MY CONSCIOUSNESS SHRIVELED around the circle of steel where the business end of the pistol barrel pressed into my skin. I couldn’t move fast enough to parry the gun without risking a bullet through my skull. Vampires don’t fear wooden stakes nearly as much as high-velocity metal-jacketed slugs. Especially to the brain.
My hands still cupped Tamara’s head. The yellow aura sparkled over her skin. Her eyes retained that faraway gloss from the hypnosis. Except for her holding a gun to my forehead, I’d have said that she was still under my control.
So as not to startle her, I whispered slowly, “What do you want?”
“Take off your pants,” she said in a curious, distant voice.
Ordinarily when a nymphomaniac tells you to undress, her intentions are obvious. But the gun confused the situation. I didn’t know whether she wanted to play with my nuts or shoot them off.
Her finger tensed on the trigger of the Browning. “Take off your pants,” she repeated. “Let’s do it.”
At this proximity the pistol looked as big as a howitzer. “Sure, but under the present circumstances I might have performance issues.”
“Men. Such babies.” Tamara’s left hand groped for my waist and fumbled with my belt buckle.
I nudged her hand away. Straightening my legs, I lay flat on top of her and caressed her voluptuous torso. I nuzzled her neck, cognizant of the pistol now pressed to the side of my skull.
The humid scent of her perspiration and natural pheromones formed an inviting cocktail of aromas. I kissed her neck and nibbled tenderly on the skin beside her jugular. Such temptation. My fangs protruded to their maximum length, and they ached to bite through skin.
Tamara’s breathing deepened. Her feet hooked over the back of my ankles, and she tilted her big hips to rub her pubic bone against my groin.
I didn’t want to bite but the hypnosis wasn’t controlling her. I had no choice but to subdue her the traditional way.
Putting my wet open mouth against her neck, I let my saliva deaden her nerves. My fangs hunted for her jugular. I broke the skin and let the blood seep onto my tongue. Human blood was supremely delicious, but I couldn’t enjoy it. I let her blood dribble out my lips.
Tamara moaned. Her left hand stroked down my shoulder and back until she gripped my butt.
Any other vampire would’ve sucked her blood until she passed out. Instead I worked my spit into the punctures to let the narcotic effects of my saliva sedate her.
Tamara’s breathing slowed. Her aura faded to a dull red color. Her muscles relaxed. The Browning clattered to the floor. Her hands dropped to her sides.
Satisfied that she was unconscious, I sat up, pulled a handkerchief from my coat, and wiped my mouth. A wave of remorse turned into a nauseating dread. What had contaminated her at Rocky Flats? And since the nymphomania had begun, what sexually risky aerobics had she indulged in? I tried not to ingest her blood-even one drop containing a pathogen could be enough to destroy me. If she were infected. I hung my hopes on that doubt.
Tamara lay peacefully on the bed, her serene face pale. Blood trickled from the two small holes in her neck.
I pressed the handkerchief against the wound until the bleeding stopped. Besides its analgesic and sedative effects, vampire saliva also accelerated healing. I had hardly drained any blood, so the bruising would be negligible, and by the time she awoke she’d only have two tiny scabs surrounded by yellow discoloration.
I climbed off her and replaced my contacts. To erase evidence that I’d been here, I washed my shot glass and returned it to the cupboard.
Tamara would suffer amnesia from both my hypnosis and the narcotic chemicals of my saliva. She wouldn’t remember anything, starting from the half-hour before I arrived. Tomorrow morning she’d be one very confused woman.
I returned to my apartment and climbed into my coffin to reflect on what had happened. I ran the air conditioner to recreate the cool dankness of a crypt. Incense-Dresden cadaver, my favorite-should have given my bedroom that perfect Old World decaying smell that induced relaxed meditation.
Funny how becoming a vampire changed things. And, no, I don’t mean the obvious physical stuff. I was much more of a beer and tacos man, and I still like them, only now I needed to add the rich liquid texture of blood. I couldn’t deny my vampire personality and my awareness of the psychic plane we inhabited. In times like this I embraced the gloom to rejuvenate myself.
But this time, the incense and darkness weren’t working.
One afternoon years ago, when I was still human, I had discovered that my car was missing from where I had left it. I searched the parking lot, bewildered, wondering if I had even driven to the store at all. I couldn’t believe that my car had been stolen. I felt off-center, empty, and confused. Not only had someone taken my property, they had also upset my perception of reality.
Now I had the same feeling of disorientation. I fidgeted against the satin lining of my casket. This incident with Tamara was supposed to have enlightened me. Instead I had stumbled deeper into a labyrinth of questions and shadows. Why hadn’t vampire hypnosis worked? Why had her aura changed from red to yellow when she succumbed to nymphomania? What in Building 707 had caused this? I needed to interrogate the other affected RCTs and cut through the confusion surrounding the investigation. This time I wouldn’t be so complacent.
The next day I left my apartment to visit the second RCT. To bypass rush-hour traffic, I took a short cut along a quiet road parallel to an abandoned railroad line in the neighborhood.
I drove with the driver’s window open. The sun filtered through the trees growing alongside the railroad tracks. My fingertips tingled where they touched the steering wheel. The day was too clear, the air too crisp, the mood too normal to inspire trouble. Concerned that something might be wrong with my car-a wheel out of balance, for example-I let off the gas pedal and listened to the tires rumble over the asphalt.
A whirring sound, like a hornet, buzzed past my ear. Something popped against the right inside of the convertible top. Sunlight instantly beamed through a finger-sized hole in the fabric.
My fingers twitched in alarm. Someone was shooting at me.
I pressed the gas pedal. The Dodge leaped forward, pushing me back against the seat. A second buzzing sound and another hole popped in the convertible top. The shots came from my left.
Yanking off my sunglasses, I turned my head to see where the shooter might be. A car horn blared at me. I faced the front. A stop sign appeared from the center of an overgrown lilac bush and a blue Chevy Impala screeched before me. I stomped on the brakes. My Dodge skidded through the intersection and missed the Chevy by inches. My car slid to the muddy right shoulder and stalled. The Chevy slowed, honked the horn as a curse, then hurried off.
A black Ford Crown Victoria approached in the rearview mirror.
I turned the ignition key, but all the engine did was whine and not start. My vampire sense blaring the danger signal, I opened the door and bolted from the car.
The Ford swerved and presented its passenger side to me. A large man wearing black leaned from the window and panned me with the muzzle of an M16 that had a silencer attached.
I sprang to the left and right as I ran for the cover of the trees along the railroad tracks. Bullets nipped the air close to my head.
I tripped and splashed into a shallow ditch next to the railroad. Scrambling to my feet, I kept running as the bullets pecked at the leaves and branches around me.
The dirty water went from ankle deep to mid-shin. I hurdled over tires and a shopping cart discarded in the ditch. The Ford started up the road to overtake me.
I crashed through a wall of reeds. Here the ditch joined a culvert about as wide as my shoulders. I dropped to my hands and knees and shimmied into the culvert, wallowing in grime and mud. I slid deep into the dark corrugated tube, not waiting to find out if I had lost my pursuers.
I needed to see. Removing my contacts in these conditions would be risky but I had to do it. I whisked my hands through the water to rinse the mud from my fingers. Carefully, I pulled the left contact out, then the right. Grit scratched my eyeballs. I splashed the filthy water into my eyes in an attempt to flush the irritation away.
Minutes passed. I heard nothing and could see little. A human would’ve been mortified with claustrophobia to be in this tight culvert for so long. But this reminded me of stories of being buried undead and emerging decades later, refreshed by the extended siesta.
Something blurry with a red aura approached to sniff my head. My claws instantly extended to defend me. The thing with the red aura growled and snapped at my face. It was a raccoon.
I bared my fangs and snapped back. The raccoon held its ground. We bitch-slapped each other until I’d had enough and retreated backwards to the ditch. Pausing before exposing my feet, I listened for danger, the quickened breath of my excited pursuer, the scratch of his finger along the rifle trigger, the tires of the Ford scraping over gravel. Nothing.
I backed out to my knees. Still nothing. Then out completely. The sun poured upon me and stung my naked eyes. A crow squawked at me from the concrete embankment of the ditch. The shooter was gone. I sloughed off the mud and rotting leaves from my trousers. Reeking of garbage I stumbled out of the ditch and walked along the shoulder back to my Dodge. Water squished in my shoes.
I inspected my car to see if it had been left alone. It had. Getting a canteen from the trunk, I washed my face, touched up my makeup, and put in a new pair of contacts. I sat on a towel to protect the driver’s seat and tried the ignition key. The engine turned over right away. Before I drove off, I surveyed the area and reflected on the attack.
Who was the shooter? He knew my route. He knew me. I was sure I had seen him and the black Ford before, if only incidentally. I promised myself that in the course of this investigation I’d get even with this shooter. It would be a delightfully hideous revenge.
Back in my apartment, I scrubbed myself clean and decided to continue my interrogation of the RCTs. I headed for the next address, which turned out to be a town house in Littleton, a suburb southwest of Denver. The dwellings were three-story units scrunched together between juniper hedges. I walked up the narrow porch of my destination and rang the doorbell. The lock on the front door clicked and the door opened.
The woman peeked at me from around the door’s edge. Neon-blue eyes were inset within her pretty, square-shaped face, matched in intensity by her crimson lipstick. A terry-cloth headband kept her wavy dark hair from spilling over her forehead. My libido piqued with the scent of her perspiration.
Showing my ID, I introduced myself and recited my credentials. “I’m from the Flats. You are a friend of Tamara Squires?”
“Tamara? Is this about the outbreak?”
“It is. And are you Sofia Martinez?”
“Yes I am.” She politely agreed to let me in. Tugging at her moistened T-shirt, worn braless over smallish breasts, she said, “I just got back from the gym. Hope you don’t mind me smelling like a mare.”
“I hadn’t noticed.”
“Don’t bullshit me, Mr. Gomez. I saw your nose wrinkle.” Black spandex shorts clung to her substantial, inviting butt.
I followed her into the modest living room, where I sat on the sofa and she plopped in the stuffed armchair. A snowboard rested in the corner. Softball and soccer trophies on the mantle crowded around a figurine of the Madonna and Child.
Sofia slipped loose her cross-trainers, peeled off her socks, and folded her bare, muscular legs underneath her hips. Suddenly, she sprang from the chair and headed for the kitchen. “Oh gosh, where are my manners? Coffee?”
I needed to ask questions and not waste time. “None for me. But thanks.”
“Too late. Since I’m having some, so are you.” She yelled from the kitchen. “Are you here to talk about the nympho thing?”
I hadn’t mentioned anything about that. “How did you know?”
“Because you asked about Tamara and then you come to see me. That was a no-brainer. Her life really went into the poopster over this, didn’t it?”
“According to her, yeah.”
Sofia returned with a serving tray with two delicate china cups filled with coffee. “I take mine with cream and a dash of sugar. I put the same in yours.”
She set a cup and saucer in front of me on the coffee table. “Let me tell you a secret about myself”-Sofia took her cup and curled into the stuffed chair-“I was a goddamn nympho before all this crap happened at the Flats.”
“So it had no effect on you?”
Sofia scrunched her lips together and wobbled her head as if deciding what to say. “I wouldn’t say that. It did make me lower my standards on occasion.” She set the cup on an end table. Clasping her hands, she shoved them between her knees and rocked forward. “I shouldn’t have said that, it was stupid. Sorry. For me, it couldn’t have come at a worse time.” With a flourish of her left arm, she looked up at the ceiling. “Here I am, in my mid-thirties, divorced, my goddam biological clock ringing so loud that I’m surprised the neighbors can’t hear it, and I can’t find someone to give me a kid. And then, to make me a certified sexual basket case, I get nymphomania for real.”
“No Prozac?”
“Prozac? What the hell do I need that for? My only problem with sex is this.” She snatched an envelope from the corner of the coffee table. “Here’s another invitation from one of my sisters to yet another baby shower.” She shook the envelope at me. Her cheeks darkened to the shade of her lipstick. “When’s my baby shower? Huh, Felix? When’s mine?”
Sofia sat still, sulking. “Am I a bad person?”
Should’ve brought rubber boots; I didn’t think I’d have to wade this deep through emotional wreckage. “No,” I told her.
She aimed those blue eyes at me. “Do you think I’m pretty?”
“Yes, I do.” This was true.
“Then what’s the problem? Am I too forward? I thought guys didn’t like all that prissy bullshit.” The words spewed out of her mouth like she had a motor in her throat. “Every guy worth having sex with is either fixed or won’t give me a kid. I don’t want to marry anybody again or bust his ass over child support, I just want to be able to point out to my baby, ‘There’s your daddy.’ And then I get this goddamn nymphomania and I go through enough condoms to make a zeppelin because I don’t want to get pregnant from the wrong dipshit.”
“Have you gone to a clinic?” I asked. “For a baby, I mean.”
“I’m not doing the turkey-baster thing. I want quality sperm fresh out of the penis.”
“Maybe you have to compromise.”
“Compromise what? All I want is to get laid and get pregnant by somebody decent,” she shouted. “It happens millions of times every day to women on this planet-just not to me.”
How sad for her, but I had to steer the conversation back to the nymphomania. I took the last sip of my coffee and set the cup on its saucer. “So your biological clock started ringing before the outbreak?”
“Hello? Didn’t I say that? I’ve been after a baby since I was divorced six years ago.”
“Seems like plenty of time.”
“You’d think. Casual sex was not the problem. It’s that the guys either did the daddy-thing already with their exes or they don’t want kids, period. So here are these otherwise perfectly suitable mates and I have to throw them back because”-her voice angered-“they won’t give me a baby.”
“I’m racing the calendar.” She held up three fingers. “This is how many years I got. No woman in my family over forty ever got pregnant.”
Her eyes glistened. She wiped a tear. “Sorry to act this way.” Her voice trembled. “But I really want a baby. I even have a nursery upstairs. Wanna see?”
God no. This woman had enough problems to keep a platoon of shrinks busy. “That’s okay.”
Sofia gave a smile so tense I thought her face would break. She finished her coffee. Closing her eyes for a moment, she sighed deeply and her cheeks turned their natural color. “Let’s change the subject. What’s with you? That makeup?”
“A skin condition. Gulf War Syndrome.”
“Yew.” She squinted and turned her head to examine me. “Other than that, you’re not bad-looking. That syndrome didn’t leave you…shooting blanks?”
“You mean sterile?”
“That. Impotent.”
“There’s a difference,” I said defensively. Vampires certainly weren’t impotent. But we were sterile and propagated solely by fanging. “My plumbing works. But I am shooting blanks.”
“See what I mean?” Sofia splayed her hands in a gesture of resignation. “Another decent guy who doesn’t cut the mustard.”
First time I’d ever been called decent. “I thought we had changed the subject. What can you tell me about your contamination in Building 707?”
Sofia crossed her arms. “I can’t go into details about that. Why are you asking?”
Time for vampire hypnosis. I bent my head down and dropped the contacts into my hand. I lifted my head and stared at Sofia.
Her rosy face blanched. Her eyes widened. Her lips parted enough for a whisper to escape. “Oh wow.”
That I’d never heard from a victim before. Considering my experience with Tamara, I approached Sofia cautiously, lest she kept a pistol jammed between the seat cushions. Her aura surrounded her like an electric cloud.
Sofia’s cheeks darkened again while her eyes gazed at mine expectantly. Tendrils from her aura turned yellow. A wave of pheromones smothered all other smells. My fingers tingled in alarm. I started to step back. Her legs reached for mine and her ankles scooped behind my calves. She grasped my wrists and pulled me down on her. “Come on, Felix. Do me.”
The yellow in the tendrils migrated into the rest of her aura. My paranoia bordered on panic. It wasn’t the threat from her I feared but this unknown reaction to my hypnosis. I wasn’t able to easily control her.
As with Tamara, there was only one remedy. I knelt before Sofia and took her head in my hands. She let go of my arms and pulled her T-shirt over her breasts.
“Yeah, Felix,” she growled seductively and leaned into me, “I’ll bet you have a weapons-grade hard-on for me.”
I sank my fangs into her neck and tasted her sweet blood. Thankfully, she nodded off soon and went limp in the chair. I cleaned up and left.
After driving home, I meditated in my coffin and reviewed what little I had learned. This nymphomania didn’t seem supernatural in origin or effect, yet that it could cut through vampire hypnosis distressed me. Plus, every time I remembered the taste of Tamara’s or Sofia’s blood, my bowels weakened in panic from the danger I’d put myself into. It was wishful thinking on my part to imagine that I was safe from contamination. The next time I went into the bathroom I might find myself glowing with radioactivity, or, worse, look down and see that my dick had rotted off.
Still, I had one more chance. I needed to interview the third radiological control technician. Jenny Calhoun.