The Undead Kama Sutra (5 page)

“What have I got to lose?”

Carmen gave a twinkling smile. “Good. Give me the spider and hold out your arm.”

I returned the jar and extended my left arm.

Carmen removed the lid and upturned the jar on my forearm. The spider dropped onto my skin and stretched its tiny legs. I got a creepy tickle. I kept my arm steady to refrain from giving an embarrassing shiver.

Antoine moved behind me, wrapped his strong arms around my torso, and pinned my right arm to my side. Carmen and Jolie grabbed my other arm by the wrist and pulled hard.

“What the hell?” I tried to jerk free but the other vampires held tight.

I stared in panic at the spider. “I thought this wasn’t going to hurt.”

Carmen laughed. “What gave you that impression? Actually, it’s going to hurt like a motherfucker.”

C
onsciousness slowly returned. I
felt weak and spent, like a castaway sailor surviving a storm. I opened my eyes and found myself on a bed in one of the cabins. Our concert to Oshún echoed softly in my head and faded to silence. Judging by the angle of the sunlight streaming through the window, I figured it to be early afternoon.

A chalice crowded the bed. She slept on her side, her smooth back toward me. She was naked, as was I. A bedsheet covered our legs.

Red and blue blotches from bite marks dotted her back and along her neck under the edge of her short brown hair. The bruises looked as if someone had gone at her with a ball-peen hammer. As painful as the bruises looked, in reality the chalices wore them proudly, like hickeys.

Carmen, modestly clad in a T-shirt and black shorts, her hair tied into a frizzy ponytail, came through the front door. “Felix, you’re awake. Welcome back to the land of the undead.”

I sat up and clutched my very sore abdomen. “What did you guys do while I was sick?” The words rasped from my throat. “Use my belly for kickboxing practice?”

Carmen tapped her foot against a metal wastebasket by the bedpost. Maroon muck clung to the plastic-bag liner. “It’s from all your heaving.”

“How long have I been out?”

“Two nights.”

“No wonder I feel like I’ve crawled back from the world’s worst bender,” I muttered.

“It wasn’t a pretty sight.”

I pointed to the chalice. “And her?”

“The adaptation process makes you crazy with hunger. Chalices fight for the honor of providing sustenance.”

“What a sport.” I kissed the chalice’s shoulder.

She snored. The bedsheet slipped from her hip and exposed the back of her thighs. Bruises and puncture marks trailed between her legs. More hickeys.

I noticed rows of scratches along the sides of my back and peeled the long, narrow scabs. I also had deep bite marks on my shoulders. Apparently, the adaptation process involved a lot of jungle sex as well as fanging.

“Quite the smorgasbord we both had. Too bad I can’t remember a damn thing.”

Carmen motioned that I get up. I swung my legs off the bed and stood. I felt woozy. She gave my nude body the once-over.

I said, “Sorry, but at the moment I can only get my flag to fly at half-mast.” Normally anemic and translucent, my skin was an opaque hue of mestizo beige. The spider bite on my forearm was a fading blemish. “How did you find out about the pine spider?”

“From Antoine,” Carmen replied. “It’s a Seminole vampire legend. At least, they claim it was a legend.”

I poked at the bite, a pale spot the size of a dime, and expected the flesh to give easily, but it remained firm. “I feel like a defrosted turkey.”

“Then it’s time to bake.” Carmen took my hand and led me to the bright rectangle of light framed by the front door.

Carefully, on stiff legs, I shuffled beside her. The anticipation of feeling the sun’s warmth made my breath shorten. My
kundalini noir
coiled, nervous and uncertain.

“Any surprises, Carmen? The last time I tried one of your tricks I got sick as…”

“A motherfucker,” she said. “Not this time.”

I pulled my hand from her grip. “Don’t lie.”

“I didn’t lie. It’s not my fault you didn’t ask the right questions.” Carmen continued outside through the doorway. The sunlight washed over her.

I paused in the threshold of the shadow and slowly extended my hand toward the sun. Conditioned by years as a vampire, I tensed to recoil at the lash of searing pain. In
stead I got a warm, gentle caress. I put both hands out and enjoyed the sensation. I tried to scoop the sunlight. I cupped the palms of my warmed hands against my face. No more Dermablend. No more makeup. No more stares at my vampire complexion.

Freedom.

I wanted more sunlight and leaned away from the shadow. The warm beam pressed against my skin. I blinked uncomfortably. Carmen handed me a pair of sunglasses and I put them on.

My skin soaked up the heat. “Do we sunburn?”

“No one has yet,” Carmen replied. “Seems our rejuvenation powers counteract it.”

“Is this permanent?”

“Unfortunately, no,” Carmen replied. “Might last a few months or a few weeks. Depends on the vampire.”

“And then what?”

“You get another bite from our little friend, the spider.”

I turned to let the sun kiss more of my body. At the present, putting up with the agony of another bite seemed worth it. “Does the Araneum know about this?”

“There are a lot of things the Araneum doesn’t know,” Carmen said. “I’ll tell them when I’m ready.”

“You’re the head of the Denver
nidus.
You have responsibilities.”

“I head the
nidus.
I’m not a hall monitor.”

I twirled my arms and laughed like a giddy child. “If the Araneum learns about this and that you’ve kept it from them,
they’ll have a fit.” I, in turn, had secrets from the Araneum that I couldn’t reveal to Carmen. But at this moment I didn’t care. I only wanted to revel in my nakedness and share the exhilaration. I ran between the cabins. “Look at me.”

No one appeared. I barged into a cabin. Nothing. I ran into another cabin. Again nothing. The resort was deserted.

Disappointed, I trotted back to Carmen. Streaking time was over. I found a pair of beach trunks slung over a clothesline and slipped them on. I asked her, “Where is everyone?”

“Antoine’s leading an Iyengar Yoga class on the other side of the island. Jolie’s teaching a kung-fu samba workshop.” Carmen flicked her hand to the dense brush. “The rest are here and there.”

She waved that I follow her to another cabin. She opened a nylon briefcase on a table and pulled out a thick sheaf of paper bound with a rubber band. She handed the papers to me. “You asked about
The Undead Kama Sutra
? Here it is.”

I
hefted the manuscript. Finally,
The Undead Kama Sutra
? “Is it true what I’ve read about this?”

“What’s true?”

“The psychic-healing part.”

Carmen opened her mouth in an exaggerated “ah,” and nodded. She put on a sly smile. “I’m convinced that it is but I’m not sure how it works. I’m still doing field studies. The original work is centuries old. The last complete manuscript, in the Western world anyway, was destroyed when the library in Alexandria, Egypt, was burned. There’s rumor of a partial manuscript in the Vatican’s collection of forbidden texts.”

I removed the rubber band from the manuscript. I flipped through pages of 12-pt. Courier marked with sticky notes, pencil scribblings, and yellow highlighter. Obviously, a work
in progress. I stopped on page 26. A paragraph described a drawing of a vampire and chalice tangled together in a pose named “Monkey Laughs at Moon.”

I didn’t know if I’d laugh having sex this way, but I would at least give a big smile.

I flipped to another page and a pose of a vampire standing with two chalices intertwined tightly against her torso. The title: “Jade Tree Ecstasy.”

I turned to another pose. This one startled me. “Feeding the Melon.”

Carmen read over my shoulder. “Whadda ya think?”

I rotated the page left and right. “Looks uncomfortable.”

“It’s an advanced pose, for sure. You got to work into it.”

“Who did your drawings?”

“I did.” Carmen displayed her hands. “These digits can do more than spank naughty bottoms.”

“Why are you writing this?”

Carmen took the manuscript from me. “I’m convinced there is a supernatural component to lovemaking. Good sex can cure a lot of ills.”

I nodded. “Of course. I’ve used that line lots of times.”

“I’m serious. Sex in the correct sequence of these poses,” Carmen tapped the manuscript, “can realign your chakras.”

“Do you know what that means? You’ve found a way for us vampires to play in the sun,” I held out my tanned arms, “and now with this
Kama Sutra
, it’ll be like we’re almost alive again.”

“We’re not in the Garden of Eden yet,” she replied.

“Where did your manuscript come from?”

“I pieced together fragments of ancient writings. Tibetan. Sanskrit. What’s left of the Aztec codices. Sumerian monographs. I had problems with that particular dialect.”

“How old
are
you?”

Carmen’s aura flashed a touch of indignation. “Since when is it okay to ask a lady her age?”

“My bad,” I said. “Are you sure you’re not using this as an excuse for marathon sex?”

“I don’t need an excuse for marathon sex. But this is beyond that. Correcting the energy flow through your chakras will reverse psychic damage and heal your mental and emotional wounds.” Carmen set the manuscript on top of the briefcase. “That’s the theory. I haven’t yet found out if and how it works.”

She turned around and leaned against the table. Her eyes gleamed seductively. “We could practice a few of the poses. As research.” She loosened her ponytail. With a shake of her head, wild, curly locks of black hair splashed over her shoulders. She heaved and the T-shirt pulled taut across her nipples. “Anything special you’d like to try?”

I matched her seductive gaze. “Oh yeah,” I drawled.

She gave an expectant nod.

I said, “Coffee, if you got any.”

“Coffee?” Carmen’s grin faded. The glare from her eyes could’ve melted iron. She swiped at me with her open hand.

I caught her wrist.

Her lips pursed, then curved into a puzzled smile. “Goddamn you, Felix.” She tore free.

“We’re immortal. What’s the rush?” Females, human or vampire, didn’t come any lustier than Carmen. Truth was, I hadn’t had sex with a vampire yet, and I wanted my first to be someone who wouldn’t make me limp for the rest of the week.

“One day I’m not ever going to offer again,” she said. “Then you’ll have no choice but to kill yourself out of regret.”

“Carmen, are you begging?”

“Ha, don’t flatter yourself.”

“Must be nice being the center of the universe.”

“I love it just fine.” Carmen went to the next room. Bags and cartons of foodstuffs sat on a shelf beside a water cooler. She brewed coffee over a small propane stove.

I thumbed through the manuscript and counted over two hundred ways of getting it on. What a scholarly triumph. “Who came up with the names for these poses? ‘Tiger and the Wheelbarrow.’ ‘Painting the Lily.’ ‘Feast of Mangoes.’”

Carmen yelled her answer so I’d hear her from the next room. “Those are my translations. Colorful, huh?”

She came back with a couple of plastic to-go cups. “It’s a fair-trade Cuban blend. Sierra Maestra with goat’s blood.”

The coffee smelled great. I put the manuscript down.

“Hope you learned something.” She gave me one of the cups. “I would call you stud but we wouldn’t know that, would we?”

“I appreciate the compliment. What are you going to do with this manuscript?”

“Get it published, what else? The general public will get off on the New Age woo-woo angle and we vampires will
have yet something else that we passed under the noses of the blunt tooths. In the meantime, I’ve got more research to do.” She grinned. “The fun stuff.”

We walked to the pier, sat on the edge, and dangled our bare feet over the water. The resort’s Bayliner was docked next to us.

“You guys only have one boat?” I asked. “Seems you’d have more.”

“Antoine’s got one.”

“Where is it?”

Carmen pointed to the water fifty feet from the pier. A white oblong object rested on the bottom of the lagoon.

I asked, “More winnings from one of his poker games?”

“Of course.”

We sipped the blood-coffee blend and meditated on the beauty around us. Fish flashed like knife blades through the water. Crabs crept up the wharf pilings and, when they caught us looking at them, skittered back down to the rocky bottom.

The sun felt great against my skin. In the few minutes I’d been outdoors, my complexion had darkened but I needed to cook awhile more before I matched Carmen’s toasted patina.

The rhythmic grunt of an engine announced the approach of a motorboat. A white boat appeared around the northern spit of land at our right, about a twenty-footer, with a fabric canopy over the cockpit.

“Expecting company?” I asked.

“No,” she replied. “It’s probably a fishing boat and the captain forgot how to read a chart. Happens now and then. Especially when we have naked chalices sunning themselves on the beach.”

The boat turned and chugged toward us. Sunlight glittered off the gold metallic letters on the hull, which read:
SHERIFF
. Under that, in dark green letters, it said,
MONROE COUNTY
.

A man in uniform—white short-sleeved shirt, yellow chevrons on his sleeve, dark green trousers, gun belt, sunglasses—occupied the helm. I guessed him to be well over six foot. Some of that height came from a pompadour so pointy and stiff it belonged on the nose of a rhinoceros.

Carmen and I got to our feet, our
tapetum lucidum
hidden by our sunglasses.

I don’t like cops. Any cops. Federal marshals, city police, and especially a deputy sheriff, like this guy. A visit by a cop was always a cure for a good mood.

The boat glided to within inches of the dock and stopped. The tall deputy with the pompadour hailed us.

“Know where I could find Antoine Speight?”

“He’s not here,” Carmen answered. “What’s this about?”

The deputy moved to the front of the boat and tossed the bowline. It landed between Carmen and me.

“A little help,” the deputy said.

Carmen didn’t move. “You didn’t answer me. What’s this about?”

The deputy grimaced in annoyance. He hopped onto the
pier and bent over to hitch the rope to the closest piling. He stood and his pompadour towered above us. When he looked at Carmen, his expression became all big-bad-wolf-and-I’m-happy-to-see-you. “Deputy Sheriff Toller Johnson.”

He removed his sunglasses and forced them through the crust of gel holding his steeple of hair in place. His gray eyes went from Carmen to me and then back to Carmen. He addressed her breasts. “You work here?”

“I have a face, if you don’t mind, Deputy.”

Johnson’s gaze rose to her face, and that hungry smile of his widened. I wanted to sew it shut with wire.

He pulled a memo pad from his hip pocket. “And you are?”

“Carmen Arellano. I’m business partners with Antoine, so yes, I work here.”

Johnson pointed the memo pad at me. “And you?”

“I’m a guest.”

“Your name?”

Johnson needed that memo pad shoved up his rectum. I answered curtly. “Felix Gomez.”

Johnson’s stare didn’t move from Carmen. “Are you missing someone from your resort?”

Carmen didn’t say anything. I’m sure she and I shared the same thought. Why was the deputy asking?

True, one of the women guests was missing. That the Monroe County Sheriff’s Office was on to it meant bad news.

The deputy made a point of resting his elbow on the pistol
holstered to his waist. The gesture signified that he had the authority to carry a gun and pry answers out of us. “Well, is anyone missing? Female?”

“A woman. Yes.”

“And her name?”

Carmen looked irritated at having to answer to this over-coiffed blunt tooth. “Marissa Albert.”

“How well do you know her?”

“As well as anyone else here.”

“Really?” Johnson gave a smug nod. “Then I need you to come with me.”

“Where to?”

Johnson flipped the memo pad closed and tucked it into his pocket. “To the morgue on Big Pine Key,
Miz
Arellano.” He worked the sunglasses back out of the pompadour and set them over the square bridge of his nose. “We have the body of a dead woman that needs identifying.”