CHAPTER 11

BOB CARCANO ENTERED the den. His round head swiveled to pick through the crowd as he scanned the room. His aura simmered with the disarming cheeriness of a smiley face. He looked about the room and, finding me, waved.

I waved back and resumed drinking my second glass of wine.

Bob remained in a pleasant mood upon seeing me, which was a surprise, considering the nagging lecture he had given me as a going-away present at our last meeting. I didn’t want to spend another evening sparring with him over my vampire dining habits. I didn’t drink human blood because…guilt bubbled into my thoughts. Blood from the Iraqi girl I had murdered came flinging at me across time and space. What I wanted more than anything else was to have the girl forgive me and expunge this guilt. But her little rotting corpse was buried in a forgotten dirt patch on the other side of the world, so my absolution was impossible.

The wine soured and I put the unfinished glass down.

Bob stood on a chair, clapped his hands, and announced, “Everybody, we’re playing zombie twister in the basement.”

The humans around the buffet table cackled like happy chickens at the news. They reinserted their fangs and joined the others filing down the stairs.

Bob and I remained alone in the den. His eyes went moody and his expression tightened.

“Felix, it’s good that you’re here.” He grasped my arm and pulled closer to me. His voice lowered to a whisper as if to emphasize the importance of what he was about to tell me. “There’s trouble. We’ve got serious business.”

“We? You mean you and I?”

Bob’s gaze lifted abruptly to the top of my head. “What the hell happened to you?”

Here came the lecture. The tone in my reply had no humor. “I got a little clumsy.”

Bob raised a hand to stop me. “Forget it. Right now I’ve got bigger concerns than worrying about your brown ass.”

I’d gotten so worked up about arguing with him that his answer muzzled my resentment. What concerns? I was about to ask when a tall, older man approached from the kitchen.

He had a white, wispy beard and matching droopy eyebrows. Orange aura. Vampire. His lanky arms draped over the shoulders of a younger woman and man flanking him. Red auras, humans.

The woman had a kerchief tied around her neck. The man wore a thick, black leather collar. Covering their necks like this meant they were hiding puncture marks, the sign they were chalices. For all but these humans, the fascination with vampires was just a playful diversion. Even the most die-hard posers thought that having someone suck blood from their necks was a perverse game played only by sickos too taken by the vampire fantasy.

Bob extended his hand and introduced me to the tall vampire. “Felix, this is one of the snaggletoothed plasma guzzlers I told you about, Ziggy Drek. He’s been around longer than the calendar.”

“It’s Siegfried von Drek,” Ziggy corrected. Resplendent in his starched white shirt and black waistcoat, Ziggy’s visage should’ve been on a painting hanging inside a castle. “At one time, I was a Prussian baron.” The words came from his mouth in a bothered drawl, delivered with the creaky, Teutonic accent of a B-movie vampire.

“And now you manage a Kinko’s.”

Ziggy hugged his chalices, then allowed them each to kiss him on the neck, the gesture saying, Screw you, Bob, I don’t need your goddamn approval. “Is that why you asked for me? To remind me of where I work?”

“We have private business.” Bob selected a blood-pudding canapé from the table and gestured to Ziggy that his companions should leave.

Bob munched on the canapé while he waited until the chalices were out of earshot. “I’m going to call a special council of the nidus. As you are one of our senior vampires, I’ll need your help.”

A ring of light descended Ziggy’s aura, the psychic equivalent of an irritated sigh. “What now?”

“Jody Pasquales and Erwin Flakes are dead.” Bob turned to me. “Jody and Erwin were vampires from New York.”

“You’ve spoiled the party to tell me this?” Ziggy tugged at his shirt cuffs. “Vampires die all the time.”

“Not like this. Seven of us have been offed in the last month,” Bob said. “If you trace the deaths on a map-New York, Philadelphia, Kansas City, Lincoln-it’s a path that leads here, to Denver. This could be another church-sponsored extermination.”

“In America?” I asked. “Now?”

“Did the Araneum say that?” Ziggy added.

“No,” Bob replied. “That’s my guess.”

“Your guess? Then say so,” Ziggy said. With every word, Ziggy’s accent became less Mannheim and more Milwaukee.

“I’ve been around,” Bob said. “I’ve seen this before.”

“And so have I. A couple of vampires get smushed and suddenly everyone’s Chicken Little.” Ziggy flapped his arms and squawked. “The sky is falling. The humans have their stakes and pitchforks out. All vampires stick their heads up their collective ass and hide.”

Ziggy clasped my shoulder and gave a jovial shake. “Felix, the way Bob’s acting, you’d think he’s about to start menstruating.”

Bob’s aura flared like the burner on a furnace. His quick glance to me said, Better not betray me.

Bob turned his anger back to Ziggy. “Don’t mock me. According to the Araneum, the vampires were quickly found out and killed. Such tactics point to vânätori de vampir.”

Every undead bloodsucker knew those words. Vampire hunters.

Maybe my attacker wasn’t concerned about the Rocky Flats investigation. Maybe he was one of these vampire hunters, perhaps the one who had questioned Jenny, the RCT.

Ziggy chuckled with skepticism. “Ridiculous. And where are these vânätori from?”

“Romania. Specifically, Transylvania.”

“According to whom?” Ziggy asked.

“Rumor.”

“Rumor?” Ziggy laughed and raised his voice. “Vânätori de vampir from Transylvania? Who’s helping them? The bogey man?”

“Make jokes, you old fool,” Bob said. “How do you explain the deaths?”

“The usual. Stupidity. Carelessness. Driving while intoxicated. That lush Erwin couldn’t walk two city blocks without stumbling into a tavern.”

“These killings followed a ritual pattern. Decapitation.”

“Stake through the heart-all that, I’m sure,” Ziggy interrupted. “Yes, we are familiar with the lore of vampire killings. I’ve been around for three centuries and not once have I seen any vânätori de vampir. I even owned a brothel in Bucharest, so it wasn’t hard to find me.”

“Maybe you’ve stumbled through the world with your eyes locked on every available crotch, but I’ve seen vânätori.”

“Good for you,” Ziggy replied. “Someday when I’m bored to tears, I’d love to hear every detail. I don’t suppose the murders could’ve been caused by another vampire? Or an envious chalice? Hasn’t that happened before? Right here in Denver, as I remembered it.”

Bob thrust a finger at Ziggy. “I’ve survived the exterminations. I’ve seen the worst of it.”

“Which was when?” Ziggy cupped a hand behind an ear.

“The Mausoleum Purge of 1810.”

“Which was where?”

“Aquitaine, France.”

“I thought so. France, not Colorado. Two hundred years ago, not yesterday.” Ziggy waved for his two chalices to return. “Bob, as the nidus leader you know better than to stir up the nest with your paranoia. When your Transylvanian vânätori show up, silver crucifixes in hand and wreathes of garlic around their necks, then call me. Better yet, tie a note to the leg of a bat and send it.”

The woman and man returned and wrapped their arms around Ziggy’s waist. He rested his arms first on their shoulders, then let his hands drop down their backs to caress their round bottoms. The three of them walked out of the den.

“Didn’t that lecherous old bastard say it was stupid vampires who die?” Bob leaned against the table. “I hate to say it, but if the vânätori do attack, I hope they go after Ziggy first.”