A great sadness crushed me. My knees buckled. I sat on my heels, my arms drooping to my sides. Breath wheezed through my dry throat. Far ahead, the taillights of the van merged into one and then disappeared.
At this moment, I wished that vampires could cry.
CHAPTER 24
I STOOD WITH TWENTY other vampires under the night sky, on the shoulder of an asphalt road beside a dusty field near Last Chance, eighty miles east of Denver. Against the dark contours of the terrain, our orange auras looked like gems floating on black velvet.
A cold, dusty breeze stirred the morning air. As dawn approached, the twilight sky faded from inky black to purple and then to blue.
Bob’s naked corpse hung from a sheet of salvaged plywood propped to face the sun. His head rested on a crude shelf above his shoulders. A ragged hole the size of a fist showed where the vampire hunters had pounded a stake through his sternum. Frayed polypropylene boating rope looped under his armpits and across his chest, holding him flat against the plywood.
To us vampires, the first rays of the morning were the most savage to our flesh. For protection, five of the vampires used the satin robes they usually donned for choir with the Temple Baptist Church. Carmen, as usual, was ensconced in tight black leather, looking like a petite dominatrix making a rural house call. My jacket and trousers rustled in the wind. Everybody wore balaclavas, gloves, and welders goggles.
A corona of yellow light spread over the eastern horizon. A tremor of awe surged through me. Since prehistoric times when the first vampires stalked human prey, this moment of dawn has meant the dreaded finish to us, the undead. Now we watched, standing with impunity in the open, protected by thick tinted glass and layers of polyester, leather, and wrinkle-free cotton.
The sun rose over the edge of the earth. A terrible, incandescent wave bore upon us like the flash of an atom bomb.
Bob’s head and corpse sizzled. His skin turned black and wrinkled. Flesh peeled away from bones and turned into smoke. The tangled mass of his organs spilled from underneath his rib cage. His bones broke apart like brittle twigs. Everything that had been Bob Carcano disintegrated into flakes of ash as centuries of arrested death came back to reclaim their due. The ash swirled and scattered in the eddy of wind twisting before the plywood. After a few minutes, nothing remained of Bob except for a discoloration in the dirt and a last smudge of smoke dissolving into the air.
As a vampire, Bob was lucky to get this modest little ceremony. Solar immolation was our way of destroying the evidence of our presence to humans, nothing more. Bob would be missed, certainly, but as undead creatures who walked in step beside the Grim Reaper, we accepted the inevitability of our final destruction.
The vampires in robes gathered around the plywood sheet and kicked free the two-by-fours holding it upright. The sheet slapped the ground with a whap. The vampires dragged the plywood and lumber down the slope and tossed it into the trash littering the gully.
Carmen and I walked back to her Audi TT roadster, a sleek, flattened lump of metal with narrow windows. We got in, she in the driver’s seat, I next to her. Protected by the Audi’s tinted glass, we pulled off our goggles, hoods, and gloves. Behind us, the other vampires dispersed into three groups and climbed into a copper-colored station wagon, an SUV, and a long-bed pickup with dually wheels.
Carmen unsnapped the collar of her leather jacket and pulled the zipper midway down her cleavage. Neither of us had said much on the way out here last night, consumed as we were with dismay and outrage at Bob’s death.
She plucked a plastic bottle from between her seat and the center console and proceeded to smear her face with coconut-scented SPF 90 sunscreen. Tiny golden Aztec calendars dangled from each earlobe. “With Bob gone, the Denver nidus chose me as its new leader.”
I held my palms up for her to give me some of the sunscreen. “I thought that position went automatically to the most senior vampire in the community. That would be Mel.”
“Under normal circumstances.” Carmen squirted the lotion into my hands. “Because of these vânätori attacks, the nidus wanted someone younger and more ruthless.”
I dabbed the sunscreen on my cheeks. “And that would be…you?”
“Yes. Me.” Carmen unzipped her jacket further and exposed breasts cupped within a black leather bra. She buttered the tops of her tits with sunscreen. “The first question from the nidus to me as the new leader was, what was I going to do about your investigation?”
She flicked her black hair over one shoulder and rubbed sunscreen onto her neck. “Before you answer, be aware that the question came directly from the Araneum.”
My aura spiked defensively. “What’s it to them?”
“The Araneum insists that we focus all our attention, at the expense of all other obligations, on finding and destroying the vânätori, on taking direct action.”
“You mean killing humans outside of self-defense?”
“Chalé. This is self-defense.” Carmen pursed her lips and applied blood-red lipstick. She flipped down the sunshade and looked at the vanity mirror. Laminated pictures of Frida Kahlo and the Virgin of Guadalupe were pinned next to the mirror. Of course Carmen wouldn’t see anything in the mirror but the interior of the car.
“Do you know what I hate most about being a vampire? Fixing my makeup without a mirror.” Carmen slapped the sunshade against the interior ceiling. “How many more vampires have to die before we do something?” She smoothed her hair.
“And the police?”
She polished the sunglass lenses with a tissue. “Subsisting on chalices and donated blood hasn’t made us that complacent. We can cover our tracks.”
“What does this have to do with my investigation?”
She put on her sunglasses and tugged at the corners to make sure they fit tight. “If things get…uh…sticky, I’ll need you. These vampire hunters use guns. You have experience with firearms.”
“And getting shot, too. Don’t forget that part. Want to see my scars?”
Carmen peered over the tops of her sunglasses and gave me the once over. She zipped her jacket to cover most of her cleavage. “Some other time.”
I put in my contacts. Now that I was unable to see auras, the world looked inert and unfinished.
She started the Audi and honked the horn. The station wagon honked back. Carmen pressed the gas pedal and her car darted off the shoulder of the road. Gravel pinged against the chassis. When the tires bit into the asphalt, the Audi lunged forward and we accelerated toward the highway.
Carmen cocked her thumb to the tiny backseat. “Gimme that portfolio, will you?”
The portfolio sat atop a pile consisting of cross trainers, a yoga mat, and a gym bag.
I placed the portfolio on my lap and stroked the cordovan leather. “Pretty nice. Expensive, no doubt.”
“Sí, un regalo.” Carmen nodded simply. “A gift from one of my chalices.”
“Like your leather outfit?”
“Like my leather outfit.”
I tapped the instrument panel. “And the car?”
“What can I say? My chalices are generous people.” Carmen gestured toward the latch on the portfolio’s flap. “I asked the Araneum to send me what they had concerning vampire-hunter attacks in America.”
I pulled out several manila folders and flipped open the first one, a document in a language I didn’t recognize, followed by what appeared to be an English translation.
“What language is this?”
“Romanian,” Carmen answered, “the native tongue of Transylvania. You’ll need to become familiar with it.”