“Do you believe this?” I asked.
“Rebecca does.”
“And you don’t?”
“Believe in vampires?” Katz chuckled. “Give me a break, Felix. I quit believing in the supernatural, fairy tales, Bible stories, all that crap, after my Sunday school teacher molested me.”
“Sorry to hear that.”
“That I don’t believe?”
“No, the other part. About your Sunday school teacher.”
Katz shrugged. “It happened and I moved on. What concerns me are the people who murdered Roxy.”
“Would these be the powerful enemies you mentioned?”
“Read for yourself.” Katz produced a thick bundle of papers from her handbag. She laid the papers on my desk.
I took the bundle and removed the rubber band. The papers were copies of newspaper clippings and printouts from numerous Web sites. SMUT LADY WINS BATTLE AGAINST PORN COMPANY. QUEEN OF RAUNCH TESTIFIES AGAINST DEVELOPERS. PORN STAR FOUND DEAD IN ALLEY.
“Give me a rundown of these powerful enemies.”
“Cragnow Vissoom is the president of the video company Roxy was contracted to.”
“What was his problem with her?”
“Roxy had bought out her contract and wanted to start her own company. Cragnow was afraid she’d take his best people.”
“Such as you?”
“Me and other girls.”
“So?”
Katz rolled her eyes. “It would make Cragnow look like a real chump. What kind of a boss can’t control his talent, especially in the skin trade? Plus Roxy made him rich. Before she hired on, Gomorrah Video was small potatoes. Thanks to her, Cragnow became number one in triple X sales and rentals.”
People had been murdered for less. That was one suspect.
“And the rest of the enemies?”
“Project Eleven.”
“Excuse me?”
“Project Eleven,” she repeated. “That’s the name of the effort to redevelop the area around the city of Pacoima.” Katz raised an eyebrow. “Ever heard of Pacoima?”
Unfortunately. I had spent my childhood bouncing from southern New Mexico to Pacoima as my parents fought, made up, and fought some more. I lived for months at a time with my aunt and mother, until my dad came around and we pretended to be a family again. I had felt tiny and brittle. Nothing seemed mine. Not my emotions, thanks to my parents. And not the few belongings I had, thanks to the neighborhood thieves and drug dealers.
Yeah, I knew Pacoima.
I looked back at Katz. “I know where it is. But I don’t know beans about Project Eleven.”
“It was a huge public works boondoggle that Roxy worked to defeat.”
Roxy.
Pacoima.
Now I remembered where I had seen Roxy before. “Let me see that DVD again.”
Katz leaned away in surprise.
“Come on,” I insisted.
She gave me the DVD. I studied Roxy’s face, especially her dimpled cheeks and the radiance of her eyes.
During one of my stays in Pacoima, I had buried my troubles in an atlas and become my elementary school’s champion in the geography bee. After winning the all-city contest, I was invited to get my award at the public library downtown. At the time I was as dark as a coffee bean and wore tight, high-water pants because my good trousers had been stolen off the clothesline. All the other kids were well-off and white. They and their parents arrived in fancy cars while I hitched a ride with my teacher in her old Datsun. Everybody gave me fake, polite smiles, as if to tolerate my presence. When I got handed my trophy—a desk globe from National Geographic—I felt like a trained monkey getting a prize for being especially clever.
A guy from the newspaper took pictures of the rich kids and their parents. Some high school girls herded the students from a Glendale elementary together for a group shot. One of those pretty girls saw me alone with my globe. She invited me over and stood beside me in front of the group. She gave me the only genuine smile I got from anyone that afternoon.
After all these years, that girl had a name.
Roxy Bronze.
Now someone wanted me to find her killer.
How did that young woman with her privileged life and beautiful personality wind up doing porn? And then get murdered?
I returned the DVD to Katz.
“What was that about?” she asked.
“I might want to buy a copy. Where were we?”
Katz tapped the papers she had given me. “Look into these people. Councilwoman Petale Venin. She hated Roxy for undermining Project Eleven. And there’s developer Lucky Rosario. He liked to hang around Cragnow and score with the actresses.”
“That include Roxy?”
“If he had the chance, but that never happened. If Lucky was ever alone with Roxy he would’ve strangled her.”
I wrote Lucky Rosario on my blotter and underlined it. “Why?”
“Roxy helped the local community fight Project Eleven. She not only humiliated Venin and Rosario, but the attention also forced the city council to withdraw the plan. Cost both Venin and Rosario a fortune.”
Interesting cast of villains. “How do vampires tie in?”
“That’s the connection between Cragnow, Venin, and Rosario.”
“What? That they’re vampires?”
“They might be.”
“Might be?” I asked.
Her tone made it seem as though being a vampire was a casual diversion. She had no idea of the burden we carried because of the sorrow from the loss of our souls. I had lost mine during my service as a sergeant in the Iraq war. I was overcome with grief after mistakenly slaughtering an innocent family when an ancient Iraqi vampire—an ekimmu—lured me close and turned me into one of the undead. I never thanked him for it—the smelly bastard.
“Look, I feel stupid mentioning it, but I have to,” said Katz. “That’s what Rebecca Dwelling told me.”
“Where is Rebecca?”
Sweat beaded on Katz’s temples. “Back in Los Angeles.”
I thumbed the papers. Discounting the vampire angle, there was enough evidence and motive to persuade even the most skeptical of cops that Cragnow, Venin, and Rosario had something to gain by Roxy’s murder. Obviously the police knew and didn’t act. Katz had good reason to be paranoid.
One big question remained.
“Katz, why me?”
“Rebecca said Coyote passed your name along.”
My fingers tingled again. I didn’t know a Coyote in Los Angeles or anywhere else. “Who’s Coyote?”
Katz wiped the sweat collecting on her brow. “Someone she met at the club.”
“He’s a vampire?”
“Go ask Rebecca.” Katz pulled a small amber bottle of pills from her purse. She glanced at the watercooler. “Could I have a drink?”
I got up and approached the cooler. Now to find the truth. With my back to Katz, I removed my contacts and put them into their plastic case. I turned about and offered her a paper cup filled with water. She reached for it and looked up to my face to say thanks.
Our gazes locked. Her pupils dilated. Her red aura blazed like I had hooked her up to an electrical socket. Her jaw relaxed, and those delicious lips parted. The amber bottle fell from her hand and rattled onto the floor. Her aura swirled like glowing syrup.
I set the cup on my desk. I picked up the bottle—prescription Xanax—and placed it next to the cup.
Taking both of her hands, I kneaded the tender webs of flesh between her thumbs and index fingers to deepen my hypnotic control. I couldn’t risk fanging her. If she found marks on her neck, however faint, that would certainly confirm what she suspected about the existence of vampires.
I massaged her hands. “Katz. Ms. Meow, close your eyes.”
With her eyes closed, she appeared angelic, a creature far removed from the licentious wench on the DVD.
Hypnosis dulled a human’s mind, and I had to prod Katz’s consciousness for every answer. What she coul
dn’t do was lie. I questioned her for ten minutes and asked her to repeat every detail concerning Roxy.
My fingers trembling, I struggled to replace my contacts. I ordered Katz to wake up.
Katz’s bosom heaved. Her eyelids fluttered. She gripped the armrests with a start.
“Are you okay?” I asked, feigning concern.
She blinked, tapping her chest as she took deep breaths. “I feel light-headed.”
“You passed out for a second,” I said, presenting the cup of water. “Happens. It’s the altitude.”
Katz read her gold wristwatch. “A second? Feels more like minutes.” She opened the bottle and shook out two pills. “So there’s no misunderstanding: Felix, you are taking this case?”
“I am. Give me time to clean up business on my end.”
“A few days, no longer.” Katz downed the pills and chased them with a gulp of water.
Her breathing relaxed. The Xanax hadn’t yet taken effect, but the ritual of downing them soothed her.
She picked up one of my business cards from the plastic holder and wrote on the back of the card. “My plane leaves this afternoon. Here’s my number. Call when you get to L.A.”
Katz collected her handbag and fluffed her tresses. I walked her to the door and wished her a safe trip.
I returned to my desk and studied the papers Katz had left for me. My thoughts turned black with worry. This case was a tangle of murder, revenge, big money, and vampires. And the worst part? My hypnosis of Katz Meow confirmed that it was all true.
CHAPTER 3
I sat at my desk for several minutes after Katz Meow left. An anxious spasm tore through me. My fingers clutched at the desk blotter.
I forced my hands flat on the desktop and stared at the wall to settle my nerves. A forgotten woman returned from my past and the memory of her tapped a well of shame from my childhood. Shame so toxic that even as a vampire I wanted to pull away from myself. The woman had remained unknown except for the bit of kindness she had shown me. Now I knew who she was, and I had to find her killer.
And the murder involved vampires colluding with humans.
Impossible.
Crazy.
Even if true, why would vampires risk catastrophe?
I tried to imagine every scenario where vampires and humans could mutually benefit from such collusion. How? We were enemies. Predator and prey.
Did the Araneum know about this collaboration? The Araneum—which is Latin for spiderweb—is the secret global network of vampires and should be made aware of this alleged vampire–human collusion. To protect the community of vampires, the Araneum had its feelers everywhere. And like the web tended by a spider, one suspicious tug on a strand would summon the Araneum to investigate, and if need be, strike.
But what if they didn’t know? To quiet my fears, I had to ask. My previous contact with the Araneum had been through my vampire mentor, who was now dead, having been killed by vampire hunters shortly after I arrived in Denver. I called Carmen, the head of the local nidus—vampire nest. I could trust her. Her voice mail picked up and said she was in Florida, “working on her tan.”
Very funny, Carmen.
I couldn’t share this suspicion of collaboration between the undead and living with any other vampire until I knew what was at risk. So I had to contact the Araneum on my own. I logged on to an antiquarian booksellers Web site, The Sagging Bookshelf, and requested a first-edition copy of the 1940s classic Dental Care and Sexual Hygiene for Post-Adolescent Women. I added that a buyer from Los Angeles had inquired about the book.
Ordering this title from this bookstore was a coded signal to the Araneum alerting them of compromising contact with humans by the Los Angeles nidus. Centuries ago, vampires had ruled with impunity over their terror-stricken fiefdoms. Now humans with their technology had the means to hunt, capture, and exterminate the undead. Our best defense was to remain hidden within the skepticism that flowered over myth and fantasy. Humans wouldn’t fight what they didn’t believe existed.
After I had sent the message my nerves should’ve calmed, but they didn’t. Instead my thoughts invented gruesome plots where even the inner cells of the Araneum had been compromised. For an instant, in my mind’s eye, the sky was crowded with helicopters catching vampires in the daggers of spotlights and tearing their bodies apart with rockets and cannon. The survivors were doused with gasoline and set afire. Bulldozers plowed the burning and squirming survivors into pits. I had seen the barbarity of war, in the time before I was made a vampire. Humans had committed these atrocities against one another; why would I think the undead could fare better?
My kundalini noir slithered within my belly like a snake trying to escape a trap.
I brewed herb tea mixed with Saint-John’s-wort and goat’s blood. To work off my nervousness, I paced my office, walking across the floor, up the eastern wall, across the ceiling, and down the other wall, pausing at my desk to sip tea. I walked this circuit until the teapot was empty.
I went downstairs to see what was in the mailbox. Checks had arrived from recent clients, assignments involving philandering spouses and an insurance chiseler. In one case I had given a client and her lawyer a digital video of her husband churning the water in a hot tub with his blond personal trainer. Of course, the husband in the other case got a similar video of his wife giving her boss highway head.
The man accused of insurance fraud told me under hypnosis where he had cached the “property stolen from him” and in what other states he committed identical scams.
After returning to my desk, I endorsed the checks and went through my files. I took a coffee break to enjoy shade-grown Mexican java mixed with type B-negative. I watched the blood drip from a Tupperware cup into the coffee. This was blood I had saved from a victim.
When I first became a vampire, human blood reminded me of my contribution to the misery and tragedy in this world. As a human I had murdered innocent people; blame it on the fog of war, but that was no excuse. I had taken aim and fired. And for a long time, I refused to drink human blood until I nearly died from weakness—and nearly let others be killed because of it.
Since then I’ve accepted my place in the cosmic game. I didn’t invent the rules. God made me need the blood of my human prey. Like any predator I have to hunt and sometimes kill, and if I’m to survive I’d better be good at it.
Something rapped on my window. Since I was on the second floor, the noise startled me and I spilled coffee on my desk blotter.
A crow peeked in from the outside windowsill. The bird was a sleek inky shape in the glare of the bright sunlight. Its eyes, twin onyx beads, beckoned impatiently. The crow rapped its beak on the wooden frame of the screen.
I looked at the bird and pulled open the sash. The sunbeam warmed my hands and face, my skin protected by Dermablend and high SPF sunscreen.
The bird rapped the window again. Did it want to come inside?
This was an old building, and layers of paint kept the window screen firmly in place. I dug at the edge with a letter opener. I pried loose one corner of the frame and pushed it open, trying not to crack the wood.
The crow squeezed into the gap and twisted its glossy black body until it emerged onto the inside sill.
The crow flew into the shaded coolness of my office and landed on my desk. An ornate metal capsule the size of my little finger was fastened to its right leg.
Was this my contact from the Araneum? A crow? Of course—what should I expect? An ostrich? Or a penguin on roller skates?
I read my watch. I had sent the email three hours ago. The Araneum responded already?
I had imagined the Araneum as somewhere in Europe, a sheltered enclave as secretive and forbidding as the Vatican. Had the crow flown all that way in three hours? Or, more plausibly, the Araneum had agents here in Denver.
I expected the crow to talk. Instead it kept mute and preened its wing feathers.
I cupped the silky, warm body. Its heart thrummed against my palm. The crow we
ighed less than a small chicken. It held still while I undid the metal clasp holding the capsule in place.
Its leg free, the crow squirmed from my grasp and hopped back to the desk. It strutted back and forth, claws scratching the paper of my blotter. The crow stopped beside my coffee cup and dunked its beak inside. It tilted its head back and suddenly hacked.
“Thanks a lot.” Crow spit now flavored my coffee. “You can finish the rest.”
The crow resumed walking across my desk.
“Behave yourself,” I said. “Crap on my desk and I’ll bake you in a pie.”
The crow swiveled its head to fix one glassy eye upon me and snorted.
The capsule was filigreed with delicate loops of gold and platinum. Tiny rubies lined what appeared to be a cap. I twisted the cap, and it unscrewed. The funky odor of stale meat leaked out. A slip of paper was curled inside, which I dug out with my fingertip.
The paper was a rolled sheet of speckled parchment that looked like onionskin and unfolded to the size of a postcard. Someone with exquisite calligraphy had written:
Our esteemed Felix Gomez,
For several months, we have suspected that vampires in the Los Angeles area have compromised the great secret.
For what purpose, we don’t know. Our inquiries have gone unanswered. Araneum agents sent to investigate have disappeared.
We ask you to infiltrate the Los Angeles nidus and question their leader, Cragnow Vissoom.
The name snagged my attention and I stopped reading. Cragnow Vissoom. The porn king. Katz Meow’s boss. One suspect behind Roxy Bronze’s murder. And the leader of the Los Angeles nidus.
I finished the message.
Direct action against family and outsiders is authorized. Report when completed.
Araneum
Direct action against family and outsiders? Rarely did the Araneum allow preemptive deadly force against family—vampires. And outsiders—humans.
X-Rated Bloodsuckers Page 2