As I sprang to my hands and knees, a stiff heavy bar whacked my back. Pain blasted through my spine. Falling to my knees, I clawed the air and dropped the pistol. I barely managed to turn my head to the left to view that attacker.
An aura of hate outlined his beefy mass. He swung a length of rebar and hit me again along the small of my back. A lightning bolt of pain shot down my legs. I convulsed and choked.
From my right, a pole with a thick, open hoop on the end like a set of jaws reached toward my neck. My nostrils flared at the metallic smell. Silver. I grasped the pole but the shaft slid through my weakened grip until the hoop closed around my neck. The silver burned the bare skin of my throat. I gagged in pain.
A tall, bearded man twisted the pole so that the silver hoop singed and choked me. His scowling face matched the photograph of Nicolae Dragan, the vânätori leader. The pain and panic kept me from focusing a vampire stare upon him. I fought to stop the agony by jamming my gloved hands under the silver hoop.
Dragan leaned over me and twisted the pole to keep the silver metal hoop pressed against my bare skin.
I writhed on the floor like a fish gaffed in the gills. I groped for the SIG-Sauer.
"Petru," Dragan yelled instructions to the other vampire hunter, who kicked the pistol from my reach. Petru grasped my right arm and kicked his heavy boot into my armpit. A spasm of excruciating pain shot across my torso and paralyzed me. My arm went limp. Petru looped a steel chain around my wrists and neck, then fastened me to a heavy metal pipe that he laid across my shoulders. He secured the chain to the ends of the pipe with steel padlocks.
Dragan pulled up on the pole, burning the bottom of my jaw, and forced me to get to my knees.
Petru grasped a steel cable and carabiner hanging from the ceiling. He snapped the cable to the pipe at a spot right behind my head.
The silver hoop around my neck opened, and Dragan pulled the pole away. I gasped in relief, light-headed with pain.
Dragan palmed a hand control at the end of an electrical cord dangling from the ceiling. He pressed a button. A winch whined from above and tightened the slack in the cable. The pipe lifted. The chain squeezed around my wrists. My shoulders were wrenched upward. Dragan kept raising the pipe until I danced on tiptoes, crucified. Sickened by waves of pain, I hung my head and retched, tasting bile and blood.
Dragan whisked the knit cap off my head. He grabbed my hair and slapped my face, hard enough to blur my vision. "Show your fangs now, spawn of Satan. Soon I'll have them in my hand and I'll be kicking your severed head out into the snow."
Chapter 27
I HUNG FROM THE steel bar. Rallying strength, I narrowed my eyes to focus my gaze and hypnotize Dragan.
He made a chopping motion. Petru whacked the rebar against my back. The blow was a thunderclap of pain. My legs gave out and I slumped against my restraints. The chain around my neck choked me.
Dragan waved Petru away. "I know about your hypnotic powers, vampir. Behave yourself or your last hours will be worse than any nightmare."
Petru stepped back into the edge of the musty shadows and picked up a sawed-off shotgun. His big hands caressed the wooden stock.
Gasping, I struggled to my feet. The haze of pain receded and my eyes looked to the other side of the garage bay.
Wendy lay on the floor where she had been gagged with duct tape. Her hands were chained and locked together. The left sleeve of her purple scrubs had been torn loose and exposed a bloody bandage that clung to her arm. Her green aura radiated danger. Another of the vânätori in a plaid shirt and denim overalls held the loose end of another chain wound around her neck.
I strained against my steel yoke and motioned toward Wendy. "Let her go. You have me."
A dirty leer compressed the wrinkles on Dragan's bearded cheeks. His red aura pulsed with lust. "It's good to know that even vampires have this kind of weakness. You made it easy for us."
His leer turned into a scowl. "And what kind of a creature is she?" Dragan's hands grasped the chain around my neck and dug the steel links into my throat. "She's no vampire. Not like you, anyway."
I gasped to catch my breath, frustrated that I was unable to tear out his jugular with my teeth. "She's human. Of no threat to you."
"Human?" Dragan tightened the chain. "She has black powers. Before we subdued her with this"—he brandished a yellow plastic Taser gun—"she threw a liquid on Mihail, turned him into a frog, and then stepped on him." Dragan's voice hardened. "She stepped on him."
"Too bad it wasn't you," I said. "I'd love to scrape you off my shoe."
Dragan straightened up. His aura brightened and telegraphed violence. Anticipating the blow, I tensed my neck. He lashed out with the Taser. The plastic gun smashed my nose. Pain shot across my face, and blood seeped from my nostrils.
The blood trickled over my lip and dried. Dragan studied the blood and pinched the flakes between his fingers. The flakes crumbled into powder. He wiped his fingers on my coat lapel. "Even your blood is inhuman."
Dragan shoved the Taser into the pocket of his jacket. He snapped his fingers. "Teodor."
Wendy's guard yanked on her tether and kicked her in the side. I yelled and cursed at them to stop. Teodor snatched a police baton from his belt. He touched a switch on the handle and blue sparks crackled from the business end. He reached for Wendy's face and ripped off the tape covering her mouth. She winced in pain and cried out, "Felix, forget me. Save yourself."
Teodor tapped Wendy's bare arm with the baton. "Shut up, witch." The end of the baton sizzled against her skin. Wendy writhed and screamed. Her green aura flashed agony.
"Let her go," I screamed. "She's innocent."
"Innocent?" Dragan asked. "She's a demon like you, Felix."
Hearing Dragan say my name made this violation ever more personal. I lunged for him and managed just a few inches before the chain gouged deep into my throat.
Dragan grinned smugly. "Go ahead and struggle. You'll only die tired."
Though roiling with anger, I decided to save my strength for an opportunity to escape and rescue Wendy. I relented and let my body sag against the restraints as I took in the surroundings.
To my left, hot air radiated from the burner fixed atop the propane tank of a space heater. A plywood table flanked the space heater. On the table rested an ornate brass crucifix, a large leather-bound Bible, and a bowl filled with dark liquid, all surrounded by lit votive candles. At the far end of the table lay a heavy mallet and a thick wooden stake, both obviously meant for me.
Petru handed Dragan the SIG-Sauer automatic.
"A vampire with a gun?" Dragan asked. "Don't trust your fangs?"
"Come closer and find out."
"Let me show you a trick about your fangs." Dragan placed the pistol on the table. He picked up the bowl and held it before me. The thick liquid in the bowl smelled like human blood. In the blood floated two long pointed incisors. Vampire fangs. Wisps of my orange aura pulled toward the teeth, and I could feel the attraction.
"How did we know you were coming? This is how." Dragan swayed from side to side with the bowl. No matter how he turned, the sharp tips of the fangs followed me. I'd never seen this before. The fangs keyed on my aura.
Being human, Dragan couldn't see the effect on my aura. He gave me a quizzical look. "I don't understand how it works, only that it's based on legend. The teeth float aimlessly on the blood but as soon as one of you vampir approaches, they line up like these do." His gaze lifted from the bowl to me. "With this secret I have the means to pry all of you demons out of the shadows and into the light of God's justice. There will be no hole dark enough to hide you now."
His eyes sparkled malevolently. "It's ironic, what you vampires are most proud of is that which betrays you. These belonged to the accursed one I shot and pulled from your car."
"Bob." The name slipped from my mouth. I growled at Dragan and snarled until the chain around my neck gagged me.
Dragan remained safely out of reach. He gestured
over his shoulder to the far side of the garage. "Your girlfriend donated the blood."
I fixed my gaze on the bandage over her arm. My kundalini noir thrashed within me. I whipped about in rage, heaving against the chains, struggling to bend the steel pipe fastened to my wrists and neck. Sweat sprayed from my face. My aura burned with a defiant radiance. I tugged and fought until I had barely enough strength to hang from the pipe and mutter, "You monsters."
"Us? Monsters?" Dragan chuckled. "You have a confused sense of morality. As for her," he tipped his head toward Wendy, "I guessed that her blood would make the attraction more powerful than human blood, and it did. I detected your presence as soon as you started up the hill. Your evil magic is your own undoing."
Dragan put the bowl aside and stepped close. "Now for the moment of truth. I'm going to examine your eyes. At the instant you try to hypnotize me, your girlfriend dies. Then you. Understood?"
Anything to keep him talking. I nodded.
Slowly, as if he were expecting me to explode, Dragan stepped closer. His breathing became shallow and nervous. His aura sizzled in near panic.
Petru tensed his grip on the shotgun. Teodor worked the switch of the baton, making it chatter and spark.
Dragan's eyes studied mine. The black orbs of his irises dilated in the center of his ice-blue pupils. I kept my hypnotic power in check. His breathing deepened and became confident. His aura smoothed as his irises shrank to pinpoints.
"You're the first that I've examined like this," he said in a muted, almost reverential tone.
"What about the other vampires you murdered?"
"Murdered? You can't murder the undead. I committed no crime. Besides, I never had time with them like I have now with you."
Dragan put his fingers on my face and spread my eyelids. He leaned close and studied my eyes. "Magnificent," he whispered. "These have transmutated completely into the eyes of a wolf. I'm going to enjoy studying them."
My fangs jutted from under my upper lip.
"Careful. Remember the girl," Dragan warned. He twisted my head toward the candles and crucifix. "You are proof that Satan exists."
"Really? I've never met him." I pulled my face away.
Dragan withdrew his hands. "You are cut from his cloth."
"You wanted time with me," I said. "Time for what?"
"Time to learn a few things. How many vampires are in Denver?"
"You didn't have to go to all this trouble for that answer. Hell, you could've called me and I would've told you." I made up a number. "Thirty-seven."
Dragan snapped his fingers. Teodor yanked on Wendy's chain leash, slipped the baton under the hem of her blouse and pressed it against her stomach. The baton emitted its evil cackle. Wendy gritted her teeth to keep from crying out as she convulsed and jerked on the floor.
"Stop it," I yelled.
Teodor grinned at me and raked the baton across Wendy's skin. She tensed her body to withstand the pain, then sputtered and cried out.
I yanked against the chains and hollered again.
Dragan grabbed my hair and shook my head. "Joke and your woman pays for your stupidity. We'll strip her naked, spread her legs, and jam the electric prod inside her. Understand?"
I choked down the bile welling in my throat. "Yes. Yes. Just leave her alone."
Teodor withdrew the baton. Wendy retched. She raised her head. Tears glistened on her cheeks. She avoided looking at me, and I knew that in this moment of anguish she couldn't help but blame me.
Dragan let go of my hair. "Who controls the vampires?"
"What are you talking about?"
"Who is the supreme authority?"
"No one. We're not like the army."
"Someone issues orders and you all obey. I've studied your kind long enough to realize that vampires have resources too deep for an individual acting alone. When we begin a campaign of cleansing, you vampires collectively react and escape."
"Maybe in Romania, in Transylvania, vampires are more organized than we are here. All that communism you lived under."
"No. It's everywhere. A vampire disappears, his human persona is listed as deceased, months later the vampire materializes in another country with a new human identity. Documents are forged. Bribes paid. Bank accounts vanish and reappear."
"If you're implying that there's a secret vampire society, there is none."
Dragan tapped my forehead. "But you're wrong. I know much about you. I even know about the spaceship."
These last words plowed through my desperation. "What spaceship?"
"The one that crashed in Roswell and brought the sickness."
"Sickness?" I rose against the steel bar, alert and curious.
"The demonic lusting," Dragan said. "Women becoming possessed with…"
I completed his thought. "Nymphomania?" Did the vânätori hold the key to the secret behind the conspiracy at Rocky Flats?
Dragan smiled agreeably. "Yes, you would know. The crash of the spaceship, which your government rather clumsily tried to hush up, aroused our suspicions. What demonic plague could come from space? Perhaps a new species of vampires? Or something worse? The onset of the nymphomania confirmed our fears, and sure enough, we found you bloodsuckers lurking to prey on the unfortunate victims."
"We don't need help seducing humans."
"It's more than mere seduction. At any time of human failure—war, revolution, and now this epidemic of nymphomania—you vampires circle about like vultures."
"And the spaceship?"
"We've kept vigil over the spaceship as your government moves it from place to place. Roswell…Ohio…then here. And everywhere it went, at one time or another, there was an outbreak of nymphomania."
"You said here. Where's here? Rocky Flats?"
"Of course here in Rocky Flats." Dragan's forehead wrinkled with suspicion. "Why would you ask? Don't you know?"
I just looked at him.
He grabbed my collar and repeated, "Don't you know?"
I shook my head and replied softly, "No."
"You know nothing about the spaceship?"
"Are you talking about the UFO from Roswell?"
Dragan nodded. He stared pensively at me and his eyebrows furrowed. "So you don't know about the connection between the spaceship and the nymphomania?"
"No."
He muttered something to Petru, who put the shotgun aside, turned around, and stooped into the shadows behind him. Petru picked up a shiny metal container the size of a shoe box. He cradled the container against his belly. The yellow and black warning symbol for radioactive material adorned the lid.
Dragan unsnapped the latches and opened the container. He carefully withdrew a thick glass bottle that was nestled in the black foam liner. A liquid in the bottle cast an exotic, shimmering glow, like that from a lava lamp.
Dragan held the bottle by the flange around the neck as if the contents made the glass barrel too hot to touch. He dangled the bottle before my face, close enough for me to feel the heat.
My aura turned yellow. Incredibly, every sensation was blanked out except for a pleasant warmth in my groin.
Dragan tapped my elbows. "Do you know what this is?"
"Only that it's probably radioactive."
"It's red mercury, the source of the nymphomania. This leaked from the spaceship. Dr. Wong took samples to that secret place near Las Vegas."
"You mean Area 51?"
"If that's what it's called."
Dr. Wong. The red mercury. A spaceship. Now all the clues meshed together and the conspiracy unraveled into one continuous thread. The nymphomania had been caused by the red mercury brought by the Roswell UFO. Red mercury supposedly produced by Rocky Flats. This was the mysterious material that contaminated the women.
Was this true? How could it be? Project Redlight painted the entire story as a hoax. Even Gilbert Odin dismissed the red mercury. I was energized by the need to confirm the truth. I tensed my arms against the chains but the steel links were too strong for my
wrists.
Dragan returned the bottle to the box. Petru latched the cover and put the box back on the floor.
"This is all new to me," I said, feeling the warmth drain from my crotch. My aura returned to its orange color.
"Would any other vampires know?"
"No."
"Then what's your concern with Rocky Flats?"
"Because we vampires have questions of our own. Every time there's an outbreak of nymphomania you scumbags show up. None of us ever connected the outbreaks to the UFO. This news about the red mercury is a complete surprise."
Dragan crossed his arms. "Interesting." He shrugged. "And now that you finally know, too bad."
"What do you mean?"
"It means that I was planning for a long night interrogating you. But since I know more about this than you, why waste time? Petru, get the stake and mallet."
Petru grasped the items from the table.
"I thought you wanted to talk," I reminded Dragan.
"That was when I thought you had something important to share, which you don't. Now it's more useful for me to watch you die." He motioned to the table and the bowl of blood. "When I have more questions, we can easily catch another vampire."
Dragan unzipped my barn coat and took the stake from Petru. The wood reeked of buckthorn and I shrank back. The myth was that buckthorn resin burned us vampires like the most potent of acids.
Dragan cupped his hand behind my neck to hold me still while he dragged the pointed end of the stake across my shirt to the left of my sternum. He wiggled the tip into a gap in my ribs, directly over where my heart would've been. "It's time that I send you to Hell. Give my regards to Satan, you bloodsucking serpent."
Chapter 28
I HAD ONLY SECONDS before Dragan would hammer the stake through my rib cage. My mind clutched desperately for an opportunity to escape annihilation.
Dragan stood to my left and Petru to my right, both men even with the opposite ends of the pipe I was chained to. The slack in the overhead cable let me pivot with the pipe across my shoulders. My feet had enough purchase on the floor for me to get a strong swing. Certain that they were about to finish me, and that I had no choice but to die at their leisure, the vânätori relaxed their guard.
The Nymphos of Rocky Flats Page 19