The force receded from me and I pulled my mouth from Phaedra.
Her aura blazed neon orange. Her eyes were open to the point of popping from their sockets, straining with horror and pain as if she’d awakened in a raging volcano.
Phaedra gasped and lurched in the Jeep. She gagged and retched, spewing bloody vomit on her clothes and the interior.
She raised her hands, gawking with terror as if her flesh was on fire.
The scene mirrored what had happened to me in Iraq, though now I was on the other side of the experience.
The words of the ancient ekimmu who had turned me echoed through the years:
I’ve given you what you want.
Immortality.
As a vampire.
CHAPTER 50
Phaedra convulsed. She stared at me, then through me. Her face showed the astonishment of this new universe. Then the realization seemed too much, and the weight of this new world brought an overwhelming fatigue. Her convulsions eased. She closed her eyes. The undulations of her aura smoothed into an amber sheath.
I stroked her hair. It was moist with perspiration, the last time this would happen. I hope she didn’t have a thing for garlic, but she was Italian.
I’d done it. Forced again into something I promised myself not to do. I’ve created a vampire.
Phaedra was stuck forever as sixteen. I didn’t know the rules for underage bloodsuckers.
She didn’t want to die and she wouldn’t, at least not in human terms.
Now she was my responsibility, even more than before. Yesterday she had one kind of family, now she had another: the immortal undead.
I retrieved my backpack and hooked it over my shoulder. I took Phaedra in my arms and carried her down the hill to my Toyota.
We needed to rest. She had a new existence to start, and I had the zombies to destroy.
I drove us through town and back to the forest. I hid the Toyota in the trees and carried Phaedra and my backpack to the morada.
I emptied Phaedra’s duffel bag of camping gear. I laid the sleeping bag inside one of the benches of the morada. I removed her parka and slipped her into the sleeping bag.
She shivered. Her eyeballs shrank within the sockets. Her hair was like dry grass.
My watch said 4:17 A.M. The morada gave enough protection from the morning sun, but to be sure, I zipped the sleeping bag over Phaedra’s head and covered her with the bench seat, temporarily entombing her.
After washing Phaedra’s blood off my arms and changing into my clothes, I chucked the sweatpants with their zombie funk into a plastic bag. I retreated to a corner opposite the door. I sat on the dirt floor, .45 pistol in hand, and arranged a coat over my head.
I didn’t make the effort to stay awake. Phaedra’s adolescent blood (the best, especially from virgins, but in this case, oh well) and the need to sleep hit me like a sedative.
I awoke lying on my side, my face in the dirt. I held the pistol like it was a metallic teddy bear.
A tapping noise drew me to the door.
I gripped the pistol and pulled it close to my chin as I peeked from under the coat.
The cracks in the door shone with morning light. The board covering the latch quivered and moved out of place. A small black ball poked through the opening. The ball had two beady eyes and a pointed beak.
A crow.
It cawed.
I threw the coat aside. Phaedra remained asleep inside the bench.
I waved at the crow. “You’re practically inside. Come in.”
The crow jerked its head from side to side as if studying what was in the room.
“What do you want?” I wondered what the Araneum needed. An update on my current assignment? A new mission?
My joints hurt and I approached the door like an old man with arthritis. The crow pulled its head back through the hole. There was a quick scratch of claws and the flutter of wings.
I eased the door open, careful to avoid any sunlight. Fortunately we remained in the morning shadow of tall Ponderosas.
The crow was gone. What did it want? Was it from the Araneum? If so, where was my message?
I scanned the forest. Phaedra and I were alone. She would awaken soon as a vampire.
I closed and latched the door. I primed a camping stove and made coffee. It’s recommended that you don’t cook inside an enclosed space, but we were vampires.
I inspected my right leg. The wound had healed and left me with bullet scar number…I’d lost count.
I sorted through Phaedra’s gear to look for something of use. I unzipped a toiletry bag. It contained jewelry and watches. One watch was a lady’s Cartier, the other a Rolex Oyster. I counted six jeweled necklaces. Four diamond tennis bracelets. Strings of pearls. Gold rings.
I found a camera bag, empty except for prescription bottles stuffed with rolls of hundreds.
All this cash and jewelry made for a handy getaway kit.
Where had this stash come from? Phaedra didn’t dress like she was lavished with a wardrobe budget.
She’d stolen the jewelry, I was sure. How she’d gotten the cash, I didn’t want to know.
I picked up a cigar box covered in macaroni and sprayed with gold paint. Probably a crafts project from summer camp a long time ago. Sequins and costume jewels had been glued over the painted macaroni.
I opened the box, expecting childhood treasures and mementos. Inside rested a dozen razor and knife blades, all embellished with toy gemstones and dabs of gaudy fingernail polish. The blades seemed almost ceremonial in their decoration.
Under the blades I found an envelope stuffed with photographs. Some of the photos were Polaroids, others inkjet color prints. Every picture framed the same subject, a bleeding slash across flesh: an arm, a belly, the back of a leg.
The flesh belonged to Phaedra.
She was a cutter. She ritually mutilated her body out of self-hatred.
The back of the photos had short poems about the wounds. Mostly about fascination with the blood and controlling the pain.
I was too repulsed to feel pity. Even undead, I couldn’t do this to my body. This girl had huge problems and now she was one of us.
I put the photos and blades back into the box, which I pushed into the duffel bag.
The coffee boiled. I poured type B-positive to half fill a cup and topped it off with coffee.
The bench seat exploded into pieces. Splintered wood sprayed across the room.
Phaedra sat up, aura blazing. Her talons clutched at the adobe sides of the bench. Black smudges ringed her eyes and made the eye sockets appear like velvet pits. The retinas of her tapetum lucidum glowed crimson as if on fire. Her face had an ashen pallor and blue veins throbbed at her temples. A red tongue lapped between her new fangs.
I raised the cup to her. “Good morning. Welcome to the world of the undead.”
Phaedra grimaced with pain and reached to hold her jaw as if opening her mouth was agony. She winced when she scraped her cheek with her talons. She looked at me and her eyes were incandescent with anger and resentment. “Why didn’t you tell me about the pain? I feel it from my head to my feet.”
“I warned you. The metamorphosis from human to vampire will pass, but it’s the least of your troubles.”
She collapsed and rested her head on the side of the bench. “I feel so sick.”
“Take it easy on yourself. This is only the first day. Wait until you have to learn how to apply makeup without a mirror.”
Phaedra squirmed and reached for her side.
“You’ll find that it healed,” I said.
She peeked under her blouse. “Still hurts like hell.” She lay back in the bench.
I stood over her and offered my cup. “Sip?”
“No thanks. I feel like crap.” She had the splotchy pallor of a fever victim. Her skin wasn’t yet translucent.
“Funny thing, though I’m not a doctor, my diagnosis is that you also look like crap.”
She kept her eyes lightly closed. H
er throat twitched and she swallowed hard.
“Whatever you do, try not to throw up in the sleeping bag.”
She rubbed her face. “When will I feel normal?”
“Human normal? Never.”
“Then when will I feel better?”
“Depends. Usually, people don’t want to be vampires, so they fight the turning. You wanted it, so it might be easy for you.” I sat on the adobe bricks. “Here’s something you have to know. It’s the iron law of vampires. Human society can never know we exist. They believe we are mythical creatures. In fact, we play along with that charade.”
Phaedra averted her eyes and I could see that she tuned me out.
I cupped her chin and made her look at me. “You mess this up and you die. The humans you tell will also die.”
“What about me? I was a human and knew you were a vampire.”
“I was ordered to kill you. I didn’t because I fudged the rules. I wasn’t sure what would happen, but the last thing I wanted was to turn you.”
“What happens now?”
“You’re one of us. You get to live.”
Phaedra lay back into the sleeping bag. She closed her eyes and turned her head.
“When you get hungry, let me know.”
“Just thinking about blood,” she whispered, “makes me want to throw up.”
I watched for a moment. She remained still and her aura cooled.
I returned to my gear. I cleaned my pistol—it wasn’t dirty but I was nervous and needed something to do. I emptied the three magazines and polished the cartridges. I reloaded the magazines and put the extra loose rounds in my pocket.
We weren’t that deep in the forest, but we were far away enough from the road so that the distant growl of motorcycles was obvious in the silence.
Was it zombies?
The motorcycles stopped in the vicinity where I’d parked the 4Runner. One engine cut off, followed by another. Two bikes.
I told Phaedra to keep quiet. I went outside and found a spot behind a growth of sumacs. I would hide there and observe the path to the morada.
The shiver along my arms relayed that my sixth sense had confirmed the advance of strangers. I waited for the snap of breaking twigs or the crunch of grass, but whoever approached were as stealthy as lynx.
An orange aura shimmered beyond the trees.
Vampire.
I stayed down despite the fact that my aura marked my position.
The vampire had red hair and a complexion like she’d rubbed her face with strawberries and dotted her cheeks with cinnamon sprinkles. Her hair was gathered back and draped behind her shoulders.
Jolie.
I felt the elation of recognizing a familiar vampire, then realized that she was here for the same reason I was. As an enforcer. I also realized that the crow I’d seen earlier was a spy and that it had been sent to confirm where I was.
Jolie’s aura glowed with guarded anxiety like mine would if I had to deliver bad news to a friend. She wore a black-and-red Joe Rocket motorcycle jacket and matching racing pants. The armored pads on her arms and shoulders exaggerated her muscularity. She moved like she was skating in slow motion so I knew she was using levitation to lighten her footsteps.
I had heard two motorcycles. Where was the other rider?
Jolie’s eyes locked onto me. The fuzz of anxiety on her penumbra sprouted short quivering tendrils. She relented from the levitation. Her heavy motorcycle boots tromped through the grass and forest debris.
She let a backpack slide off her shoulder and held it in gloved hands.
I stepped in front of the junipers and kept my pistol in a loose grip. I didn’t want to signal anything threatening. Jolie and I had a history.
If there was one vampire I never wanted to harm, it was Jolie, and here she came on a mission that might include punishing me. If I had to shoot Jolie, .45 slugs wouldn’t do much good unless they were silver.
She halted a half-dozen paces from me. Her severe expression matched my mood.
I asked, “Where’s the other vampire?”
“Right here.” The growl came from my left.
He was a squat muscular Asian in black armored riding leathers. He passed soundlessly through the junipers.
“You got a name?”
“Nguyen Trotsky Hoang.”
“You were named after a commie?”
“No. I was named after my uncle. Let’s stick to business. Where’s the girl?”
I gestured to the morada.
“Did you…” Jolie started.
The answer had to be either kill her or turn her.
“I turned her.”
The tendrils from Jolie’s aura shrank with relief. She zipped open the backpack and withdrew a long leather pouch. She undid the leather thong wrapped around one end.
Jolie peeled the pouch back like a foreskin and exposed an exceptionally phallic-looking wooden stake, the blunt end made of silver. I winced at the pungent odor of hawthorn resin, poisonous to vampires. She removed the blunt end and revealed a sharpened wooden point reinforced with veins of silver. A stake made of hawthorn and silver was the most effective and painful of weapons to use against a vampire.
“Who’s that for?” I asked.
Nguyen said, “You.”
My guts turned into pulp. I’d compromised the Great Secret and, despite the warnings, had forced a good friend into killing me or compromising herself.
Jolie cinched the thong around the stake and dropped it in the bag. “The Araneum knows we are friends yet they also gave me this.” She pulled out a short knife in a leather sheath tooled in a woven pattern. The handle of the knife was filigreed with yellow gold and platinum. Rubies decorated the pommel. The knife looked designed by the same craftsmen who made the messenger capsules.
She unsheathed the short curved blade. “I was to skin you.”
Nguyen’s mouth curled into a grin.
Not only was Jolie to kill me, she had orders to bring back my skin. Nguyen was to make sure it would get done. For an instant I felt that blade slice through the membrane holding my skin to my flesh, followed by the hellacious agony as the skin was ripped free. The imagined sensation scorched me to the marrow. I pictured Jolie flaying my body and folding the bloody envelope of my skin—I saw my face as a loose bag, the eyeholes, nostrils, and mouth sagging into ragged ovals.
Could she skin me?
Could I kill her?
My only escape was to murder these two, but more enforcers would be sent after me, and more after that until I was caught and my skin turned into parchment. I had forever to run and the Araneum had forever to catch me.
I could think of only one thing to say under these circumstances.
“Let’s have coffee.”
I led them to the morada. Since I’d been outside in the fresh air, once in the morada I became aware of stove fuel odor, coffee, and vomit.
Phaedra lay inside the bench.
Jolie and Nguyen studied a fanged bag of blood and the vomit spot on the floor.
Jolie said, “At least the girl tried to eat.”
She knelt and spread the sleeping bag from Phaedra’s face. “Jeez, Felix, you chicken hawk, you’re picking them kinda young, aren’t you?”
“She picked me.” I gave my story, starting with the hallucinations.
Nguyen looked around the room. “Where is the psychotronic diviner?”
I didn’t want to answer. I’d screwed up enough with Phaedra.
“Well?” The edge in Nguyen’s voice said he was tired of waiting.
“The zombies have it.”
“How did that…”
Jolie cut him off. “We’ll go over that later. Right now let’s see what we can do about the girl.”
Tendrils betraying Nguyen’s annoyance stuck out from his aura. He wanted me to think of him as the vampire in charge, but it was obvious Jolie made the decisions. He sat on his heels and picked over Phaedra’s camping gear.
I explained Phaedra’s
diagnosis with Huntington’s. My guess was that her brain disease had made her a conduit for psychic consciousness. I added that she had no chance of living past thirty, and that she wanted me to turn her into a vampire.
“And you first said no?” Jolie asked.
“I did.”
Jolie stroked Phaedra’s forehead in a gentle and surprisingly maternal gesture. “Yet here she is.” Jolie took Phaedra’s right hand and massaged the web of flesh between thumb and forefinger. Phaedra’s aura gave a tiny pulse.
I didn’t need Jolie digging into the guilt I felt about Phaedra. We had enough stockpiled over Carmen.
I primed the stove and lit the burner. “How’s she doing?” I measured coffee into the percolator basket, filled the pot with water, and set it on the stove. “I don’t have much experience at turning.”
“Doesn’t take much practice. But she’s doing well. Better than most.” Jolie tucked Phaedra’s hand back into the sleeping bag and pulled the zipper to her chin. “Vampires this young can be exceptionally powerful.”
“How so?”
“The exuberance of youth. Their incredible powers of recuperation. They’re more adventurous and less inhibited.”
“That’s Phaedra to a T, but I don’t think that’s a good thing.”
“She’ll adjust. We all do.”
“I mean I don’t think it’s good she’s a vampire.”
“Don’t worry. The Araneum will take care of her.”
The coffee perked. I offered Jolie and Nguyen their choice from the bags of blood. She fanged open an O-negative.
“I only have two cups.”
“You and I can share.” The comment was directed at me but meant for Nguyen.
We split the bag between two cups that I filled with coffee. He took the second cup and flipped a resentful gaze at her.
Jolie placed her backpack on the floor and sat on the adobe bricks of the bench. She got close and examined my face.
“You look like you’ve been on the wrong end of an ass kicking.”
I told them about Dr. Hennison and the zombies. They listened pensively, their auras contracting and expanding like bellows. I emphasized a warning about the zombie collective consciousness.
Jailbait Zombie Page 21