Rescue From Planet Pleasure (7 page)

Chapter Ten

Until Coyote and Jolie returned, I had nothing to do but study the view. I spotted the muted gleam of the Cress Tech towers facing the butte. The closest of the towers was at least a mile away and the sunlight reflecting off the psychotronic diviner on top made the device shine like a metal button in the dusty haze. I counted eleven towers in one arc to the west and five more in another arc to the east. The towers were placed about a half-mile apart. The two arcs could be just the start of a large circle that had yet to be filled in. By my guess a total of twenty-four towers would be needed to complete its circumference.

I mused over what Cress Tech was using the psychotronic diviners for. They detected psychic transmissions, and years ago I had used one to find Phaedra.

And these? Did they detect our teleportation through the Sun Dagger?

I thought about that as I sat in the shade and waited for Coyote and Jolie to return.

And waited. One hour. Two. Three.

Coyote and I had been gone half an hour. Where did he and Jolie go? What if they got stuck at their destination? Or were they caught in a supernatural traffic jam inside the psychic plane?

The sun dipped toward the western horizon, and a long shadow bled from the butte across Chaco Canyon.

I heard Jolie laughing. Then a snicker from Coyote. A tote bag full of clothes flew from between the stone slabs and landed beside me in the dirt. Both of them emerged from between the slabs. Jolie wore a lime-green bikini and pink flip-flops. She carried a plastic hurricane cup with a long bendy straw. Coyote still wore his same clothes and palmed a half-eaten hoagie in one hand and a tallboy of PBR in the other.

Jolie perched her sunglasses on her head. Her eyes sizzled with excitement. “That was fucking awesome.” I could smell rum on her breath.

“The hell you go?” I asked.

She showed me the side of her cup where it said: Key West.

“We go to Pacoima,” I grumbled to Coyote, “for a quick lunch. And you take Jolie for happy hour in Key West?”

Coyote replied through a mouthful of sandwich. “
Vato
, what can I say? She looks better than you in a bikini.”

Jolie shucked her flip-flops and pulled her jeans, t-shirt, and jacket from the tote bag. She yanked them over her bikini and sat on the ground to tie her cross trainers.

The throb of an approaching helicopter echoed toward us.

Coyote straightened and swiveled his head to locate the sound. “We can’t let them find us up here.” He pointed to the side of the butte. “Go. Go. Get off this hill.”

My thoughts zinged to the towers and their psychotronic diviners. Our jumps through the psychic world must have triggered an alarm.

With me in the lead, we dashed off the top of the butte and slid down a chute between the stone columns along its face. When we reached the bottom, we’d have to scramble for a hiding place as far from the butte as we could get.

A Blackhawk appeared, cruising below us, prowling low and slow.

I braced my arms and legs against the sides of the chute. Jolie and Coyote piled on top of me.

The helicopter landed at the edge of the butte’s rocky skirt, a hundred meters from us, blocking our escape. Armed men hopped out and fanned from the machine.

These goons were as well equipped as Navy SEALs but I couldn’t say if they were military, or special police, or contractors. But whoever they were, I was sure they either worked directly for or answered to Cress Tech International.

The Blackhawk lifted into the air and flew off. The men shouted to each other and hustled along the slope, moving past in a loose formation that told me they didn’t realize we were here.

“Back up,” I whispered. We had passed a deep groove that we could retreat into. The drumming of the helicopter blades masked the sounds of rocks crumbling from the sandstone as we inched back up. The groove was about five feet deep and ten feet high, and we packed ourselves into it. Luckily, our side of the butte was in shadow that grew darker by the minute.

Another helicopter circled above.

“Shit,” Jolie whispered. “I left my stuff up there.”

“You Coyote?” I asked. “What about the beer can?”

“I crushed it and put it in my pocket. It’s worth money.”

A whole nickel. Perhaps.

For their troubles, the helicopter crews would find a tote bag, ladies flip-flops, and a plastic hurricane cup from Key West. Let Cress Tech try to make sense about how that stuff got up there.

The Blackhawks made pass after pass as twilight gathered. Laser beams from their chin turrets traced the ground. They landed repeatedly, dropped off ground teams, circled, landed at another spot, and picked them up to repeat the procedure along the ground surrounding the butte. For all the noise and excitement, the effect was very much Keystone Cops.

Since it looked like we might be stuck here for the night, we slowed our metabolisms to conserve energy. This would also cool our bodies to near ambient temperatures and reduce the likelihood that we’d be discovered by thermal viewers. We kept our sunglasses on to hide our reflective eyes at the expense of losing our night vision and the ability to see auras.

Another two helicopters arrived and doubled the chaos. One of the men in SWAT gear wandered along the bottom of the butte in front of us. He had slung his carbine under one arm and walked like he’d lost much of his enthusiasm. He halted before us and shined a flashlight along the stone columns. I tensed. We were maybe fifty feet above him, but should he spot us, I’d dive on him, hopefully before he could cry for help.

He swept the beam left and right, up and down. He turned it off, unzipped his pants, and took a whiz that was a bit too aromatic. He gave himself a shake, zipped up and strode away.

The helicopters kept orbiting. A half dozen Humvees arrived. They scurried over the ground, rocks popped from under their tires, dirt plumed the air, headlamps and searchlights swept in flaming arcs through the fog of dust.

Cress Tech was here because we had tripped an alarm. But their haphazard response told me they had been caught unaware. Maybe they were hoping for a minor psychotronic blip and we must’ve spooked them by gonging the alarm big time. I didn’t know what they expected to find—not us, for sure—and with typical macho thinking, they had dispatched lots of guns to greet the supernatural. Foolish humans.

The hours passed with glacial slowness, and we remained as motionless as the rock. Jerusalem crickets and beetles inched up our sleeves and pants, over our faces, and into our ears and nostrils. No need to flinch or scratch. We vampires spend a lot of time in crypts and are used to creepy-crawlies.

Finally, when the night was inky black and cool, the helicopters landed, the men climbed in and flew away. The Humvees drove off in a long dust cloud, a carnival parade of flashing lights and sweeping headlamps.

We waited and listened for stay-behinds. I piqued my ears for the
scritch
of Velcro, the creak of a boot on the ground, the metallic click from a gun. No sound except for the flapping of owl wings. I willed life back into my limbs, and we untangled ourselves. I beat the bugs from my clothes. Jolie snorted a centipede out her nose. Coyote munched on something.

We removed our sunglasses and panned the area for suspicious auras. Nothing but desert critters trying to make their living.

My watch read 4:40 a.m.

“What now?” Jolie asked. Our side of the butte faced east, and if we lingered here, the morning light would fry us like chorizo.

“Home.” Coyote slithered over me, slid down the chute and let himself fall. He hit the ground running.

Jolie and I dropped after him. We sprinted over the rough slope and headed west. Using the cover of gloom, we weren’t worried about getting noticed as we ran fast as antelopes. If someone did spot us, then we’d be another one of those strange desert phenomena that New Mexico is famous for.

Coyote chose a path over the lowest ground between the two closest towers. Our auras glowed like paper lanterns. But if the psychotronic diviners did spot us, we’d be long gone before Deputy Dawg arrived.

Coyote scrambled over the edge of Chaco Wash, followed by Jolie, then me at her heels. He jumped from outcropping to rock and landed on the sandy bottom. Jolie and I followed him across the wash to a wall of eroded sandstone and layers of loose dirt, and we climbed up and onto the floor of the canyon.

A faint purple band outlined the mesa to the east. I announced, “Sunrise in a few minutes.”

We were making good time, but not good enough. The deadly rays of the morning sun would burn through our sunscreen and cook us. We needed shelter to survive the dawn.

Coyote quickened our pace. We ran across the desert like our hair was on fire because in a few minutes, it might be. Along with the rest of our bodies.

A glance over my shoulder revealed that the horizon behind us had warmed from purple to a burner-plate red. A bronze light settled across the tops of the hills and mesa to our front and over the summit of Fajada Butte behind us. We had maybe thirty minutes before the dawn sun charred us into undead cinders. My kundalini noir tingled in panic.

“What exactly is your plan?” Jolie asked, her aura bristling with spikes of worry. “Where’s the road we used yesterday?”

“Too far.” Coyote pointed to a draw up the side of the mesa. “That will take us home.”

The light had warmed to yellow and crept down the terrain surrounding us.

“Don’t think we’re going to make it,” I said.

Coyote’s aura flashed waves of concern, and he veered suddenly to the right. “There’s an old car that way,” he noted. “Should give us enough shade to survive.”

“Should?” Jolie asked. “I don’t like the sound of that.”

“At most,” Coyote replied, “you’ll get a sunburn.” Then he mumbled, “Maybe.”

We ran past where the draw spilled from the mesa. A rusted ’46 De Soto appeared in the creosote and sage about a hundred meters to our front. The derelict hulk looked like it had been plowed into the dirt, the front end and wheels completely buried, its rounded trunk bulging from the ground.

I said, “Doesn’t look like much protection.”

“Have faith,
ese.
”

I spied something to my left inside the draw—my sixth sense pinged a warning—and I slowed to determine what it was. Two round objects were planted on thick wooden shafts midway up the slope, maybe fifty meters away and directly in the path Coyote had been headed for. The morning light seeped down the slope toward the objects, but at the moment they remained in shadow.

“C’mon.” Jolie ran back to grab my arm. “We’re wasting time.”

My sixth sense now rang at full red alert, but I couldn’t believe—I didn’t want to believe—what my eyes were telling me. My feet halted in mid-stride, my shoulders locked tight, and my hands clutched into trembling hooks.

I recognized the two objects as human heads. Female human heads. Rather, female vampire heads impaled on stakes. One head was caramel brown and topped with dense frizzy hair. The other was pale with angular features and a limp mop of platinum blond tresses. Their mouths gaped open and goo dripped from the severed necks.

The brown head belonged to Phyllis, my minder from the Araneum. The other belonged to her boss, Natacha De Brancovan.

Phaedra had left her calling card.

***

Chapter Eleven

I stared at the two decapitated heads. Their dead eyes bulged from sockets ringed with sagging skin, their jaws drooping open, fangs protruding.

The world as I knew it turned inside out. Questions crackled through my mind. When had Phaedra done this? Had she brought only the heads or had she dragged Phyllis and Natacha from Denver still alive, and then butchered them close by? If so, how?
How?
How could two badass vampires like Phyllis and Natacha let themselves get murdered?

A small voice whispered through me.
You like my little gift, Felix? I picked these for you.

Phaedra was watching, leering. But all I could do was put my hands to my ears and shout, “Get out of my head, damn you.”

They didn’t see it coming, poor things. But you will.

Jolie tugged my arm and brought me back to the moment. She was hollering, “Let’s go.”

The morning shadow around me turned gray. Light seeped down the mesa, into the draw above me, toward the heads and became a brilliant yellow, the color of molten rock.

Jolie pulled harder on my arm and yelled that we had to get going.

The air grew hotter like I’d stuck my head inside a furnace. Never had I been this exposed to the dawn. As the ground brightened around me, a humming noise began in my ears like I could hear the light growing stronger.

Jolie yelled again, but the humming drowned her words.

The sunlight edged closer to the heads, and my skin tightened, my nerves shriveled. The humming intensified into a shriek.

The instant the light touched the tops of the two decapitated heads, the hair sizzled and smoked. The ray of sunlight traced down their faces, burning whatever it touched. The eyes smoldered, popped, and flames burst from the sockets. Fire jetted out their nostrils, out their mouths. The flaming skin sloughed away, leaving their skulls intact for a moment, before they fractured to pieces and fell in clumps of dust around the stakes. Black smoke twisted up the draw.

Jolie yanked my arm, and I turned to face her. She was yelling, and her mouth formed the words:
Move! MOVE!

The shriek was now a deafening howl that made my kundalini noir shake. Heated air parched my mouth. Stung my tongue. My nostrils. My eyes.

Jolie kicked the back of my legs. I fell backwards. She grabbed my collar and hauled me beside her. My legs swung around, twisting my body away from the slope.

Coyote was ahead of us, bent over by the rear bumper of the De Soto, struggling to open its trunk. I staggered alongside Jolie, both of us bent over in an awkward duck walk to remain in the sliver of shadow still hugging the canyon’s basin. The instant direct sunlight touched us, we’d start to fry. Annihilation was seconds away.

The De Soto was a blur in front of me. The light was blinding, the air thick as hot molasses. Coyote heaved on the trunk lid and the trunk yawned open. He grabbed Jolie’s arm. She grabbed mine, and we tumbled in a daisy chain into the De Soto. My sunglasses were knocked away. Coyote climbed on top of me and slammed the trunk closed. A merciful darkness swallowed us.

We wormed deeper into the De Soto. The back wall of the trunk had been removed, and the sedan’s interior gutted to form a cocoon-like chamber littered with ratty blankets, clothes, and heaps of fabric. Cardboard and plywood had been fitted into the windows with rags crammed around them to seal out the light and seal in a musky odor.

Coyote pulled a tattered velvet curtain from where it had been discarded on the floor. The curtain rained dirt and ants across us as he spread it over our bodies. We huddled together and waited.

The dawn screamed like a hungry monster. If one ray of light leaked in, our sanctuary would turn into an oven. I clenched my eyes and kept my face down. The howling grew into a hurricane of noise, the beast seeking to devour us. We pressed into each other, squeezing into a frightened ball.

The shriek ebbed into the ringing noise, the ringing into a hum, and the hum faded to silence.

We stayed locked together for several moments until our kundalini noirs stopped quivering. We separated and poked our heads from under the curtain. Coyote and Jolie had removed their sunglasses. He rubbed his eyes.

I fished a tube of sunscreen from my jacket pocket and smeared the soothing lotion on my skin. I passed the tube to Coyote who gooped the sunscreen on and then tossed it to Jolie. She slathered her face, neck, both hands, and tossed the empty tube aside.

I asked Coyote, “How did you know about this place?”

“Me and a girl used to sneak down here for, you know, some hootchie-cootchie,” he answered.

“Rainelle?” Jolie asked.

“No. Some
ruca
who worked at Los Alamos. On the bomb. You know.” Coyote made the sound of an explosion.

“You dated a nuclear scientist?” Jolie pressed.

“Don’t act surprised,” Coyote replied in an insulted tone. “Brainy chicas dig me.” His voice deepened. “According to the Pythagorean theorem, the square of the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the squares of the other two sides.” His voice returned to normal. “Not sure what that means,
ese
, I was never good at geomagraphy. Besides, she is long gone.
Muchos años.
”

We remained quiet, bunched together like dogs in a cage.

Jolie broke the silence, “Coyote, you can teleport on your own, right?”

“If you call it that,
Símon.
”

“Then why didn’t you teleport us out of danger?”

“Unless there’s a portal, each must access the psychic world on their own. I could’ve teleported myself but I didn’t want to leave you behind.”

“Fair enough,” Jolie said. She scooted under the trunk lid, lay on her back, and cocked a leg. “Everyone ready?”

“Go for it,” I replied.

She kicked the trunk open. Sunlight dazzled us. My kundalini noir hitched from so much sudden brightness.

Jolie crawled out, stood, and dusted herself. Coyote emerged next, then it was my turn. A momentary panic whisked over me, a worry that we might have misjudged stepping into the sunlight too soon. But the air was morning cool and fresh. We were safe.

I climbed out of the trunk. “What about Phaedra?”

“She’s steps ahead of us,” Jolie replied. “She knew we were here and she knew what route we’d take back from Fajada Butte. How?”

We both looked at Coyote.

He said, “There is much that she knows, and much that she doesn’t.” Spikes of anxiety pistoned in and out from his aura’s penumbra.

“What’s that mean?” I asked.

Coyote’s aura formed a doughnut-shaped halo around his head. Two red beams shot from his eyes through the hole. “Phaedra is using the psychic plane to spy on us. She knows we’re going to use the Sun Dagger against her, but she doesn’t know how.”

“Neither do we.” I pointed at Jolie.

“In time,
vatos.
” Coyote’s eye beams disappeared and the halo melted into his aura.

“And just as worrisome,” Jolie offered, “what about your mom and Rainelle?”

His aura started pistoning the spikes again. Jolie and I swiveled our heads as we swept our sixth sense like radar beams across the landscape. Nothing suspicious pinged back.

Coyote slammed the trunk closed and flung handfuls of dirt over the car in a half-hearted attempt to make it look as if we hadn’t disturbed the location.

We started up the draw and paused where the vampire heads had been. Nothing much remained, just ash piled around the bases of the stakes.

“Did you know them?” she asked Coyote.

“Only Natacha,” he answered. “We weren’t friends.”

That was no surprise. She was a real ball buster from the Araneum, an icy blonde so cold she could probably chill beer in her cooter, and I couldn’t see her chumming up with Coyote.

“She’s the one who ran me out of the Araneum.” He kicked her ashes into the surrounding dirt and continued up the draw.

Jolie yanked the stakes from the ground and threw them into the desert, where they clattered on rocks and bounced out of sight.

“Why the mind fuck?” she asked. “Why stake Phyllis and Natacha and show her cards? If Phaedra intends to knock us off, why not wait and catch us by surprise?”

“She’s toying with us,” I answered. “And as far as mind fucks go, I give this one an
A
plus.”

“Or maybe Phaedra is waiting,” Coyote said. “Maybe she knows about Carmen. Maybe Phaedra needs to make sure she can kill us all at one time.”

“That’s reassuring,” Jolie replied.

“Phaedra has weaknesses.” Coyote started walking up the draw.

Jolie and I fell in behind him. “Like what?” I asked.

“Like her fear of you. And Carmen. That fear will make Phaedra overplay her hand.”

“How do you know that?”

Coyote stopped and turned to face me, his wrinkled eyes smoldering with feral determination. “
Vato
, have faith. Otherwise lie in the dirt like a turd and wait to be stepped on. Jolie and I will continue. Right,
chica
?”

She nodded.

“
Entonces, sigueme.
” He resumed climbing up the draw.

I felt like Coyote had placed a dunce cap on my head. Jolie and I trailed after him, the three of us hopping from rock to rock until we reached the rim of the mesa. Wisps of smoke twisted from Coyote’s home and the neighboring buildings a quarter mile away. Everything peaceful. Everything quiet. Tranquil. A jarring juxtaposition in the wake of our recent brush with the discovery of Phaedra’s gruesome souvenirs and our near escape from the murderous dawn.

We trotted across the mesa—Jolie and I panning the seemingly infinite vista—anxious, concerned that a trap or bad news waited. Maybe Phaedra had also attacked Coyote’s mom and Rainelle.

As we got closer to the houses, the dog began to bark. A metal rake skritched the ground. Rainelle’s Ford pickup came into view where it was parked on the north side of the doublewide.

Jolie slowed and dropped behind to provide cover—just in case.

Goats bleated. Chickens clucked. The dog barked. A cat meowed from behind the fence. The scene was so homey we should’ve burst out singing “Old McDonald Had a Farm.”

Coyote’s posture wilted as if the night’s misadventures had at last caught up with him. Lines of fatigue strained Jolie’s face, and I was sure I looked just as worn out.

The skritching stopped and Rainelle appeared from behind her home, a rake propped on her shoulder. “Welcome back.” She stopped at the fence, stared, and studied our weary faces. “You okay?”

“Why shouldn’t I be?” Coyote answered.

That’s the dilemma of bringing humans into the circle of the supernatural. How much do you tell them?

She asked, “
Cafe con sangre?
” the question making it obvious that she was used to his evasive replies.

Coyote rewarded her offer with a smile and added, “Have you seen La Llorona?”

“
Your
mother?” Rainelle quirked an eyebrow. “She has a name, you know.”

Coyote scoped the area around the house. “But have you seen her?”

“She was around last night.”

“Was El Cucuy with her?”

“Don’t think so. Why?”

“
Todo está bien?
”

She quirked her eyebrow again. “What are you getting at?”

“
Nada.
Let’s go inside. We’re hungry.”

“Well you can stay hungry,” Rainelle replied, “until you tell me what’s going on.”

Coyote hunched his shoulders and let them drop as he sighed. I could practically hear his thoughts:
viejas
,
como chingan
.

“There is trouble?” she asked.

He nodded. “I don’t want to worry you,
querida.
”

“Anyone comes here for trouble,” she brandished the rake like it was a club, “I’ll break their heads.” She relaxed her stance. “Just tell me what to expect.”

She turned to enter the doublewide from the back door. Coyote led Jolie and me through the kitchen entrance. We stowed our sunglasses and our auras were finally calming into a steady orange glow.

Within a few minutes, Rainelle was working an espresso machine that sputtered and spewed steamed blood into our coffee. Breakfast around the living room coffee table: omelets and fry bread, smothered in pig’s blood. Afterwards, Jolie and I cleared the table and washed dishes. Rainelle stepped out back and resumed raking the backyard.

Jolie had stripped off her jacket and her pistols hung in their shoulder holsters within easy reach. I took her cue and tucked my Colt into the front of my jeans before I shrugged out of my jacket.

Coyote brought a small cardboard box from the room with all the junk. He set the box on the coffee table and opened it. Nested inside crumpled newspaper was a psychotronic diviner not much bigger than a pack of cigarettes. He set the diviner on the table.

The body of this diviner appeared to be constructed of stainless steel plates welded together. A four-sided pyramid the size of a large olive sat on top. The pyramid was made of sheets of clear quartz, and inside the pyramid stood a pink quartz crystal no bigger than a pinto bean. Coyote flicked a brass switch at one corner of the box. Nothing happened.

He closed his eyes and raised a hand toward the diviner. The pink crystal emitted a faint glow, and the diviner beeped.

“It’s working,” I told him.

He relaxed his hand and opened his eyes. The glow faded. “This diviner is not very sensitive. But if Phaedra is nearby and she uses her powers, we’ll get a warning.”

Coyote returned to the kitchen and poured himself a glass of Jameson. He sipped the whisky and studied the diviner.

Jolie took a shower, then it was my turn. As I washed off the grime and scraped away the layers of makeup and sunscreen, my muscles turned to rubber and I looked forward to a nap. Rainelle provided clean clothes she scrounged from the extra room.

Jolie and I slept in the living room, she on the sofa, me on the floor. Late in the afternoon, Coyote woke us. He had set a shoebox filled with papers next to the diviner on the table.

Jolie stretched and got up. She walked into the kitchen and returned to hand out straws and 500 milliliter bags of chilled blood. I fanged a hole in a Type B Positive and inserted my straw. I parked myself next to her on the sofa.