"The Nymphos of Rocky Flats" - читать интересную книгу автора (Acevedo Mario)

CHAPTER 4

ROBERT CARCANO LIVED ON the left side of a redbrick duplex in north Denver. For vampires in the Denver nidus-Latin for nest-he was their patriarch. I’d never met him, though we had traded a few brief emails. He edited The Hollow Fang, an Internet magazine for vampire aficionados, and where better for vampires to hide than in the middle of the wanna-bes and pretenders?

An amber bulb in a glass lantern fixture illuminated the steps leading to his porch. The crisp, night air carried smoke drifting from the neighborhood chimneys. Mixed in with the smells of burning pine and cedar was an enticing whiff of blood. My mouth watered.

I rang the doorbell and waited. A shadow darkened the curtain drawn over the door’s window. The dead bolt snapped, and the door opened.

A man, shorter than myself, portly, round-faced, and hawk-nosed, with a sloping forehead retreating into a bald scalp, looked at me from around the door’s edge.

I smiled politely and introduced myself, though I knew I was in the presence of one of my own. “Mr. Carcano, I’m Felix Gomez.”

He opened the door fully and waved me inside. He wore a blue sweater, khaki pants, and tasseled moccasins. “Good to finally meet you, Felix. Call me Bob.”

The foyer was so small that Bob and I bumped into one another. Beside the front door stood a rack of shelves, stacked with mail and packages. Once inside, the aroma of blood became stronger.

He opened an interior door and led me into a sparsely furnished living room. The blood smell grew intense. Tall, black halogen torch lamps shone their illumination upward to the ceiling, spreading a warm glow throughout the room. Along the counter separating the living room from the kitchen sat four blood-transfusion machines. On each machine, a plastic bag filled with blood cycled back and forth on the rocker cradle.

“It’s dinner,” Bob explained. “In my day job I’m the quality-control supervisor for the Front Range Blood Bank.”

“Quite the scam,” I said, hiding my anxiety at the prospect of insulting my host when I refused a meal of human blood.

“It’s more than that,” he replied. “This way I get only safe blood. Can’t be too careful these days what with HIV and hepatitis C, among other things. One fellow in Frankfurt contracted Marburg. A ghastly disease, much like Ebola. Poor guy lost most of his lower intestines. Wearing a colostomy bag certainly takes the bloom out of being immortal.”

Bob pointed to the two black-leather and chrome-tubing chairs beside a glass-topped table. “Have a seat. Drink?”

“What? Bloody Marys made with real blood?”

Bob frowned. “What do you take me for? Count Chocula? Get real. My specialty is Manhattans.”

“Then bottoms up.”

He mixed Canadian Club, vermouth, bitters, and ice in a chrome cocktail shaker. As Bob shook the drinks, I popped out my contacts and put them in their plastic container, which I slipped into my trouser pocket. With my unfiltered vampire vision, Bob’s orange aura danced over his skin. Bright streaks spiraled over his arms and legs. Each creature’s aura was as different as a snowflake and remained as unique and expressive as a face.

He poured my drink into an old-fashioned tumbler with thick, beveled edges, very traditional and reassuring. Bob lifted his glass in a salute. “Cheers.”

The Manhattan was sweet, with a good kick to it. Could have used a dash of goat’s blood, though.

Bob sipped and smacked his lips. “The Araneum thinks highly of you. Felix Gomez, vampire detective.”

Araneum meant spiderweb in Latin, an appropriate name for the worldwide underground network of vampires.

“They did save me. Maybe someday I can repay them.”

After I had returned from Iraq, the army isolated me in a special ward of the Walter Reed Army Hospital. I was too weak and disorientated by my new vampire nature to escape. Then a colonel arrived, one of us, sent by the Araneum to keep the authorities from learning what I actually was. The colonel had me immediately discharged from the service as a disabled veteran and sent home. I never heard from the colonel again and learned only later that his mysterious manner was typical of how the Araneum worked.

“How much do you know about the Araneum?” I ventured.

Bob walked into the kitchen and started collecting dishes. “Only that we’ve been aiding each other to escape the mortals since, well, there were human necks to suck on. Then in the 1300s the Pope ordered the Knights Templar to seek and exterminate us. Our loose arrangement of vampires wasn’t enough. So the Araneum was formed and has been active ever since.” He ladled spaghetti from a stockpot into a large ceramic bowl. “I wanted to surprise you with mole but my recipe was no good.”

“And how does one join the Araneum?” I asked.

“They’ll let you know.”

“Are you in the Araneum?”

He smirked. “Wouldn’t be much of a secret organization if I told you, would it?”

“Okay,” I chuckled, “but can you discuss The Hollow Fang? Clever way to meet family.”

Bob spooned thick beef cutlets into the bowl. “As a printed newsletter it’s been around in one form or another since the 1880s. I took it over a few years ago and put it on the Internet.”

He came out of the kitchen holding a tray with a basket of bread, a large steaming bowl, and dining ware. After resting the tray on the glass table, he arranged the dishes, silverware, and napkins.

I heaped spaghetti and beef cutlets onto my plate. My fangs grew in anticipation of tasting dinner.

“While on the subject of the The Hollow Fang, the local fan club is hosting a ‘vampire party’ this weekend.” Bob handed me an invitation, which I glanced at and tucked into my coat pocket.

“Come by and get acquainted with the local nidus,” he continued. “They’re a fun group. And meet the humans. Mostly posers who get off pretending they’re undead. You’ll also meet a couple of snaggletoothed plasma guzzlers, real old-timers.”

Bob read the temperature display of the closest blood transfusion machine. “One hundred and one degrees. Perfect. I like my victims to be a little feverish.”

He turned off the machines, the rhythmic click-clack giving way to the soft buzz of the torch lamps behind us. Grasping the bags by the corners, he placed them in a basket, which he covered with a napkin to trap the heat. “These are all type O-positives. I hope that’s okay?”

Now to share my ugly secret. “I’d rather have something else.”

Bob stopped in mid-stride. “Oh?”

“I prefer animal blood.”

Bob set the basket on the table. “Why? This is premium human juice.”

I dislodged the words from my mouth. “I’ve never dined on human blood. It has to do with the circumstances of how I became a vampire.”

Bob frowned. “You’re not the first. Does this aversion to human blood have to do with your war service?”

“It does.”

“Why must it bother you? Do you think the real perpetrators of the war-Saddam Hussein, President Bush, the oil barons, the arms merchants-lose any sleep over what they’ve done?”

“They weren’t there. I was.”

“They use money and power to distance themselves from their crimes.”

“That doesn’t mitigate my guilt. I pulled the trigger.”

He lifted a bag from the basket and placed it in my hand for me to experience the squishy feel of 450 milliliters of warm, whole blood.

“This was donated in the spirit of altruism, to share the gift of life,” Bob said. “It wasn’t shed in terror or under duress. Enjoy.”

Into my mind flashed the image of blood draining from the bullet hole in the Iraqi girl’s belly and staining my hands. The bag of blood turned into the girl’s heart, and I dropped the bag into the basket in disgust.

Bob sighed. His disappointment skewered me.

Someday I’d find the Iraqi vampire who had forced me into this existence. I’d repay him by chaining his undead carcass to a cement mixer and rolling it into a volcano.

“I wouldn’t be a gracious host if I didn’t accommodate my guests. There’s horse blood in the refrigerator. Let me heat it in the microwave.”

I was a poor guest but I couldn’t ignore the guilt that festered inside of me like a tumor.

Bob returned from the kitchen with a plastic carafe. I opened the carafe and poured. Steaming red blood flowed over the spaghetti and cutlets. The aroma restored my good mood. I stabbed a cutlet with my fork and smeared it in the blood.

Bob grabbed a bag of human blood and tore the corner. His fangs protruded from under his upper lip. “Not as good as sinking my teeth into an unsuspecting human’s neck and drawing a fresh meal. But who gets that opportunity these days?”

He squeezed the bag over his pasta and cutlets. The red fluid spread across his plate like marinara sauce. “I brought these samples from a blood-donor clinic in Colorado Springs. Part of an evangelical Christian workshop for teens where the young women pledged to remain virgins until marriage.”

“So that’s the blood of innocent maidens?”

“As innocent as you’ll find these days.” Bob twirled the bloody spaghetti over his fork.

Bob was a good cook, and the meal soothed me. I finished the cutlets, emptied the carafe over my plate, and sponged the blood with bread.

“You have a good appetite,” he said. “Vampires shouldn’t live on blood alone. The pasty-faced look is the result of an incomplete diet. I spiced the meat with Saint-John’s-wort and royal bee jelly.” He squinted at me. “Your complexion looks almost human. You use a Dermablend foundation?”

“It’s a vampire’s best friend,” I replied. “That and Maybelline.”

“We could talk makeup tips all night like schoolgirls, but I’d prefer to learn why you’re in Denver.”

Down to business. “You know I’m a private investigator,” I said. “I’ve taken an assignment for the Department of Energy.”

Bob put his fork down. His aura brightened several watts. He removed his contacts. The camaraderie disappeared from his eyes, replaced by the angry glow of his tapetum lucidum. “What did they hire you for?”

So far I had spurned Bob’s main course of human blood and now threw acid on the insult by provoking a reaction as if he’d caught me stealing. If Bob were to have confidence in me, I had to make him understand, so I told him about the nymphomania at Rocky Flats.

He gulped his Manhattan. The Dermablend may have hid the change in Bob’s complexion, but the more I spoke the brighter his aura became. “I don’t like this. You’re in danger.”

“How so?”

“Things have changed for us, Felix. Once upon a time, we could live in a castle, guarded by pathetic minions, and swoop out at night to feed on the necks of the local wretches. Now humans have technology. Their computers and DNA testing can track us across continents. They don’t need wooden stakes, they have assault rifles. A trail of desiccated corpses was once a monument to our power. Today, just one body with puncture wounds in the neck is enough to send a taskforce of forensic pathologists and district prosecutors on our trail.”

“I don’t intend to bite anyone at Rocky Flats, so don’t worry, Bob.”

“How many humans have you fanged?”

“Fanged? You mean converted?”

Bob snapped his fingers impatiently. “Yes, yes.”

What business was this of his, anyway? I hesitated to answer. “None.”

“And how many necks have you sucked on?”

“I’ve bitten three people.”

“I thought you didn’t like human blood.”

“I had to subdue them. I didn’t feed.”

Bob stared pensively. “Your behavior is irrational and unhealthy. Preying on humans and drinking their blood is our nature.”

“And if I don’t? Am I going to get kicked out of the vampire’s union?”

Bob got up from his chair and prepared another Manhattan. “By refusing to drink human blood, you’re turning away from your vampire side, the source of your strength. If you don’t drink human blood, you’ll lose your powers. It’s what nourishes the kundalini noir.”

“Blood, any blood, is all we need.”

“As if I don’t know what I’m talking about,” he said. “Why did you come here tonight?”

“Dinner. To meet you. To learn.”

“Then listen and learn. I was fanged in 1694. I haven’t done it all, but I’ve seen enough to know that it takes some effort not to give in to hopeless cynicism about this cycle of betrayal and death between us and humans.”

Bob drank from his Manhattan. “It’s a restless existence, this life as a vampire. Even if you come to a cordial arrangement with your human neighbors, how long can you stay in one place before they become suspicious as to why you don’t age and wither as they do? This gift of immortality becomes a heavy iron yoke. You’ll see.”

This allusion to the tragic life of a vampire ruined my appetite, and I let the remaining blood congeal on my plate. “Perhaps, but I’ve got a lot to experience before I become a jaded old bloodsucker.”

“Like myself?”

I knew better than to answer.

“We fill a need for humans,” Bob said. “This terror of being preyed upon excites them, it breaks the ennui of their dreary lives. That’s the mysterious beauty of this symbiotic relationship that binds us. You know the erotic allure of submission. The offering of a bare neck is not much different than opening one’s legs. Both are sensual, powerful. I’m sure you’ve done women. And if you haven’t already, you’ll get rid of your lingering homophobic reservations and do men, as well.”

I looked around Bob’s spartan accommodations. “And where are your women, your men?”

“I’m staying celibate this decade. After a hundred years or so, fondling genitalia and plugging orifices for the sake of an orgasm loses its novelty.”

“So I’ve got a while before I get bored with sex?”

“Don’t get flip. Because then you’ll get complacent. Let me tell you why I fear the Department of Energy. Somebody doesn’t want their secrets to get out.”

“I’ve faced worse.”

“This isn’t some gang of trigger-happy dope smugglers. You’ll be dueling with one of the most secretive arms of the federal government.”

“You’re forgetting that I’m a vampire.”

“Don’t be too cocky about your powers. Rely on them too often, and they’ll give you away. And then”-Bob cupped his hands together-“humans will trap you. An iron cage won’t hold us for long, true, but what about a magnetic containment unit, or something more exotic? Look at their prize. A vampire. They’ll perform biopsies-no, vivisections-to learn about our immortality and powers of transmutation into other forms, a wolf for example.”

Bob touched his eye and then his upper incisors. “They’ll carve out your tapetum lucidum and your fangs. You might get into trouble so deep not even the Araneum could help you.”

If he had witnessed the paranoid nuttiness at Rocky Flats as I had, perhaps he’d lose this appreciation of DOE’s prowess. “You make it seem bleak. I can handle myself.”

“I don’t understand why you don’t quit this assignment. What are you trying to prove?”

“This is my job, for one. Am I supposed to wet my pants and run every time someone yells boo? I’m a vampire, for Christ’s sake. Humans are supposed to run away from me. And I agreed to help a friend in trouble.”

“A human?”

“Yes, a human.”

“Felix, remember who you’re dealing with. In the centuries I’ve been around I’ve seen humans only get more conniving and cruel. We are supposed to be the evil ones, yet are we worse than a serpent? We are simply predators who dine on human blood. Isn’t that how God made us? Look at the real evil in history. The Inquisition, the Holocaust. Vampires didn’t highjack airliners and crash them into buildings. Who invented the guillotine? Nerve gas? Humans! And you’re working for the very people who massacred hundreds of thousands with the A-bomb in Japan, injected pregnant women with plutonium just to see what would happen, and lied about radioactive fallout poisoning families in Nevada. God knows how much land they contaminated around Denver.”

“I’m aware of this.”

“Be careful, Felix. If you get caught and the government realizes that they have a vampire, then we as a species are doomed.”