The boat crossed the surf and bellied into the sand. Men jumped off and formed a line from the boat to the trees. Others lifted bundles that were handed down the line, to be piled among the trees.
I sniffed and caught the sharp smell of cocaine.
Slinking around them, I kept watch on my prey: Johnson. These men had many weapons, which meant I had to corner Johnson alone and unsuspecting.
A thumping echoed faintly in the sky, a noise still too small for humans to hear. I perked my ears. Motor sounds approached from the water. More humans were coming, though Johnson and his companions hadn’t yet noticed.
Weapons. Cocaine. The paper they valued so dearly. There was going to be trouble.
But how to get Johnson? If trouble started, he would be in the middle of it. I might never get at him.
The thumping grew loud. The men on the beach dropped their bundles and shouted in panic. Their auras raged like fire.
A beam shot upon them from overhead, a circle of bright light that held steady on the boat. The whirring wings of the flying machine reflected the light. The loud thumping made my guts tremble. More beams flashed over the water and the men scurried across the beach.
The light stung my eyes. I retreated into the shadow of the palmettos.
A lone figure, tall, his aura bright with desperation, sprinted up the beach. Johnson.
A beam of light snagged him.
Johnson raised his arm, pointed his gun into the beam, and fired.
Chapter
12
Weapons chattered and their deadly stingers hissed through the air. In the glare of the spotlights from the water, men on the beach staggered and fell. Their boat exploded and threw a ball of fire into the night sky.
The heat splashed against my snout and I melted into the shadows.
Johnson ran across the sand toward me. Tufts of sand erupted around his feet.
No, Johnson was mine. My front paws clawed at the ground in anticipation.
When he was close to the brush, he screamed and fell to his knees, wounded by a bullet. Another beam ensnared him, the two shafts of light holding him like pincers.
I yelped in distress at losing my prey. Bounding from the shadows and onto the edge of the beach, I lunged for Johnson and leaped into the brilliance surrounding him.
Our eyes met and his opened wide with terror. I wanted him to whimper and wet his pants in fright. I locked my jaws on the garment around his neck and dragged him into the brush, my vampire-wolf strength easily handling his weight. His human odor swirled through my nose, bringing the smell of warm blood, insect repellent, gasoline, and terror. Johnson grasped my foreleg and I shook him until he let go.
Wild and noisy shooting surrounded us. One of the lights sweeping over us went dark. The second light swung across the beach to follow the men dashing from the burning boat and toward the brush.
Hurriedly, I pulled Johnson deeper into the undergrowth. Branches and stiff reeds scraped against us. Letting go, I stepped away, not sure of what to do next. I needed him to answer my questions, and, as a wolf, I couldn’t hold a conversation in English. I doubted he would wait patiently while I transmutated back into a vampire.
Johnson brought his legs under him and kneeled. He clutched his side and grimaced with pain. In a pathetic human gesture, he clung to the bag of money strapped around his neck. He gazed at me and back to the beach, looking amazed that I had saved him. His aura blazed with frightened confusion and then with angry determination.
He brought his hand weapon up and fired at me. I sprang to one side. He lurched to his feet. I readied to pounce on him.
The flying machine roared over us. The thumping of its wings pounded my ears. A bright light stabbed through the trees and dazzled me. I leaped into the shadows. When I turned around, Johnson was gone.
The flying machine circled above, the wind from its whirling wings beating the treetops and scattering palm fronds. Its light hunted for prey. A swarm of bullets snapped at the brush.
I darted through a dark grove of tangled vines. I sniffed deeply, turning my snout from side to side. To my left, I found the meaty scent of Johnson’s blood.
Mindful of the flying machine, I kept low and padded out from the vines and through a thick patch of tall grass.
Up ahead. The red haze of a human aura. Johnson.
I sprang into a gallop. Johnson’s scent grew stronger.
As I bounded over a fallen log, I saw Johnson running to where he had left his boat. He clawed at branches whipping against his face. I circled to ambush him.
Johnson reached a clearing and slowed to a limp. He looked over one shoulder back in the direction of the shooting. The flying machine hovered over the fighting. Its beam of light sliced through the night.
I crept into a black hollow between two palmettos and waited.
Johnson emerged from the clearing and came straight at me. He limped, favoring his right leg. He held the money bag tight against his chest while a stain grew on the side of his torso. Moonlight glinted off his weapon.
I flexed my legs and bared my fangs. The muscles on the back of my neck tightened and the fur bristled.
Johnson stopped. He looked about, as if realizing that he was being watched.
Silently, I stepped forward, closing in for the attack.
Johnson’s shiny eyes searched the gloom. The two black orbs of his pupils locked upon me. He raised his weapon in my direction.
“What are you?” he whispered to himself. Adrenaline and desperation tainted his scent.
Being a wolf, I couldn’t answer.
Johnson winced, his expression distorted with confusion. He adjusted his grip on the bag.
I put one paw forward.
Johnson motioned with his weapon and I stayed still.
I stared at his neck.
Johnson’s aura shimmered with deliberation, as if he was wondering what to do about me. His aura flared, signaling an attack.
I jumped away. His bullets pumped at the brush and the blasts slapped my ears. I bounded around him, weaving back and forth to confuse him.
His weapon went silent. I lunged and jammed my paws against his chest. His arms beat my flanks. My teeth snapped at his throat, tearing flesh and tasting delicious blood.
Johnson fell. I tumbled over him. I set my jaws for the final bite. Something hard thumped against my skull and I staggered away, momentarily dazed.
Johnson crouched, keeping the weapon high over his shoulder to use as a club. Blood seeped from his neck.
I circled, looking for the chance to strike again. Like any wounded animal, Johnson was desperate and still dangerous, but so was I.
The flying machine returned, a noisy blur of wings and flashing lights. Its noise beat my ears and shook my insides. The beam of light speared Johnson. He bared his clenched teeth and looked like a cornered rat.
Holes appeared on his chest. Blood sprayed into the light. Johnson fell backward, his legs twisted beneath him. His aura burned with terror and pain, glistened vainly for an instant, then vanished.
My best lead in this case was dead.
Chapter
13
A shaft of light hunted for me. I slunk back and hid until the flying machine left.
I sniffed Johnson’s body, now a lifeless, bloodied heap.
The humans in the flying machine had cheated me. I snarled at them, frustrated. Angry.
In the distance, lights swung through the brush, silhouetting a line of men and their weapons against the glow of the burning boat. The fighting on the beach had stopped, the last echo of gunshots disappearing into the night. Above, the flying machine circled with the chop, chop of its wings drumming against my ears.
I didn’t have much time to search Johnson, and I couldn’t do so as a wolf.
I lay in a smooth patch of sand. Closing my eyes, I summoned the transformation back into a vampire. My legs stretched from their sockets, elongating and twisting as pain surged through my bones. Skin burned where fur ret
racted into flesh. The worst of the agony was when my snout blunted and my skull and jaws re-formed.
I opened my eyes. The pain ebbed and my muscles relaxed. As I gazed about, the world seemed emptier, the sounds duller, the smells fainter.
Naked, I rolled to my hands and knees.
The line of men moved closer. Radio calls and static crackled through the night. The helicopter hovered above, shepherding the group with its searchlight.
I crawled to Johnson’s body. I pulled the satchel with the money from his shoulder, opened the bag, and thumbed the pads of hundred-dollar bills, estimating a hundred and fifty thousand dollars. No sense in wasting the cash. I looped the satchel’s strap over my head. Searching his pockets, I found a magazine of ammunition, cigarettes, a lighter, keys, a coke spoon, coins, and his wallet.
A loudspeaker boomed over the island. “This is the United States Drug Enforcement Administration and the Monroe County Sheriff’s Office.”
The Sheriff’s Office? Johnson, the stupid criminal bastard, had betrayed his own. This death might have been a favor.
The loudspeaker continued: “You are surrounded and outgunned. Put down your weapons and come out with your hands behind your head.” The message was repeated in Spanish.
Red auras floated through the brush like a string of glowing balloons. The auras belonged to police agents advancing closer, now about two hundred meters away. No time to go through the wallet. I stuffed it inside the satchel.
The agents called to one another. There was no doubt this was a drug war; they were as well-armed as infantrymen and very trigger-happy. Laser pointers from their guns traced before them, like glowing red feelers probing the shadows of the brush.
Except for the bag of money slung over my shoulder, I stood naked with my dork hanging in the sea breeze. I crouched to hide behind a bush. To escape the island, I had to get to my boat, which was moored in a swampy inlet behind me, about a hundred meters away. The agents were fifty meters away and moving closer. I could slip into the brush and make it to the boat except…my wallet and ID remained in the pile of clothes I had stashed when I had transmutated into a wolf. Damn.
The clothes were to my left, somewhere within a grove of palmettos and saw grass. The agents hadn’t reached the spot yet. I counted fifteen red auras, clumped into groups of three. One group turned in my direction.
“The grass here is trampled,” an agent said. The optic tubes of his night-vision goggles gave him a lobster-face. “And I see shoe prints.”
Despite his night-vision goggles, I had the advantage with my vampire eyes. But they had the advantage of numbers and guns.
“The copter nailed one of the assholes around here,” a companion added.
The first agent stopped. “Hold on. There’s another set of prints. Someone barefoot.”
I glanced at my naked feet. Those were my prints.
These agents were no more than twenty meters away. A laser pointer swung toward me. The red line quivered across the branches and leaves above my head. Careful. Steel-jacketed lead slugs could hack my flesh as effectively as silver bullets.
If they were looking for a barefoot suspect, I’d give them one. I lay on my back next to Johnson and shut my eyes.
Brush scraped against fabric. I smelled perspiration from the agent, and hot oil and burned ammunition from his recently fired gun.
A strong light played over my face, making the insides of my eyelids glow. “Here’s the second guy.”
Boots scuffed the earth by my head. “Son of a bitch is naked.”
“You noticed?” Another man’s voice. “You feds got a real grasp of the obvious.” A gloved hand touched my shoulder. “Don’t see a mark on him.”
The first man said, “Don’t recognize him from our list of suspects. Maybe he’s got ID in that bag or shoved up his ass.”
His breath and the odor of a menthol cigarette puffed against my face.
I opened my eyes.
He crouched beside me. His nose was inches from mine. I hit him full-force with vampire hypnosis.
His aura flared like a match. His pupils dilated and his expression went slack. He fell on his ass. The submachine gun slipped from his grasp and clattered to the ground.
The other two agents stepped back. I rotated on my heels, zinging upward in the classic vampire fashion.
“What the f-” one gasped and then froze when I zapped him.
His companion jerked an M-16 to his shoulder. I locked onto his gaze and instantly hypnotized him as well.
Their jaws drooped and they stood slump-shouldered. Hypnosis would hold them long enough for me to escape.
Another group of agents moved toward where my clothes were stashed. I had to act fast.
The palm trees grew close together, the fronds overlapping. I sprinted for the nearest tree and hustled up the trunk, where I leaped to the next tree. From that tree I bounded to the next.
“What was that?” An agent turned on the flashlight attached to his submachine gun and panned the cluster of fronds where I had been. I kept still.
“The wind. I don’t know.”
“Wind, hell, let’s see what jumps out.” The agent shouldered his submachine gun and opened fire. The bullets chopped the tree and tattered palm fronds whipped through the air. He quit shooting and examined the gnarled tree with the light from his gun. He turned off the light and lowered his weapon.
An agent at the far end of the line halted at the spot where my clothes were. He yelled, “I found something.”
Better hurry. I leaped from tree to tree, nimble as a monkey, silent as a bat.
Three agents clustered around my clothes. I jumped and landed beside them.
Startled, they turned toward me. First snatching my clothes, I shook my nakedness and taunted, “Wooga, wooga, wooga.” No need to hypnotize them; I wanted them to panic.
Pie-eyed with surprise, they opened fire and shouted into their radios. By then I was back up the tree, my clothes tucked under one arm and the satchel of money swinging from my shoulder.
I bounded to the next group and repeated my “wooga” introduction. They started shooting. Bullets clipped the brush in every direction. The other groups opened fire and, within a minute, they were gunning for one another and yelling:
“Watch out. We got one wacked on meth.”
“Shoot the bastard. Drop him.”
The helicopter returned. Its searchlight probed the ground and held for a moment on the outline of an agent huddled among the palmettos and bushes.
“Police. Police,” he shouted, panicked like he was about to shit his pants. “Don’t shoot.”
I ran through the brush toward where my boat was moored in the bog. I stepped through the muck and tossed the satchel and my clothes into the boat. I cast loose and climbed aboard. The helicopter and the confused shooting masked my starting of the Evinrude. I kept the throttle cracked enough to quietly back out from under the overhanging vines and cypress moss and into the surf. I pointed the bow to the dark sea and, with the muffled outboard churning the water, slipped away.
I wasn’t worried about what the agents would report. That a naked Tarzan whacked on meth jumped from tree to tree?
My path to the island had been to follow Johnson, and now I had to guess a reverse course. An hour northwest at moderate speed, then turn northeast until I returned to the Keys. The compass ball mounted to the windshield didn’t move. I tapped the plastic housing, to free the compass. The cheap housing broke apart and the compass ball fell to the deck.
What now? I found the Big Dipper and fixed the North Star to keep myself oriented. Sooner or later I should run into one of the islands in the Keys.
What did I have to show for tonight’s work? My best lead was dead, a crooked deputy shot and killed by his fellow cops.
I pulled Johnson’s wallet from the satchel. Maybe I’d find something. I went through his wallet. Monroe County Sheriff Office ID. Credit cards. Gift cards and coupons. After I read each one and decided that
it added nothing to my investigation, I tossed it overboard.
Just as I was about to fling one business card away, I stopped and read it again. The card belonged to a hotel resort in Hilton Head, South Carolina. Along the bottom was the name of the resident golf pro. I remembered Odin’s enigmatic clue: Goodman.
Now I knew where I could find a Goodman. The golf pro. His name was Dan Goodman.
Chapter
14
Finally, the trail was once again hot, hotter than before. I had a strong lead to the name Odin had given me-Goodman-and where I could find him.
But a golf pro? What would a golf pro have to do with the murder of an alien and the chalice, Marissa?
I slipped the business card into the satchel and laid the satchel on the deck by my feet.
Before me, the horizon lightened from indigo to cerulean. The eastern stars faded. Sunrise approached.
Despite my spider-bite vaccination against the sun, I had my doubts. My mouth went dry. I was scared. For centuries, it had been the first rays of the new day’s sun that incinerated vampires. It was like facing a tiger I knew could never be completely tamed.
Even worse, I should’ve spotted land by now and I was getting hungry and lightheaded. Rummaging through the boat I found nothing but empty bags of Doritos. There were obviously no cups of blood lying about. The fuel gauge indicated that the tank was full to the brim-a lie, considering I’d been motoring for a good part of the night. At any moment I expected the Evinrude to cough and quit. Well, I did have all those hundred-dollar bills, which meant I had plenty of paper handy in case I had to blow my nose.
I could’ve planned this sojourn better. For starters, stealing a better ride instead of this piece of rusted junk.
My consolation was that I knew how to find Goodman-Dan Goodman-who might be the man the alien Gilbert Odin had fingered as his murderer. Goodman killed Odin for what reason? It had to be more than Odin being an alien. And, if so, would I have to include Goodman as part of my investigation ordered by the Araneum?
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