I headed back to Colorado on I-10. I drove straight through, stopping only to gas my Cadillac and to hide in the restroom of a Houston diner while I waited for the sunrise to pass. Some big, bad vampire I was, loitering in the stall of a men’s room. Times like these made me wish for another spider bite…almost.
Afterward I sat at the counter and ordered a large coffee and a breakfast burrito to go. Outside, I dumped half of the coffee from the Styrofoam cup. Back in my car I set the coffee in a console cup holder and unwrapped the burrito, which I lay on my lap. From the console I pulled out a plastic squirt bottle of type A-negative. I filled the cup so the mixture was fifty-fifty blood and coffee. I took a sip and added a little more blood. I pumped a couple of squirts of blood into the burrito. Mmmm, egg, jalapeño, and type A.
I didn’t want to think about what had happened in the last two weeks, I only wanted to get home. The enormity of the loss of Carmen overwhelmed me. This was worse than her being dead for good. In this case, the great sea of space and getting Carmen back seemed as impossible as me plucking a star from the heavens.
I couldn’t do anything about it, and worrying didn’t do anything except leave me frazzled and feeling helpless.
Something rapped against my car. I looked up. A crow peeked over the upper left corner of the windshield.
A crow? This meant the Araneum wanted something.
The bird’s claws scratched across the roof of the Cadillac. The little black head appeared over my side window and tapped again, this time impatiently.
I felt a queasy hollowness and I knew I was in trouble. I had failed in my mission. I found out about the alien threat but the cost had been losing Carmen.
My appetite vanished and I put the burrito and coffee away. I scrolled the window down. The crow perched on the windowsill, facing me. A filigreed capsule the size of my little finger was clipped to the crow’s right leg.
I caressed the crow’s warm, soft head. The beady eyes expressed no emotion. With my other hand, I slipped the capsule from its leg.
I spread my knees and held the capsule low between my legs to keep it in shadow. I unscrewed the jeweled ruby cap from the platinum-and-gold capsule. The familiar and rancid smell of flayed vampire skin wafted upward. I used my little finger to pull out a roll of parchment.
I unrolled the tissue-thin paper and read this note.
We’ve been texting you. Check your cell phone.
Araneum
So the Araneum had gone snippy on me. I had a new cell phone but no car charger, so I had left the phone off to conserve the battery. I turned the phone on and got an alert that I had several voice mails and a text message waiting.
I checked the text message first.
FELIX
BE AT THE MOTHER CABRINI SHRINE THIS WEDNESDAY AT 3 P.M.
ARANEUM
Sounded like a trip to the woodshed. Not good. I erased the message.
The Cabrini Shrine stood west of Denver on I-70. An unlikely place for a meeting.
I balled the parchment and tossed it out my window. When the parchment flew out of the shadow of my car and into the sunlight, the note immediately flared into a burst of fire that darkened into a puff of black smoke.
The crow stared at the vanishing smoke and blinked its eyes. Then it turned around on the windowsill and tapped against the capsule in my hand. I screwed the cap back on and fit the capsule on the bird’s leg.
I tried to shoo the bird, resentful of the news it had brought. When it didn’t move, I scrolled the window up. The crow jumped away, startled by the glass pane rising against its tail feathers. It flew to the hood of my Cadillac.
I honked the horn to shoo it again. The crow wouldn’t scram.
I checked my voice mail. Jolie left a message wishing me a safe journey and telling me that she missed Carmen.
She signed off: “Call me.”
There was a lot of sadness in her voice. I could wait for that conversation.
The other calls were from human clients asking when I’d return to my office. When I got there.
I started the car. The crow hadn’t moved. When I got to the highway, the crow centered itself on the front of my car and faced ahead like a hood ornament. I accelerated to ninety miles an hour. The crow hunkered down and squinted into the slipstream.
Was this bird going to freeload a ride all the way to Denver? Fat chance.
I slammed on the brakes. The crow shot from my car like it’d been catapulted from an aircraft carrier.
Hasta la vista, you little feathered bastard.
The crow sailed over the concrete lane for a hundred feet. It spread its wings and wheeled upward to arc over my car.
Bird poop splattered on my windshield.
The crow gave a laughing caw. Hasta la vista, back at you.