A BARKING DOG WOKE ME. I opened my eyes-they burned. I reeked of pepper spray. Pushing off the carpet, I sat up and noticed the morning sun trickle around the edges of my window blinds. Outside, the dog finally shut up.
A bent tire iron lay on the carpet. Somebody had whacked me with a blow that would’ve killed a human, and I’m sure that’s what they had intended for me.
With a headache that felt like an electric bell ringing in my frontal lobes, I staggered to the front door and locked the deadbolt.
I retreated into the bathroom to treat my wounds and wash up. I’d been hit so hard that my contacts had been knocked out. If I could’ve seen my reflection, I’m sure my swollen eyes would’ve looked like stewed prunes. Dried blood flaked from my scalp. On my head, I felt a crease atop a lump the size of my thumb. When I laid the tire iron against my head-only barely touching the tender flesh-the crease fit into the bent part of the tire iron. The angle of the blow coming from behind meant my attacker was probably right-handed.
Right-handed like the man who had come after me with the M16. Pranging me across the skull with this tire iron would’ve seemed a practical tactic to a man of his large, muscular size.
I sniffed the handle of the iron, smelling talcum powder and latex residue, then tossed it aside. The attacker had worn disposable gloves, so unless I discovered his name or Social Security number engraved on the metal, I couldn’t expect to find much of a clue on it as to his identity or motive.
He knew plenty about me, though. My home address. What kind of car I drove. For now, I was sure he thought I was dead, or close to it. Once he figured out that I was on my feet, he would attack again.
I put on a fresh pair of contacts and folded a compress over the wound. My head throbbed with an ache that four tablets of aspirin weren’t able to quell.
In the second bedroom, my desk had been smashed apart. Shattered drawers and torn folders lay scattered on the floor. The computer power cords and modem cable dangled over the desk, where my hard drive and backup had been. What he didn’t know was that he had taken a decoy.
Though that wasn’t exactly reason to gloat. There had been two attempts on my life-as close to a life as a vampire had-and my apartment had been pillaged.
I checked the kitchen and found my laptop safe behind the false panel in the pantry. I still had my files and I was still alive. The lump on my head started to throb.
What hurt worse than the lump or the nauseating headache was the humiliation of getting KO’d by the human goon who had ransacked my place. Being a vampire, I was heir to the legacy of the most feared ghouls in history, Dracula and Nosferatu. I was supposed to be the terrorizer, not the terrorized.
The attack left me obsessing. Bob Carcano had cautioned me about my refusal to drink human blood, accusing me of ignoring my vampire nature. Was he right? What consequences did that bring? My wounds hadn’t healed overnight, which worried me. Last year, I’d been shot in the back and by the following morning, I was fit enough for my Pilates class.
Had the lack of human blood in my diet affected my recuperative powers? Or was it my guilt? Maybe, too, my vampire senses had dulled, and that’s why my attacker had gotten the better of me. Or not. I wasn’t sure.
Dizzy and spent, I went into my bedroom and pulled the Murphy bed from the wall, exposing my coffin. I climbed in and spent the rest of the day listening to the built-in stereo while I medicated myself into a dreamy haze with ibuprofen and vodka tonics.
When the buzz wore off I remembered Bob’s invitation to The Hollow Fang party for tonight. A vampire party. They’re either as sedate as an art reception-I’ve been to one where the guests critiqued watercolors and noshed on scabs they picked off the corpse centerpiece-or they’re as raucous as an orgy choreographed by Attila the Hun. I wasn’t in the mood for highbrow conversation and scabs-or orgies, for that matter-but if I stayed here, I’d be looking at the same damn ceiling I’d been staring at since morning. Plus I should meet members of the local nidus. Can’t have too many undead friends.
When it came time to go, I showered and then jolted my nerves with a tall cup of Costa Rican dark roast spiced with goat’s blood. The lump was almost gone and if I fluffed my hair over it, no one could tell that my head had been used for batting practice. And if someone asked, I’d tell him that I’d accidentally let the lid of a coffin slam on me. Clumsy me.
The party was in an east Denver home, a gabled Tudor. Techno music boomed from inside. A chubby woman answered the doorbell, wearing an obscenely tight latex cat suit that pinched a wedge of fat cleavage out the front. Her thick legs teetered on stiletto heels. No mistress of the dark, she looked more like a matron of the refrigerator. Her eyes had a vampire’s gleam from costume contacts. “Welcome to our crypt, fellow vampire,” she lisped through plastic, glow-in-the-dark fangs.
What a sad poser. No self-respecting vampire would dress like her, not unless there was serious money involved. I excused myself and squeezed past.
Most of the guests wore black, some gaudy latex, others trashy Goth getups with chains and leather, and a few were dressed in dark clothing that looked ordered from Lands’ End. Everyone’s eyes shone bright, the same as the greeter’s from the front door.
I surreptitiously removed my contacts. Instantly, the color of the auras let me know who was vampire and who was human. Makes for an interesting switch when we vampires have to remove our contacts to fit in.
As soon as I got something to eat, I’d start to mingle. I forgot about this being a mixed crowd-vampires and humans-so there weren’t many real blood treats on the buffet table in the den, mostly human food. A chocolate cake in the shape of a casket lay in the center of the table. Tamales wrapped in black cornhusks were piled in a chafing dish. Black candles dripped wax on bone-shaped candelabras. A steaming fondue pot held what looked like blood, but it was only marinara sauce-sans garlic, of course. A pyramid of blood-pudding canapés sat on a silver platter. No scabby corpse, thankfully. The cake looked especially rich, so I grabbed a serving knife.
Someone tapped my shoulder. “Cut me a piece of that.”
I turned around.
A woman grinned at me. A bright-green aura radiated from her body as if she were plugged into a xenon lamp. With an aura that color, she was not human, and she definitely was no vampire.
“Felix Gomez,” she said, “welcome to Denver.”