I charged the door and kicked it off the hinges.
The odor of human gore filled my nose. Dried blood, lots of it.
I entered the room, pistol held at the ready, fangs extended, my nerves tingling. My kundalini noir tightened into a protective coil.
Phaedra was doubled over against the wall, between a couch and an upright lamp. She gasped in the effort to speak.
I made a shush motion.
Phaedra covered her mouth and withered, sliding down the wall to the baseboard.
The front room had an ugly plaid couch, coffee table and end tables covered in vinyl woodprint, and mismatched lamps. A bong, a lighter, and a bag of pot sat on the coffee table.
Blood on the carpet trailed from the hall on my left and to the kitchen in front of us.
The kitchen table was on its side, two legs broken off, and the chairs scattered like they’d been thrown aside.
I crept along the wall, my eyes peering down the sights of my.45, and turned the corner into the bedroom.
Blood-soaked bedcovers lay twisted from the mattress and across the floor to the hall. A heap of clothes covered a chair in the corner. The butt of a pistol stuck out from under the only pillow along the headboard. A cell phone was plugged into a charger on the nightstand.
Tough guy Gino must have been asleep, taken by surprise, and dragged out. I didn’t see evidence-women’s clothing, for example-that indicated he hadn’t been alone.
Congealed drops of blood clung to the headboard. If he had been clubbed on the head, there would be a fine spray of blood spatter across the headboard and walls. From the looks of the blood pattern, I guessed that he had been stabbed and the drops on the headboard were what had flown off the blade.
Phaedra appeared in the doorway. One hand still covered her mouth and she looked liked she was about to throw up.
I backtracked from the bedroom and examined a ruffled trail on the carpet nap. Phaedra put her free hand on my shoulder and stayed close.
Our boots left dirty tread marks. There was a series of faint shoe prints across the middle of the carpet; one had heels like a men’s shoe, the other a continuous sole like the bottom of a cross-trainer. Not much mud in these prints. The zombie attack happened before today’s rain had started.
Another detail. These prints didn’t match those of yesterday’s zombies. Meaning, at least two more zombies for a total of four.
When I stopped for a closer look, Phaedra bumped against me and recoiled, startled.
A wide shallow mark showed where a heavy object had been dragged, probably Gino’s body. Considering all the blood spilled in the bedroom, there were only scattered drops on the hall carpet. Whoever took Gino must’ve wrapped him in a blanket or bedsheet. Either that or he didn’t have much blood left when they carried him out.
The table and chairs in the kitchen had been pushed aside to clear a path to the back door. Cornflakes littered the floor. Maybe I’d luck out and find a bloody handprint on the door. No, the doorknob and frame were clean.
The back door was shut but didn’t look right. I adjusted my grip on the pistol. I hooked the edge of the door with my shoe toe and pulled. The door swung open. The knob clattered to the floor. The back screen door lay twisted in a puddle of rainwater on a concrete patio slab.
I paused at the threshold. A weedy yard gave way to junipers and Ponderosa pines climbing up the hill behind the house. A metal tube snaked to a white propane tank in the yard. I studied the muddy ground beside the tank and saw no tracks or evidence that someone hid behind it. Convinced that no surprises waited, I stepped out and examined the patio slab.
Rain splashed into a line of pink puddles between the door and the far end of the slab. They had carried Gino this way. I crossed the slab and looked for prints in the mud or a path broken through the weeds. The few remaining footprints had been obscured by the rain.
The weeds and grass were bowed in two trails leading east, toward the creek. They had left several hours ago. I didn’t see any point in following. The rain would’ve obliterated their prints and I couldn’t leave Phaedra behind.
They had gone east. What was there?
Gino was a big guy, how had they trucked him off? In a litter carry, or was he chopped into convenient, easy-to-carry pieces?
Back inside, I found Phaedra leaning against the refrigerator, hugging herself and trembling. She mumbled, “At least they didn’t cut him to pieces like they did Stanley.”
I wouldn’t be too sure. “You mean Stanley Novick?”
“Yeah.”
“How’d you know him?”
“Through Gino. He told me what happened.”
Why had they taken Gino instead of leaving his mutilated corpse?
Phaedra’s right eye blinked so fast I thought her eyelids would spring loose. She pressed it with the palm of her hand.
We had broken into Gino’s house and tracked mud and left our marks over everything. I wasn’t interested in preserving the crime scene. This wasn’t CSI, I was after zombies.
I took her free hand. She wouldn’t move.
“Come on,” I said, “there’s no point in staying.”
I led her out the front door. She followed in a faltering shuffle.
We got back to the 4Runner. Phaedra opened the door and reached for her water bottle. She dug the meds from her slicker. Her trembling hands rattled the bottles. She took a tiny blue pill and a red-and-yellow capsule and downed them with a gulp of water. Her right eye kept blinking and she pressed her hand over it.
“You better?” I asked.
Phaedra lowered her hand. Her eyes became hard as marbles with a look that accused me of causing her troubles.
The echo began.
I covered my ears and locked my legs to keep from stumbling. “Goddamn it,” I yelled, “stop that.”
The echo crashed like it rang from enormous bronze bells. The vibration shot from my brain and down my spine. My hips gave out and I sank to my knees. “What do you want from me?” I screamed.
The echo quit. I blinked, grateful that my head was quiet and clear. The front of my trousers were soaked from kneeling in the mud.
Phaedra looked down at me. Rain dripped from her slicker. “Don’t ever patronize me. Don’t take me for granted.”
“I haven’t. I won’t. What gave you that idea?”
Phaedra propped the Toyota’s front door open, sat inside, and waited. “So we understand each other, okay?”
Yeah, we understood each other. I had my duty to perform. I straightened upright. “Okay. Sure.” My wet trousers pressed against my knees.
“You know who the others are, don’t you?” Phaedra asked.
“I do.”
Phaedra pulled a handkerchief from her pocket and cleaned her nose. “This is all a big secret, isn’t it? You as a vampire. The others.”
“It is.”
“Why?”
“There’s a world parallel to the human one. You’ve discovered a way into it.” Mud had splashed on the slide of the pistol. I used my cuff to buff away the smudges. “This world is full of vampires and other supernatural creatures.”
“Why is it a secret?”
“Because we can’t trust humans.”
“Why?” she asked.
“Humans are the most treacherous and cruel of all creatures.” Add to that equation Phaedra with her mental mojo. “They wouldn’t hesitate to destroy us.”
“How can humans be worse than the ones who killed Gino?”
“I’m not going to debate that right now.” I racked the slide and caught an ejected cartridge in the palm of my left hand. The gun should fire, no problem. “What’s important is that we have a strict rule about revealing the existence of the supernatural world.”
“What’s the rule?” Phaedra asked.
“If a human finds out about the existence of vampires”-I pointed the pistol at her-“I’m supposed to kill them. Like I have to kill you.”