Low benches ran along the eastern and western walls. The benches were constructed in the same manner as the walls, adobe and mud plaster. More of the rough-hewn planks lay on top of the benches.
Phaedra bent over the bench on the western wall. She removed adobe bricks along the edge of the bench. She wedged her fingers under the planks, shifted them back and forth, and worked the planks loose. She lifted the planks and propped them against the wall.
The open bench looked like an adobe sarcophagus. An army duffel bag rested inside.
“What’s in the bag?” I asked.
“My camping stuff.”
“You sleep up here?”
She nodded. “Told you it was my hideout.”
“What are you hiding from?”
“The future me.”
The grimness of the comment skewered me. Phaedra meant a future wasting away and dying of Huntington’s. If I turned her into a vampire, I’d spare her that hideous fate. But that was the fate God had given her. If I made Phaedra into a vampire, then I’d hold myself responsible for her new destiny as an undead bloodsucker.
Phaedra lifted the duffel bag and dumped out most of the contents: a rolled sleeping bag, granola and candy bars, packets of beef jerky, and a hurricane lamp. She opened the lamp, exposing a candle that she lit with a butane lighter.
The lamp’s dim yellow light made our shadows flicker on the walls. She brought the lamp close to one of the bench planks.
“Look.” Phaedra turned the board over to reveal an etching of a Star of David and a menorah scorched into the wood. “This is a hiding place within a hiding place. There were Jews among the Penitentes and they snuck here in further secrecy to celebrate their traditions. Did you know many Conquistadors were Jews fleeing the Inquisition?”
I did know. My own past came back to me. Coyote, an ancient vampire I’d met when on assignment in Los Angeles, was a child of the Spanish conquest of America. Half Aztec and half Spanish Jew, perhaps the first true Mexican, Coyote still carried the shameful burden as a survivor of the Inquisition.
“How’d you discover this place?”
“I was hiking by myself about four years ago and found it.” Phaedra sat cross-legged on the floor and rested the lamp in front of her. She closed her eyes. “You feel it? There’s an energy here. It’s a holy place. Aren’t you afraid?”
“Unless I’m tied to the floor and somebody’s about to stake me, why should I be afraid?”
“What about things like holy water? Crucifixes?”
“That’s movie stuff. I could brush my teeth with holy water. You want to hurt me with a crucifix? Pawn it and buy a gun.”
“Then what’s true and what’s not about you? As a vampire, I mean.”
I didn’t want to explain anything. The more Phaedra pried about vampires, the worse I felt about neglecting my duty to the Araneum.
Guilt put its heavy hands on my shoulders. I had no choice but to kill Phaedra, convert her into a chalice, or turn her into one of us. But I wouldn’t do any of them.
“You look tired,” she said. “Aren’t you immortal?”
“The trick to staying immortal is that you’ve got to pace yourself.”
She asked, “What about the zombies? What do you know about them?”
“Not much.”
“Where do they come from?”
“Depends. Several things can cause zombies. A virus. A mutation. In this case, there’s a reanimator. He’s killing people and using them for parts to make zombies.”
“How do you know that?”
“Other vampires told me.”
“How do you pass information? You guys have a newsletter? A website? Blog?”
“Yes. Yes. And yes.”
“Will you show me?”
“No.”
Phaedra played with the lamp and tried not to appear miffed. “Did a reanimator get ahold of Gino?”
“Most likely. It’s what happened to Barrett.”
Phaedra blinked. I could tell she was trying to take in the reality of everything that I’d said.
She picked at the laces of her boots. “Who is this reanimator?”
“That’s what I have to find out.”
“He’s the one you have to stop? By stop, I mean kill.”
“Yes. I have to kill this reanimator and destroy his zombies.”
“Do zombies die of disease?”
“Technically, they’re already dead. Make that undead. I’m pretty sure they’re immune to colds and pneumonia.”
“What about Huntington’s?”
“I guess they’d be immune to that, too. In what I’ve read about zombies, they’re not much of a drain on health care.”
“Are they immortal?”
“Considering they’re undead, I’d say yes. Why the questions?”
“I’ve spent most of my life thinking about my death.” Phaedra twisted a lock of hair from her bangs, the gesture idle, her face blank as if meditating.
She turned to the bench. “I have something else to show you.”
She reached into the bench and folded aside a tarp covered with dirt. Whisking away the dust, she lifted an artist’s black portfolio from under the tarp. She unzipped the portfolio and opened it to reveal a large drawing tablet.
Phaedra laid the portfolio where the light from the lamp was best. The tablet was full of drawings that had been torn loose and slipped back under the cardboard cover.
“When I looked into the void and found you”-Phaedra showed me the first drawing-“this is what I saw.”
It was a charcoal sketch of the little Iraqi girl.
The sketch Phaedra held was a caricature, but the rendering captured mood in a way a camera never could. A round innocent face that had no business being close to war: hair drawn as wild zigzags that got lost in the confused crosshatched texture of the night sky; eyebrows arched in permanent horror; tiny lips twisted in sorrow.
Every scratchy mark directed me to her eyes.
Dark eyes. Frightened eyes. Accusing eyes.
Her eyes were smudges of charcoal, but they projected light from deep within the paper.
I wanted to slap the portfolio closed and push it away. But I was transfixed, both fascinated and frightened that the blackest of my memories was exposed.
Phaedra pulled out another sketch.
Soldiers huddled around the little girl where she lay dying on a poncho. Shadows radiated like spokes from each soldier as if the girl was a hub of blazing light. One soldier knelt by her side and leaned close with a bayonet.
Me. That soldier was me.
I had unsheathed the bayonet to cut away her blood-soaked dress.
Phaedra sorted through the sketches.
A pair of man’s hands.
Covered in blood.
My hands.
The emotions burst out of me.
Fear.
Terror.
Despair.
Phaedra held up the drawings like they were exhibits at a trial.
My kundalini noir shrank into a tiny ball.
Now I understood. Phaedra had crossed the astral plane to dig into my psyche. She’d uncovered my nightmares and endless shame. Phaedra’s psyche had woven into mine and that’s why I’d seen her face merge with the Iraqi girl’s.
My mind replayed the events of my vampiric life from the death of the Iraqi girl until now. My turning. My service as a vampire enforcer. The loss of Carmen to alien gangsters. The psychic attacks. Phaedra’s wish to cheat death.
Were these events randomly strung together or were they a path leading me to this moment?
And this decision?
Turn Phaedra.
I wouldn’t do it, but to refuse was to let Phaedra die.
I withdrew from the world, falling, rolling, tumbling-delirious in a miserable confusion.
A mental image of the little Iraqi girl came into focus.
Years ago, I’d been shot by vampire hunters and was close to dying. Wendy Teagarden, a supernatural dryad, gave me her blood and I was taken by a dream. In this dream I met the Iraqi girl and her family. They rose from the dead to confront me. In order for them to enter heaven, they had to let go of their hatred of me. The little Iraqi girl’s final words were “We forgive you.”