She added, “I know what you are.”
The girl had said what, not who.
The fear returned and my fangs throbbed against the inside of my upper lip.
Her eyes widened as she continued. “You are a vampire.”
The girl’s words lanced through me.
My brain sputtered in bewilderment, my thoughts misfiring, my body shocked into paralysis.
Slowly, my mind found its track and raced toward one thought.
Kill her.
No human except for a chalice could live with the knowledge of the undead.
I readied my arms for a swipe of my talons across her throat. How far out the door could I get before her blood gushed across the table?
I had murder on my face and the girl saw it. Fear spread into her eyes. The color left her face. She recoiled, and when scooting out of the booth, she noticed my talons.
Her eyes turned back to mine and seemed to pulse.
My name echoed in my head.
Felix…ix…ix.
The echo amped up to a rush of noise.
I clutched the table to ground myself.
Not again. Not now. Not here.
The echo increased to a ringing shriek. A thousand needles vibrated against the inside of my skull. My vision went blurry and turned the world into a grainy fog.
Everything from my jaw to my balls trembled. My kundalini noir quivered like a stick in an earthquake.
Nausea snaked up my throat. Bile pushed over my tongue, bitter and foul.
I started to heave. My arms and legs jerked in spasms. I had the sensation of falling.
My head and shoulder smacked into something hard.
Warm liquid dribbled on my face and chest.
The vibrations stopped. The needles disappeared. The shriek trailed to nothing.
But there was no silence. Someone yelled, a fresh voice that bounced inside my skull. A woman.
“Hey, I asked if you were okay.”
My eyes quit shaking and I focused to get my bearings.
I lay at the bottom of the booth and looked up at the under-side of the table. Pastel clumps of gum clung to the wood. The liquid dripping on me was coffee.
The waitress crouched beside the booth. She yapped like an angry terrier. “You told me you were okay. Now I find you on the floor about to toss your cookies. You on drugs?”
The bile seeped back down my throat.
“You hear me? Are you on drugs?”
I felt dizzy and sick. “No, I’m not on drugs.”
“Then quit acting like you are.”
I pushed from the floor and crawled onto the bench. Puddles of coffee rolled across the vinyl upholstery and wet my trousers.
The girl remained at the edge of the booth, frozen, her eyes huge.
She showed no fear that I was a vampire. Some, upon meeting us, turn away and shriek in terror. Others are drawn as if a vampire was what they’d been waiting for all their lives. Still others, like this girl, accepted us vampires with guarded fascination.
Why was she the same girl from my hallucinations? Did she project the psychic signals? Or was she misdirection about the true source?
I sat upright, slowly, to let my head clear.
The waitress picked my coffee cup from the floor. She walked off, grumbling. “If you’re sick, the county hospital is up the road. I’m not cleaning up any vomit.”
One of the hunters paused in the act of devouring a monster burrito. Red chile sauce dribbled from the mouth in his pumpkin-like head. “Yeah, that was disgusting. I about lost my appetite.” He went back to devouring.
I patted my face and hands with a paper napkin to blot the coffee. Carefully, so I wouldn’t smear my makeup.
The girl slid into the booth. She tilted her head in amazement as if she’d made a great discovery. The line of her mouth became an amused grin as if I was the butt of a joke.
I was drenched inside out with embarrassment. I’d come to Morada strutting my bad vampire stuff and first the zombies smacked me down, then this girl.
Our waitress came back with a towel. “Tell you what, mister, you take your business elsewhere. Don’t worry about the bill.”
What could I say? I couldn’t make a bigger ass of myself. I tossed a couple of dollars and got up.
The girl stood from the booth and zipped her jacket in a quick, impatient motion. The waitress leaned across the table and wiped as she complained about the meager tip.
The girl and I retreated for the door. We were quiet but hardly inconspicuous.
The four geezers watched in astonished curiosity, the liver spots on their withered skin darkening, their rheumy eyes swimming behind enormous spectacles.
Getting kicked out of the restaurant worked to my favor. With no witnesses, I could act against the girl.
She pulled the hood of her slicker over her head. We stepped into the cold rain.
I needed to learn what she knew about psychic energy and zombies. But more important, was she responsible for my hallucinations?
“Who are you?”
She turned to face me. “Phaedra Nardoni.”
So I had a name. That was a start.
Phaedra continued to the 4Runner. She waited by the front passenger door, her shoulders hunched against the rain. Vapor puffed from her mouth.
How did she know this was my vehicle? How much did she know about me? My talons inched from my fingertips.
Her gaze shot to my talons, then my face. The gleam in her eyes pulsed once in warning, like the hammer of a gun cocked back.
That gleam was enough to make my kundalini noir catch like it was about to feel a stake. She was responsible for the hallucinations. In the restaurant, when I climbed off the floor, the girl acted as if she was as surprised by what happened as I was. If she didn’t know it then, she knew it now. This power-a psychic attack-was her weapon.
At the moment, I had no defense. She could get inside my brain at will. The violation I had known before returned.
I felt myself falling inward again in search for what I could trust, what I could believe, what I could control.
Any hesitation she had when we first met was gone. She stood waiting, defiant with confidence and awareness.
I asked, “You’re Gino’s cousin?”
“Yeah. He told me about you.”
I sorted through my questions. How much did he say? What about the zombies? Did she know about them?
But first, “So where is he?”
“I don’t know,” she answered. “I came to the restaurant looking for him.”
A gust of wind sprayed rain into our faces. I let the water drip. Phaedra wiped her cheeks.
She stamped her feet. “It’s cold. Let’s get in your truck already.”
I needed to remove my contacts and confirm what kind of creature Phaedra was. I’ve run across humans with supernatural abilities before but none compared with Phaedra’s. I had one weapon in reserve. Once alone, in private I would zap her and it would be my turn to mess with her head.
I eased close to unlock her door. A sniff didn’t detect the smell of anything undead or unusual.
My nose cataloged the aromas: the wet fabric and plastic of her clothes; the fragrance of moist hair with perfumed shampoo and conditioner; the scent of a flowery deodorant threaded with her perspiration and the rich, intoxicating bouquet of female pheromones.
She wasn’t vampire. Or zombie. Despite her psychic powers, Phaedra seemed very human.
We got in and buckled up. Phaedra fumbled with the right pocket of her slicker and drew a pint bottle of water. She pulled at the pour top and chugged a long swallow.
This was the first time I’ve been this close to a girl her age since I was a boy her age. I wallowed in the forbidden sensuous delight of her tempting adolescence.
“How old are you?” I asked.
“Sixteen.”
Sixteen. The number sliced into me like a piece of shrapnel. If the girl in Iraq had been twelve, she’d be Phaedra’s age by now. Had she lived.