The Nymphos of Rocky Flats

by Mario Acevedo

  "I notice you're still here."

  "Maybe I like dumb challenges." She pointed a finger at me. "You know what I mean?"

  "Much too well." I offered my hand. "Miss Dryad, you have a name?"

  "A rather nice one, I think." Her pearly grin returned. "Wendy Teagarden."

  We shook hands. Her touch was firm and warm.

  "Wendy? So you are like Tinkerbell. Who's your old boyfriend? Peter Pan?"

  That pearly grin flattened a tight line. "Keep that up and you'll go home the same way you got here…alone."

  I raised my hands to signal surrender. "My bad. Forgive me."

  Wendy shook her head and gave a self-deprecating laugh. "Considering what I have to work with, okay, you're forgiven."

  "How do you know Bob?"

  "Friends of friends."

  Wasn't much of an answer. "What do you want from me?" I asked.

  "Since my offer for sexual favors went right over your head," she waved a hand over her hair and made a whoosh sound, "I'll have to settle for chocolate cake."

  "What offer?"

  "Jeeze, talk about your dumb challenges." She rolled her eyes. "The cake. Please, while I'm still in the mood for that."

  I plunged the serving knife into the cake and flipped a piece onto a paper plate.

  Wendy looked at the plate and twitched her nose in disapproval. "Kinda small."

  "I thought size didn't matter."

  "We're talking about chocolate cake."

  I cut a thicker portion. "Is this okay? What else would you like me to do?"

  Wendy lifted the plate and started away from the buffet table. "Cork that opened bottle of merlot and bring it. And a couple of glasses."

  "Where're we going?"

  She motioned to the other guests. "To get some privacy."

  How much privacy would we need?

  We went out a side door, into a night barely lit by the dim street lamps. We walked around the corner of the house into a shadow between two elm trees.

  Wendy approached the wall. She planted one foot on the siding and began walking up, vampire fashion, while keeping the paper plate level with the ground so that the chocolate cake wouldn't slide off. Stepping over the eaves, she disappeared onto the roof.

  I lifted my leg and set my shoe against the siding, then stepped upward with my other foot. The climb was a simple, sixteen-foot vertical walk. But my movements became sluggish, and the higher I climbed, the harder I breathed. The wine bottle and glasses clinked together and almost slipped from my hands.

  I hoisted one leg over the eaves and then the other. My feet planted themselves on the steep, shale-shingle roof. I felt like a fat man who had sprinted up three flights of stairs. Thoughts about my weakening vampire prowess led me to brood about my refusal to drink human blood, and that, in turn, resurrected my guilt over shooting the Iraqi civilians.

  Wendy's aura brightened with concern. "You okay? What's with that bump on your head?"

  "Coffin lid fell on me. Occupational hazard." I rested my hands on my knees until I gained enough breath to ask, "Now that we're up here enjoying the penthouse view, explain your green aura."

  Wendy set her plate on the swamp cooler and stabbed the cake with her fork. "You got a weird set of priorities. We're alone. We've got wine. And you ask about my aura. Why?"

  "Humor me."

  "It's green for the reason yours is orange."

  "Mine is orange because I'm a vampire." I set the wine and glasses on top of the swamp cooler.

  "Sort of. Your aura is orange because, being a vampire, your psychic energy level is centered on the second chakra, which is here." Wendy touched her lower abdomen. "It's all explained by Tantric mysticism."

  My stay in Denver had taken a tight turn into the even-more-weird. Radiation and nymphomania weren't enough, now there was this New Age wackiness to consider. It was a good thing she was easy on the eyes. I worked the cork out of the bottle and poured the wine.

  "You know anything about chakras?" She palmed one glass and sipped.

  "I've tried not to." The question reminded me of a hippie-dippy granola chick I dated in college. I put up with her Birken-stocks and patchouli stink for the sake of tapping her hairy nookie.

  "Haven't you wondered," Wendy asked, "why humans have red auras and vampires orange ones?"

  "Figured it was the same reason humans have blunt teeth and I have fangs. Part of the prey-predator arrangement."

  "Chakras are your body's psychic energy centers," Wendy said. She set her glass on the swamp cooler. "There are seven major chakras and each corresponds to a distinct psychic energy level. Each level is analogous to the color reflected by your aura. Red auras mean that the being is concerned with manifestation. Orange, connection."

  "Connection to what?"

  "Of the material world to the spiritual," she said. "That's why vampires can see auras. You were surprised by my green aura, weren't you?"

  "Of course. But once you explained that you were a dryad—a forest sprite—then I figured it's because you ate leaves and bean sprouts." And granola.

  "My energy is centered on compassion. The fourth chakra. Here." She stroked her sternum. "Its color is green."

  During my interrogation of Tamara, Sofia, and Jenny, their auras had gone from red to yellow when the nymphomania took over.

  "What are the chakra colors?" I asked.

  "Red, orange, yellow, green, light blue, dark blue, and white."

  "You're green. I'm orange," I said. "If we're supernaturals, why aren't our energy levels next to each other?"

  "I don't mean to insult you," Wendy replied, "but despite your powers, you vampires are closer to humans. That's what you came from. We dryads were born this way."

  "Then explain yellow."

  "Who has a yellow aura?"

  "Somebody I've met."

  Wendy raised an eyebrow. "Was this somebody a supernatural? Like us?"

  "I'm not sure," I replied. "They were human when I first met them. Under vampire hypnosis their auras turned from red to yellow."

  Wendy kept quiet for a moment. "Maybe that has something to do with it. Yellow is transformation."

  "Transformation from what?"

  "One psychic level to another," she explained. "I don't know of any supernaturals with yellow auras. Doesn't mean they don't exist." The intensity of her green aura notched up. "Why did you hypnotize these humans? Was it part of an investigation?"

  "How do you know about that?"

  "Bob Carcano told me you're a private detective."

  My anger with Bob kept the words from forming. I had to force them out. "Yes, I'm an investigator."

  "He said something about an outbreak of nymphomania at Rocky Flats." Wendy crossed her arms. A mischievous smile traced across her mouth. "Sounds kinky. Could be fun."

  "Bob talks too much. And why do you ask about me?"

  "A request."

  "By whom?"

  "Someone far away."

  Who did I know from far away? "The Araneum?"

  "If it was, I couldn't say so, could I?"

  "What else do you do?" I asked.

  "In other words, what pays the bills? I work at Denver Health, the local public hospital. It's a good place to keep tabs on things."

  "What if I want to keep tabs on you?"

  Wendy reached for me. "I'll make it easy for you." Her fingers clasped my wrist.

  My kundalini noir rustled at the expectation of pleasure. Since becoming a vampire, I've never given thought to being close to another being, not this way. And certainly not to a supernatural creature I knew little about, however cute.

  Wendy abruptly pulled away and lifted the hem of her sweater. She flashed a narrow band of white skin above her belt. Lusty excitement heated me. She didn't waste time. The steep slope of the roof could demand some interesting positions.

  A pager clipped to her belt buzzed and its red light flashed. She pressed the pager button to illuminate the display. "It's the trauma center, a.k.a. t
he knife and gun club. Must be short-staffed again." She smoothed her sweater over her waist. "Sorry. Gotta run. Give me your number."

  I handed her a business card.

  She kissed my cheek. "I'll call." She stepped off the roof and floated down between the elm trees like a leaf. She scurried over the lawn toward a silver Mazda coupe parked along the sidewalk. The coupe's alarm beeped twice. Wendy got in. The car shot away from the curb, honking goodbye.

  The air cooled my skin where she had kissed me. Wendy was a good distraction from the mess of my investigation. The mystery about her intrigued me. Was she from the Araneum? If I wanted to learn more about Wendy on my terms, I should've gotten her number.

  Now to get down. The drop from the roof looked forbidding now that I suspected my vampire powers were weakened.

  Come on Felix, trust yourself. Walking off the edge, I hovered for a second. Then the air collapsed under me, and my legs slammed into the ground. I tumbled backwards over the grass and thumped my head on the siding.

  Clutching my scalp, I cursed, pushed myself up, and brushed dead grass from my clothes.

  I needed another belt of wine to nurse the pain, but then I remembered that I'd left the merlot on the roof. I wasn't climbing back up there, so I limped inside and guarded a spot at the buffet table next to the liquor. Humans in capes took out their fake vampire teeth. They dipped breadsticks into the marinara sauce and acted as if they had been impaled. Their voices melted into the blur of conversation and music.

  I downed one glass of a red wine I poured from a box, a wine whose two major attributes were that it was wet and had alcohol.

  The humans dared one another to try the blood-pudding canapés, all of them behaving as if they were trying to out-dork the others. One of them, a man of about thirty and clearly the leader in this informal dork contest, threw his cape back and unfolded a cell phone. He stared at the tiny screen and started text-messaging. Even here at a party, humans were obsessed with documenting their lives.

  Documenting. The thought echoed in my head.

  The rush of ethanol and the fall from the roof must have jogged a loose connection in my brain, and I had a "Eureka" moment. The Tiger Team report couldn't exist in the bureaucracy of DOE without generating a tide of paperwork. Documentation such as access logs, visitors' files, and expense reports.

  If I looked hard enough, I could find a trail within that documentation. A trail that would lead me to the truth.

  Chapter 11

  BOB CARCANO ENTERED the den. His round head swiveled to pick through the crowd as he scanned the room. His aura simmered with the disarming cheeriness of a smiley face. He looked about the room and, finding me, waved.

  I waved back and resumed drinking my second glass of wine.

  Bob remained in a pleasant mood upon seeing me, which was a surprise, considering the nagging lecture he had given me as a going-away present at our last meeting. I didn't want to spend another evening sparring with him over my vampire dining habits. I didn't drink human blood because…guilt bubbled into my thoughts. Blood from the Iraqi girl I had murdered came flinging at me across time and space. What I wanted more than anything else was to have the girl forgive me and expunge this guilt. But her little rotting corpse was buried in a forgotten dirt patch on the other side of the world, so my absolution was impossible.

  The wine soured and I put the unfinished glass down.

  Bob stood on a chair, clapped his hands, and announced, "Everybody, we're playing zombie twister in the basement."

  The humans around the buffet table cackled like happy chickens at the news. They reinserted their fangs and joined the others filing down the stairs.

  Bob and I remained alone in the den. His eyes went moody and his expression tightened.

  "Felix, it's good that you're here." He grasped my arm and pulled closer to me. His voice lowered to a whisper as if to emphasize the importance of what he was about to tell me. "There's trouble. We've got serious business."

  "We? You mean you and I?"

  Bob's gaze lifted abruptly to the top of my head. "What the hell happened to you?"

  Here came the lecture. The tone in my reply had no humor. "I got a little clumsy."

  Bob raised a hand to stop me. "Forget it. Right now I've got bigger concerns than worrying about your brown ass."

  I'd gotten so worked up about arguing with him that his answer muzzled my resentment. What concerns? I was about to ask when a tall, older man approached from the kitchen.

  He had a white, wispy beard and matching droopy eyebrows. Orange aura. Vampire. His lanky arms draped over the shoulders of a younger woman and man flanking him. Red auras, humans.

  The woman had a kerchief tied around her neck. The man wore a thick, black leather collar. Covering their necks like this meant they were hiding puncture marks, the sign they were chalices. For all but these humans, the fascination with vampires was just a playful diversion. Even the most die-hard posers thought that having someone suck blood from their necks was a perverse game played only by sickos too taken by the vampire fantasy.

  Bob extended his hand and introduced me to the tall vampire. "Felix, this is one of the snaggletoothed plasma guzzlers I told you about, Ziggy Drek. He's been around longer than the calendar."

  "It's Siegfried von Drek," Ziggy corrected. Resplendent in his starched white shirt and black waistcoat, Ziggy's visage should've been on a painting hanging inside a castle. "At one time, I was a Prussian baron." The words came from his mouth in a bothered drawl, delivered with the creaky, Teutonic accent of a B-movie vampire.

  "And now you manage a Kinko's."

  Ziggy hugged his chalices, then allowed them each to kiss him on the neck, the gesture saying, Screw you, Bob, I don't need your goddamn approval. "Is that why you asked for me? To remind me of where I work?"

  "We have private business." Bob selected a blood-pudding canapé from the table and gestured to Ziggy that his companions should leave.

  Bob munched on the canapé while he waited until the chalices were out of earshot. "I'm going to call a special council of the nidus. As you are one of our senior vampires, I'll need your help."

  A ring of light descended Ziggy's aura, the psychic equivalent of an irritated sigh. "What now?"

  "Jody Pasquales and Erwin Flakes are dead." Bob turned to me. "Jody and Erwin were vampires from New York."

  "You've spoiled the party to tell me this?" Ziggy tugged at his shirt cuffs. "Vampires die all the time."

  "Not like this. Seven of us have been offed in the last month," Bob said. "If you trace the deaths on a map—New York, Philadelphia, Kansas City, Lincoln—it's a path that leads here, to Denver. This could be another church-sponsored extermination."

  "In America?" I asked. "Now?"

  "Did the Araneum say that?" Ziggy added.

  "No," Bob replied. "That's my guess."

  "Your guess? Then say so," Ziggy said. With every word, Ziggy's accent became less Mannheim and more Milwaukee.

  "I've been around," Bob said. "I've seen this before."

  "And so have I. A couple of vampires get smushed and suddenly everyone's Chicken Little." Ziggy flapped his arms and squawked. "The sky is falling. The humans have their stakes and pitchforks out. All vampires stick their heads up their collective ass and hide."

  Ziggy clasped my shoulder and gave a jovial shake. "Felix, the way Bob's acting, you'd think he's about to start menstruating."

  Bob's aura flared like the burner on a furnace. His quick glance to me said, Better not betray me.

  Bob turned his anger back to Ziggy. "Don't mock me. According to the Araneum, the vampires were quickly found out and killed. Such tactics point to vânätori de vampir."

  Every undead bloodsucker knew those words. Vampire hunters.

  Maybe my attacker wasn't concerned about the Rocky Flats investigation. Maybe he was one of these vampire hunters, perhaps the one who had questioned Jenny, the RCT.

  Ziggy chuckled with skepticism. "Ridiculous. And where a
re these vânätori from?"

  "Romania. Specifically, Transylvania."

  "According to whom?" Ziggy asked.

  "Rumor."

  "Rumor?" Ziggy laughed and raised his voice. "Vânätori de vampir from Transylvania? Who's helping them? The bogey man?"

  "Make jokes, you old fool," Bob said. "How do you explain the deaths?"

  "The usual. Stupidity. Carelessness. Driving while intoxicated. That lush Erwin couldn't walk two city blocks without stumbling into a tavern."

  "These killings followed a ritual pattern. Decapitation."

  "Stake through the heart—all that, I'm sure," Ziggy interrupted. "Yes, we are familiar with the lore of vampire killings. I've been around for three centuries and not once have I seen any vânätori de vampir. I even owned a brothel in Bucharest, so it wasn't hard to find me."

  "Maybe you've stumbled through the world with your eyes locked on every available crotch, but I've seen vânätori."

  "Good for you," Ziggy replied. "Someday when I'm bored to tears, I'd love to hear every detail. I don't suppose the murders could've been caused by another vampire? Or an envious chalice? Hasn't that happened before? Right here in Denver, as I remembered it."

  Bob thrust a finger at Ziggy. "I've survived the exterminations. I've seen the worst of it."

  "Which was when?" Ziggy cupped a hand behind an ear.

  "The Mausoleum Purge of 1810."

  "Which was where?"

  "Aquitaine, France."

  "I thought so. France, not Colorado. Two hundred years ago, not yesterday." Ziggy waved for his two chalices to return. "Bob, as the nidus leader you know better than to stir up the nest with your paranoia. When your Transylvanian vânätori show up, silver crucifixes in hand and wreathes of garlic around their necks, then call me. Better yet, tie a note to the leg of a bat and send it."

  The woman and man returned and wrapped their arms around Ziggy's waist. He rested his arms first on their shoulders, then let his hands drop down their backs to caress their round bottoms. The three of them walked out of the den.

  "Didn't that lecherous old bastard say it was stupid vampires who die?" Bob leaned against the table. "I hate to say it, but if the vânätori do attack, I hope they go after Ziggy first."