Rescue From Planet Pleasure (29 page)

“
Vato
,” Coyote said, “I owe Rainelle a romantic getaway to show my gratitude. Someplace fancy. Maybe the Travelodge in Farmington. But I’m a little short. Could you spring me some
ficha
?”

I pulled my pockets inside out. “I’m broker than you are. The last of my cash was burned up in your doublewide.”

“So’kay. You can mail a check when you get home. Or better yet, use PayPal.”

***

Chapter Fifty-two

I was back where this adventure had begun, in my office on the second floor of the Oriental Theater. Jolie remained in New Mexico with Yellowhair-Chavez, no doubt working overtime at keeping his wigwam warm.

Carmen lay beside me, hip to hip, shoulder to shoulder, hands clasped, both of us still clinging to the ebbing orgasm. The ceiling fan swirled above and its wash cooled our sweaty bodies and the moist funk between our legs. The office lights were off, but the neon glare from the marquee stuttered through the windows and bathed us with a wandering, fiery glow.

During sex Carmen and I clutched one another like ship-wrecked survivors on a raft. Release wasn’t so much a surrender to pleasure as a respite from the anguish shrouding our minds.

Guilt wormed through me. How much of the recent disaster had been my fault, and how much of it was inevitable? Against my better judgment I had turned Phaedra and created the monster that tore the Araneum apart and almost killed us. Before that, I had let Carmen get kidnapped by the aliens. In a curious and tragic way, the two events had coiled together, the universe undoing one mistake with another … at a price.

Phaedra’s insurrection caused Coyote to look for help in the psychic realm. That was where he pinpointed Carmen on the far side of the galaxy. Her extraordinary empathetic powers made her a valuable treasure to the aliens. Those same powers made her a threat to Phaedra.

I would get through this. Time heals all wounds, just as it wounds all heels. Carmen had to cope with the memory of years spent as a pet to her alien masters, never knowing if return to Earth was possible. Plus she bore the injuries inflicted by Phaedra’s psychic blasts. As did Coyote.

The minus column to this disaster included the untold number of vampires murdered. A lot of humans had also been killed, but they were only an asterisk to the carnage. Plus I couldn’t forget the disastrous end to the Nancharm. And Che, Coyote’s fearless dog. So much bloodshed only to circle back to where we had started—with the Araneum again firmly in charge.

Carmen was resilient, perhaps the strongest vampire of them all, and yet when she rested her head on my naked chest, I could feel the dissonant vibration of her damaged kundalini noir.

We didn’t talk about how we felt. Why bother? We had to process the trauma on our own and shovel it into a corner like so much manure, to use either as compost for lessons learned or remain as shit to stink up our minds.

On some nights, Carmen and I climbed on the theater roof to study the sky and sift through our recollections of D-Galtha, which was fading into dream-like memories. We stared at the stars and tracked the occasional moving lights, certain they were satellites or airplanes but secretly wishing Blossom would drop by for a visit. A very short visit, only long enough to keep us posted. Had the Wah-zhim succeeded in overthrowing the Nancharm or did the civil war within the Galactic Union continue? My kundalini noir flinched in remorse for my part in killing Moots.

The cheerful jangle of noise from a First Friday Art Walk carried through an open window. As did the aroma of carnitas and beef, onions, and cilantro. Carmen raised her head. She let go of my hand and rose to her feet in one fluid lift.

She grabbed a wine glass and filled it from an open bottle of pinot noir on my desk. Glass in hand, she sashayed to the window, anchored her elbows on the sill and looked out. She was haloed by the flickering light from the phallus-shaped marquee. I wiped myself with a hand towel, then rose from the rug to join her.

We looked down on the sidewalk. About twenty people milled between the entrance of the theater and a taco truck parked against the curb. Even if anyone bothered to look up, I doubted they would’ve noticed us in the darkened window.

Smoke rising from truck roof vents brought the delicious smells. I could use a snack. “Hungry?”

Carmen sipped from the glass. “Maybe later. I still feel a little stuffed from my all-meat diet.” She bumped her hip against mine.

From the window we overlooked this area of the west Highlands neighborhood. Clusters of people strolled along the sidewalk, making the circuit among the few remaining galleries. In the short years that I’d been here, gentrification had swept out a tamale shop, a comic-book store, various art studios and replaced them with a hipster barbershop, wine bars, craft breweries, upscale eateries, and one real estate office after another. On either side of the commercial strip, a rash of McMansions stood where century-old bungalows had been scraped away.

Thankfully, the blunt-tooths remained clueless to the recent supernatural war. Just as Mel had predicted, the feds were doing their best to hide the Cress Tech fiasco in a file classified
Top Secret-Never Mind
. The media carried the official version—that the many casualties and the loss of equipment had been caused by a live-fire exercise gone wrong. Better to blame incompetence than admit the truth about their aborted search for psychic energy and alien contact.

The psychotronic towers had been torn down and hauled away. The explanation for their existence was that they were temporary antennae erected for America’s perpetual GWOT—the Global War on Terror, a.k.a. the never-ending cash cow for the military-industrial complex.

A crow fluttered through the darkness. Carmen and I backed away to let it land on the windowsill. A message capsule glittered on its leg. The Araneum was back in business. Duty called.

I reached to remove the capsule. The crow snapped at my hand and squawked. It stared at Carmen and raised the leg with the capsule.

“Be my guest,” I said.

Carmen unclipped the capsule and unscrewed the ruby-encrusted cap. Out burst the stench of rotting meat, the telltale stink of the flayed vampire flesh the Araneum used as parchment. She extended a talon from her index finger and hooked a roll of parchment from the open capsule. Unfolding the roll to the size of a postcard, she turned her back to the neon light to better illuminate the message. The light made the translucent parchment glow. When I squinted to read the words the crow nipped my arm, warning me to back off.

As she read, Carmen chewed on her lower lip. She balled the parchment and offered it to the crow. If this was daytime, she could toss the parchment into sunlight and watch it disappear in a puff of smoke. But as it was night, the crow would have to eat it. The bird sighed and took the message from her fingers. He tossed his head back to gulp it down. The crow shut his eyes and bowed. His belly rumbled. He winced and coughed smoke, a gross stinky odor.

Carmen replaced the cap and clipped the capsule to the crow’s leg. It turned around and flew off.

“Well?” I looked at Carmen.

She downed the last of the wine and returned the glass to my desk. “The Araneum has appointed me to the Central Plenum.” She wandered about my office to collect her clothes from the floor and the furniture.

“Congratulations. It’s quite a promotion. If that’s what you want.” Soon Carmen would be gone. Again. I grasped the wine bottle but set it back down. Suddenly I wanted something stronger. Scotch. Rye. A neck teeming with Type O Negative.

“I know you’re no fan of authority, but the Araneum needs me.” She bunched her clothes. “I’m the only vampire with so much first-hand knowledge about the aliens.”

“Who’s holding you back?”

“You won’t miss me?”

“Silly question. Plus there are a couple of bennies for me in this. One, it wouldn’t hurt to have an ally among the hallowed ranks of our superiors. And two, with your elevated pay grade it’ll be easier for you to spot me a loan.”

“That’s worrisome.” Carmen laughed. “You sound a lot like Coyote.”

“You’re right, that is worrisome. When are you going to tell Jolie?”

“Soon. I’ll sweeten the news with a romantic getaway.”

I chuckled. “First you’ll have to pry her loose from her Navajo stud.”

“That’s your job.” Carmen dropped the ball of clothes on a chair.

“Whattaya mean?”

She walked to me. “You have a vested interest in pulling them apart because that romantic getaway includes you.” Carmen gave a smile that was better than Viagra.

Acknowledgments

I feel like Lazarus with this book, and that’s a very good thing as I’ve been gone a while. First on my thank-you list, Kevin J. Anderson, the honcho at WordFire Press, and Peter Wacks, his over-worked and relentlessly optimistic editor, plus the behind-the-scenes elves who keep the gears oiled and turning at WordFire. My critique group, who make literary beat-downs something we all look forward to: Jeanne Stein, Warren Hammond, Angie Hodapp, Aaron Michael Ritchey, Travis Heermann, Tamra Monahan, Lou Berger. And Terry Wright. A special nod to those great folks at Lighthouse Writers for allowing me into their tribe of awesomeness: Andrea Dupree, Michael Henry, Nick Arvin, Dan Manzanares, Kerry Booth, and the rest of those amazing word scribblers. Su Teatro for keeping me in the loop. Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers, my literary home. A special mention of Eric Matelski for nailing the cover art. Jen Mosquera and Eric Jaenike for never letting me forget my shortcomings as a human being. Mark Graham, Manuel Ramos, and Rudy G for their props and support. My sister Sylvia and her partner Janet for keeping the faith. My sons Alex and Emil for putting up with me. And lastly, to my fans, for stoking the fires and bombarding me with, Where the f*ck is Felix? I hope this story was worth the wait.

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About the Author

Mario Acevedo is the author of the Felix Gomez detective-vampire mystery thrillers. A former helicopter pilot, paratrooper, engineer, and art teacher, Mario lives and writes in Denver, Colorado. He takes his orders from Scout, a Shiba Inu.

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