That evening I ordered delivery of the famed local pizza-pepperoni, black olive, and jalapeño-which I smothered with warmed cow’s blood. An hour after sunset I went outside my apartment and removed my contacts. The evening shadows became transparent to my night vision. Every animal shimmered with a red aura. I stepped behind a pine tree where I was hidden from casual view. I set my fingers and toes against the brick wall of the apartment and climbed up, stealthy as a lizard.
Once on the roof, I sat quietly on the warm shingles to catalogue the sights, sounds, and smells of the neighborhood. I needed to know what normal was like so I could detect the abnormal.
While I looked around, I stewed over how Gilbert had suckered me into accepting the assignment. Nymphomaniacs. Conspiracy. Only the federal government could invent such a mess. If I hadn’t heard the words from Gilbert’s mouth, I wouldn’t have believed the cockamamie story. But the offer of fifty thousand bucks did a lot to make me try and see things his way.
Hell, why was I worried? I should solve this case within hours. All I had to do was interrogate the affected women under vampire hypnosis and get to the truth.
A black Ford Crown Victoria cruised down the street. The Ford slowed as it approached my Dodge. The auras of the two occupants brightened, showing that they had an interest in my car. After a moment, the Ford sped up and disappeared down the street.
No cause for concern. My Dodge Polara was a collector’s item. I should sell it and drive newer wheels, perhaps a Toyota with an FM radio and a CD player.
I lay flat on the roof and sighed. This trip to Denver was going to be a vacation.
My kundalini noir twitched. I sat up and looked in the direction the Ford had gone. My vampire sixth sense nagged at me and whispered danger.
I dismissed my doubts. I was dealing with humans. What could go wrong?
CHAPTER 4
ROBERT CARCANO LIVED ON the left side of a redbrick duplex in north Denver. For vampires in the Denver nidus-Latin for nest-he was their patriarch. I’d never met him, though we had traded a few brief emails. He edited The Hollow Fang, an Internet magazine for vampire aficionados, and where better for vampires to hide than in the middle of the wanna-bes and pretenders?
An amber bulb in a glass lantern fixture illuminated the steps leading to his porch. The crisp, night air carried smoke drifting from the neighborhood chimneys. Mixed in with the smells of burning pine and cedar was an enticing whiff of blood. My mouth watered.
I rang the doorbell and waited. A shadow darkened the curtain drawn over the door’s window. The dead bolt snapped, and the door opened.
A man, shorter than myself, portly, round-faced, and hawk-nosed, with a sloping forehead retreating into a bald scalp, looked at me from around the door’s edge.
I smiled politely and introduced myself, though I knew I was in the presence of one of my own. “Mr. Carcano, I’m Felix Gomez.”
He opened the door fully and waved me inside. He wore a blue sweater, khaki pants, and tasseled moccasins. “Good to finally meet you, Felix. Call me Bob.”
The foyer was so small that Bob and I bumped into one another. Beside the front door stood a rack of shelves, stacked with mail and packages. Once inside, the aroma of blood became stronger.
He opened an interior door and led me into a sparsely furnished living room. The blood smell grew intense. Tall, black halogen torch lamps shone their illumination upward to the ceiling, spreading a warm glow throughout the room. Along the counter separating the living room from the kitchen sat four blood-transfusion machines. On each machine, a plastic bag filled with blood cycled back and forth on the rocker cradle.
“It’s dinner,” Bob explained. “In my day job I’m the quality-control supervisor for the Front Range Blood Bank.”
“Quite the scam,” I said, hiding my anxiety at the prospect of insulting my host when I refused a meal of human blood.
“It’s more than that,” he replied. “This way I get only safe blood. Can’t be too careful these days what with HIV and hepatitis C, among other things. One fellow in Frankfurt contracted Marburg. A ghastly disease, much like Ebola. Poor guy lost most of his lower intestines. Wearing a colostomy bag certainly takes the bloom out of being immortal.”
Bob pointed to the two black-leather and chrome-tubing chairs beside a glass-topped table. “Have a seat. Drink?”
“What? Bloody Marys made with real blood?”
Bob frowned. “What do you take me for? Count Chocula? Get real. My specialty is Manhattans.”
“Then bottoms up.”
He mixed Canadian Club, vermouth, bitters, and ice in a chrome cocktail shaker. As Bob shook the drinks, I popped out my contacts and put them in their plastic container, which I slipped into my trouser pocket. With my unfiltered vampire vision, Bob’s orange aura danced over his skin. Bright streaks spiraled over his arms and legs. Each creature’s aura was as different as a snowflake and remained as unique and expressive as a face.
He poured my drink into an old-fashioned tumbler with thick, beveled edges, very traditional and reassuring. Bob lifted his glass in a salute. “Cheers.”
The Manhattan was sweet, with a good kick to it. Could have used a dash of goat’s blood, though.
Bob sipped and smacked his lips. “The Araneum thinks highly of you. Felix Gomez, vampire detective.”
Araneum meant spiderweb in Latin, an appropriate name for the worldwide underground network of vampires.
“They did save me. Maybe someday I can repay them.”
After I had returned from Iraq, the army isolated me in a special ward of the Walter Reed Army Hospital. I was too weak and disorientated by my new vampire nature to escape. Then a colonel arrived, one of us, sent by the Araneum to keep the authorities from learning what I actually was. The colonel had me immediately discharged from the service as a disabled veteran and sent home. I never heard from the colonel again and learned only later that his mysterious manner was typical of how the Araneum worked.
“How much do you know about the Araneum?” I ventured.
Bob walked into the kitchen and started collecting dishes. “Only that we’ve been aiding each other to escape the mortals since, well, there were human necks to suck on. Then in the 1300s the Pope ordered the Knights Templar to seek and exterminate us. Our loose arrangement of vampires wasn’t enough. So the Araneum was formed and has been active ever since.” He ladled spaghetti from a stockpot into a large ceramic bowl. “I wanted to surprise you with mole but my recipe was no good.”
“And how does one join the Araneum?” I asked.
“They’ll let you know.”
“Are you in the Araneum?”
He smirked. “Wouldn’t be much of a secret organization if I told you, would it?”
“Okay,” I chuckled, “but can you discuss The Hollow Fang? Clever way to meet family.”
Bob spooned thick beef cutlets into the bowl. “As a printed newsletter it’s been around in one form or another since the 1880s. I took it over a few years ago and put it on the Internet.”
He came out of the kitchen holding a tray with a basket of bread, a large steaming bowl, and dining ware. After resting the tray on the glass table, he arranged the dishes, silverware, and napkins.
I heaped spaghetti and beef cutlets onto my plate. My fangs grew in anticipation of tasting dinner.
“While on the subject of the The Hollow Fang, the local fan club is hosting a ‘vampire party’ this weekend.” Bob handed me an invitation, which I glanced at and tucked into my coat pocket.
“Come by and get acquainted with the local nidus,” he continued. “They’re a fun group. And meet the humans. Mostly posers who get off pretending they’re undead. You’ll also meet a couple of snaggletoothed plasma guzzlers, real old-timers.”