I felt as if I was shrinking deep into myself and the world pulled away from me with a wet, sucking sound. I became queasy from the sense of violation. Everything seemed an illusion-who or what could I trust? I retreated behind my doubts.
I wasn’t sure what was going on and I didn’t like it.
Mel busied himself draining his bag of blood. He searched with the straw to slurp from the corners of his bag. His eyes turned to me and wrinkled with concern. “Felix, you look like there’s a spider crawling in your shorts. What’s up?”
All of us wore contacts and we couldn’t read one another’s aura. I must’ve really telegraphed my emotions to have them read so easily.
“What about hallucinations?” I asked.
Phyllis had been drinking blood while she studied me with her keen eyes. She put down her bag. “What about them?” Her gaze pulled at me like hooks.
Talking about the hallucinations would stir up my feelings of violation and guilt, but Phyllis might know something that could help.
“The last few nights I’ve had bad dreams about my turning.” I fought to displace my emotions and kept my voice calm as if I were talking about someone else. “I’ve been getting hallucinations that bring back memories I worked hard to forget. A voice comes to me, repeating my name.”
“Whose voice is it? A fanging victim?”
“No.”
“Was that it? Just a voice?” Phyllis fired the questions like an interrogator.
“I saw a face.”
“Whose?”
“Someone from long ago. Someone dead.”
Phyllis played with the straw in her bag of blood. “How do the hallucinations come to you?”
“At first in nightmares. Lately I’ve been getting them even during the day.”
“What triggers them?”
“They just happen.”
I remembered the girl. My kundalini noir wilted and I felt my shoulders sag with grief.
Buck up, Felix. Don’t show weakness. I erased the girl’s image from my mind. I straightened up and put a stoic gaze into my eyes.
For the first time since I’ve known Phyllis, a flicker of regret played across her face.
“What is it?” I asked.
Phyllis hardened her stare. The corners of her eyes twitched. “Are you up for this assignment?”
“You mean finding the zombie creator?”
“And the source of the psychic signals.”
I didn’t appreciate these jabs she was throwing at me. “Are you doubting my abilities?”
“I have my concerns.” Another jab.
“What are you getting at?”
Phyllis shifted uncomfortably as if she were about to say something that would hurt us both. “I’m sending you help.”
The comment stung like one of those jabs had connected to my chin.
Mel winced and whispered sympathetically, “Ouch.”
Phyllis’s meaning lingered in the air, stinking. She’d lost confidence in me as an enforcer.
I asked, “Why?”
“No reason other than my own paranoia.”
“I don’t like someone from the Araneum describing herself as paranoid,” I said. “The rest of us should be paranoid about you.”
Phyllis’s expression seemed to petrify.
I wanted to break through her calm veneer, so I added, “Unless this business of being paranoid is bullshit.”
Phyllis let her face relax. A manipulative gleam sparkled in her eyes. “I wouldn’t worry.”
“It’s my ass. I am worrying.”
Her eyes went dim and her mouth flattened, like her mind had clicked off the “show emotions” button. She said, “I’m bringing in Jolie.”
The name was a stab where my heart used to be. Jolie was another vampire enforcer from the Araneum. She and I had met through our friendship with Carmen Arellano. We both had been Carmen’s lovers. In the days since we lost Carmen, Jolie and I had kept in touch. Our conversations were strained by the mutual understanding that we had unknowingly betrayed Carmen. Because of our mistake, she was now a prisoner of extraterrestrial gangsters.
Jolie and I once commiserated our way to sex. I’m sure both of us were thinking of Carmen as we screwed each other. I know I was. Afterward, we both pretended that the other no longer existed.
“Send for her then,” I said. “You don’t need my permission.”
Phyllis replied, “Jolie’s finishing another assignment. You should wait for her.”
“I’ll get started now. The Araneum said ‘immediately.’”
“You should wait. A repeat of what happened to Carmen would be a disaster.”
This wasn’t another jab, it was an uppercut to my jaw.
I looked away from Phyllis and let my ego absorb the blow.
I slipped a few bills under my glass and collected my backpack. “Phyllis, you don’t think I can handle this, bring in anyone you want.”
She dropped her empty bag of blood into Mel’s lunch box. “Felix, you’re the best we have. Unfortunately, even the best can’t afford to make mistakes.”
The psychotronic diviner sat on the front passenger’s seat. A dim white glow shimmered inside the crystal.
I was on the way to Morada. I had borrowed an older Toyota 4Runner from Mel because I didn’t want to bang up my Cadillac.
South of Saguache, the highway emptied into the San Luis Valley. Yellow and orange autumn leaves splashed like fire across the evergreens of La Garita Hills. The highway made one last jag before heading straight south along the western boundary of the valley.
I was about to tune the stereo when the girl appeared. Her face and those unforgiving eyes loomed before me.
The voice returned.
Felix…ix…ix.
Just as suddenly, her face disappeared and I stared at the square grill of a semitruck coming straight at me. Its horn bellowed.
A shock wave of panic and terror ripped through me. I snagged the steering wheel to the right and jammed on the brakes.
The semi roared by, the horn blaring even louder, the driver flipping me off.
The Toyota skidded across the pavement and swerved left. My guts seized in fear that I would flip over. I countersteered. The 4Runner snaked back and forth, losing speed, and came to a halt. The sharp odor of burned rubber came through the vents. The back end of the semitrailer receded in my rearview mirror.
I rested my head against the rim of the steering wheel and let go a long sigh of thanks.
Something shone in my peripheral vision.
The crystal in the diviner burned bright white.
It burned bright white.
The diviner had just detected a psychic signal.
During the hallucination.
This couldn’t be a coincidence.
Did this confirm that the hallucinations were psychic energy attacks?
It had to.
The glow in the crystal faded. I put my hands close to the pyramid and my fingers trembled in dread.
If the hallucinations were the result of my guilt, I could find a way to cope. But what defense did I have against a psychic attack?
I imagined a hand groping inside my skull, fingers sifting through my brain. The sense of violation returned.
I felt stripped and humiliated.
Naked.
Unclean.
Why the attack? Why me?
Who was doing this?
A sense of foreboding cut deep into me, as if I were pressed against the edge of a giant knife.
Were the zombies and the psychic attacks related?
What else could the psychic attacks do? Could they only manipulate my thoughts or could they also steal from my mind?
The foreboding cut sharper.
Was the Araneum not telling me something about this assignment?
How much danger waited for me in Morada?
Why was the Araneum sending me out here like this? As bait? Was I that expendable?
I reached behind me for a cooler on the rear seat. A dozen 450-milliliter bags of whole human blood sat in the cooler. I snatched a bag and fanged a hole in an O-neg, inserted a plastic straw, and sipped.