I waited at the Shrine of the Sacred Heart, better known locally as the Mother Cabrini Shrine. The Catholic Church built the shrine to commemorate the first American saint, Maria Francesca Cabrini, Patroness of Immigrants. Her twenty-two-foot-tall statue stood on a commanding hill overlooking the Colorado plains to the north and the town of Golden straight east. Close by, I-70 snaked westward through the foothills into the Rocky Mountains and over the Continental Divide.
If anyone believed the myth that the Christian cross was as feared as garlic by us vampires, then a stroll to this shrine would destroy that fiction.
The Stations of the Cross bordered the concrete steps leading to the shrine. The dozens of crucifixes here-imbued with Resurrection juju, no less, should’ve been enough to incinerate any undead bloodsucker. But the only way to hurt a vampire with a cross would be to either bonk him on the head or sharpen one end and stab him through the chest.
Here I stood, at the top of the shrine, waiting for the Araneum. I didn’t know their agenda. I was only told to show up. I’m sure they were pissed over what happened to Carmen. So was I. I’d be surprised if I didn’t get a major ass-chewing…or worse. The worse part unsettled me. I didn’t want my skin used for undead Post-it notes.
The sun warmed me and I touched up my sunblock with a tube I pulled from my pocket.
Mother Nature had given the Front Range one final arctic blast as a going-away present. Smudges of snow lingered in the shadows. Cirrus clouds traced across the distant sky like scrawls of chalk against cerulean blue. A brown haze ringed the horizon.
Two women in their mid-thirties, both wearing fleece vests over black jogging tights, leaned forward against the base of the shrine and stretched their legs. They chatted about tax law and money, so I guessed they were lawyers or accountants playing hooky from the office.
I peeked over my sunglasses to study their auras. Neither seemed interested in me. Good. I didn’t want to be so far down on the vampire pecking order that the Araneum sent humans to interview me.
The two women turned from the shrine and bounded down the steps.
Coming in the opposite direction, another woman jogged up the stairs. Her skin was the color of a roasted coffee bean and she had short, black, nappy hair under a red head-warmer band. She held the leash of a large dog, some mutt with a blue-gray coat with yellow tufts around its neck and down its long, skinny legs.
I read her aura.
Orange.
Vampire.
The time was three on the dot.
An uneasy feeling ran through me. My kundalini noir shifted like it wanted to relieve a sudden kink.
Her aura had the even glow of a bulb filament, not betraying any hint of emotional turbulence. The Araneum had sent a real composed one to interrogate me.
The vampire crested the top of the stairs and halted. She stood a bit over five feet and wore sunglasses with rhinestones and a green jacket over a navy blue jogging suit. She carried a messenger bag over one shoulder. In human years, she looked in her early forties.
The dog had a red aura, so I knew it wasn’t a supernatural in disguise. With its tail wagging and ears perked, the dog lunged playfully for me. It was a cross between a blue heeler and a golden retriever, hence the unusual coat. The vampire pulled the dog back, patted its head, and unclipped the leash. The dog bolted for me, sniffed my crotch, and turned away to explore the garden around the shrine.
The vampire wound the leash around one wrist. “Felix, good to meet you.” She kept her distance, about six feet away, and didn’t bother to extend her free hand to thaw her frosty greeting. “Phyllis.” All business, she was. No point in asking her favorite color or taste in music.
I didn’t recognize her face or name. “I know most of the vampires in the Denver nidus but not you. Where are you from?”
“You have a way of contacting Carmen Arellano?” Phyllis didn’t waste time with prolonged introductions.
I didn’t want to discuss Carmen but I knew we would. Thinking about her only uncovered the loss and deepened the scar.
I started with my story, beginning with my acquaintance of the alien impostor Gilbert Odin.
Phyllis raised a hand to stop me. “I’ve read Jolie’s report.”
How should I handle confessing my failure to protect Carmen? What fate awaited me? Was the Araneum going to tear off my skin? The Araneum should have shared more information, preparing me to better deal with Goodman and Clayborn. Still, the fault was mine. Anything I had to say in my defense remained clotted in my throat.
“Sorry to hear what happened to Carmen,” Phyllis said. Her admission surprised me.
“We would have told you more,” she continued, “but we were afraid that you might get captured and talk. You didn’t fail, considering the circumstances.”
The words didn’t make me feel any better. I was supposed to prevail regardless.
“What we want to know is, is there a way to get Carmen back?”
The question seemed absurdly simplistic. “If I knew where she was and if I had a flying saucer. You got one handy?”
Phyllis’s stony smile meant of course not.
“I know the rules,” I said. “No vampire can be held prisoner in a situation that threatens the Great Secret.” The existence of the supernatural world. “If we couldn’t rescue Carmen, we’d have to destroy any and all evidence of her existence. Jolie and I were ready to do that.”
“I don’t doubt you, Felix. But the situation has reintroduced a level of tension within the Araneum.”
“What kind of tension?”
“There’s a small but vocal minority within the high council who wants greater control over the vampire community. The majority, the status quo, says we continue with our laissez-faire approach. Only when a vampire threatens the Great Secret do we act. Outside of that, we’re each on our own.”
“You mentioned ‘reintroduced,’ meaning this tension has existed before.”
Her blue heeler began sniffing one of the memorials in the garden. Phyllis whistled. The dog lowered its leg, gave an open-mouth dog grin, and trotted away.
“It’s always been under the surface but not this pronounced,” Phyllis replied, “not recently anyway. The flip side to control is who determines what control is? What is acceptable, what is not, and how are the rules enforced?”
“Not recently? There’s a history to this?”
Phyllis’s aura dimmed and nodules of discomfort budded along the penumbra. Considering how cool she’d been before, this must be some bad news.
“Civil war. It happened in the thirteenth century, about a hundred years after the Araneum was formed in reaction to the growing threat of the Knights Templar. The vampire leaders turned on each other, followed by assassinations, then more violence, and eventually an undead bloodbath. We almost exterminated ourselves.”
“What saved us?”
“It wasn’t because we came to our collective senses. All trust in the leaders collapsed and the violence lost its momentum. Basically, we got tired of killing one another.”
“Interesting lesson. I’ve heard about our past troubles but I didn’t know of a war among us.”
“It’s not a moment we’re proud of. The war proved we are more human than we want to admit, despite what we say and how we act. The human lurking inside of us does more than nag our conscience with the need for compassion and the yearning for love. It also nurtures the irrational lust for mass violence and destruction.”
“And Carmen’s kidnapping by the aliens has rekindled this argument?”
“More than rekindled. And it’s more than about Carmen. Or you. The aliens are a new threat and we have to decide how to deal with them. They’ll be back and they’ll want more. We have to be ready. We’ve learned the humans are willing to sell themselves for petty material gain.”
“That a surprise?”
“’Course not. Heaven help us if we get in the way.”
I hadn’t realized any of this. I was worried about getting my ears boxed by the Araneum, while the problem was way beyond that.
Phyllis continued. “The aliens have a psychotronic device, right?”
“That’s correct.”
“Meaning they have a primitive understanding of psychic energy but the point is, they know. This time they used money and the illusion of power to control humans. The next time they might have a more advanced version of the psychotronic device, something that can directly manipulate humans, or even us.”
“Where does this leave me?”
Phyllis extended an index finger and touched the tip with her other hand. “Right here. At the vanguard. You’re the point man in our negotiations with the aliens. They come back, you’ll talk to them.”
“And if I find a way to rescue Carmen?”
“Consult with the Araneum before you do anything. We’ll help in whatever way we can.”
“You sound like you know something I don’t.”
“We’re not keeping anything from you, Felix.” Her aura stayed calm. Still, Phyllis represented authority and those in charge always take liberties with your fate. If you object, it’s because you can’t “appreciate” the big picture.
“What about Goodman?” I asked. “He’s dead but the people he worked for know a lot about Carmen and me.”
“The government has a vested interest in keeping what happened quiet. We have family and chalices in place who can arrange that.”
She opened the messenger bag and pulled out a small glass bottle with a chartreuse-pine spider inside. “You know about this?”
“I do. Wouldn’t recommend it.”
“Why?”
I told her my experience with the spider bite and that it had left me worse off.
She stuck the bottle back into her bag and slipped out pages from The Undead Kama Sutra. “And this?”
“Carmen about had it figured out.”
“So it works?”
“She was close.”
Phyllis nodded, allowing herself a fleeting expression of regret. She put the pages back in the bag. She pursed her lips and whistled. The dog perked its ears and loped back to her. She clipped the leash to its collar.
“Later, Felix. Try and stay out of trouble.” Her aura pulsed and she smiled. “For as long as you can.”