The Girls With Games of Blood (39 page)

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.

“I understand, and I will not keep you,” he said. “I wish to simply say one thing.”

“What’s that?”

He might’ve said he loved her. But he never got the chance.

S
OMEONE GRABBED
Z
GINSKI
violently from behind and threw him out the back door. He soared over the asphalt and bounced off the side of the green Dumpster. As he got to his feet he saw Prudence Bolade’s Thunderbird parked haphazardly beside the building, the driver’s door still open. A haze of smoke drifted from the interior.

That is not possible,
he told himself.

“You all right, mister?” a child’s voice said. He turned to see three preteen black children on bicycles staring at him.

“I am fine,” he said. “Now run along.”

They continued to stare. He was about to do something to frighten them away when, from inside the building, Fauvette screamed.

Zginski stopped just inside the door. Prudence Bolade indeed awaited him, but it was a far different Prudence than the one he remembered. She was burned along one side of her body, the skin blackened and leathery, while the rest of her countenance had aged so that she resembled a child’s dried-apple doll. Her nightdress was also burned in places, and one foot had charred so badly it resembled a hoof. There was a
hole in her garment torn by his fist, but he saw no evidence of the gaping wound that should’ve been beneath it.

She clutched a blackened, cracked table leg in one hand, the jagged point still smoldering. And that point was jabbed into the chest of Fauvette, who stood with her back pressed to the wall, eyes wide and terrified, straining on her tiptoes to keep the stake, already imbedded in her flesh, from piercing her heart. Blood ran down her legs and pooled at her feet.

When she saw Zginski she cried, “Rudy!”

“Oh, yes,
Rudy,
” Prudence growled, her voice dry and brittle. “You tried to destroy me, and you
did
burn down my house. That was my ancestral home, you know that? It had stood for over a
century
!”

Zginski said nothing. The door slammed shut behind him, leaving them in the dim hall. Prudence was a mere arm’s length away, but he doubted he could move fast enough to dispatch her before she drove the stake home.

Fauvette will not die again,
he insisted to himself.
I will not
let
her die again.

Fauvette watched little tendrils of smoke rise from the stake. The tip needed only a slight upward shove to find its mark. “What’s she talking about? Who
is
she?”

“She’s my sister,” Patience said. She came down the hall from the opposite direction. “Let her go, Prudence.”

“Patience,” Prudence said, drawing the last syllable out as a snakelike hiss. If she worried about being trapped between two other vampires, it didn’t show.

“Please, let me down,” Fauvette whimpered. “I don’t know you, I haven’t done anything to you.”

Prudence ignored Fauvette. “The game is still on, dear sister,” she breathed raggedly. “Your little friend here is our newest play-pretty.”

“She’s just some waitress, Prudence,” Patience said with faux annoyance.

“Ah, but you’re lying,” she drawled. “You haven’t asked what happened to me, or how I got here, or how I found you. Your first concern was for this adorable little
tick.
And that means she matters to you an awful lot.” She turned her remaining eye toward Zginski. “And to you as well. I’d have thought you had better taste.”

“What do you want?” Patience said.

“I want to see the look on your face when she crumbles to dust. And I want you, Mr. Baron Zginski, to try to rescue her, so I can see the look on your face when you fail.”

“Oh, God,” Fauvette whimpered. She could not physically rise on her toes any higher, and the stake was working its way toward its target. The tiny hallway had become the arena for her life, and she could do nothing to save herself.

“Can you wait me out, dear?” Prudence sneered at her sister. “How much of that vaunted patience do you possess?”

Zginski’s mind raced to comprehend all the forces at work. He was
certain
the blow he delivered should have destroyed Prudence; for it to fail, she would have needed a source of blood and power greater than any he could conceive. Certainly greater, he knew, than anything in the house, which he had thoroughly searched.