X-Rated Bloodsuckers

by Mario Acevedo

Veronica wore white shorts and a loose short-sleeve blouse with a jungle print and stood barefoot on the oak floor. She had the burnished, muscular legs of a dancer.

  With a nod, she beckoned me in. Expecting a hearty embrace and a lusty kiss, I was surprised when she kept a cool distance when she led me inside.

  The floor creaked as we walked under a Moorish arch separating the front room from a dining area. I set my bag on a dinette table. There wasn’t much furniture. Some mismatched chairs and a couple of end tables with flowering planters on top. The corners and walls were crooked from where the building had settled over the years.

  Veronica’s mood puzzled me. She didn’t act nervous, the way someone would if anticipating trouble. Not that I suspected her, since my vampire sixth sense detected no threat. Just to make sure, I examined the room again. Nothing out of the ordinary.

  So why the frosty act? Maybe Veronica had heard bad news. Maybe she didn’t feel well. Or maybe she was being fickle in the way women can be and resented my intrusion into her life. In any case, I’d peruse Roxy’s files and leave. Good thing condoms have an expiration date.

  Veronica waved that I follow her into the kitchen. She pointed to a document box sitting on the counter by the refrigerator.

  Her expression stiffened, her face a protective mask. “Felix,” she said without prompting, “lo siento.” I’m sorry.

  “For what?” I replied. We both spoke in Spanish.

  “I was eager to see you. To invite you into my home,” Veronica explained. “But when I put the box there for you, it hit me what your visit was really about.”

  “You mean Roxy’s murder?”

  Veronica stared at the floor and nodded. She gathered stray hair behind one ear. It was a gesture that betrayed her struggle to maintain composure. “After Roxy was killed and I knew no one was serious about investigating her murder, I promised myself that she would get justice.”

  Veronica looked out the kitchen window. I wanted to remove my contacts so I could witness the animated display of her aura expressing her inner turmoil. I expected to see her lower lip quiver and the shine of tears in her eyes.

  Instead, her jaw hardened, and that was it. This was the limit of sadness she would allow herself to show. My attention in this case had been so centered on Roxy Bronze that I had forgotten she was Veronica’s lieutenant in the campaign to stop Project Eleven. Veronica picked the fight with the Los Angeles City Council and its millionaire patrons not only out of principle but also to win. She was no one’s wallflower. Veronica jumped into the fray like a tough, seasoned paratrooper.

  Roxy had provided money, and the sexy, scandalous angle the media craved, but it was Veronica’s nerve and drive that marshaled the community and turned the city council on its heels.

  “I haven’t thought about those files since I brought them here.” Veronica said this in a monotone, as if testifying under oath. “Despite my best intentions, my duties at Barrios Unidos, my family obligations…”

  “I understand,” I replied. “Life gets in the way. A murder investigation isn’t a hobby, especially this one. That’s why people hire me.”

  Veronica gave a smile of thanks. She stood beside me, close enough that she brushed my arm. I could feel the heat of her skin.

  I removed the box’s lid. Thick hanging folders were braced from the sides. “How long have you had this?”

  “Since a couple of weeks before Roxy was killed.”

  Several months, then. “This could be considered withholding evidence from a murder investigation,” I said.

  Veronica shook her head. “I’m not withholding anything.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “After her death—her murder rather—the cops raided Barrios Unidos to look for evidence,” Veronica replied. “All they said was ‘Show us Roxy’s desk.’ They emptied the drawers. They took everything: personal photos, pens, even a box of paper clips.” In the excitement of telling me the story, Veronica returned to her quickstep Spanish. “I was surprised the detectives didn’t scrape the gum stuck under her chair.”

  “What about Roxy’s computer?” I asked.

  “They confiscated that. And we had to give them permission to go to our Internet service provider and dig through our emails. The assholes deleted half of our archives just to be pricks.” Veronica turned away and rubbed her forehead, as if the memory hurt.

  “How did you end up with the box?”

  “After we stopped Project Eleven and got done celebrating,” Veronica said, “Roxy and I decided to consolidate the files, which at the time were scattered all over the office. We’d see what to keep or toss out. I took the box, thinking I would go through it when I got the chance. But I never did.”

  “Where was the box when the police searched Barrios Unidos?”

  “In the trunk of my car. Had they asked, I would’ve given it to them.” Veronica shared a look troubled by anxiety. “Roxy was dead. A lot of rich people were happy about that. The cops were only there to purge anything that could further embarrass the politicos behind Project Eleven.”

  I ran my thumb along the thick stacks of papers inside the hanging folders. “It’ll take a while to go through this. Good thing I brought my toothbrush and jammies.”

  “Your jammies?” The anguish in her eyes gave way to a twinkle. She gave a sardonic laugh. “Okay, you want to stay up all night and play detective, that’s your business. You are the professional. But first we get dinner. I’m starving. There’s a place down the street that stays open late. We’ll talk about something else besides this.” She pointed to the box.

  Veronica put on sequined flip-flops. We went out and stood in line at a restaurant decorated with bamboo awnings and tiki torches. She chewed a tablet of Nicorette gum and clasped my hand. Her silver rings singed me and I repositioned her hand so that her forearm rested on mine.

  I had to skip the first table the maître d’ offered, as she wanted to sit us with my back against a mirror. How long would it have taken Veronica to notice in the reflection that she dined alone?

  I settled for a corner booth. No mirrors. One candle.

  Veronica asked for margaritas. We split an order of swordfish with mango chutney and potato cakes. I tried my best to match her appetite, but without a drenching of blood, even a gourmet offering like this tasted as bland as cold, unsalted oatmeal.

  Veronica kept with the margaritas while we chatted about life, her family, and movies. I didn’t mention it, but my thoughts kept rolling back to what might be in Roxy’s files.

  Veronica stopped midway through her third drink and pushed the glass away. “I surrender. Coffee?”

  We had the house blend, which sans blood, tasted like muddy water. Veronica nibbled on cheesecake.

  On the way back to her place, I kept her on my left side so when we walked arm in arm, her silver wouldn’t touch my bare skin. Climbing the stairs to her apartment, she slipped and I caught her.

  Veronica clung to the banister. “Give me a minute. My stomach is sorting through this love-hate relationship I have with tequila.”

  Closing her eyes for a moment, she took a deep breath and exhaled. I helped her trudge up the stairs. We paused at her door while she dug keys from her shorts pocket.

  She fumbled with the dead bolt. “Felix, are you enjoying yourself?”

  “Of course. Why?”

  “You picked at your food. I practically swam in my margaritas. You barely sipped yours. Now you hold me like I could give you cooties.”

  “Maybe it’s me who has cooties.”

  Veronica slurred a laugh. “You don’t have cooties.” She pecked my cheek. “See. No cooties. Was that so complicated?”

  Being an undead bloodsucker makes everything complicated.

  With my hand steadying her shoulder, she guided me into the apartment and her bedroom. Veronica plunked face first onto the mattress. Her feet dangled off the edge of the bed and her flip-flops dropped to the floor.

  Veronica’s right hand came up
and pointed to the hall. “Felix, be my hero,” she mumbled, “and bring some water.”

  I went to the bathroom and filled a glass. When I returned to the bedroom, Veronica had turned onto one side and gathered a pillow under her head. The little screen of an iPod on the nightstand gave an inert glow.

  I set the glass beside the iPod, took off my shoes, and lay next to Veronica to spoon. Her firm rump pressed along my pelvis. I pushed one hand under the pillow and laid the other on her hip.

  The music playing was a woman crooning about frustrated love. She must’ve cribbed my notes.

  Up close, Veronica was a cascade of smells: sweat, tequila, mango chutney, shampoo, aloe vera lotion, and her delicious pheromones. This beautiful, healthy—albeit pickled to a hundred proof—creature that I rested against was a reservoir of savory blood and sexual release.

  I could zap Veronica and enjoy the ride. What would prevent me?

  A junkie going cold turkey and finding a syringe loaded with smack, a pyromaniac with matches, gasoline, and an empty house, their temptations were trivial whims compared to the roiling hunger that stoked my desire.

  Her heart thumped a beaconing tempo.

  My fangs pushed out from my gums.

  The valves in her veins ticked like stopwatches, counting the seconds before my attack.

  My kundalini noir coiled as it prepared me to strike and feed.

  CHAPTER 21

  No. I wouldn’t take advantage of Veronica.

  God had taken away my soul, but I remained with a free will. I am vampire, not an animal that surrenders to every impulse.

  I’d reciprocate Veronica’s affection, nothing more. Let her decide, sober and willing, how this relationship would progress.

  I held Veronica tight and waited for temptation to pass. My kundalini noir finally relaxed and my fangs shrank back under my lip.

  Veronica snored faintly and I waited for the songs on the iPod to end.

  I stayed with her until 3 A.M., then got up and removed my contacts. Veronica lay swaddled in her red aura, undulating with dreamy thoughts. I walked to the front room. The floor creaked, and I levitated to pad about noiselessly.

  Something rustled outside the window. A small red aura betrayed an opossum munching grapes.

  “Better scat,” I whispered, “before Coyote finds you.”

  The opossum’s beady eyes stared from under a crown of grape leaves as it continued eating.

  I dug through my overnight bag for blood I brought from Coyote’s. I microwaved one package of type B-positive.

  While sipping blood through a drinking straw, I opened the box with Roxy’s file and removed the first folder. I sat in a chair with the folder on my lap and unfastened a binder clip.

  This file contained photocopies of the agendas and minutes from city council meetings. Someone had scrawled along the margins and between the paragraphs. Words were underlined with bold strokes, as if the pen had been slashed across the paper like a blade.

  I recognized names from the Los Angeles political scene. Lucky Rosario. Councilwoman Petale Venin. I kept tripping over her name in this investigation. She was the quarterback behind the effort to get Project Eleven on the ballot. I assumed she had plenty of dirt under her fingernails—what politician didn’t?—but I couldn’t imagine someone in her public position risking murder.

  Nowhere in the papers did I see mention of Cragnow Vissoom, Dr. Mordecai Niphe, or Reverend Journey.

  I flipped through the stack. It would take a month to go through these documents. I’d get a clearer picture of the battle over Project Eleven, but would anyone have said something to incriminate him or herself with violent crime? Or even more improbably, vampire–human collusion?

  I leafed through the next folder, a collection of grainy black-and-white copies of photographs.

  The first photo that caught my interest was of Lucky Rosario standing beside a washed-up Hollywood celebrity. The actor had done a series about a bounty hunter in Miami until low ratings and a drug habit did him in.

  Where had I seen these pictures before?

  On the wall of Rosario’s office.

  How did Roxy get these copies? When I first saw the original pictures at Rosario’s they didn’t mean much. What had I missed? What was the significance to my investigation?

  Something like this next picture.

  Three men stood before a restaurant table.

  The man on the left was the shortest. Wearing a pinstriped shirt and fashionable tie, with keen eyes peering through wirerims, and a thick mat of kinky hair, was Dr. Mordecai Niphe. In the middle of the group, a white shirt rumpled under the armpits, collar and tie digging into a fat neck, grinned Lucky Rosario. Lucky’s arm draped over Niphe’s shoulder like they were best buds.

  Standing to the right was a tall, older man in a suit. He had gray, almost whitish, well-groomed hair. I didn’t need a caption to know who he was.

  Reverend Dale Journey.

  He projected the arrogant bearing of an elderly senator or a retired air force general. Yet his smile appeared too tight. Nervous. The gap between Journey and Rosario told me that Journey didn’t want to be seen in this company.

  Journey and Niphe together, with Rosario in the middle. What linked them? Who lurked unseen in the background? Cragnow Vissoom?

  The time was 5:30 A.M. Sunrise would come soon. I needed to hide from the deadly rays of first light. Sunblock wasn’t enough to protect me.

  The photos were promising, but first I had to protect myself from the sun. I clipped the file together and set it back in the box.

  The front room faced east. I closed the drapes tight and retreated to a room at the back of Veronica’s apartment, the west side. I felt like a spider slinking down its hole.

  What made the sunrise so dangerous? I didn’t know. Perhaps a vampire’s psychic defenses weakened over the night and the splash of sunlight breaking across the eastern horizon was too intense to endure. Or was there a special property of sunlight when it penetrated the atmosphere at a low oblique angle? Let another vampire, some undead egghead, solve that mystery.

  I closed the door of the back room and shut the curtains to block any stray reflected sunbeams.

  The room was Veronica’s home office. A laptop computer sat on a small desk. Assorted notes to call Mom, pick up laundry, dangled from thumbtacks stuck to a corkboard on the wall. Binders stuffed with papers lay stacked on an ironing board.

  One paper lay half out of the binder, and I slipped it out. It was a letter from the dean of the Graduate School at Brown University offering a tenured position teaching public affairs and public policy. I opened the binder. The next paper was a letter of introduction from the marketing department of Toyota of America. Buried in the binder were unopened envelopes from Princeton, a lobbying firm in Washington, D.C., and Univision. This was a basket of brass rings, and yet Veronica ignored them to stay where she felt needed most—in the ramshackle surroundings of Barrios Unidos.

  What I had run away from, Veronica embraced as her calling.

  But I had left years ago. As a boy. Human. Now I returned as vampire on a mission of vengeance.

  I waited in a cheap office chair next to the desk. Slowly the curtain turned into an illuminated rectangle as sunrise began. The minutes passed, and the rectangle got brighter and brighter.

  A quarter past seven. The window was as bright as it would get. The worst of the deadly rays had abated and the threat passed.

  I left the back room to fetch my overnight bag. Veronica remained silent in her room, evidently fast asleep. The kitchen and dining area were lit with sunshine flooding past the curtains. Though I was safe, I felt a tinge of fear, like standing close to a river of hot lava.

  I went into the bathroom and covered with makeup–sunblock as much skin as I expected to show. I sat in the kitchen, my wet hair slicked back, my fangs squeaky clean and minty fresh. I wore a T-shirt and shorts, and propped my bare feet on the cool tiles along the edge of the counter. My contacts w
ere in, to keep from scrambling for them once Veronica got up.

  After brewing coffee, I mixed half of another bag of blood into my cup of java. The rest of the blood I dumped into a bowl and sopped it up with a warmed cranberry scone.

  The third folder from the box rested on my lap. The folder contained a jumble of loose papers, printouts of emails, and Web blogs.

  I found a small greeting card. A soft-focus photo of a coffee setting decorated the cover. Tucked inside the card was a restaurant credit card receipt made to Freya Krieger. Time of purchase: 1:12 P.M. The date? Three weeks before the death of Roxy Bronze.

  The note in the card was neatly penned in blue:

  Sis, Great to see you.

  Lara

  Who was Lara? Sis?

  Did Roxy Bronze—Freya Krieger—have a sister named Lara?

  They had gotten together for lunch, and because of the card, I gathered the two didn’t see each other often. Was Lara visiting, or did she live in L.A.? If the latter case, why the card? Was there an estrangement between the two?

  Veronica stirred in the bedroom.

  I put the file aside. With the last piece of scone I blotted the remaining globs of blood. I poured plain java into a cup to let it cool, then swished the coffee in my mouth to have the proper breakfast breath. As I washed the dishes and cleared away all evidence of my blood meal, the door to the bathroom closed.

  When Veronica came into the kitchen I was arranging the files in the box. She cinched the belt of a white terry cloth robe. Strands of wet hair curled beside her freshly scrubbed face. Even though she smelled of bayberry soap, her eyes still carried the wilted look of overdoing it the night before.

  With her hands thrust into the pockets of the robe, Veronica leaned against the doorway from the hall into the kitchen. “Thanks for being a gentleman.”

  Me? A gentleman? Give me a chance to change that opinion. I filled a cup with coffee. “Cream? Sugar?”

  She took the cup in both hands. “Black is fine.” Eyes closed, she slurped several times. Every swallow brought more life to her expression. A finger uncurled from the cup and pointed to the box. “Any progress?”