Incredibly, he rolled to his knees and retrieved his hat. How unstoppable was he? This H&K could kill a bear.
Exposed ribs flopped hatch-like from his chest. A lump of pulp dropped from the hole. He grabbed the lump and came to his feet. He shoved the lump into the chest cavity and tamped the ribs back into place.
I leveled the sights on his nose. The next shot would blow his head apart like a melon.
The zombie screwed the hat on his head. Mud plopped from the wilted brim. He wiped his belt buckle and shuffled closer as if daring me to shoot again. No problem, I had plenty of bullets for both zombies.
Both zombies?
Where was the other zombie?
This was a diversion.
Stars exploded in my head.
Pain rattled my skull and spine.
My knees buckled.
I rallied and straightened my legs. I pivoted to the left and my gun hunted for the other zombie.
She swung in a blur of arms and legs from an overhead branch. Her boot heels came straight at my face.
I raised my pistol and squeezed off shots in a panicked spasm of self-survival.
More pain thudded across my forehead.
The strength drained from my hips and knees. My legs became jelly. Sharp branches ripped at me while I tumbled.
Tumbled.
Tumbled.
CHAPTER 13
What woke me was the sensation of having a hot iron pressed against my face.
Even with my mind fogged up with pain, I instantly knew what this was.
The morning sun.
My kundalini noir shrank and corkscrewed in terror.
I slapped my hands over my face and curled into a ball. Hot rays prickled my skin. I squinted through my fingers.
The gray light of a rainy dawn broke to the east. A semicircle of yellow light hovered over the horizon, marking the place where the sun would rise.
The morning sun, the great devourer of vampires, was an instant away from roasting me into ash.
I lay in a rocky puddle at the bottom of a shallow ravine. I was surrounded by trash, weeds, and trees. My wet clothes were matted with mud and garbage.
My head swam in pain, but unless I moved…NOW…the next sensation would be cooking alive.
I drew the collar of my coat over my head. I sat up and crawled to the nearest well of shadow.
Sunlight lashed at me. The air burned with microwave intensity.
I splashed through the syrupy mud like a wounded, desperate dog and dove headfirst through the bramble.
I burrowed into a layer of wet dirty leaves. I scooped them over me until I was covered in a paste of leaves and mud. I lay still in the protective coolness while the ravaging sunlight stalked the open ground.
Worms and beetles crawled out from the fetid mud and kept me company by climbing over my face. I cinched my fingers over my nose and kept my eyes clenched tight to keep the visitors out.
A headache banged against the inside of my skull.
I stole a look at my wristwatch. My vision was blurry and I had to study the watch face to read the time. Almost eight. The morning after. The blow to my head had knocked me out all night.
Rain plopped through the leaves overhead. Then more rain. The downpour smothered the sunlight. The worms and beetles vanished as if they’d melted into the mud.
Rain channeled through the tree and came out in a spout from a fork in the trunk. I knelt under the spout to wash away the filth. I relished the cleansing and the reprieve from death. The water poured over me like a baptism.
Why hadn’t the zombies finished me off?
Couldn’t they find me?
I peered into the ravine. Flattened grass and dislodged rocks marked my path down the slope. Soggy cardboard and paper trash littered the rocky puddle I’d fallen into. No, I had been lying in plain sight.
Maybe the zombies thought they had killed me.
Or maybe they had a more pressing task.
As the rain beat down, I picked my way out of the ravine. I looked for my pistol, which I found in a patch of dandelions. A quick check of the magazine showed I had three rounds left. The muzzle bore was clear but gritty mud remained in the recesses of the pistol. Letting a gun get this dirty-for any reason-was as bad as stealing from your mother.
I scrambled up the ravine and kneeled at the edge. I parted the brush with the barrel of my.45.
No zombies.
Spent cartridge casings glittered in the mud under the oak. Some fight I had put up. I went down making a lot of noise but that was it.
Carefully, I made my way back to my Toyota.
The doors were open and my belongings were scattered over mud torn up by footprints.
If my kundalini noir had a mouth, it would’ve groaned.
My clothes lay in soaked lumps. The cooler sat empty with the lid open and gaping at the rain. The bags of blood looked like silver hamsters where they rested in the mud.
Had the zombies taken anything?
They had.
Now I understood why the zombies had left me alone.
They had found a prize too valuable to waste time killing me.
The psychotronic diviner.
CHAPTER 14
When the Araneum learned that I had lost the diviner, they were going to skin me for sure. My head throbbed harder. My kundalini noir sank to the pit of my belly.
Why did the zombies take the diviner? Were they attracted to shiny pretty objects?
Or did they recognize the diviner for what it was? In that case, what did the zombies and their reanimator know about psychic energy and the astral plane? Was he responsible for the psychic attacks? And my hallucinations?
Not all my clothes and belongings had been gone through-my overnight bag and backpack remained unopened. When the zombies found the diviner, they must have lost interest in everything else and hurried away.
The rain let up but the clouds remained low and threatening. Much like my recent bad fortune.
I felt clammy in my wet clothes and had to change. I was miserable enough on the inside. Might as well be comfortable on the outside.
I gathered my belongings, drove back to town, and found a Laundromat next to a truck stop. My first priority was to wash up and change. With customers wandering in and out of the men’s room, for privacy I locked myself in a utility closest. I gave myself a sponge bath, shaved in the mop sink, applied makeup, and put on clean dry clothes.
While my dirty clothes churned in a washing machine, I sat in my Toyota, cleaned my H&K, and inserted a fresh magazine.
This pistol was one of the most powerful in the world but wouldn’t do much good if I walked around with my head up my ass.
I’d made one huge mistake as a human-when I’d accidentally killed the Iraqi girl and her family-and that has led me to the path of the undead.
Later I’d made one huge mistake as a vampire-I had let Carmen get kidnapped by the aliens.
The stakes in this investigation were too high for more screwups. The Araneum depended on me. The zombies were a big enough threat in the physical world. What would happen if they got into the astral plane?
But that was speculation about the future. I had to focus on what I could control, the here and now.
I checked my cell phone for messages. Only one. From Gino. The time stamp showed that he had called yesterday evening. About the time I was taking a snooze in a mud puddle courtesy of the zombies.
Gino wanted to meet again, at a restaurant called Humphreys. He gave directions and emphasized the time, noon sharp.
I called back. His voice mail answered. I didn’t leave a message.
I clipped a holster to the inside of my waistband. I racked the slide of the H&K to chamber one of the fat.45 rounds.
I reviewed my plan. Question Gino. Under hypnosis. Interrogate Vinny and their uncle Sal. They might know enough to add another piece to the puzzle. Find the creator of the zombies and destroy him and every one of his creatures. Get to the bottom of th
e psychic energy signals and the hallucinations. Retrieve the psychotronic diviner.
I holstered the pistol.
I was ready for anything.
I had to be.
CHAPTER 15
Humphrey’s Kountry Kitchen was on the west end of town, past a Shell station minimart. There were two vehicles in the restaurant parking lot, a Buick LeSabre and a Ford pickup hauling a trailer with a pair of camouflaged quad bikes. I didn’t see Gino’s silver Nissan Titan.
I was deliberately ten minutes late. Where was he?
I went down a block and turned around. I parked on the shoulder where I could check out the restaurant and the neighborhood.
The rain started again. I looked through the arcs my wipers swished across the windshield. People wandered around the Shell station across the street, moving about the cars and gas pumps, or in or out of the minimart. I studied the dark windows of the buildings facing me, a real estate office and a honey wholesaler.
Maybe Gino had been dropped off at Humphrey’s. Either the Buick or the Ford could be his wheels. I flipped open my cell phone and punched his number. His voice mail picked up again.
Where the hell was Gino? He might be sleeping off a hangover, playing errand boy to Uncle Sal, drilling some tail…or had the zombies gotten him?
Frustrated and more than a little paranoid, I snapped the phone closed and dropped it into my coat pocket.
Without Gino, I’d be playing Whac-A-Mole looking for clues.
Then again, Gino might be in Humphrey’s waiting for me.
I drove to the restaurant and parked beside the Ford pickup. I got out of my Toyota and stepped into a muddy puddle. Goddamn weather. I pulled the collar of my barn coat tight around my neck. Fighting zombies was trouble enough without the misery of getting soaked and cold. This was too much like being back in the army.
A For Sale sign sat in the front window of the restaurant. Guess even mountain views and country living get old.
I started through the front door of the restaurant when the hallucination of the girl came to me, the apparition so real I could almost feel the heat of her body.
If this was a psychic attack, I wouldn’t give in.
I planted my feet and stood strong. I imagined swatting the image out of my head. But the hallucination tore into my thoughts.
She called my name. Her voice filled my head, drowning out all other sounds. Its echo bounced inside my skull, gathering volume until her voice became a deafening shriek as loud as a fire alarm.
The top of my spine buzzed. I pressed one hand across the back of my neck to dampen the sensation. The vibration continued down my psychic column and my spine shook.
Panic and fear gouged me to the bone. I stumbled into the restaurant and collapsed on the wooden bench in the foyer.
The shriek halted like someone had turned off a spigot of noise. My head held the fading echo. As my helplessness and panic subsided, my strength returned-and my anger.
Psychic energy attacks. Zombies. Gino’s mysterious cousin. The loose ends in this mystery tangled around me.
A woman appeared in the doorway to the dining room. She wore an apron and had a pen stuck in her mop of henna-colored hair. Her eyes and forehead crinkled in worry. “I saw you keel over like you had a seizure or something. You okay?”
“Yeah.” On the outside. Inside I was a mess.
“You waiting for somebody?”
Gino, but it wasn’t her business. “Sorta.”
“Sorta yes or sorta no?” Her tone went from concern to a hard scold. “Either get in or get out. No loitering.”
Feisty shrew needed a kick in the butt to learn about customer service. I followed her inside to see if Gino was here.
A pair of elderly couples sat at a square table in the middle of the room. The old women unsnapped clear plastic bonnets they had cinched over their blue hair. The four geezers complained that they couldn’t remember when it had been this cold and rainy. Try last year.
Two beefy guys wearing down vests over camouflage hoodies-hunters, I was sure-occupied a booth at the far corner.
No Gino.
The waitress fanned a laminated menu toward the empty booths along the wall. “Your pick.”
I took a seat facing the front window and ordered coffee. I sneaked the bag of type O-negative from my coat and squirted the remaining blood into my cup. I stashed the empty bag back into my pocket. I sipped the warm brew and it comforted me like a hug from a chubby hooker.
What now? Where was Gino? Where were the zombies?
My ears tingled, then my fingertips.
Danger.
I set the cup down.
My kundalini noir coiled, like a viper ready to strike. I curled my fingers to hide my extending talons.
The hairs on the nape of my neck stood up. A shadow glided across the fogged restaurant window. My fangs pushed down from my gums and threatened to poke out from under my lip.
The front door opened. A figure entered the foyer and stood behind the window separating the foyer from the dining room.
The figure wore a blue hooded slicker. The feminine outline suggested a woman.
It was her.
I could feel it.
The girl in the psychic attacks.
How was this possible?
A prickly sensation trickled from my head to my fingertips and toes.
Her rain-shellacked slicker glistened in the fluorescent light from the foyer ceiling. The brim of the slicker’s hood cast a shadow across her forehead to the middle of her face, masking her eyes. Moist strands of brunette hair curled from under the hood.
She clasped the hood in both hands and pushed it up and back as if lifting the visor of a helmet. As she did this, the anticipation turned my stomach into mush.
Her face was on the mature side of adolescence, a woman yet still retaining the soft lines of a girl’s features. The elegant sweep of her nose matched the trace of an elongated face and a delicate chin. Her nose and cheeks were rosy from the outside chill.
This was her.
The girl.
The adolescent girl from my hallucinations. That phoenix who had risen from the ghost of the little Iraqi girl.
The prickly sensation became centipedes digging at my skin. I’m an undead bloodsucker; this creeped-out feeling was not supposed to happen to me.
Her right eye twitched. She rubbed the heel of her hand against the eye. When she brought her hand down, the right eye remained open and still.
Her two dark eyes rested on me, as if I was the only object in the world. The gleam in those eyes bore deep-probing, knowing, menacing.
My kundalini noir twisted like it wanted to find a hole and hide.
For a moment, all I could see were her eyes.
The eyes that had haunted me across the oceans and years since I first saw them in Iraq. Deep as wells, dark as the night I’d last seen them.
My fear became cold, heavy, and paralyzing, like I’d been trapped under a giant block of ice.
Her right eye twitched again.
I am vampire-a seasoned warrior, a supernatural killer-and this woman, this ingenue, this girl with a nervous facial tic, made me shrink in terror.
CHAPTER 16
My body screamed: Danger, get away. This…girl…woman…whatever…was poison. My legs tensed to catapult me through the roof.
I forced myself to stay put. Since when did I run away?
Relax. Look tough but nonchalant.
Who the hell was she? Why was she here?
She had been only the stuff of hallucinations, but now she was standing in the doorway.
The girl walked through the foyer into the dining room and stopped by the counter. Water dripped from the hem of her slicker and soaked her green sweatpants.
Everyone else in the restaurant seemed to have vanished and it was only her and me.
My hands trembled.
Control yourself, Felix. Don’t let her see you panic.
She had no weapon that
I could see. In any other circumstance, a quick bite to her tender neck was the most I’d need to keep her in place. If that didn’t work, I’d use the.45. The advantage was mine.
Her right eye twitched again. She blotted her eye. When she lowered her hand, those eyes were no longer threatening but uncertain and vulnerable.
Her spell on me dissolved, slowly.
I looped a hand around my coffee cup to feel the warmth. The others in the restaurant came back into focus: the two hunters at a booth, the four geriatrics at their table, the bitchy waitress marching by with a carafe.
The girl took a halting step. She looked afraid.
Good. She needed to be afraid of me.
Keep looking tough.
I had to see what this woman was. Human? Supernatural? If so, what kind? What did she want? My hands flinched upward to remove my contacts but I hesitated. Too many witnesses.
The girl leaned from one foot to the other as if debating whether to leave or to approach me.
She crossed the floor. Her gaze became fragile. A wrong move on my part and she’d be out the door.
I didn’t dare so much as blink.
She stopped beside my booth. Her eyes were a rich honey brown and shiny with fear. This close, I could see fresh pimples on her chin and in the crease along her left nostril.
A teenager. I’d been terrorized by a teenage girl with bad skin.
She reached for the top of her slicker. Was she going for a weapon?
I crossed my arms and set my elbows on the table. I curled my hands and readied my talons.
Without a word, she unzipped her slicker and took a seat on the opposite side of my booth. Her green sweat top said Morada Panthers in yellow script. Water seeped from the folds of her jacket and puddled around her elbows. Her fingers were red and her knuckles white from the outside cold.
She acted scared of me, yet she had come this close.
What did she want?
She took a deep breath and clenched her fists as if steeling herself for a dangerous jump. Her right eyelid blinked repeatedly, semaphoring her anxiety. She put her hand on her upper cheek to keep the eye still.
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