car around and headed back toward town. As he neared the driveway leading to old Mama Prudence’s place, a car pulled out onto the highway and passed him in the other lane. He slammed on his brakes, unable to believe what he just saw.

The Mustang. That goddamned Zginski was leaving Mama Prudence’s at three o’clock in the morning. What the hell was
that
about?

He considered following Zginski, maybe even trying to catch him and force the confrontation here in McHale County. But that would mean never getting ahold of the doe-eyed Fauvette, and he’d already invested too much time and energy in that scheme to back out now.

He took a deep breath, then drove slowly and within the speed limit back home. He parked behind his own car, went inside, and lay down on the couch. He wanted to know what time Bruce got home, and he left his coiled belt on the end table to help provide the proper greeting.

Zginski drove quietly back to Memphis, without even turning on the radio. The competing voices in his head provided plenty of stimulation.

One chastised him for leaving, accusing him of being a weakling and a coward. That voice had the shrill tone of his father, a man who hadn’t crossed his mind in a century.

Another berated him for lowering his guard and deigning to have intimate relations with one woman while secretly coveting her sister. This one sounded like the priest he’d known as a young man, who made it his business to turn all the male youth of his parish away from licentious women. Everyone knew, of course, that he actually wanted to turn them
toward
his own bedchamber.

But the oddest one, and the one that surprised him most, scolded him for ignoring and casting aside Fauvette. If any of their kind was truly capable of love, she was, and she deserved better treatment. And this voice sounded like his own.

A
T THE SAME
moment Zginski knocked on Prudence Bolade’s door, Bruce Cocker finished his beer, climbed from his car, and urinated on a tree. He was not drunk, but the combination of several joints at home and a couple of beers on the way definitely put him in a mellow, and amorous, state of mind. He crept through the woods toward Dark Willows.

His hazy brain found it easy to ignore what might still be hanging from that nearby tree. He was well on his way to convincing himself it had just been an elaborate prank, that the boy had not been killed and that they’d all have a big laugh over it later. Yeah, that was it. He wasn’t about to go see for himself, because knowing for certain would do him no good at all.

He paused at the edge of the Crabtrees’ yard. The house was dark, except for the light up in Clora’s window. Her shadow passed across it, and his blood raced as much as the dope and alcohol allowed. He
needed
to get laid, to relieve some of the pressure and dispel the sense of doom enveloping him. He needed to touch her soft flesh, to hear her say she loved him, to lay back while she sucked him off.

As he stepped into the open yard, a voice said, “Hey, cracker.”

Bruce froze. The voice cut through all the illicit substances and instantly sobered him. As he slowly turned, his eyes first spotted the figure’s moon-cast shadow stretching across the damp grass toward him. He followed it to the still silhouette that stood between him and the house, as unmistakable as its voice and twice as horrifying.

“You done fucked up big time, peckerwood,” Leonardo said. He fought down his amusement and made his voice rumble the way his preacher uncle used to do when he spoke about eternal damnation. “You sent me to hell the other night, and now I’m back to claim
your
soul.” For effect he raised his right arm and pointed one finger; the shadow on the ground reached all the way from Leonardo to Bruce.

Bruce could not move, and could barely breathe. He’d never hallucinated from marijuana before, but maybe the dire things his father said about dope were true after all. “You ain’t real,” he whispered, his voice trembling as much as his body.

Leonardo laughed. He picked up a stick and bounced it off Bruce’s head. “Real enough for you?”

Bruce winced, rubbed absently at his temple, and thought,
This is just the grass fucking up my head.
Maybe his stash was polluted by government pesticides. “Fuck you,” he choked out.

Leonardo moved toward him. “The devil’s gonna love your attitude, cracker. Might hang you up between Nathan Bedford Forrest and Adolf Hitler. Bet you’d feel right at home there, wouldn’t you?”

Now Bruce could make out the boy’s features. For a moment he wasn’t sure; after all, they
did
all look alike, especially at night. But when the ghost smiled, there was no doubt it was the one they’d lynched.

And when he opened his mouth wide, Bruce saw the long, sharp fangs of a demon.

Bruce’s heart pounded so loud he could barely think. In a small, pitiful voice he managed to get out the words, “Our Father, who art in heaven—”

“
Your
father ain’t in heaven,” Leonardo growled. “He ain’t even a pimple on God’s black ass. And neither are you. You think angels are coming down to save you? They got better things to do.”