The Undead Kama Sutra (25 page)

T
he saucer glided close
and hovered a hundred feet from us, right on the edge of the marsh. The hum felt like an electric tickle. The hairs rose on the back of my neck. My
kundalini noir
writhed in alarm.

Clayborn’s aura burned incandescent yellow with terror.

“They’re not here to rescue you, are they?”

Clayborn stood beside me, quiet as a condemned man.

I gave the leash a tug. “Didn’t think so.”

Three struts extended from the belly of the saucer. It settled into the marsh, the struts flattening the grass and sinking into the mud.

A hatch the size of a car door opened and a ramp extended to the ground.

Clayborn squirmed. Jolie took a step from me.

“Where are you going?” I whispered to her.

“No sense bunching up, in case they open fire.”

Clayborn tried stepping away.

“Not you.” I jerked the leash and put my arm around his shoulders. “Who are they?”

Tendrils of despair snaked from Clayborn’s aura. “I don’t know.”

“Then why are you so worried? Are they fellow crooks you cheated? Or are they the law?”

The tendrils twisted like burning snakes. Either way, Clayborn was in deep intergalactic doo-doo.

But before I gave Clayborn up, his captors would have to help me find Carmen.

A yellow aura filled the hatch of the saucer. One alien emerged, squatting through the hatch and climbing onto the ramp. He had a humanoid shape and unfolded his legs to walk upright down the ramp. A second alien followed him, then a third. Their auras signaled caution, and they each advanced with one arm extended and holding a blaster pistol.

They were identical triplets and looked exactly like Gilbert Odin: mustaches, short-sleeve shirts, and wrinkled khaki trousers—the kind of cheap clothes a civil servant like Odin would wear.

At the bottom of the ramp, the first alien tripped and fell splashing into the marsh. His aura blazed with surprise. The other two aliens rushed beside him, all three tromping in the mud and struggling to get the first alien to his feet.

“So much for an awe-inspiring close encounter,” Jolie whispered.

Finally, the three aliens marched toward us, the mudsplattered one leading. A clip-on tie dangled from his collar. His aura simmered with embarrassment. They halted ten feet from me.

The alien at the left nudged the leader. “Go on.”

Alien number one pointed his blaster at me. His aura brightened with confidence. “Surrender your prisoner.”

A glop of mud fell from the tip of the pistol barrel. Another wave of embarrassment surged through his aura.

Jolie coughed.

The auras of all three aliens flashed like camera bulbs. They whirled and aimed their blasters at her.

I coughed.

Another flash from their auras and they whirled toward me.

I raised my free hand. “Easy now, guys. Someone could get hurt. We don’t want trouble.”

Alien leader lowered his pistol. The other two took his cue and lowered theirs as well.

“Who are you?” I asked.

“Deputies,” said the alien on the right.

“Marshals,” said the deputy on the left.

Alien leader flexed his jaw in irritation.

“You’re cops?” I asked.

Alien leader nodded. “Cops. From the Galactic Union.”

“You got any ID?”

“Yeah, sure.” Alien on the right reached into his back pocket.

More embarrassment flared through the leader’s aura. He elbowed the other alien. Leader raised his blaster. “Here’s all the ID I need. Now give us Fugitive 187.”

“Fugitive?” I gave the leash a tug. “I knew Clayborn here wasn’t on the up-and-up. You got a warrant?”

Leader steadied the blaster. “Don’t push it.”

Jolie took careful steps toward Clayborn and me. “What’s he wanted for?”

“Class 2 crimes against the Union Code of Order. Violation of the quarantine. Interplanetary racketeering. Smuggling exotic contraband. Social contamination of a primitive species.”

“What primitive species?” I asked.

“You.”

Jolie stood behind Clayborn. “Anything else?”

“Class 1 crimes. Murder. Conspiracy to commit murder. He’s been sentenced to death in absentia. We’re to bring him back, dead or alive.”

I patted Clayborn’s head. “Is there a reward?”

“Yes. We leave you two alone.” Alien leader swung his pistol from me to Jolie.

“How did you find him?” I asked.

“We were patrolling near your planet Neptune when we picked up the power surge of a transporter dematerializer orbiting Earth. By the time we got here…”

By the time they got here?
How many millions of miles away
was Neptune? The teleportation happened yesterday, so they must have hauled serious space ass to get here.

Leader continued, “…the ship with the transporter was gone. But we got a fix on Fugitive 187. I didn’t know how we’d get him from the compound on Hilton Head but when you escaped with 187 in the helicopter, it was easy as cake.”

“You mean pie,” Jolie corrected.

“Pie, cake, doughnut, whatever.”

“My friend was teleported,” Jolie said. “Where to? Is she okay? I need to get her.”

Alien leader raised an eyebrow. He fixed his attention on Clayborn. “So it’s abetting the illegal transport of a native species? That’s a Class 4 offense.”

“If we turn Clayborn over,” Jolie asked, “can you get him to tell us where my friend has gone?”

“There is no if.” The alien on the left motioned with his blaster at me. “Fugitive 187 must answer for the Class 1 crimes.”

Jolie circled her hands around Clayborn’s neck. Spots of intrigue formed and floated in her aura. “Then give us a day, a few hours, to get him to talk.”

The leader snorted. “Don’t bother. Show her, 187.”

Clayborn slowly raised a hand and splayed his tentacle fingers across his right eye. The tips of his fingers squeezed around the eyeball and entered the socket. He winced and the eyeball popped out with a wet slurp. A wire bundle, like an optic nerve, extended from the eyeball into the socket.

As a vampire, I’ve seen all kinds of creepy shit. This ranked near the top.

He offered the eye to Jolie. She shook her head.

“It’s a prosthetic,” the leader said. “Your Mr. Clayborn embezzled from his fellow gangsters. They kidnapped and tortured him to find out what he’d done with the money. Besides taking his eye, they roasted his wives and children in front of him. And still he wouldn’t talk.”

Clayborn licked the eyeball to moisten it and screwed it back into the socket. “I remain true to my principles.”

Alien on the right nodded. “So you see, it would be pointless to question him.”

Jolie massaged Clayborn’s neck. “Then you’ll help us find Carmen. I can’t abandon my friend.” Her aura brightened with anger.

“Our friend,” I added.

The leader answered, “Like I mentioned, that was a Class 4 violation. We have the Class 1s and 2s to investigate first.”

“Too bad for your friend,” said alien on the left. “We have our orders.”

“Meaning Clayborn keeps his secrets.”

“Probably.” The leader beckoned that I turn Clayborn over to him. “We need to take him.”

Jolie’s aura raged with defiance. “You said dead or alive?” Her talons extended quick as hornets’ stingers. With a move that would’ve been invisible to mortal eyes, Jolie’s talons scissored Clayborn’s neck. One second she was standing behind him, clasping his neck. An instant later she backed away, her hands held up. “Then take him.”

Clayborn wobbled in place. His knees buckled, his body sagged, and his head tipped forward. Purple blood gushed from the neck toward the alien cop trio.

They recoiled in horror. By the time they gathered themselves, Clayborn had plopped dead between them. His head plunked facedown into the sand. I held the empty hoop of wire.

The leader paced forward and examined the corpse. He sighed with disappointment.

I extended my talons and readied myself for the attack. “Don’t try to take us.”

The leader shook his head. “Earthlings are outside my jurisdiction. I’m pissed because you just cost me a bonus.” He shoved the pistol into a holster. He waved to his comrades. “Grab his arms and legs.” The leader picked up Clayborn’s head and jammed his fingers into the nostrils and mouth. He held the head like a bowling ball and at an angle, to keep the still dripping stump from soiling him with purple blood.

“What about Carmen?” Jolie asked.

“Can’t help you.”

“How can we find her?”

“Know any detectives?”

Jolie pointed at me.

The leader stopped and gave me the once-over. “Good luck, lady.”

He followed the others up the ramp but slipped and caught himself before falling again. “I’ll be glad to get home,” he muttered. “This isn’t worth the overtime.”

The ramp retracted into the hatch, which then closed. The
hum started once more. The saucer lifted and the three landing struts folded flush with the belly. The saucer rose into the sky, going faster and faster, and became a black circle that shrank into the void of night.

I stared into the spot where I’d last seen the saucer disappear. Jolie sat on the bottom lip of the helicopter cargo door. Her aura tightened and waves of despair pulsed through it. Her shoulders quaked and she rubbed her eyes. “Damn it, I wish I could cry.”

She turned her vampire eyes to me. This was the first time I’d ever seen
tapetum lucidum
clouded with grief. “Where is Carmen? How can we get her back?”

She might as well have asked me to shit rocket fuel.

I looked back to the stars. Carmen was among them, not in a spiritual sense but for real. In a UFO, like she’d always wished for, but not under these circumstances. All my life I’d looked up at the night sky and wondered when and if it were possible to cruise among them. Now I knew it was not only possible but that I had to. How? And when?

“Call me a coward?” Antoine’s voice carried across the marsh. He marched toward us, splashing through the muck, his orange aura signaling a fight.

“You’re late for the festivities,” I told him.

“Late hell.” He pointed to the sky. “They left early.” Antoine hefted a two-by-four with a big nail sticking out one end. “I needed something to even the odds. Took me forever to find this.”

“Antoine, I can’t even give you credit for trying. They had
blasters and God knows what else. A board with a nail in it wouldn’t have done much.”

Antoine swung the two-by-four like a ball bat. “Let me hit you and then you tell me.” He turned to Jolie. “What’s up, babe?”

She started to explain. Antoine walked up to her and they hugged. A moment later, Antoine tore himself from her and flung the two-by-four into the sky. “Useless bastards.” The board whirled and splashed into the marsh a hundred meters away.

Jolie checked her phone. “It’s still dead.”

Antoine leaned into the pilot’s side of the cockpit and flicked switches. “Same here.”

I said, “We better get moving before the government comes looking for their helicopter. Antoine, you lead the way.”

He tugged at Jolie’s hand. She pulled free, straightened up, and marched alongside him up the sandy road. I followed right behind.

Antoine began to trot. Jolie and I took up the pace.

“What about you, Felix?” He quickened the trot into a run. “How do you plan on bringing Carmen back?”

What was my answer?
I glanced back to the sky and the stars. Carmen was a long distance away, even for a vampire.

I
headed back to Colorado
on I-10. I drove straight through, stopping only to gas my Cadillac and to hide in the restroom of a Houston diner while I waited for the sunrise to pass. Some big, bad vampire I was, loitering in the stall of a men’s room. Times like these made me wish for another spider bite…almost.

Afterward I sat at the counter and ordered a large coffee and a breakfast burrito to go. Outside, I dumped half of the coffee from the Styrofoam cup. Back in my car I set the coffee in a console cup holder and unwrapped the burrito, which I lay on my lap. From the console I pulled out a plastic squirt bottle of type A-negative. I filled the cup so the mixture was fifty-fifty blood and coffee. I took a sip and added a little more blood. I pumped a couple of squirts of blood into the burrito. Mmmm, egg, jalapeño, and type A.

I didn’t want to think about what had happened in the last two weeks, I only wanted to get home. The enormity of the loss of Carmen overwhelmed me. This was worse than her being dead for good. In this case, the great sea of space and getting Carmen back seemed as impossible as me plucking a star from the heavens.

I couldn’t do anything about it, and worrying didn’t do anything except leave me frazzled and feeling helpless.

Something rapped against my car. I looked up. A crow peeked over the upper left corner of the windshield.

A crow? This meant the Araneum wanted something.

The bird’s claws scratched across the roof of the Cadillac. The little black head appeared over my side window and tapped again, this time impatiently.

I felt a queasy hollowness and I knew I was in trouble. I had failed in my mission. I found out about the alien threat but the cost had been losing Carmen.

My appetite vanished and I put the burrito and coffee away. I scrolled the window down. The crow perched on the windowsill, facing me. A filigreed capsule the size of my little finger was clipped to the crow’s right leg.

I caressed the crow’s warm, soft head. The beady eyes expressed no emotion. With my other hand, I slipped the capsule from its leg.

I spread my knees and held the capsule low between my legs to keep it in shadow. I unscrewed the jeweled ruby cap from the platinum-and-gold capsule. The familiar and rancid smell of flayed vampire skin wafted upward. I used my little finger to pull out a roll of parchment.

I unrolled the tissue-thin paper and read this note.

So the Araneum had gone snippy on me. I had a new cell phone but no car charger, so I had left the phone off to conserve the battery. I turned the phone on and got an alert that I had several voice mails and a text message waiting.

I checked the text message first.

Sounded like a trip to the woodshed. Not good. I erased the message.

The Cabrini Shrine stood west of Denver on I-70. An unlikely place for a meeting.

I balled the parchment and tossed it out my window. When the parchment flew out of the shadow of my car and into the sunlight, the note immediately flared into a burst of fire that darkened into a puff of black smoke.

The crow stared at the vanishing smoke and blinked its eyes. Then it turned around on the windowsill and tapped against the capsule in my hand. I screwed the cap back on and fit the capsule on the bird’s leg.

I tried to shoo the bird, resentful of the news it had
brought. When it didn’t move, I scrolled the window up. The crow jumped away, startled by the glass pane rising against its tail feathers. It flew to the hood of my Cadillac.

I honked the horn to shoo it again. The crow wouldn’t scram.

I checked my voice mail. Jolie left a message wishing me a safe journey and telling me that she missed Carmen.

She signed off: “Call me.”

There was a lot of sadness in her voice. I could wait for that conversation.

The other calls were from human clients asking when I’d return to my office.
When I got there.

I started the car. The crow hadn’t moved. When I got to the highway, the crow centered itself on the front of my car and faced ahead like a hood ornament. I accelerated to ninety miles an hour. The crow hunkered down and squinted into the slipstream.

Was this bird going to freeload a ride all the way to Denver? Fat chance.

I slammed on the brakes. The crow shot from my car like it’d been catapulted from an aircraft carrier.

Hasta la vista,
you little feathered bastard.

The crow sailed over the concrete lane for a hundred feet. It spread its wings and wheeled upward to arc over my car.

Bird poop splattered on my windshield.

The crow gave a laughing caw.
Hasta la vista,
back at you.