The Undead Kama Sutra (2 page)

I
had a dead alien
on my hands and twenty thousand in hundred-dollar bills. I could ditch Odin and take the money, but his final words had hooked me.

“Save the Earth women.”

Given Odin’s extraterrestrial origins, the ray gun, and the mysterious gruesomeness of his death, I knew he wasn’t asking that I save the Earth women from bad hair days. Someone had killed Odin to get him out of the way.

I’d come from my home in Denver, Colorado, to southern Florida. I was on vacation and after a different mystery. Over the last few months I had collected random pages from a manuscript called
The Undead Kama Sutra
.

My sole vampire client had mentioned the manuscript in passing. He said the myth was that this
Kama Sutra
could
adjust a vampire’s psychic energy and turbocharge our supernatural recuperative powers. I hear a lot of crazy things in my business, and blew it off. Later the vampire brought fourteen grainy photocopied pages of the manuscript. He told me they’d been copied from a private collection in London. Or Frankfurt. He wasn’t sure.

This
Kama Sutra
showed vampires in various poses, acrobatic couplings with other vampires or humans. The captions were handwritten in English, with additional notes scribbled in Greek and Sanskrit.

I found other references to this particular
Kama Sutra
on the Internet, either posted on blogs or in academic treatises. What piqued my interest, besides the interesting erotic and graphic drawings, were the allusions that sex in these poses was psychically therapeutic. But the captions were incomplete, and from what I deduced, the trick was performing sex using the proper technique in the right sequence and for the correct duration. Each cycle of poses referenced a chakra and the ailment it was meant to cure.

We vampires know how disturbances in our psychic energy field can alter our health and humor. The disturbance that most got to us was keeping a daylight schedule, and the usual remedy for the “sunlight blahs” was an extended nap in a coffin.

An entry in one blog mentioned the name of someone researching this
Kama Sutra
: Carmen Arellano. I knew a Carmen Arellano; she was the head of the Denver
nidus,
Latin for “nest.” Figures: if anyone was studying an erotic manuscript, it would be her.

The blog went on to say that this Carmen was in Florida, and the last I heard from the Carmen I knew was that she was also in Florida.

I had called her and voice mail picked up. Carmen’s message said she was in Key West working on her “tan.” I’d bet a cooler full of arterial type-A negative that these two Carmens were the same vampire. I left word to expect me and began my road trip to Florida in my Cadillac.

Was it possible that sex was psychic therapy? I couldn’t dismiss the idea as ancient bunk.

An impossible story? Hell, I’m a vampire and am sitting shivah with a visitor from another planet. Tell me again what’s impossible. If this preternatural
Kama Sutra
was authentic, it was worth exploring to make it easier for us vampires to exist in a more crowded and suspicious human world.

Now I had two mysteries to solve. This one and Odin’s.

I gathered Odin and all of his loose parts into the center of the bedcovers. I bundled him and folded the edges of the blanket to keep his blood from leaving a trail.

His funk stuck to my clothes and I doubted I could get them smelling fresh again. What would his stink do to the trunk of my Cadillac? I extended a talon and cut the thick plastic cover off the mattress. Standard issue for a business that rented rooms in fifteen-minute increments. I wrapped him in the clear plastic. Later I’d cinch the cover tight with duct tape. That should do it for now, since I wasn’t going to keep him in the trunk of my car longer than tonight.

The two Benjamins I left on the dresser should pay for the room and the bedcovers. I put on my sunglasses to hide my
eyes, though wearing sunglasses or contacts prevented me from using vampire vision.

Odin’s corpse had deteriorated enough that I could carry him under one arm. I palmed the blaster with my other hand and shoved the gun into the front of my trousers. This weapon might come in handy, especially since I’d left all my firepower back in my desk in Denver.

Outside, the second shift of hookers prowled the curb alongside North Tamiami Trail, the main drag in this part of Sarasota. They strutted on stiletto heels around discarded hip flasks and bottles of malt liquor.

I carried Odin down the stairs. The plastic wrap slipped loose and something dribbled from the bundle. Four of his toes bounced like grapes against the steps. I swept them with my foot into a patch of weeds under the balcony. Good thing it wasn’t something from between his legs. After folding his corpse into the trunk of my Cadillac, I secured the plastic bundle with a roll of duct tape I had stashed next to the spare tire.

None of the hookers showed any interest. Considering this neighborhood, a whale could fall out of the sky and flatten the motel, but no one would admit to seeing a thing.

I drove off and stopped a few blocks away to examine the envelope with the money. What did the numbers on the front mean?

A phone? Radio frequency? Internet address?

Odin had said, “Take me here.”

So these numbers must be a place. Were they map coordinates?

I got a road map, checked the margins, and read the tic marks for latitude and longitude. If these were coordinates, the spot was three miles west of Bradenton Beach in the Gulf of Mexico.

The map didn’t show any islands out there, only water. Would I be taking Odin to meet a boat? I’d check it out. If no one showed up, I could dump him into the water.

I flipped the envelope over, took out the money, and looked inside. No other instructions. So when was Odin to be delivered?

My call then. Tonight.
Before
he stinks up my car.

I stopped in a local sporting goods store, bought their cheapest GPS unit, and headed toward the beach. The clouds settled low and reflected the amber haze of the street lamps. A drizzle misted my windshield. Drops splashed against my car and became heavier by the minute. By the time I crossed from Cortes to Bradenton Beach, the downpour had chased everyone indoors. I parked close to the marina on the eastern side of the island, facing Sarasota Bay.

I carried Odin to the beach and left him along the water’s edge. From the deserted marina, I borrowed a Wave Runner, and returned to fetch the body.

I draped the bundle over the rear of the seat, secured his body with bungee cords, and fastened the GPS to the handlebars with duct tape. To use my night vision, I removed my sunglasses. Heading south around the island, under the
bridge, then west through the wet gloom into the Gulf of Mexico, I followed the direction indicators to the coordinates I had programmed into the GPS.

The rain felt hard as ball bearings and stung my skin. My hair lay plastered against my forehead. My soggy clothes flapped from my limbs. The chill was uncomfortable and made me look forward to a hot cup of coffee and A-negative. Behind me, the glow of civilization faded on the eastern horizon. The distance marker on the GPS counted the meters to the coordinates.

One thousand. One hundred. Fifty. Twenty-five.

I rolled the throttle to idle.

The Wave Runner drifted forward.

Ten meters. Five meters. At zero, the arrow turned into an X.

The Wave Runner stopped and bobbed on the waves. I gave Odin’s corpse a mule kick. “Get up. We’re here.”

Waves slapped the fiberglass hull. Rain puddled in the crevasses of Odin’s plastic shroud.

The surface of the water shimmered with the beat of the raindrops. The shimmer took on a metallic sheen and I realized this was from hundreds of little fish leaping from the water. The sheen became pink from the tiny red fish auras.

I looked over the side of the Wave Runner into the murky water. What made them behave like this?

The Wave Runner’s engine stalled. Suddenly an electric charge pulsed through the seat, up my spine, and into my arms and head. My limbs buzzed like the tines of a tuning
fork. Glowing blue rings from St. Elmo’s fire curled around my wrists and ankles. The hair lifted from my scalp. My
kundalini noir
—that black serpent of energy residing in every vampire instead of a heart—coiled in panic. Get out of here.

My hands and feet stayed put. All around, the little fish floated lifelessly in the water.

The Wave Runner rocked backward. Something huge rose from the water in front of me.

A
smooth, pewter-gray hump the
width of a tennis court rose from the sea. My Wave Runner slipped backward on the water cascading from an enormous rim surrounding the hump.

The object lifted clear of the sea, then hovered noiselessly about fifty feet before me. It had a spherical body bisected by a wide disk.

A flying saucer. A UFO. One straight from the late-night drive-in movies. Those guys with the cheesy special effects had it right all along.

Odin had asked for my help in finding his assassin. Why didn’t he ask these aliens? Unless this UFO was robotic…or was this more of the scheming among the aliens? Odin had told me that extraterrestrials had to keep their visits secret
because Earth was under quarantine, which was why he’d hired me before.

Odin also asked that I save the Earth women. But from what, exactly?

The grip of the blaster poked against my belly but I remained paralyzed. Not that the gun would do me much good. The crew of this ship certainly had more dangerous weapons, and if they wanted me dead, they could’ve disintegrated me already.

A hatch about a meter square opened in the belly of the sphere and a faint beam of light fixed upon my craft. Rain sparkled in the light, like confetti. The bundle holding Odin’s remains started to vibrate. The Wave Runner swung around as if its back end had been snagged by an invisible hook.

The bundle strained against the bungee cords. The Wave Runner surged toward the hatch.

The bungee cords tore loose. Odin’s bundle sproinged from the seat and levitated for a moment before floating toward the hatch. The bundle rotated and went headfirst into the UFO. The hatch closed.

The electric charge disappeared. My limbs relaxed. The fish in the water came to life again and fluttered away.

The UFO remained still for a moment. The rain eased and stars appeared in the black patches behind a gray mist above. The UFO rose silently and headed into the sky.

Sayonara, Gilbert Odin.

When the UFO was a speck in the mist, I reached to my waist and pulled out the blaster. Whoever shot Odin had used
an alien weapon, maybe this one. I examined the knobs and the strange markings.

The rain stopped abruptly.

I looked up. The UFO loomed directly over me.

Startled, I shrank against the seat. Why had they returned? To abduct and probe me? My sphincter tightened.

I readied to dive into the water. The electric pulse returned and my limbs were paralyzed as before.

The hatch opened again and the beam of light focused on me. The blaster trembled in my hand.

A voice spoke from the light, a feminine voice, calm yet stern—like a warning from a librarian. “Let go of the weapon.”

I released my grip. The blaster floated upward through the hatch.

“Thank you.” The beam vanished. My muscles relaxed. The hatch closed and the UFO rose to zoom upward through the sky. Rain pelted me again.

I’d been hoping the ray gun would even the odds when I found Odin’s killer. Not anymore.

I grasped the handles of the Wave Runner and wondered if it would start again. Thankfully, the engine coughed to life and burbled the water. I swung the Wave Runner east and cranked the throttle full-open.

A half-mile from shore, a couple of fighter jets screeched in my direction. They roared above, two F-16s armed with air-to-air missiles. As they zoomed past, strobe lights blinking, the auras of the pilots looked like crimson smears against the darkness.

The jets pitched upward on the trajectory of the UFO. If the fighters were after the saucer, good luck. Odin’s intergalactic hearse was probably on the other side of the moon by now.

The jets disappeared into the clouds and it was just me and my questions. Didn’t the Air Force debunk UFOs? How would they explain this? Lie, of course.

I returned the Wave Runner to its slip. So far I had the name Goodman, a murder using an alien blaster, UFOs, and a warning to save the Earth women. As far as leads, I had next to bupkus.

The cawing of a crow echoed through the misty darkness.

A crow? What was a crow doing out in such a cold, wet night?

To find me.

The crow meant the Araneum—which translated into “spiderweb” in Latin and was the formal name for the worldwide network of vampires formed to protect us from extermination by humans—wanted me for a job. The Araneum used crows as messengers, and why else would that bird be here?

I felt my shoulders sag. I didn’t need more work; I was on vacation.

A small red aura gave away the crow’s position, where it sat tucked along the bottom of a shack, trying its best to stay out of the rain. The crow cawed again, an irritated squawk of discomfort.

“Shut up, you feathered bastard. I didn’t ask for you to
come around.” The crow never brought good news, like I was needed in Cancún to rub sunscreen on horny coeds.

I approached, my wet shoes crunching the sand and broken shells covering the beach. I wondered what the Araneum wanted at this hour. The crow kept its small black head drawn into its shoulders to conserve warmth. This bird didn’t seem pleased to be out here, either. To the Araneum, it didn’t make a difference if you were a vampire or a crow. Duty called.

The crow turned its shivering head toward me and blinked. It struggled to stand, as if its joints had rusted, and then walked toward me in a stiff-legged limp. A shiny metal capsule was clipped to its left leg.

I picked up the crow. Its wet feathers crinkled. The small, warm body trembled. I tucked the crow’s torso under my armpit. The bird squirmed and I clamped my arm to keep it still. I unclipped the capsule, a tube made of filigreed platinum and gold, with a ruby-encrusted cap.

I hunched over to protect the capsule from the rain.

The Araneum used swatches of vampire skin as notepaper, a precaution to maintain secrecy, since the skin would burst into flame when exposed to sunlight. Rumor was the patch of skin came from a condemned vampire. But it was dark and raining. What about exposure to water?

I shook raindrops from the capsule and unscrewed the cap. The odor of rancid meat burst out like a fart. Yep, vampire hide. I extended a talon from my index finger and used the long, narrow tip to draw out the contents.

Surprisingly, there were two items inside: a folded square
of onionskin-like parchment—the vampire skin—and a piece of newsprint.

The parchment unfolded to the size of the palm of my hand. A message was written in ornate calligraphy, in brown ink—dried blood? It read:

What did the Araneum mean, “compromised”? Captured? Exposed as a supernatural? How could that happen? Any other vampire? What other vampire? And what about “these extraterrestrials”? The only ones I knew just left Earth. Why was the Araneum passing this information now,
after
I’d sent the alien Gilbert Odin on his way? If this was so damn important, why didn’t the Araneum alert me sooner?

Report when completed what? Thoroughness at what? Who was I supposed to blab the investigation to? Talk radio?
The Araneum knew more about this threat than I did. Why were they so stingy with information?

Rain trickled down my face and splashed onto the parchment, smearing the ink. No poof into flames.

I slipped the crow from under my armpit. It blinked and snorted indignantly.

I waved the parchment in front of its beak. “Okay, wise guy, if there’s no sunlight, what’s to keep this from getting into the wrong hands?”

Snapping faster than a mousetrap, the crow snatched the parchment from my fingers and the swatch of vampire skin disappeared down its throat. The crow swallowed, looked at me, then burped smoke.

I waved away the foul-smelling puff. “Next time give a warning.”

The crow chirped, sounding like “Ha, ha.”

I gave it a shake. “If you got anything coming out your butt, keep it to yourself.”

I unfolded the newsprint, an article about a charter airplane, a Cessna Caravan, that had crashed last week near San Diego, killing all seven aboard. What did that have to do with the aliens? Obviously the article was a clue, but for what? Okay, I am a detective but a little help was always appreciated.

Raindrops soaked the newsprint. I wadded it into a soggy ball, which I offered to the crow. “Might help with your heartburn.”

The crow squirmed, indicating that it wanted to be let go.

I pushed the wad of newsprint into the capsule, screwed the cap back on, and clipped it to the crow’s leg.

I set the crow on the sand. It shivered and remained still for a moment before starting to limp away. I expected the crow to leap upward but it didn’t, instead continuing on its trek through the rain.

A pair of headlights crossed over the bridge from the mainland. When I looked back at the beach, the crow was gone.

I returned to my Cadillac. I had my orders.