I smiled to try and put her at ease. After all, I wasn’t exactly bad company. At least not in public.
The girl said, “Felix Gomez.”
It was the voice that echoed through my hallucinations. It was like a spike had been hammered into my head.
She added, “I know what you are.”
The girl had said what, not who.
The fear returned and my fangs throbbed against the inside of my upper lip.
Her eyes widened as she continued. “You are a vampire.”
CHAPTER 17
The girl’s words lanced through me.
My brain sputtered in bewilderment, my thoughts misfiring, my body shocked into paralysis.
Slowly, my mind found its track and raced toward one thought.
Kill her.
No human except for a chalice could live with the knowledge of the undead.
I readied my arms for a swipe of my talons across her throat. How far out the door could I get before her blood gushed across the table?
I had murder on my face and the girl saw it. Fear spread into her eyes. The color left her face. She recoiled, and when scooting out of the booth, she noticed my talons.
Her eyes turned back to mine and seemed to pulse.
My name echoed in my head.
Felix…ix…ix.
The echo amped up to a rush of noise.
I clutched the table to ground myself.
Not again. Not now. Not here.
The echo increased to a ringing shriek. A thousand needles vibrated against the inside of my skull. My vision went blurry and turned the world into a grainy fog.
Everything from my jaw to my balls trembled. My kundalini noir quivered like a stick in an earthquake.
Nausea snaked up my throat. Bile pushed over my tongue, bitter and foul.
I started to heave. My arms and legs jerked in spasms. I had the sensation of falling.
My head and shoulder smacked into something hard.
Warm liquid dribbled on my face and chest.
The vibrations stopped. The needles disappeared. The shriek trailed to nothing.
But there was no silence. Someone yelled, a fresh voice that bounced inside my skull. A woman.
“Hey, I asked if you were okay.”
My eyes quit shaking and I focused to get my bearings.
I lay at the bottom of the booth and looked up at the under-side of the table. Pastel clumps of gum clung to the wood. The liquid dripping on me was coffee.
The waitress crouched beside the booth. She yapped like an angry terrier. “You told me you were okay. Now I find you on the floor about to toss your cookies. You on drugs?”
The bile seeped back down my throat.
“You hear me? Are you on drugs?”
I felt dizzy and sick. “No, I’m not on drugs.”
“Then quit acting like you are.”
I pushed from the floor and crawled onto the bench. Puddles of coffee rolled across the vinyl upholstery and wet my trousers.
The girl remained at the edge of the booth, frozen, her eyes huge.
She showed no fear that I was a vampire. Some, upon meeting us, turn away and shriek in terror. Others are drawn as if a vampire was what they’d been waiting for all their lives. Still others, like this girl, accepted us vampires with guarded fascination.
Why was she the same girl from my hallucinations? Did she project the psychic signals? Or was she misdirection about the true source?
I sat upright, slowly, to let my head clear.
The waitress picked my coffee cup from the floor. She walked off, grumbling. “If you’re sick, the county hospital is up the road. I’m not cleaning up any vomit.”
One of the hunters paused in the act of devouring a monster burrito. Red chile sauce dribbled from the mouth in his pumpkin-like head. “Yeah, that was disgusting. I about lost my appetite.” He went back to devouring.
I patted my face and hands with a paper napkin to blot the coffee. Carefully, so I wouldn’t smear my makeup.
The girl slid into the booth. She tilted her head in amazement as if she’d made a great discovery. The line of her mouth became an amused grin as if I was the butt of a joke.
I was drenched inside out with embarrassment. I’d come to Morada strutting my bad vampire stuff and first the zombies smacked me down, then this girl.
Our waitress came back with a towel. “Tell you what, mister, you take your business elsewhere. Don’t worry about the bill.”
What could I say? I couldn’t make a bigger ass of myself. I tossed a couple of dollars and got up.
The girl stood from the booth and zipped her jacket in a quick, impatient motion. The waitress leaned across the table and wiped as she complained about the meager tip.
The girl and I retreated for the door. We were quiet but hardly inconspicuous.
The four geezers watched in astonished curiosity, the liver spots on their withered skin darkening, their rheumy eyes swimming behind enormous spectacles.
Getting kicked out of the restaurant worked to my favor. With no witnesses, I could act against the girl.
She pulled the hood of her slicker over her head. We stepped into the cold rain.
I needed to learn what she knew about psychic energy and zombies. But more important, was she responsible for my hallucinations?
“Who are you?”
She turned to face me. “Phaedra Nardoni.”
So I had a name. That was a start.
Phaedra continued to the 4Runner. She waited by the front passenger door, her shoulders hunched against the rain. Vapor puffed from her mouth.
How did she know this was my vehicle? How much did she know about me? My talons inched from my fingertips.
Her gaze shot to my talons, then my face. The gleam in her eyes pulsed once in warning, like the hammer of a gun cocked back.
That gleam was enough to make my kundalini noir catch like it was about to feel a stake. She was responsible for the hallucinations. In the restaurant, when I climbed off the floor, the girl acted as if she was as surprised by what happened as I was. If she didn’t know it then, she knew it now. This power-a psychic attack-was her weapon.
At the moment, I had no defense. She could get inside my brain at will. The violation I had known before returned.
I felt myself falling inward again in search for what I could trust, what I could believe, what I could control.
Any hesitation she had when we first met was gone. She stood waiting, defiant with confidence and awareness.
I asked, “You’re Gino’s cousin?”
“Yeah. He told me about you.”
I sorted through my questions. How much did he say? What about the zombies? Did she know about them?
But first, “So where is he?”
“I don’t know,” she answered. “I came to the restaurant looking for him.”
A gust of wind sprayed rain into our faces. I let the water drip. Phaedra wiped her cheeks.
She stamped her feet. “It’s cold. Let’s get in your truck already.”
I needed to remove my contacts and confirm what kind of creature Phaedra was. I’ve run across humans with supernatural abilities before but none compared with Phaedra’s. I had one weapon in reserve. Once alone, in private I would zap her and it would be my turn to mess with her head.
I eased close to unlock her door. A sniff didn’t detect the smell of anything undead or unusual.
My nose cataloged the aromas: the wet fabric and plastic of her clothes; the fragrance of moist hair with perfumed shampoo and conditioner; the scent of a flowery deodorant threaded with her perspiration and the rich, intoxicating bouquet of female pheromones.
She wasn’t vampire. Or zombie. Despite her psychic powers, Phaedra seemed very human.
We got in and buckled up. Phaedra fumbled with the right pocket of her slicker and drew a pint bottle of water. She pulled at the pour top and chugged a long swallow.
This was the first time I’ve been this close to a gi
rl her age since I was a boy her age. I wallowed in the forbidden sensuous delight of her tempting adolescence.
“How old are you?” I asked.
“Sixteen.”
Sixteen. The number sliced into me like a piece of shrapnel. If the girl in Iraq had been twelve, she’d be Phaedra’s age by now. Had she lived.
But Phaedra was not the girl I had killed in Iraq. Why did her face keep showing up in the hallucinations? Did it have to do with the psychic signals tapping the guilt inside of me, the guilt I’ve been yoked with since I helped kill the Iraqi girl? A guilt that had resurfaced and festered since I’ve lost Carmen?
Here was Phaedra, another woman careening into my life. We sat alone in my Toyota, the metal and glass cocoon a shelter from casual voyeurs.
She put her hand on mine, her warm touch inviting. There was a tiny quiver in her fingertips, yet she wasn’t afraid. Phaedra’s large brown eyes remained guarded but inquisitive.
Her fingers clasped my wrist. I could’ve broken free but remained transfixed, wondering about this mysterious young woman.
“What do you want, Phaedra?”
“It’s simple. You have to keep me from dying.”
CHAPTER 18
Phaedra was dying? And she needed my help?
I said, “I don’t understand.”
“You’re a vampire, right?”
My fangs sprouted to combat length. My muscles tightened like springs.
Phaedra’s eyes locked and loaded. Don’t mess with me.
I didn’t need another psychic brain scramble. The murderous vampire routine wasn’t working, so I bent the rule about having to immediately kill her for knowing about the undead.
I gave a parting flash of my fangs as they retracted. “Yes, I am a vampire.” I motioned from her head to my mine. “What about you? Where does that mind power thing come from?”
“I don’t know. No one but you believes that I have it.”
The Araneum knew about psychic signals. Perhaps the zombies did as well. “Trust me, I believe you.” Had she discussed this with someone else? “I’m not the only one you’ve talked to about this?”
She replied, “That’s right. I’ve been in therapy for my hallucinations.”
Therapy? Hallucinations?
Phaedra reached into the left pocket of her slicker and pulled out a couple of small plastic bottles, one white, the other amber. “These are my meds.”
Wads of bills tumbled from her pocket. She scrambled to catch them with a clumsy, embarrassed grab.
I scooped the bills that had fallen over the center console. The bills were twenties and a hundred.
She took the money from me and shoved it back into her pocket. “It’s my…allowance.”
Quite a hefty allowance. The hesitation in her voice told me there was more about the money she didn’t want to explain.
I took the bottles of meds. The prescription label on the white bottle said: Haloperidol tab.5 mg. The label on the amber bottle: Nortriptyline cap 25 mg.
I returned the bottles. “What is the problem?”
Phaedra dropped the bottles in her pocket and snapped the flap. “The meds are for hallucinations and mood swings. And spasms.” She pointed to her twitching right eye. Next she extended both hands and the fingertips showed a slight tremble. “I have Huntington’s chorea.”
“I left my medical dictionary at home. You better explain.”
“Basically, my brain is rotting from the inside out.” Phaedra said this with less emotion than I’ve heard from others complaining about a broken fingernail. “It’s hereditary. My mother died of it when she was thirty-two.”
“You seem calm about it. If I had this disease, I’d be shitting my pants.”
“That’s not funny. I lose control sometimes and have shit in my pants. So no more shit jokes, okay?”
Okay. Better that I look sympathetic. “You’re sure you have Huntington’s?”
“One hundred percent positive. I might live to thirty. Most likely twenty-eight.”
Dead at twenty-eight? Wasn’t a diagnosis but a death sentence. I’d really be shitting my pants. “With a diagnosis like that, you seem almost cheery.”
“Because I have a way out.”
“Which is?”
“You.”
“Me?”
“Make me a vampire and I won’t die.”
My kundalini noir lunged in attack. I clenched my muscles to keep from showing the reaction.
“In case you’re unfamiliar with the concept, we vampires are undead. We exist with one foot in the grave. Sometimes we sleep there. Being a vampire is no picnic.”
“Neither is dying of Huntington’s.”
“We have other problems.”
She asked, “Do vampires die of Huntington’s?”
“Not that I know of. We’re immune to most human diseases. How do you know about vampires? About me?”
“My hallucinations.”
“How?”
“I get images in my head.”
“Images?”
“Perceptions. I wish I could explain it better but I can’t. It’s like describing colors to the blind, sounds to the deaf.” Phaedra stared at the dashboard. For an instant, her eyes turned vacant. “I send out special ‘thoughts’ and they wrap around what they find. At first I didn’t understand what I was seeing. Over time, I learned to focus my thoughts and I began to create sharper perceptions of things.”
“What things?”
“Things in a place.”
“Place?”
“A gigantic void. Like another world with nothing in it but a way to get from one location to another.”
Was Phaedra talking about the astral plane?
She continued, “We have time and space and I’ve found something more. In this void I can see another side to everything.”
Void? She must’ve read the confusion on my face, and her forehead clenched in frustration. “Sorry, that’s not the right word, but I can’t think of a better one. Being in this void made me think differently about the world. I began searching. Maybe in this void, this dimension, I’d find it.”
“Find what?”
“A chance to not die like my mother. What happened to her was so wrong.” Phaedra’s eyes glistened. “Day by day, she lost more and more control over her body and mind. The Huntington’s took everything. I remember finding her on the floor helpless with a puddle of mess between her legs.”
Tears pooled in Phaedra’s eyes, the drops fat and heavy with sadness. “I cleaned her up. I could read the awful question in her face. Why? I felt so ashamed for her. And I knew that’s what waited for me.”
How wrenching, but I wasn’t much for the emotional wringing needed to drive these heart-to-heart talks, especially since I had no heart. “The Huntington’s is responsible for your hallucinations and that in turn has led you to…” I didn’t want to say astral plane, so I said, “the void.”
“Seems that way.”
In a cruel twist, nature had compensated Phaedra. What a trade: get psychic power at the expense of your brain turning to mush.
The inside of the windows by Phaedra had fogged up. The windows around me were still clear.
I asked, “You looked for me?”
Phaedra wiped a spot on the passenger window. Rain dribbled along the outside glass. “I didn’t know what I was looking for. You are what showed up.”
“How did you know it was me?”
“It was like I was walking inside your head.”
Phaedra said this casually, but she had been privy to my most buried thoughts. My skull seemed to split open and let a rush of violation flood my brain.
I felt the withdrawal from the world. I clutched at the steering wheel and forced myself to remain engaged in the present.
Phaedra said something.
I was still a little off center. “What?”
“When is it going to happen?”
“It, what?”
“When are you going to
turn me into a vampire?”
I tightened into combat mode, taut as the trip wire of an antipersonnel mine. She mentioned vampires and my reaction was to kill her.
What did Phaedra know about this vampiric existence? The lurking on the fringes of civilization. The masquerading as an ordinary human. The fear of discovery. The terror of the morning sun. The long stretch of immortality without the sanctuary of real family and love.
As a soldier I had killed one little girl and that tragedy had since defined my life. I hadn’t turned anyone and promised myself that I wouldn’t condemn another soul to my fate.
I said, “I won’t do it.”
“Why? Isn’t that what you vampires live for?”
“Not this one.”
Phaedra studied me like she hadn’t quite figured me out and was looking for the hidden buttons to push.
“There’s another reason I’m here,” I said. “Barrett Chambers.”
I expected Phaedra to recoil in surprise. She didn’t.
I asked, “Do you know what happened to Barrett?”
Phaedra nodded. “He became like the others.”
CHAPTER 19
Was Phaedra talking about zombies? Now we’re making progress. “What do mean ‘the others’?”
“I don’t know what else to call them. They move through the void but they are not alive. And they’re not dead.”
I wanted to fill in the blanks by mentioning that Barrett had been a zombie, but the less Phaedra-a human-knew about the supernatural world, the better to protect the Great Secret.
Zombie behavior was new to me. So were psychic signals and Phaedra’s use of the astral plane. Maybe the geniuses of the Araneum could figure it out. For now, what mattered was that Phaedra was in the middle of this supernatural whodunit.
I had part of my mystery solved. I knew the cause of the psychic signals and who was responsible. “How long have you been going into this void?”
“Years. Most of the time I didn’t know what I was doing. Whenever I mentioned it, the docs would up my meds. See this”-she pointed to the zits in her face-“side effect of the haloperidol. Plus dry mouth.” She swigged from her bottle. “The images didn’t stop, I only quit talking about them. I kept sending signals and seeing what I could learn.”
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