Years ago, I’d been shot by vampire hunters and was close to dying. Wendy Teagarden, a supernatural dryad, gave me her blood and I was taken by a dream. In this dream I met the Iraqi girl and her family. They rose from the dead to confront me. In order for them to enter heaven, they had to let go of their hatred of me. The little Iraqi girl’s final words were “We forgive you.”
I returned from the dream, strong, complete, hungry.
Why wasn’t this memory depicted?
The delirium melted away. Clear-eyed and wary, I stared at Phaedra. “Why are you doing this?”
Her eyes were tiny yellow slits in the candlelight. “I’ve told you. So you can make me a vampire.”
“That will never happen.”
“It has to.” She jabbed at the drawings. Her fingernails gouged the paper. They left dark shiny smears.
Blood?
She waved her stained fingertips. I smelled the blood. Was this a trick? Had she cut herself on the sly?
The revulsion was too much and I recoiled from her.
Phaedra’s hand curled and her bloody index finger clawed at me. “And I selected you.”
“Where’s my say in this?”
She shook the drawings. “You know what it’s like to live with this pain. This humiliation.”
I swatted the drawings from her hand. They fluttered to the floor. “Don’t talk to me about humiliation. Not after you’ve been digging around in my head.”
“I had to do it.” She grasped my wrist. “So you can save me.”
I held her at arm’s length. “You used the Iraqi girl to manipulate me. I owe you nothing.”
Her eyes probed mine, her expression pleading. “Nothing?”
“Not after what you’ve done.”
That pleading expression turned injured. She let go of my hand and lowered her head.
The echo started, faintly. I got ready for a hard blast to my brain. But the echo never rose above a murmur and faded.
Was this the last of Phaedra’s psychic tricks? She kept her face down and appeared embarrassed, broken.
She knelt and quietly collected the drawings.
The realization that I had better memories of the Iraqi girl reassured me. The guilt was still there but softened by her forgiveness.
Phaedra had trouble with the zipper on the portfolio. I reached to help her but she brushed my arm aside with her shoulder. After she’d closed the portfolio, she sat with her back to me.
She gave tiny sobs and wiped her face.
I didn’t have a solution. Didn’t help that she had been dishonest with me from the start. Maybe another vampire would turn her. If he didn’t kill her.
I read my watch: 3:11 P.M. We’d been here a while.
The constant anxiety caught up with me. I was tired and wanted to rest. I stared longingly at the open bench. It would be a squeeze to get in but was almost like a crypt in a chapel. This wasn’t a polished mahogany casket with a padded silk lining but it had a rustic appeal. A nap now would be too callous, even for me, so I offered an olive branch.
“Don’t your relatives worry about you?”
“Fat chance. My aunt dreams of the day she sees my face on a flyer at the police station.”
“And Uncle Sal?”
Phaedra pulled the parka’s hood over her head. “Like he cares about anything but money.”
My eyelids were heavy. I wish I had turned down this assignment. Phaedra was more than I wanted to handle. Now that she had shut up, perhaps I could get some sleep.
Her cell phone chimed. She stood and dug into her jeans. In the glow of the tiny red screen, she squinted with annoyed recognition at the number flashing. She put the phone to her ear. A woman’s voice chattered like an angry squirrel.
“Yeah, Aunt Lorena, I’m okay. Yes, I’m sure. Calm down. Why do you ask?” Phaedra’s complexion faded. She repeated, “Oh my God.” She snapped the phone closed and dropped it into her parka. “We have to go.”
I blew the lamp candle out. “What’s happened?”
“Uncle Sal’s men were attacked.”
My kundalini noir tensed. “Where? Who?”
“By the river. Cleto is missing.”
“How?” I asked.
“Just like Gino.”
The zombies were back.
CHAPTER 34
The afternoon sun retreated and cold, dark shadows claimed the forest. Phaedra ran down the slope to my 4Runner. I stayed behind her, in position to catch her in case she slipped on the uneven rocks. When we made it back to the highway, we were again in bright sunlight.
She got on the phone and, after quick frantic conversations, pieced enough together to relate a few details. Cleto was arranging a sale. Of drugs I was sure. Cavagnolo and Vinny had arrived later and found a gruesome mess.
Phaedra opened one of her prescription bottles and shook out two pills. She gulped the pills, chased them with a slug from her water bottle, and leaned against the door. She closed her eyes and grimaced.
I asked, “You okay enough to answer some questions?”
She raised her right hand and made a go-ahead motion.
“When was the last time your uncle spoke with Cleto?”
“A couple of hours ago.” She kept her eyes closed. “Why?”
“I’m trying to establish a timeline.”
The zombies had attacked recently, in daylight. Why had they become so brazen?
There was another possibility. Maybe Cavagnolo was using the mysterious killings as cover to get rid of Cleto. Maybe Cleto suspected that Cavagnolo was an informant. I couldn’t overlook the most obvious of motives.
Phaedra cracked her eyelids and peeked at the highway. She sat up and directed me to a dirt road. We wound through willows and cottonwoods on a course that took us close to the Rio Grande.
Phaedra waved to slow down and pointed to the right, through a trampled opening in the tall weeds. She explained that there were lots of secluded hangouts along the river, and she knew where the meeting had been.
My ears started to buzz. A second buzz began at my fingertips, rushed up my arms, and caused a shiver across my shoulders.
The first vehicle that came into view was Cleto’s black Chevy pickup. The second was a white Cadillac Escalade that I hadn’t seen before. The vehicles were within a clearing, surrounded by a bowl of dense trees and shrubs. The doors were open on both vehicles. Spatters of blood the size of dinner plates stained the windows and the upholstery.
On the other side of the clearing, Cavagnolo and Vinny stood beside their red pickup. They stared slack-faced at the carnage. Cavagnolo’s thumb played nervously over the hammer of his pistol. Vinny remained farther back, looking ready to run away.
Dozens of empty cartridges were strewn across the dirt. The back hatch of the Cadillac yawned wide. Plastic liter jars spilled white crystals across the ground. Judging by the cat piss smell, it was meth.
Three men lay in heaps so bloody I thought they’d been mulched to death instead of shot. One looked familiar but was so mutilated I couldn’t be sure.
Phaedra stepped behind me in slow movements as if worried that at any second the mayhem and bloodletting would begin again.
Cavagnolo saw us and in one quick wipe, his expression went from horror to anger. He scowled, and when he spoke, spit sprayed from his mouth. “Goddammit, why the hell did you bring her here?”
Phaedra brushed beside me. “I had to show Felix how to find this place.”
Cavagnolo aimed his pistol at the corpses, not to shoot, but like it was a talisman to ward off evil. The skulls had been pried open and emptied. “What’s with taking the brains? Is this some voodoo horseshit?”
More like an afternoon snack for zombies.
I asked, “These your guys?”
Cavagnolo gave a rueful nod.
“Everyone accounted for?”
“Except Cleto.” Cavagnolo pawed at the spent cartridges. “He put up a hell of fight.” Cavagnolo hesitated. “I can’t figure it. We�
�ve got no trouble with anybody. So what is this about?”
I said, “Maybe someone’s trying to send you a message.”
“Who? Why?” Cavagnolo squared his shoulders and leaned toward me.
I didn’t give ground. “Back off, Sal. Don’t crowd me.”
“Then why did you say it?” He tightened his grip on his pistol and gave a look that at any second he was going to drill me through the forehead. “First you arrive. Then we lose Gino.”
Cavagnolo better be careful or I’ll snap his neck. I didn’t want to do that, especially not in front of Phaedra. “What are you getting at, Sal? That I had something to do with this? Get your thinking straight. Stanley Novick was the first to get chopped up like this. That happened days before I got here. And Gino came to me for help, not the other way around.”
Cavagnolo relaxed his grip as my words soaked into his head. Heavy breaths bellowed through his nostrils.
I thought this hellish scene would leave Phaedra trembling in terror. Instead, she wandered through the area and inspected the bodies and blood from a distance.
I had to ignore Cavagnolo and think about the zombies. Why did they strike now? Why Cleto? Were they stalking him?
Phaedra called from the edge of the clearing. “Here’s something.”
A set of bloody prints went south. These prints were deep as if burdened with a heavy load. Cleto?
I didn’t need to be Daniel Boone to follow the trail to the river. They had flattened the grass and weeds and left spots of blood and bits of cloth. Zombies for sure.
Phaedra followed me. Cavagnolo stayed behind with Vinny. She stepped gingerly in my footsteps as if afraid the blood and tatters would infect her.
The zombies couldn’t have made a more obvious path with a road grader. This sloppiness was the reason the Araneum wanted them exterminated.
Footprints and drag marks continued off the riverbank to the water’s edge. The river lapped back and forth and obliterated the tracks in the sand close to the water.
I surveyed the opposite bank. The trees were set back about a hundred feet so the ground was more open. Where did the zombies go?
The river flowed over rocks and the eddies curled around submerged sandbars. Phaedra caught me studying the water.
“You’re thinking of crossing?”
“Depends. How deep is the water?”
“That’s not a good idea,” she said. “The current can be pretty fast and suck you under. You could drown.”
No, I couldn’t. There was a lot I hadn’t told her about vampires.
“Any ideas?”
She used her index finger to note a path across the river. “If you insist, try that line of rocks. The water’s knee-deep at the most.”
I stepped off the bank. Icy water filled my shoes.
Phaedra held my arm. “Careful.”
I’ve been dunked in the Missouri River and crawled out. Compared to that river, this was a trickle.
I told her I’d be okay and would return shortly. I picked my way along the rocks and across a sandbar. The water lashed about my shins.
Once on the other side, I walked along the water’s edge. I searched the sand and river rocks for the trail.
If the zombies carried heavy, awkward loads, the strong current would have worked against them. Sure enough, a hundred feet downstream, I found a confusion of prints. Some of the feet had dug into the sand, like they’d been struggling to haul something from the water. The footprints became an orderly procession away from the riverbank. Broken grass and a string of maroon dots pointed south in the direction the zombies had fled.
To where?
I couldn’t imagine zombies, let alone zombies dragging a clumsy mutilated corpse, strolling across the highway during daylight.
The trail continued through the thicket to a hard-packed frontage road. Footprints wouldn’t show. The weeds on the opposite side of the road were fresh and undisturbed. The zombie trail stopped here.
I found a circle of water stains close to the shoulder of the road. Whatever leaked was held still for a moment, that’s why the spots were in a circle instead of a ragged line.
Held still…to be loaded into a vehicle?
What else? That’s how the zombies escaped with Cleto.
Then who drove? The reanimator? Zombie motoring skills probably matched their smell, but again, Barrett Chambers had driven himself to Denver.
I returned across the river. Phaedra waited. Water squished from my shoes.
She asked, “What did you find?”
“Not much of anything. The trail vanished.”
She whispered, “Zombies?”
I nodded.
“How do they do disappear like that?”
“They have their ways,” I replied.
“Should we tell my uncle? That it’s zombies?”
I put a flat edge in my voice. “No. Zombies are part of the secrets we have to keep. Besides, would he believe us?”
We backtracked to the ambush place. Cavagnolo and Vinny were on their knees scooping meth crystals back into the plastic jars. They weren’t picky about sifting out the grass and dirt.
They stood and each held an armful of plastic jars.
“Phaedra, come here,” Cavagnolo said. He handed her his load of jars. “Put these in Vinny’s truck. Wait for me there.”
She took the jars back to his truck.
Cavagnolo brushed his hands to get rid of the dust and white meth residue. He put his hand on my shoulder and led me out of the clearing. The gesture was a crude attempt to reassure me.
We stood with a curtain of willow branches between us and Phaedra. He suddenly grabbed the sleeve of my coat and yanked the pistol from his waistband.
“I’m going to shut your mouth once for all, you son of a bitch.”
The pistol swung toward my face.
My reflexes kicked into vampire speed. I didn’t know if Cavagnolo intended to shoot me or only try to scare me. Either way, I had other plans.
I wrenched the pistol from him and shoved him in the chest. I kept myself from punching his face and breaking his skull. I was close to losing myself in anger and the blow might’ve killed him.
Cavagnolo stumbled backward. His eyes gaped with astonishment. His arms twirled through the willow branches. He tripped and fell onto his back.
I ejected the magazine and racked the slide to clear the chamber. I tossed the magazine into the weeds and threw the pistol at his feet.
“Why are you worried about me keeping my mouth shut? Is this about your deal with the feds?”
The astonishment in Cavagnolo’s eyes boiled into rage.
“As long as I’m alive, your secret stays with me. I die and the world will know what a rat fink traitor you are.” I lied because I had made no such arrangements.
I reached down and pulled him up by his collar. I brought his face close to mine so he’d get the full brunt of my anger.
Even though I had him by the neck, he growled. “Yeah, I read you. Now you read me. Stay away from Phaedra.”
This guy had a brass pair if he was threatening me. “Phaedra wants to talk to me, that’s our business. Understand?”
Cavagnolo tried to shake loose.
I said, “Kill me and you’re screwed. Two ways. Your secret will get out and your own men will turn on you. And there’s what happened to Gino, Cleto, and the rest of that crew. I can stop the ones responsible. If you stay the hell out of my way. Understand?”
He nodded but that didn’t hide his rage.
I let Cavagnolo go.
He smoothed his jacket collar in quick motions. “Fuck you. I’m doing you a favor by telling you to stay away from Phaedra. She might be my niece but she’s still a fruitcake.”
“Phaedra’s a troubled girl, that’s all.”
“Troubled? She’s a crazy bitch.” Cavagnolo found his pistol and brushed off the dust.
Bitch? That was something Cavagnolo would say about a girlfriend, wife, even his mother, but hi
s niece? How crazy was she?
Cavagnolo shoved the pistol into his waistband. “You’re quiet all of a sudden, wise guy.” He gave a malicious smirk. “That’s because you know I’m right.”
CHAPTER 35
Cavagnolo and I stepped from behind the trees and back to the clearing. Flies swarmed around us, perhaps hoping we’d also drop dead and add to the feast.
“What are you going to do about the bodies?” I asked.
“Leave ’em,” Cavagnolo answered. “Let them rot. I didn’t kill them, so when the cops come asking, I’ll tell them the truth. I don’t know nothing.”
“So that’s it?”
“Whaddaya expect? I move them and get caught, then the cops will assume I had something to do with this.”
Made sense. I said to Phaedra, “Better go with your uncle.”
“What about you?”
“I have things I need to get done.”
Vinny held open the rear door in the pickup cab. Cavagnolo nudged Phaedra’s arm. She pulled away. Her gaze swept over the corpses and back to me.
There was no horror in her eyes, only a strange disappointment. She stood between an old world and a new reality. What she had dreamed for-a new life reincarnated as an immortal-was possible. I had been her guide for a brief excursion into the world of the supernatural.
Her stare sharpened. My kundalini noir cringed as I sensed an echo. But she didn’t do it. Instead she turned her back to me and climbed into the pickup.
No good-byes from either of us. There was no reason that I should see her again.
They drove off and left me with a cloud of flies beating around my head.
What would the Araneum tell me to do about Phaedra? For now my priority was the zombies.
I started my 4Runner and drove to a paved road. I stopped beside a gravel quarry and got my map. I noted the places where the zombies had been.
Gino’s place. He had been carried from his house toward Pinos Creek. Why not carry him to the road and escape in a vehicle as they had done with Cleto? Why take the creek?
What about this ambush? Was it planned or did the zombies run across Cleto and the others? The zombies had taken him away in a vehicle. Where to?
Next, the ambush on me. That attack happened to the north of here by four miles. I couldn’t figure why the zombies were out there.
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