A red aura surrounded the man who stood between the house and me. His psychic shroud undulated with pleasure and the fuzzy, sparkling penumbra betrayed his curiosity.
He had the broad shoulders of a lumberjack. A fleece sweater covered the top of a white lab coat.
His proud jaw and the cowlick curling over his forehead made him appear like the superhero in a comic book. Only we weren’t in any comic book and he was no superhero.
He crouched beside my cage.
I focused my gaze into his. I’d zap him and order him to let me out.
His irises opened like the apertures on a camera lens. Usually the irises pop wide as fast as a bubble bursting. His aura brightened, but it didn’t blaze as I expected.
My hypnosis powers were weak.
The man’s expression went blank. He staggered from the cage.
Cowboy zombie grasped his arm and pulled him away. Why did the zombie protect this man? Was he their master? The reanimator?
The man gave his head a groggy shake. He rubbed color back into his face. Snakes of malice lashed from his aura. His forehead wadded with deep furrows of anger. He motioned toward cowboy zombie and beckoned for the club.
The man took the club and smacked it across the cage. “What the hell did you do to me?”
The cage rattled. I feared the wires would snap loose and shock me.
I couldn’t break free. I couldn’t hypnotize him. I was trapped.
The man eased the club through the wire grid. “What the hell are you?”
I was certain he was going to jab me with the club, and when he did, I’d shove it back into his chest.
Instead the man wedged the club in the grid and tipped the cage. I slid across the plywood toward the electrified wires.
I grabbed in panic for the plywood sheet to arrest myself. My fingers touched the wires under the plywood, and the next instant, blasts of mule-kick pain shot up each arm and exploded in my armpits.
My hands tore from the wires and I tumbled backward against the grid.
The sensation was like getting impaled on a red-hot iron bar. Every synapse fired between every cell, and the universe within my head was scorched of everything but pain.
The cage rocked back and settled on its bottom. I curled on the plywood to save myself.
The man levered the cage again, and again I fell against the wire grid.
For the next minute I lived inside a lightning bolt, my being consumed with white pain, every thought obliterated by a tumbling fire that wracked my body.
The pain abated, like the crackling embers of a dying fire. I smelled burnt flesh-my own. My eyes gradually came into focus. Wisps of smoke drifted by my face.
I lay on my side in a clenched fetal position. My kundalini noir trembled, exhausted by the ordeal.
The man slapped the club against the cage. “More?”
I couldn’t speak. I put my hand against my face-my numb fingers were hard as icicles-and tried to force my mouth to move. My lips were rubbery and cold like those of a dead fish.
He yelled, “You do that hypnosis thing again and I’ll fry you like sausage. You understand?”
I pulled from a deep reserve and the effort to speak was like climbing out of a crevasse. “Yes, I understand. No more, please.”
“Please?” His aura smoothed. “Don’t expect a ‘you’re welcome.’”
I wanted a sip of warm blood. I wanted a ticket home. I wanted…I wanted…
The morning light on Ghoul Mountain inched down the summit. The last of the eastern stars disappeared into the cerulean blue.
The dawn approached.
I wanted not to die.
CHAPTER 39
I turned to the man. “Take me inside.”
“Why?”
“Please, take me inside.”
He tapped the club against the wooden deck. “Tell me why.”
The light on Ghoul Mountain broadened and lengthened like a pale tongue. My kundalini noir rolled and bucked in apprehension.
The man knew too much as it was. He’d seen me transform from a wolf. I didn’t want to tell him I was a vampire. I didn’t want to confess my greatest fear and weakness-the rays of the morning sun.
The man scanned the terrain. “What is it? All of a sudden you forgot about my shock therapy. What are you afraid of?”
“I can’t…can’t…”
“Can’t what? Tell me?” The man swung the club like a baton. “I think we’ve established that you’re going to do whatever the hell I tell you. I got all morning and apparently you don’t.”
The light on Ghoul Mountain was halfway down its side. My kundalini noir coiled in desperation. I couldn’t betray the Araneum. “No, please, you don’t understand.”
“Then make me understand. I’m an intelligent man. Shouldn’t be hard.”
I could lift the plywood floor and hide behind it. But the electric grid would shock me and I’d thrash around, burning, to the amusement of this demented bastard.
The morning light slanted across Ghoul Mountain.
The dread of annihilation made me feel the flames licking my skin. My mind clawed for ideas to escape but there was only one.
I cried out: “It’s the morning light.”
The man turned his face toward Ghoul Mountain. His eyes became twin shiny disks, as yellow and menacing as the sun about to destroy me.
He pointed to the east. “The sun?”
“Yes,” I yelled.
“The morning light?”
“Yes,” I yelled again, the word shooting from my throat.
“What’s so dangerous about it?”
Moments ago, electric pain had stripped me of everything but the ferocious touch of its agonizing sting. Now fear, the fear of being roasted into nothingness, the absolute and complete destruction of Felix Gomez, lay waste to every thought but one: Survival.
I let cowardice splash over me with a filth that I readily gulped to stay alive. “The morning sun destroys us.”
“Us who?”
“Us vampires.”
The man looked stunned. “Vampires?”
“Yes. Yes.”
“No shit,” he replied. “You are a vampire?”
“Yes.” My throat hurt from the scream.
Sunlight reached the bottom of Ghoul Mountain and marched into Deadman’s Gulch.
The man rapped the club against the deck. He smiled triumphantly. “They said I was crazy for my studies in reanimation.”
He was the reanimator.
“Look at what I’ve done.” He pointed the club at his mob of zombies and then to me. “I’ve opened the door to a world beyond death and see what else I’ve found. A vampire.”
“Please, take me inside.” I saw myself a pathetic sniveling coward, helpless to do anything but betray my kind. My kundalini noir lay in a circle, head to tail, opened its mouth, and began eating itself. My strength emptied out a gash in my psyche.
“Now that I know this, why should I take you inside?” the reanimator asked. “You said us, meaning more vampires. I caught you; I can catch them. I might learn a very interesting lesson by watching what the sun does to you.”
The echo started.
Felix…ix…ix.
Phaedra’s face bloomed before me.
The echo ricocheted in my brain and my spine quivered.
What did she want? Was this a warning? Too late, I was already in deep, deep shit.
The echo grew loud. A trembling continued down my spine.
Not now, for God’s sake.
I grasped the plywood board and pulled myself into a ball. In a second, that psychic noise would have me thrashing against the inside of the electrified cage.
My psychic column vibrated. My vision blurred. I shut my eyes tight and got ready for the worst.
The vibration suddenly stopped. The echo halted, more abruptly than it ever had. I opened my eyes.
The man set his hands on his knees and stared in amazement. “What the hell is wrong with you?”<
br />
At the moment, everything. “Take me inside,” I whispered.
The man stood. “Not until you talk.”
A zombie brought a camcorder. Unlike the other revenants, his clothes-clean white lab coat, black trousers, and dress shoes-were well-kept and neatly pressed. He was the one I’d seen on the porch last night. Aside from the gummy smears around his lifeless eyes, he looked like a service technician in an ad for Mercedes-Benz.
The reanimator took the camcorder and aimed it at me. The pale triangle of Ghoul Mountain reflected in its lens.
“Smile for YouTube. Time’s running out.”
I recoiled at the image of the white rays of the sun lapping my skin and the sizzling flesh turning into smoke. “I’ll tell you everything.”
He lowered the camcorder. “Such as?”
“Everything. Vampires. The world of the supernatural.” The dam of self-restraint had broken, and I would jettison every promise and secret in trade for one more day undead.
The reanimator handed the camcorder to lab coat zombie. “Then we’ll talk. After all, there will be another sunrise.”
CHAPTER 40
Zombies slipped poles through the wire grid of the cage and lifted. They carried me sedan-chair style while lab coat zombie tended the electric power cable attached to the cage.
I swayed on the plywood sheet, vacant eyed, defeated and broken. I, Felix Gomez, combat veteran, vampire detective, had turned yellow to save his hide.
All those stories I’ve heard of defiant heroes burned through my memory and singed me. They had stared into oblivion and were given a choice. Treachery or death. They had chosen death.
I had chosen treachery. All the heroics in my life meant nothing.
We entered the porch door. Cowboy zombie stumbled at the threshold and the cage tipped. I fell against the wire grid and, as I cried out, scrambled to center myself on the plywood.
Cowboy zombie leered at me over his shoulder. “Ghaw. Ghaw.”
This part of the house was at one time the living room. Most of the walls had been knocked out. Thick dirty drapes covered the floor-to-ceiling windows. Cables and tubes snaked across the floor and hung from the ceiling like the vines of a grotesque plant growing out of control. The humid air was thick with the odor of benzene and formaldehyde. It looked like the lab in a straight-to-video horror movie-with me as the starring victim.
Shelves stood along two of the adjacent walls. Bubbles pumped through dozens of glass jars and aquariums on the shelves. Human parts floated inside the cloudy solutions. A blood transfusion machine sat on a narrow table. The machine rocked back and forth, pumping blood from a dismembered torso in a tub and into a plastic bag warming in a Crock-Pot.
The zombies took me to the far end of the room next to a heavy wooden door mounted on a steel pipe frame. The door had been fashioned into a table. Lab coat zombie donned a pair of oven mitts and opened the door to my cage. The reanimator snapped his fingers and the zombies upended the cage.
The terror of what was about to happen made me cringe. I fell across the wire grid, the electricity sparking and burning my skin. I dropped to the floor, jerking about in agony.
A sharp pain like I’d been hit with a nail gun ran through my left hand. The pain reverberated inside me and I could do nothing but squirm in helplessness.
Cowboy zombie pulled away from a red jumper cable clamp that he had pinched to the palm of my hand. Lady tall boots zombie plopped a metal cap on my head and buckled a leather chinstrap. A black jumper cable dangled from the cap.
The reanimator gripped the handle of a large electrical knife switch bolted to a workbench. He closed the switch and…
I thought my head exploded. Everything attached to my brain-skull, medulla oblongata, eyeballs-seemed to blast apart. The tornado of pain funneled down my spine, circled my chest, and ran to my left hand. Every nerve ending along that path became a rivet of fire.
The pain receded, like smoke clearing after a bomb blast. The mental noise of anguish rumbled in my brain.
The reanimator came back into focus. He studied me, his hand holding the switch at a half-cocked position.
My kundalini noir flattened, limp as a deflated balloon.
I fought to keep my eyes open. “Who are you?”
His expression slipped into pride. “I am Dr. Leopold Hennison. A medical doctor, not some silly academic with a Ph.D.” He pointed to a certificate on the wall. “And you are?”
“Felix Gomez.”
“Where are you from?”
“Denver.”
“A vampire from Denver? I sent one of my zombies to Denver. Barrett Chambers. Would you know what happened to him?”
“Who?”
Hennison closed the switch again. The lightning bolt blasted through me again-the world went white with pain-and when I came around, I wanted to melt to the floor.
“Barrett was the first zombie I made who could drive. You don’t know how much his loss inconvenienced me,” Hennison said. “Let’s try this again.” He tapped his fingers on the switch. “What happened to Barrett Chambers?”
I lie and I get more pain. Better to tell the truth. “I destroyed him.”
“Why?” Hennison grasped the switch handle.
“Because he was a zombie.”
“So?”
“We can’t let humans know about the undead. Your zombie could’ve been discovered and captured.”
Hennison loomed close. “What’s this worry about humans knowing about the undead? They will soon. About the undead. About zombies. About me.”
Hennison backed away. “And they will know soon enough about vampires.”
My kundalini noir deflated even more. I had betrayed the Great Secret. How could I undo this?
“As for Barrett Chambers,” Hennison said, “he was scouting for prospects. Perhaps he wasn’t ready to be on his own. Oh well. Science is all about taking risks.”
Hennison opened a plastic cooler on the workbench. He took out a Red Bull, popped it open, and guzzled from the can.
Tall boots girl zombie leaned over me and stared at my naked crotch. Yellow drool oozed from her mouth and splattered on my leg.
“We better get you some pants,” Hennison said. “Kimberly hasn’t lost her oral fixation.” He chomped his teeth twice. “Just ask him.” Hennison cocked a thumb at cowboy zombie, who covered his crotch with both hands and retreated a step. “Kimberly minds well but let’s not tempt her too much.”
Lab coat zombie tossed me a pair of filthy sweatpants.
Hennison finished his Red Bull and dropped the empty can into a recycling box. He drummed the handle of the switch. “Remember. Act naughty and it’s zap, zap.”
I came to my feet. Kimberly’s greedy eyes followed the angle of my dangle. I pulled the pants over my legs and wondered if out of sight, out of mind applied to zombies.
I stood, my flesh and bones aching, but I was grateful that my body still worked.
Cowboy zombie tipped the wooden table vertical.
Hennison motioned that I back against it. I hesitated as I studied the metal hoops bolted to where my wrists and ankles would rest.
The doctor started to press the switch handle.
“No, no,” I shouted. No more pain. “I’ll do it.”
Hennison relaxed. Cowboy zombie and Kimberly cinched the metal hoops over my wrists and ankles. I flexed my arms and legs to test the strength of the hoops. I could break free but needed a distraction to keep them from frying me with the electricity.
Hennison tripped a lever on the table. The door pivoted into a horizontal position, stopping suddenly so that the back of my head thumped against the surface.
Hennison unhooked the jumper cable clamp from my hand and removed the steel cap. “Don’t get any funny ideas. Now you’re wired directly to the generator outside.”
“Believe me,” I replied, “funny is the furthest thing from my mind.”
He chuckled. “Don’t get me wrong. We can joke around. A sense of
humor makes for good conversation.” Hennison waved to his mute zombies. “Trust me that I’m lacking in good conversation.”
Hennison was lacking more than conversation but I knew my reward if I said so. He wanted to talk, I needed time to escape, so why not let him gab?
Hennison took off his fleece sweater and smoothed the lab coat underneath. He faced a large mirror fixed to the wall close to the table. He wiped dust from the glass. He watched himself as he turned his face, lifting his chin, his jaw set, as if he was auditioning to be Benito Mussolini.
His reflected gaze swung in my direction. Hennison jerked his head over his shoulder toward me. He turned to the mirror and back to me.
I knew what he saw, or rather didn’t see: my reflection.
For a short moment, his brow furrowed in puzzlement. When it smoothed, he smiled. “Let’s you and I come to a deal.”
“Anything you say. Tell me what you want, we’ll shake hands, and I’ll be on my way out of here.”
“You’re being too optimistic,” Hennison said. “You and I are going to have a nice, long chat. I ask questions and you tell me the answers.”
“I don’t want to disappoint you but I’m not very good at this.”
“You’ll do fine, trust me. Just don’t get all macho.”
“Let’s go back to that deal,” I said, convinced that my choices were bad and really bad.
“You decide how comfortable you want to be,” Hennison explained. “See, tomorrow I’m going to test your assertion that morning sunlight will destroy you. But until then, we’ll chat, and it’s up to you whether you want to pass the time in comfort or in extreme pain.”
CHAPTER 41
Hennison rattled through a pan of tools on the workbench and selected a scalpel. He propped his elbows on the table and prodded my shoulder with the blade. A sting followed the trace of the scalpel on my skin.
“You’re a walking freak show, Mr. Gomez. A Wikipedia of the fantastic. How do you transform from animal to human form?”
“It just happens. You might as well ask a duck how it grows feathers.”
“What about not showing a reflection?”
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