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  She cruised toward the highway, me spooning against her. Long ago, we spent time like this, only naked with nothing between us but post-sex funk and regrets for what we let happen to Carmen.

  On the highway, Jolie accelerated to a clip that had us breezing through metro traffic. The drive to northwest New Mexico would take us through the town of Durango in southwest Colorado. No matter which way you go, it’s a confusion of highways. Direct routes were impossible because every road has to contend with an inconvenient feature of nature’s landscaping called the Rocky Mountains.

  Jolie headed south from Denver, then off the interstate onto Highway 285. We were going fast but nowhere near the hundred fifty plus she had bragged about.

  Her left thumb touched a switch by the clutch lever. Red and blue lights strobed along the front fairing. I lifted my head and panned to the rear of the bike and noticed similar lights.

  Jolie gave me the elbow. Hard. Quit moving.

  I shouted, “You think those lights will fool the cops?”

  “Like I’m worried,” she shouted back.

  True. Any cop who stopped us would get the zap hypnosis. He—or she—would be lucky if all we did was snack on their necks.

  The cars in front of us eased to the right lane to make way. Jolie molded herself to the gas tank and I clutched her waist. She cranked the engine into a howl and the bike kicked forward. Traffic and terrain whooshed by in a smear of colors. Her ponytail hung out the back of her helmet and the slipstream made it slap my visor. A peek over her shoulder at the speedometer showed the needle arcing past one forty.

  She didn’t slow for the corner. The bike leaned close to the road, our knees grazing a pube’s width distance from the asphalt blurring past.

  The rear tire hitched when it began to slide. Using vampire-quick reflexes, Jolie expertly worked the throttle and wiggled her hips, snapping the tire firmly back on the road.

  And so we zoomed through the mountains, a white blur with red and blue lights warning other drivers to keep clear. I thought about the trip to New Mexico. What was so special about Fajada Butte? How were Jolie and I getting Carmen back home? How had Coyote located Carmen? Was she okay? Who was holding her prisoner? Once we got her back to earth, how was she going to stop Phaedra? What the fuck was I thinking? Outer space? Back to Earth?

  We stopped for gas in Gunnison, worked the cramps out of our legs and each sucked down a bag of blood. I said, “You mentioned that Phaedra put the hurt out on Araneum. How?”

  “It happened pretty quickly. Like a coup.”

  “How is that possible?”

  “An inside job. Vampires turned against the Araneum.”

  “Family joined Phaedra?”

  Jolie swung a leg back over the Hayabusa. “Seems that way.”

  “And all this time I’ve been doing my PI day job, clueless?”

  “Maybe Phaedra saved you for last.” Jolie started the Suzuki and fastened her helmet. “As dessert.”

  Minutes later, we were on Highway 550, clipping south through the San Juan National Forest, my mind back to sifting the questions. The Araneum was on the ropes? This explained why a messenger crow hasn’t visited me in … a couple of months. Usually, not hearing from the Araneum was a good thing. This time though, not hearing from the Araneum was a very bad thing.

  A black dot appeared before us and streaked past.

  Jolie decelerated to one-twenty, to eighty, fifty, coasted at thirty and raised her head.

  The black streak returned and slowed. It was a crow fluttering towards us and dive-bombed in front of the bike, then wheeled away, cawing.

  The crow was telling us something. Had the Araneum sent it?

  My vampire sense—the braiding of my six senses and intuition—tingled the nape of my neck. I glanced left, right, then behind us. A dark blue Ford Mustang followed at speed and gained on us.

  “We got company,” I yelled to Jolie.

  Her helmet twitched toward the left rearview mirror. “Got ’em.”

  “What’s the plan?”

  “Let them try and catch us.” Jolie hunched back down over the gas tank and redlined the engine.

  I pressed my chest against her back, the hard shape of the Colt revolver in my jacket reassuring.

  The highway poked through a tunnel blasted in the rock, an ideal place for an ambush. We screamed through. Nothing happened. I caught a one-two beat of relief, then we slalomed around curves to enter a stretch named the Million Dollar Highway for its breathtaking mountainous views … at normal speed. At this velocity we didn’t concern ourselves about anything except for the road in front of us and the Mustang on our tail.

  A quarter of a mile ahead, a pickup truck sat parked on the right shoulder. As we closed on it, someone stood on the bed, watching us, holding something at chest level. The device was square and shiny, the size of a shoebox.

  A vibration rang my nerves, then tore up my spine and smashed into my skull, like a thousand brass cymbals crashing together.

  White light exploded inside my head, blanking out my vision. The motorcycle slipped away. I became weightless, disoriented, floating through nothingness.

  ***

  Chapter Three

  I found myself bouncing along the asphalt. Butt first. Then one shoulder. A double slap of pain.

  The fog in my head vanished, and my vision burst into Technicolor brilliance, blue sky and white clouds whirling above.

  The back of my helmet rebounded against the road. The visor snapped loose and my sunglasses flew off. Something squished between my back and the pavement.

  My brain clicked into vampire survival mode, and my synapses sparked at hyper-speed. Time slowed. Microseconds became milliseconds. Milliseconds became seconds. The blur of the crash sharpened into slow-motion focus.

  Jolie pancaked beside me, landing on her back, arms and legs spread out, her aura a twirling pool of orange fire.

  We spun down the road like hockey pucks. The Suzuki tumbled alongside us, somersaulting, chewing against the guardrail, disintegrating into a cascade of plastic and metal.

  Close behind us, the Mustang charged through the motorcycle debris. An orange aura shimmered around the driver. Vampire! And red from the front passenger. Human. He aimed a shotgun out his window, no doubt hunting for Jolie and me. Though my mind was super-aware, I couldn’t make out his face behind the gaping snout of that twelve-gauge cannon.

  Jolie had the best shot at the Mustang so I yelled to her, “You take out the car. I’ll get the pickup.”

  Her helmeted head tracked the guy with the shotgun as she pivoted down the asphalt, unzipping her jacket, reaching with both hands across her chest to draw a brace of Kimber .45 pistols. Her boot heels sparked across the pavement. As she swung around like a gun turret, she aimed at the Mustang, squeezing the triggers so quickly that the semi-auto volleys came out like burps from a submachine gun.

  The marble-sized slugs zinged toward the Mustang in a swarm of lead. Steam geysered from the punctured radiator. Bullet holes stitched the windshield in front of the driver. The shooter’s face tore up so fast that he remained scowling even as bullets mulched flesh and bone.

  The Mustang swerved. The front wheels locked up, the nose end of the big muscle car digging into the asphalt, the chassis pitching forward. The air bags exploded against the driver and passenger. The car flipped between Jolie and me, tilting, pinwheeling, flinging parts, smashing over the remains of the motorcycle, and crunched upside down.

  Jolie and I had slowed our spinning. The slides of her empty Kimbers were locked back, smoke hula-hooping from the exposed barrels and her boot heels. My backside burned from the friction as I continued to slide down the road. Jolie scrambled to reload her .45’s.

  We were almost to the pickup truck parked on the shoulder. Tendrils of alarm whipped from the red aura surrounding the man in the bed. He wore a hat and a brown duster and held a cube of polished steel bars framing a box of layered glass.

  I experienced a flash of rec
ognition about the device, but first it was my turn for payback.

  I yanked my jacket open, and at lightning speed, had the magnum out and blasting.

  Bullets cleaved through the device he was holding. It broke apart in a spray of glass. Slugs hammered the man, doubling him over. Blood spurted from his chest. His aura vanished like a snuffed match flame and he fell from view into the bed. The truck pulled away, kicking dirt. It fishtailed across the pavement and accelerated up the highway. The driver’s aura glowed red in the rear cab window. The pickup rounded the curve and disappeared.

  Heels dragging across the pavement, I finally spun to a halt. My mind slowed to normal speed.

  Jolie catapulted onto her feet and limped toward the Mustang. She tossed her helmet and gloves aside. The leather on the spine, shoulder blades, and elbows of her jacket was worn to the Kevlar armor underneath. She reloaded the Kimbers with a pair of fresh magazines she fished from a jacket pocket.

  The car lay on its battered roof, the shattered remains of the windows looking like the nubs of broken teeth, the wheels twisted like mangled paws.

  Bones and joints aching, I struggled upright. The tattered backpack dangled from my shoulders. A smear of blood spiraled from where I had first landed to where I had come to rest—the red stain was from the bags of blood that had popped inside the backpack. The rest of the items—my toiletry bag, cell phone charger, and ammo—were scattered amid random parts of car and motorcycle.

  I gathered loose cartridges from the pavement and replaced the spent shells in my magnum. After ditching my helmet, I joined Jolie where she crouched beside the Mustang. She stared at the slack bodies of the driver and shooter hanging from their safety belts, blood dripping from the bullet holes uglifying their faces. The spent airbags draped like used condoms. Neither of our attackers had auras. Fangs shone in the driver’s mouth.

  I asked, “He look familiar?”

  His blood was starting to turn into brown flakes.

  Jolie shook her head and shoved her pistols into the holsters inside her jacket. She pointed at him. “We got a vampire.” She swung her finger to the shooter. “And a human.”

  “Plus the two humans in the pickup,” I added. I knew where Jolie was going with this. Vampire relations with mortals were strictly controlled. We could feed on them, exploit them, but their awareness of us and the supernatural world, the Great Secret, was limited to those humans who chose to become chalices—willing suppliers of blood. Their knowledge of the undead was a guarded secret, and any revelations would be punished by turning or by death.

  I put my revolver away and pulled the shotgun from inside the car. “These clowns were Phaedra’s soldiers. So she does have an army and vampire traitors are among them.”

  The shotgun was a Mossberg Tactical Semi-Auto. I worked the action and ejected a round, which I snatched in mid-air. I clawed it open, not surprised the shell was loaded with silver buckshot packed in garlic powder. I winced at the poisonous odor. “These guys knew they were going after vampires.”

  Jolie noted, “I doubt any of these humans were chalices.”

  “Meaning,” I said, bending the barrel of the shotgun and sent it twirling over the trees like a boomerang, “whoever was behind the attack wasn’t afraid of betraying the Great Secret.” Protecting the Great Secret was the reason for the existence of the Araneum.

  Talons extended, Jolie reached in, cut the safety belts, and let the bodies fall into heaps. “Let’s see who these douchebags are.” She retrieved their wallets and tossed one to me.

  I opened it and looked inside. The ID was a Colorado driver’s license, but the colors were off and the photo was blurry. “So we got a name, won’t do much good as this ID is fake. There’s not much else. No credit cards. No business cards. No receipts.”

  “Same here,” Jolie replied.

  I pulled out a stack of crisp hundred dollar notes. “Plenty of these, though.”

  Jolie plucked them from my hand, added them to the Benjamins she withdrew from the other wallet, and folded the cash into a side pocket of her riding pants. “For my expenses,” she explained.

  We tossed both wallets back inside the car.

  Jolie crouched again and retrieved a cell phone. The screen was cracked, the back missing, and its components fell loose. “Not getting anything from this.” She threw the phone into the weeds. “What about checking the registration? Running the plates?”

  “Why waste our time? These guys were expendable. We need to worry about the next crew sent our way.” I pointed to the trail of debris. “Who knew we were making this trip?”

  “It was a last-minute plan between Coyote and me.”

  Jolie hadn’t set the trap for herself. Which meant?—

  “I know what you’re thinking,” she blurted. “No way could it be Coyote.”

  I couldn’t believe that either. “Then I’ll bet the guys in the Mustang had my place under surveillance. They must’ve arranged an ambush with the pickup.”

  Jolie had tuned me out. She was panning the desolate highway, eyes first drawn north toward the tunnel we’d gone through, then south where the pavement inclined and curved out of sight behind the rocks and ponderosas. The road had been plowed across the side of a mountain, rising on the left and dropping on the right into a wooded and rocky draw. I got the impression someone watched us, not close, but from a great distance.

  As a vampire, I have no beating heart. Instead, a kundalini noir—the black serpent of supernatural energy—animates my undead body. Paranoia made my kundalini noir vibrate like a tuning fork.

  “Come on,” she said. “Let’s get rid of the evidence before someone stops and gets too nosey.”

  We each grasped a wheel on one side of the Mustang, heaved together, and rolled the car over. Sunlight slanted through the twisted windshield frame. As this light lingered across the driver, his skin darkened and shriveled and burst into flame. His head resembled a burning charcoal briquette.

  Once death finally claimed a vampire, the sun would consume his undead flesh. Jolie and I backed away, though not afraid for our safety. Clothing and sunscreen protected us from the sun’s deadly rays. We kept our distance out of awe and terror at this preview of every vampire’s inevitable demise.

  Smoke filled the interior and billowed from the broken windows and seams in the car body. The vampire’s hands withered and broke apart. His smoldering head deflated like a collapsing soufflé and crumbled into ash. After a moment there was nothing left of him but a pile of clothes covered in undead dust.

  Jolie sighed. “Fuck, I always hate to see this.”

  “Show’s over,” I said. “Back to work.”

  We straightened the wheels so they wobbled more-or-less straight when we pushed the coupe past the guardrail and off the road. The car teeter-tottered over the edge. The rear bumper swung upwards, and the Mustang bounced down the slope, flattening a path through the brush, smashing saplings, and vanishing into the thicket. The car ripped and thrashed through the brush until it crashed with a loud krump that echoed across the hills. A cloud of dust billowed over the treetops below.

  We talked as we tidied the littered wreckage of the Suzuki, tossing the larger pieces down the hillside, and collected my scattered belongings and her helmet and gloves.

  Jolie thumped her palm against the side of her head. “What the hell caused that mental whammy? A ray gun?”

  I reflected on the device the man in the truck had aimed at us. When I recognized what the device was, an icy hook twisted my guts. “No. A psychotronic projector.”

  Jolie halted in mid-pitch, an exhaust pipe in hand, and perked an eyebrow. “A what?”

  I punted my helmet into the draw. “The aliens on the Roswell UFO had brought it. They were testing it to see if they could psychically control humans. I destroyed the original at Rocky Flats.”

  “So the aliens are back?”

  “Can’t say for sure. Phaedra has psychic powers and maybe discovered how to make one. Or she’s cut a
deal with the aliens. Have you met Phaedra?”

  Jolie threw the exhaust pipe down the slope. “Haven’t had that pleasure. Remember back in Morada? When she gave us the slip?” Jolie referred to our assignment in southern Colorado when we had been ordered to stem an outbreak of zombies. Afterwards, when we tried to find Phaedra, the treacherous newly-turned bloodsucker had disappeared. She later returned to my apartment in Denver with the severed head of another vampire enforcer and told me her quest was to destroy the Araneum. After giving me a demonstration of her special supernatural power—a psychic mind blast—she again vanished.

  “Count yourself lucky,” I said. “She doesn’t need a projector. She can conjure those mental blasts on her own.”

  “How?”

  “Don’t know. She was dying of Huntington’s chorea when I met her. It’s a disease that causes voids in the brain. Maybe that allowed her to develop psychic powers. She could project her thoughts into your dreams and consciousness. Plus she had discovered a portal into the psychic plane, and that gave her the ability to see from place to place. After I turned her, she learned how to read minds and focus her psychic powers into a mental howitzer. Trust me, what we experienced a few minutes ago was the BB gun version.”

  We found our sunglasses and put them back on.

  “Is it possible she read my mind,” Jolie asked, “or yours, or Coyote’s, and learned about our trip?”

  “It is possible. But you can detect her mental trespassing. Feels like a hallucination controlled by someone else. I haven’t felt anything like that recently.”

  “Me either,” she replied. “What about Coyote?”

  “Good luck to Phaedra. Reading his mind would be like snorkeling in a sewer.”

  Jolie surveyed the surrounding mountains. “And she’s out there. What does she want?”

  “Long term? Take charge of the vampires.”

  “She’s welcome to that headache. But why?”

  I shrugged. “Arrogance. Ambition. Could be she’s simply fucking nuts.”

  “What about short term?”

  “Get rid of you and me. And she could know about our plan to get Carmen.”