The Undead Kama Sutra Read online

  Odin’s corpse had deteriorated enough that I could carry him under one arm. I palmed the blaster with my other hand and shoved the gun into the front of my trousers. This weapon might come in handy, especially since I’d left all my firepower back in my desk in Denver.

  Outside, the second shift of hookers prowled the curb alongside North Tamiami Trail, the main drag in this part of Sarasota. They strutted on stiletto heels around discarded hip flasks and bottles of malt liquor.

  I carried Odin down the stairs. The plastic wrap slipped loose and something dribbled from the bundle. Four of his toes bounced like grapes against the steps. I swept them with my foot into a patch of weeds under the balcony. Good thing it wasn’t something from between his legs. After folding his corpse into the trunk of my Cadillac, I secured the plastic bundle with a roll of duct tape I had stashed next to the spare tire.

  None of the hookers showed any interest. Considering this neighborhood, a whale could fall out of the sky and flatten the motel, but no one would admit to seeing a thing.

  I drove off and stopped a few blocks away to examine the envelope with the money. What did the numbers on the front mean?

  A phone? Radio frequency? Internet address?

  Odin had said, “Take me here.”

  So these numbers must be a place. Were they map coordinates?

  I got a road map, checked the margins, and read the tic marks for latitude and longitude. If these were coordinates, the spot was three miles west of Bradenton Beach in the Gulf of Mexico.

  The map didn’t show any islands out there, only water. Would I be taking Odin to meet a boat? I’d check it out. If no one showed up, I could dump him into the water.

  I flipped the envelope over, took out the money, and looked inside. No other instructions. So when was Odin to be delivered?

  My call then. Tonight. Before he stinks up my car.

  I stopped in a local sporting goods store, bought their cheapest GPS unit, and headed toward the beach. The clouds settled low and reflected the amber haze of the street lamps. A drizzle misted my windshield. Drops splashed against my car and became heavier by the minute. By the time I crossed from Cortes to Bradenton Beach, the downpour had chased everyone indoors. I parked close to the marina on the eastern side of the island, facing Sarasota Bay.

  I carried Odin to the beach and left him along the water’s edge. From the deserted marina, I borrowed a Wave Runner, and returned to fetch the body.

  I draped the bundle over the rear of the seat, secured his body with bungee cords, and fastened the GPS to the handlebars with duct tape. To use my night vision, I removed my sunglasses. Heading south around the island, under the bridge, then west through the wet gloom into the Gulf of Mexico, I followed the direction indicators to the coordinates I had programmed into the GPS.

  The rain felt hard as ball bearings and stung my skin. My hair lay plastered against my forehead. My soggy clothes flapped from my limbs. The chill was uncomfortable and made me look forward to a hot cup of coffee and A-negative. Behind me, the glow of civilization faded on the eastern horizon. The distance marker on the GPS counted the meters to the coordinates.

  One thousand. One hundred. Fifty. Twenty-five.

  I rolled the throttle to idle.

  The Wave Runner drifted forward.

  Ten meters. Five meters. At zero, the arrow turned into an X.

  The Wave Runner stopped and bobbed on the waves. I gave Odin’s corpse a mule kick. “Get up. We’re here.”

  Waves slapped the fiberglass hull. Rain puddled in the crevasses of Odin’s plastic shroud.

  The surface of the water shimmered with the beat of the raindrops. The shimmer took on a metallic sheen and I realized this was from hundreds of little fish leaping from the water. The sheen became pink from the tiny red fish auras.

  I looked over the side of the Wave Runner into the murky water. What made them behave like this?

  The Wave Runner’s engine stalled. Suddenly an electric charge pulsed through the seat, up my spine, and into my arms and head. My limbs buzzed like the tines of a tuning fork. Glowing blue rings from St. Elmo’s fire curled around my wrists and ankles. The hair lifted from my scalp. My kundalini noir—that black serpent of energy residing in every vampire instead of a heart—coiled in panic. Get out of here.

  My hands and feet stayed put. All around, the little fish floated lifelessly in the water.

  The Wave Runner rocked backward. Something huge rose from the water in front of me.

  Chapter

  3

  A smooth, pewter-gray hump the width of a tennis court rose from the sea. My Wave Runner slipped backward on the water cascading from an enormous rim surrounding the hump.

  The object lifted clear of the sea, then hovered noiselessly about fifty feet before me. It had a spherical body bisected by a wide disk.

  A flying saucer. A UFO. One straight from the late-night drive-in movies. Those guys with the cheesy special effects had it right all along.

  Odin had asked for my help in finding his assassin. Why didn’t he ask these aliens? Unless this UFO was robotic…or was this more of the scheming among the aliens? Odin had told me that extraterrestrials had to keep their visits secret because Earth was under quarantine, which was why he’d hired me before.

  Odin also asked that I save the Earth women. But from what, exactly?

  The grip of the blaster poked against my belly but I remained paralyzed. Not that the gun would do me much good. The crew of this ship certainly had more dangerous weapons, and if they wanted me dead, they could’ve disintegrated me already.

  A hatch about a meter square opened in the belly of the sphere and a faint beam of light fixed upon my craft. Rain sparkled in the light, like confetti. The bundle holding Odin’s remains started to vibrate. The Wave Runner swung around as if its back end had been snagged by an invisible hook.

  The bundle strained against the bungee cords. The Wave Runner surged toward the hatch.

  The bungee cords tore loose. Odin’s bundle sproinged from the seat and levitated for a moment before floating toward the hatch. The bundle rotated and went headfirst into the UFO. The hatch closed.

  The electric charge disappeared. My limbs relaxed. The fish in the water came to life again and fluttered away.

  The UFO remained still for a moment. The rain eased and stars appeared in the black patches behind a gray mist above. The UFO rose silently and headed into the sky.

  Sayonara, Gilbert Odin.

  When the UFO was a speck in the mist, I reached to my waist and pulled out the blaster. Whoever shot Odin had used an alien weapon, maybe this one. I examined the knobs and the strange markings.

  The rain stopped abruptly.

  I looked up. The UFO loomed directly over me.

  Startled, I shrank against the seat. Why had they returned? To abduct and probe me? My sphincter tightened.

  I readied to dive into the water. The electric pulse returned and my limbs were paralyzed as before.

  The hatch opened again and the beam of light focused on me. The blaster trembled in my hand.

  A voice spoke from the light, a feminine voice, calm yet stern—like a warning from a librarian. “Let go of the weapon.”

  I released my grip. The blaster floated upward through the hatch.

  “Thank you.” The beam vanished. My muscles relaxed. The hatch closed and the UFO rose to zoom upward through the sky. Rain pelted me again.

  I’d been hoping the ray gun would even the odds when I found Odin’s killer. Not anymore.

  I grasped the handles of the Wave Runner and wondered if it would start again. Thankfully, the engine coughed to life and burbled the water. I swung the Wave Runner east and cranked the throttle full-open.

  A half-mile from shore, a couple of fighter jets screeched in my direction. They roared above, two F-16s armed with air-to-air missiles. As they zoomed past, strobe lights blinking, the auras of the pilots looked like crimson smears against the darkness.

  The je
ts pitched upward on the trajectory of the UFO. If the fighters were after the saucer, good luck. Odin’s intergalactic hearse was probably on the other side of the moon by now.

  The jets disappeared into the clouds and it was just me and my questions. Didn’t the Air Force debunk UFOs? How would they explain this? Lie, of course.

  I returned the Wave Runner to its slip. So far I had the name Goodman, a murder using an alien blaster, UFOs, and a warning to save the Earth women. As far as leads, I had next to bupkus.

  The cawing of a crow echoed through the misty darkness.

  A crow? What was a crow doing out in such a cold, wet night?

  To find me.

  The crow meant the Araneum—which translated into “spiderweb” in Latin and was the formal name for the worldwide network of vampires formed to protect us from extermination by humans—wanted me for a job. The Araneum used crows as messengers, and why else would that bird be here?

  I felt my shoulders sag. I didn’t need more work; I was on vacation.

  A small red aura gave away the crow’s position, where it sat tucked along the bottom of a shack, trying its best to stay out of the rain. The crow cawed again, an irritated squawk of discomfort.

  “Shut up, you feathered bastard. I didn’t ask for you to come around.” The crow never brought good news, like I was needed in Cancún to rub sunscreen on horny coeds.

  I approached, my wet shoes crunching the sand and broken shells covering the beach. I wondered what the Araneum wanted at this hour. The crow kept its small black head drawn into its shoulders to conserve warmth. This bird didn’t seem pleased to be out here, either. To the Araneum, it didn’t make a difference if you were a vampire or a crow. Duty called.

  The crow turned its shivering head toward me and blinked. It struggled to stand, as if its joints had rusted, and then walked toward me in a stiff-legged limp. A shiny metal capsule was clipped to its left leg.

  I picked up the crow. Its wet feathers crinkled. The small, warm body trembled. I tucked the crow’s torso under my armpit. The bird squirmed and I clamped my arm to keep it still. I unclipped the capsule, a tube made of filigreed platinum and gold, with a ruby-encrusted cap.

  I hunched over to protect the capsule from the rain.

  The Araneum used swatches of vampire skin as notepaper, a precaution to maintain secrecy, since the skin would burst into flame when exposed to sunlight. Rumor was the patch of skin came from a condemned vampire. But it was dark and raining. What about exposure to water?

  I shook raindrops from the capsule and unscrewed the cap. The odor of rancid meat burst out like a fart. Yep, vampire hide. I extended a talon from my index finger and used the long, narrow tip to draw out the contents.

  Surprisingly, there were two items inside: a folded square of onionskin-like parchment—the vampire skin—and a piece of newsprint.

  The parchment unfolded to the size of the palm of my hand. A message was written in ornate calligraphy, in brown ink—dried blood? It read:

  Our esteemed Felix Gomez,

  The vampire underworld has a new threat, the extraterrestrials. Because of your experience with the aliens, we have chosen you to investigate this threat. Under no circumstances are you to allow yourself or any other vampire to be compromised by these extraterrestrials.

  What did the Araneum mean, “compromised”? Captured? Exposed as a supernatural? How could that happen? Any other vampire? What other vampire? And what about “these extraterrestrials”? The only ones I knew just left Earth. Why was the Araneum passing this information now, after I’d sent the alien Gilbert Odin on his way? If this was so damn important, why didn’t the Araneum alert me sooner?

  We expect your usual thoroughness. Your investigation is to be kept confidential.

  Report when completed.

  Araneum

  Report when completed what? Thoroughness at what? Who was I supposed to blab the investigation to? Talk radio? The Araneum knew more about this threat than I did. Why were they so stingy with information?

  Rain trickled down my face and splashed onto the parchment, smearing the ink. No poof into flames.

  I slipped the crow from under my armpit. It blinked and snorted indignantly.

  I waved the parchment in front of its beak. “Okay, wise guy, if there’s no sunlight, what’s to keep this from getting into the wrong hands?”

  Snapping faster than a mousetrap, the crow snatched the parchment from my fingers and the swatch of vampire skin disappeared down its throat. The crow swallowed, looked at me, then burped smoke.

  I waved away the foul-smelling puff. “Next time give a warning.”

  The crow chirped, sounding like “Ha, ha.”

  I gave it a shake. “If you got anything coming out your butt, keep it to yourself.”

  I unfolded the newsprint, an article about a charter airplane, a Cessna Caravan, that had crashed last week near San Diego, killing all seven aboard. What did that have to do with the aliens? Obviously the article was a clue, but for what? Okay, I am a detective but a little help was always appreciated.

  Raindrops soaked the newsprint. I wadded it into a soggy ball, which I offered to the crow. “Might help with your heartburn.”

  The crow squirmed, indicating that it wanted to be let go.

  I pushed the wad of newsprint into the capsule, screwed the cap back on, and clipped it to the crow’s leg.

  I set the crow on the sand. It shivered and remained still for a moment before starting to limp away. I expected the crow to leap upward but it didn’t, instead continuing on its trek through the rain.

  A pair of headlights crossed over the bridge from the mainland. When I looked back at the beach, the crow was gone.

  I returned to my Cadillac. I had my orders.

  Chapter

  4

  I spent the next two nights in Fort Myers, in a proper hotel more upscale than the Sarasota pit where Odin had died. I didn’t feel like sharing a place with bedbugs or hookers.

  Trouble waited for me, so I needed to regroup and refresh. As a vampire, I could only last so long on a human daylight schedule before turning into a cranky and dull-minded insomniac. I had to stay sharp. The best way was a long nap in a coffin but I didn’t bring one. Too bad I couldn’t try a routine of poses from The Undead Kama Sutra to help realign my chakras.

  I went online and checked the classifieds at HollowFang. com, the Internet newsletter for vampire aficionados. A funeral home in Orlando made deliveries, code for temporary sleep accommodations to traveling vampires. I requested a Majestic Imperial casket with the Sedona leather lining and hammered brass fittings. I was on vacation. Why not splurge? Besides, I got a “family” discount.

  The delivery crew brought the casket up to my room, explaining to the hotel staff that it was a magic prop. I hoped to chat with the crew and touch base with the local nidus. But both humans seemed clueless about the true nature of their employer.

  I pushed the bed aside and had the crew lay the casket in the middle of the floor. The casket was a vintage model, complete with a foldout crystal ashtray. Fortunately, instead of old stogies, the leather lining smelled of Vancouver Island sinsemilla. I dozed off dreaming of fanging topless Canadian women in dreadlocks. The DO NOT DISTURB sign on the room door kept the maid away and I slept—forgive me—like the dead for the next thirty-seven hours.

  I started the first day awake with a mug of organic, fair-trade Bolivian coffee, a raspberry scone, and a 450-milliliter bag of whole human blood that I’d brought along in a cooler. Arterial type A-negative—the good stuff.

  Since I had no idea where to start looking for this Goodman character, I continued on my original reason for coming to Florida, to find Carmen and quiz her about The Undead Kama Sutra. I drove south, as if the Florida peninsula was a drainpipe leading me to Key West.

  Early evening, after the sun had set, I was on U.S. 1, midway between Islamorada and Duck Key. The fragrant sea air rolled in through my cracked window during the long drive across
the intercoastal bridge connecting the Keys. The bridge was a ribbon of concrete that hopscotched from the Florida peninsula across a chain of islands that stretched into the turquoise sea. That the bridge continued to exist at all was a testament to Nature’s forbearance rather than man’s ingenuity. The ruins of the old bridge lay in pieces between the islands, where a hurricane had torn the structure apart. Small key deer picked at grass around the remaining abutments.

  Traffic stopped suddenly as if the road ahead was paved with glue. In a rush of noise, a couple of women on custom choppers thundered past on my left as they white-lined between the lanes. One a brunette, the other a redhead. Tiny bikini tops barely covered their muscular, tanned torsos. Braids swirled behind their heads. Wraparound sunglasses shielded their eyes. Lean shanks of leg showed between the hems of their denim shorts and the tops of their cowboy boots, which were propped on the highway bars alongside the engines. Light flashed off the bangles on their wrists and the chrome of their bikes.

  I dropped my sunglasses to peek over the lenses at these high-octane mamas.

  Orange auras.

  Vampires.

  I immediately recognized one aura. Carmen. She wasn’t kidding about working on her tan. She sported the best makeup job I’d ever seen on the undead.

  I’d’ve followed Carmen and her redheaded friend. But I was stuck behind a Dodge Caravan with a litter of snotty kids wiping their boogers on the rear window.

  Carmen rode a green bike with a flame paint job. She cocked her thumb at me and shouted something to her fellow biker on a blue metal-flake chopper. They exchanged nods and sped away.

  I knew Carmen had seen me. Why didn’t she stop? I texted her:

  WHAT GIVES? ON THE WAY FELIXG

  It was late evening when I finally rolled into Key West. No reply from Carmen. Along Truman Avenue, I searched the rows of motorcycles parked in front of the strip joints and dives. I found the two choppers outside a tavern called Murphy’s Scupper.