I explained what I’d seen last night to Alex. He started to gnaw at the cuticle on his thumb. “They hopped,” he repeated.
“They hopped,” I confirmed.
“They had long yellow pieces of paper hanging off their foreheads, and you thought you heard bells ringing.”
“I know. It sounds crazy. They looked like superlong Post-it notes. Maybe I was hallucinating. Maybe it was all the stress of seeing people getting killed. I mean, since when does 3M make tools for the supernatural?”
“No. There were bells and yellow pieces of paper. It’s exactly what I was afraid of. We have to go talk to Aldo right now.”
“I’m not going anywhere right now, but to my bed. Alone. I need to rest.”
“This can’t wait, Melina. Aldo has to know about it.”
“Last I saw, your mouth worked just fine. You go tell Aldo about it.”
Alex sighed and slumped back on the futon couch. “Yeah, about that. Remember I told you Aldo and I had a little falling out. It’s probably not completely safe for me to go on my own for a little tête-à-tête with Aldo. He’d probably dust me as soon as he looked at me.”
“And this is my problem why?”
“It’s your problem because you failed to make your delivery, Messenger. Now get your ass out of the papasan chair before I decide to show you exactly how well this mouth can work.” Vampires are perfectly capable of talking in completely human tones that sound like everybody else. They also have a particularly persuasive voice they can use when they don’t feel like being messed with. It’s a little like that thing Liam Neeson did in
Star Wars
with the Jedi voice. Alex had just used his Jedi vampire voice on me.
I found I’d risen out of the chair without even being aware that I was doing it. “Crap,” I said. “But I better be back here and in bed by two or you are going to have to explain to the Little Dragons why I can’t teach class tomorrow.”
“It’s a deal,” he said, back to his regular voice. “I’ll drive. You don’t look so hot.”
“Thanks,” I said, following him out of the apartment. I wished I could say the same for him.
IT WAS THE SECOND TIME I’D BEEN TO ALDO’S NEIGHBORHOOD in forty-eight hours. It must be some kind of record. Aldo’s house probably hadn’t seen this much action since bell-bottoms were in style the first time around.
Alex pulled his guard red Porsche 944 Turbo up right in front. We were not exactly inconspicuous.
“Aldo hates it when we park in front of his house,” I said from where I was sunk down so far in the leather seat that I could barely see over the dashboard.
“All the more reason to do it,” Alex said, smiling.
I shook my head. “Do you want his help with this thing or do you want to piss him off?”
Alex thought for a moment before opening the door and angling his long legs out of the low-slung sports car. “A little of both.”
I leaned back in the seat. It was even more comfortable than Grandma’s Buick. I felt actually embraced by the leather. “Pull around to the 7-Eleven and park. I’ll show you where the ninjas attacked me.”
“Ooh, Melina,” he cooed. “You know just what to say to make a guy putty in your hands.”
If only.
He pulled around the corner, we got out and I directed him to where I’d been attacked. “Smart,” he said. “Look at the sight lines. You can’t see this spot from any of the stores or houses on this block.”
I looked around. I hadn’t considered that. “They were lucky, too, though, that no one was around.”
Alex shrugged. “Midmorning on a weekday. It was a calculated risk, but most people would be at work at that time of day.”
True enough.
“But how would they know I even had something they wanted? Or that I would take it here?” I stopped in the middle of the sidewalk, questions multiplying in my head faster than I could ask them.
Alex stopped, too, and turned around to face me. He stuck his hands in his pockets and sighed. “My guess is that they had been shadowing you since you left the hospital, Melina.”
I shook my head. “Nobody was following me. I would have sensed it. I’m sure. I can tell when you’re within fifty yards of me, Bledsoe. I can’t imagine that tai chi ninjas could have shadowed me for hours without me noticing.”
“They’re just men, Melina. Men with spiritual power and physical prowess, but still just men. They wouldn’t have tripped your freaky sensors.” Alex actually looked apologetic. “I should probably have warned you.”
“Ya think?” I said, hands on my hips. I looked around the parking lot. It held pretty much the same kind of beater cars that it had held earlier. No shiny SUVs, though. I dropped my hands to my side in defeat. They had been shadowing me. How many SUVs had I seen between the hospital and here? I wasn’t even sure. I knew there’d been one in this parking lot, though, and one by my apartment earlier, too. Could they have been the same ones that had driven the hopping things down to gang territory?
“Come on,” Alex said. “This is fascinating, but we need to talk to Aldo.”
I contemplated holding my ground and arguing more. It was definitely tempting. Bledsoe so deserved it. Why send me out with something that someone would try to take without a little advance notice? I’m not saying I could have taken the ninjas even if I’d been prepared, but I’d at least been able to hold my ground for more than thirty seconds. Bledsoe was already walking, though, and I suppose there was no use crying over spilled milk. Or, in this case, my own spilled blood. So as tempting as it was to watch him walk away—and the way his ass looked in those jeans made it very tempting indeed—I ran a few steps and caught up with him.
We walked the two blocks back to Aldo’s house, marched up to the front door, rang the bell and waited. Then we waited some more. I felt the starch leaving my spine. If I were a flower—an ironic lily or a daisy—I would have wilted. “We should have called first, Alex,” I said. “He’s not home.” My mother always says to call first, that dropping by unannounced is rude. I really should listen to her more often.
Occasionally, when I let myself contemplate it, I have to admit that I wouldn’t be in this mess of a life if I’d listened to my mother at age three. Consequences are a bitch.
“He’s home. I can smell him. I know you can sense him, too,” Alex said. “Be patient.”
He was right. I could feel the buzz in my flesh. Of course, I already had the buzz in more ways than one from standing next to Alex. It was stronger now, though. I swayed a little. I really was exhausted. An eternity later, the door swung open and Aldo stood in the frame in all his glory. He had on a purple velvet suit with a yellow shirt and an ascot. He looked like an extra from an Austin Powers movie. Alex winced. My eyes still felt seared from seeing the earlier massacre. Aldo barely registered. “Alex. Melina. What a pleasure. How may I help you?” he said, standing aside as though to make room for us to enter.
It was a good line, but I noticed he wasn’t inviting Alex in. I also noticed the way he was staring at my throat. There was no way I was waltzing in there without somebody to watch my back, even if it was another vampire. Without an invitation, Alex would be stuck outside.
“We have a problem, Aldo. As master of the Sacramento Valley Seethe and a Council representative, I thought you should know about it,” Alex said, his hands jammed into the pockets of his jeans.
“Really? You think there’s something I should know about? Something I should inform the Council about?” Aldo looked off in the distance. “Were you not the very person who told Magdalena that I wouldn’t know AB negative blood if it came in a labeled bottle? And that the Council was as effective as a vampire with gingivitis?”
I snorted but quickly tried to cover it with a pretend cough. “Allergies,” I said. “I think it’s the jasmine.”
Aldo put on a look of mock concern. I say
mock
because I knew Aldo was never concerned about anything that didn’t directly relate to Aldo.
“I may have said something along those lines,” Alex admitted. “I was trying to impress Magdalena. You know how it is. You start to run your mouth and the most amazing things come out of it.”
I looked over at Alex. He was no more concerned with impressing Magdalena than he was with impressing Aldo. He hated the entire vampire hierarchy and the Council, too, and steadfastly had as little to do with it as he could get away with. If he hadn’t been so useful to all of them in the ER at the city hospital, they would have probably dusted his extremely fine ass decades ago.
Alex was like an undead canary in a coal mine, an early warning system for the vampires. He knew more about what was happening in the city than almost any other vampire and reported back on it when it started to get dangerous for the Seethe, who then reported it to the Council. In turn, they left him mainly alone. Mainly, but not entirely.
Aldo sighed. “What do you have to tell me, Alex?”
Alex nudged me. “Tell Aldo what you saw last night.”
I did my recitation again. I described the hopping creatures with their long fingernails and their long yellow pieces of paper. I told how they’d massacred a group of young Latino men.
“And?” Aldo said when I was done.
“And I think they’re
kiang shi
,” Alex said. If we’d been in the movies, the music would have gone all ominous at that moment. Sadly, we had no musical accompaniment, and I had a feeling that neither Alex nor Aldo would appreciate me humming something. Wow. I really needed sleep.
“Kiang shi?”
I looked over at him. “What the hell are
kiang shi
?”
“Chinese vampires,” Alex answered.
Aldo shook his head. “They’re not vampires. I’ll concede the Chinese thing.”
“They’re undead. They drink blood.” Alex was counting points out on his long, elegant fingers. “They’ll turn to dust if they’re out in the daylight or if they get staked in the heart. They’re vampires.”
“They’re much more like zombies than they are like vampires.” Aldo started to retreat into his house. “They have no intellect, no real will of their own. They’re nothing but a murderous animal unless someone is controlling them. Then they’re nothing more than someone’s slave. They have nothing to do with us.”
Alex started to follow him, pressing his attack, but came up short at the threshold. “They’re stirring up trouble in the city. They’ve attacked before. I found one of their talismans clutched in someone’s hand in the ER yesterday.”
“Whose hand?” Aldo asked, seeming mildly interested.
Alex paused. “I’m not precisely sure. The arm it was on was no longer attached to anyone’s body.” He crossed his own arms over his chest.
I looked over at Alex. He shrugged. My stomach rolled. “Is that what I was carrying here earlier? Something you took out of a hand that was on the end of a severed arm?” I demanded. Why? Why did my mother have to have such a clean pool? I know she would have let a little mold grow if she’d known what she was getting me into.
“Pretty much,” he said, inspecting his fingernails as if it were nothing out of the ordinary.
“Gross!” This was why I never wanted to know what was in the boxes and envelopes I delivered. I was much happier when I didn’t know. Ignorance is totally bliss in these instances. I had the sudden urge to plug my ears with my fingers and sing “la, la, la” really loud.
Alex shook his head. “Get over it.”
“What was it anyway?” I deserved to know that at least.
“I told you, it was a talisman. Though when I gave it to you, I wasn’t sure. I knew the markings on it were in blood, chicken and not human. I knew it had some power.” Alex continued to look as if he were talking about a recipe for a really good mojito.
“So you just scooted it over to me out of the shadows and sent me off with it?” I was starting to get really steamed now.
“What did you want me to do? Wrap it up and put a bow on it?” Apparently, Alex was starting to feel the heat as well.
“Are you two finished?” Aldo sighed.
“No, we’re not finished,” Alex said. “I want to know what we’re going to do about it.”
“Nothing.” Aldo shrugged. “I told you. It doesn’t have anything to do with us. They’re not vampires, not like you and me. They’re not my problem. It’s a ’Dane thing.”
“They’re likely to become your problem if whoever’s controlling them keeps this up.” Alex bounced a little on the balls of his feet, like a fighter ready to jump into the center of the ring.
Aldo crossed his arms across his velvety fabulousness. “I doubt that.”
“Oh yeah?” Alex said. “Do you remember how bad things were back in 1978? With Richard Trenton Chase? He wasn’t really a vampire either as I recall.”
“Who?” I said. “Richard Trenton what?”
“Chase,” Alex and Aldo said in unison, and then they exchanged sour looks. I thought about yelling “jinx,” but they didn’t seem in the mood.
“Richard Trenton Chase was a seriously disturbed young man who decided that his own blood would turn to dust if he didn’t drink other people’s blood. He killed six people over four days. They caught him, but it created an antivampire hysteria in Sacramento that had us all ducking and covering for months,” Alex explained.
“Longer than that,” Aldo said with a sigh.
“So why don’t you think we need to do something about these
kiang shi
?” Alex all but stamped his foot.
Aldo rolled his eyes and leaned against the doorjamb. “What would you have me do?”
“You could talk to the Council about it,” I suggested. I mean, that’s what they were there for, right? To keep the peace among the various factions that lived here. I mentioned already how many people came to northern California during the Gold Rush. I mentioned, too, that they brought their gods and their demons with them. Well, all those various things didn’t always get along, to put it mildly.
