I bolted upright, gasping, confused.
Where was I?
I sat in a coffin. I smelled formaldehyde and ethanol-embalming fluid. In the middle of the room stood a mortician’s table, a white slab with a trough around the edge and a metal stand on one end to hold the deceased’s head in place. Light shone through a row of frosted-glass windows high along one wall. A Porti-Boy embalming machine-it looked like a big, squat blender with a hose sticking out between the front dials-sat on a steel shelf on the opposite wall. The shelf was crowded with jugs of embalming fluid, autopsy compound, and tissue builder. Under the shelf waited a white porcelain commode for whatever was next to be flushed away. There was an interior door to my right and a wide service door to my left.
I was alone in the morgue. My clothes-a red print Hawaiian shirt and khaki cargo pants-were not mine.
I felt queasy.
I had the dim recollection of Carmen and her chalice, Jack, pulling my carcass out of the ocean. They had scrubbed me with soapy water, hosed me off, and brought me here. She had mentioned staying with a chalice couple who owned a mortuary in Bluffton. That must be where I was.
My coffin rested on a workbench. An insulated carafe stood on the table within reach. I tasted a recent blood meal. I didn’t remember drinking the blood nor did I remember being dressed or falling asleep in this coffin.
My wallet, its contents, and an assortment of embalming tools-a big syringe, metal tubes of various lengths, a coil of latex hose, and forceps-lay spread across the workbench. I touched the wallet; the leather was dry. I had to have been here awhile. How long?
Bracing myself against the sides of the coffin, I started to get up. My knees were stiff and they ached, as did my lower back. I ran my hands down along my thighs to my calves. My fingers dragged across the scars where Goodman’s bullets had chewed my leg.
The images and sensations from the ambush returned to torment me in a kaleidoscope of terror. First the bomb detonating, the hot blast heaving me out of the motel lobby, my face riddled with glass, smoke curling from my burned clothes.
Then the sprint through Hilton Head as Goodman and his goons hunted me, their bullets cracking the air inches past my ears.
The warming of my skin, scalding as the spider bite wore off and the sun fried my unprotected flesh.
Nausea flooded through me again. My kundalini noir tightened into a ball, compressing itself in a panicked spasm. I gagged, unable to do anything except fight the impulse to vomit. I clutched my throat as if trying to pull slack into a noose around my neck.
The nausea abated, replaced by an icy fear that twisted through me. I slumped forward and rested my head against the side of the coffin, weakened and spent.
Footsteps approached beyond the door at my right. I sat up again, the nausea returned, and I waited, too crippled by my wretched condition to offer resistance if it was trouble.
The door opened. A woman asked, “Felix?”
Somehow I knew she was Leslie, Jack’s wife, a chalice and co-owner of the mortuary. We must have met when I was first brought here.
Leslie stepped inside and closed the door. Her aura glowed pleasantly, like a candle behind red cellophane. She was in her early forties. A flowered blouse and jeans clothed her voluptuous meatiness-hardly a dainty woman, yet attractive in a nurturing, Earth-mother sort of way.
I felt her heat as she drew close. Her warm hand lay on mine.
“How are you?” Leslie’s blue eyes had the comforting empathy of a nurse. Being among chalices meant I didn’t need vampire hypnosis. I could relax.
“Not so good.” My head felt unsteady and I touched my face. I had a grizzly stubble. A scab outlined a tear on my temple. “Where’s Carmen?”
“With Jack. Running errands.”
“How long have I been here?”
“Since last night.” Leslie removed the scarf from around her neck. She pulled the tails of her blouse from her waistband and undid the buttons. Her aura brightened with a growing lust. “Would you like some fresh blood? You’ll feel better.”
If this was only about providing fresh blood, she could’ve bled herself and replenished the carafe. Chalices weren’t into this exchange of fluids with the undead for charity’s sake. Sex with a vampire was one of the bigger rewards for submission.
Leslie’s blouse fell open and displayed her large bosom in a lacy white brassiere. Wife-husband chalices were not uncommon. They promised debauched recreation in many possible combinations. But I confined my game to females. Chalice couples brought into this arrangement their many perversions, and a favorite among the men was a cuckold fetish. I had no desire to put on a show for Jack. He would have to get his voyeuristic jollies somewhere else.
I ran my tongue across my incisors. My fangs stayed flush with my other teeth. I had no urge for fanging…or for sex. At least she had asked.
“Thanks,” I replied. “Some other time.”
What irony. When I had the tan, women were losing interest in me. Now my tan was gone and I had no interest in them.
Leslie’s aura dimmed from disappointment. She smiled self-consciously and clutched the collar of her blouse. Her hands worked the buttons, top to bottom, and left the tails of the blouse outside her jeans. She tied the scarf around her neck. “You’re not acting particularly vampiric.”
“Let me worry about that.” The queasiness clung to my throat like a greasy scum. Perhaps if I washed it down I’d feel better. “Can you get me a drink? A beer. Wine? Something hard if you’ve got it.”
Leslie crouched beside the workbench and opened a cabinet door. She brought out a bottle of Wild Turkey, a can of Pepsi, and a pair of highball glasses, and set them on the workbench by the embalming tools.
I stared at the booze. “Do you and Jack pickle yourselves while you pickle your clients?”
“It’s from our last Halloween party.” She reached back into the workbench, pulled out a black paper horn, and gave it a toot.
“Cocktails and cadavers,” I said, “what a theme.”
Leslie put away the horn. “I’ll get ice from the kitchen.”
Usually it didn’t take much to get me to drink but my thirst had left me too. The queasiness grew stronger and I realized why I felt this way.
Goodman had chased me to the brink of doom and I couldn’t forget that. Even when I drifted in the water, already safe from Goodman, I had lost the will to resist. When the hands of my rescuer grasped me, I made no attempt to help in my own salvation. I didn’t care. I surrendered to what had seemed inevitable.
I was broken.
I deserved no pleasure. I never wanted to smile again. I had no desire for liquor, or sex, or fanging. What then would be the point of being immortal? I still walked among the living but Goodman had beaten me.
As a detective, I was useless.
As a vampire, I was as good as dead.