The crow swung its little round head and wobbled as if drunk.

I grabbed what was left of my motorcycle’s front fender and tossed it at the crow. “I want to talk to your boss, you little shit.”

The fender clattered around the bird. It acted unimpressed by my wrath and poked at the ground. The crow jammed its beak into a scramble of weeds and wrestled loose a silver object the size of my little finger.

But the object wasn’t silver, it was white gold and platinum; a message capsule the crow wore on its leg. The crash must have knocked the capsule loose.

The crow grasped the capsule in its beak and limped toward me.

I took the capsule and wiped away the dust. I unzipped my leather jacket and leaned forward to create a pocket of shadow. With my left hand I unscrewed the ruby-rimmed cap, keeping the capsule in shadow to protect its contents from direct sunlight. The Araneum sent notes on vampire skin. A touch of sunlight would make the undead parchment burst into flames.

The Araneum must flay the smelliest vampires because when I removed the cap, what shot out was a putrid odor worse than rotting meat wrapped in moldy swim trunks.

I used the point of a talon to snag the parchment rolled inside the capsule. The parchment resembled yellowed onionskin. Keeping the note tucked close to my belly, I fumbled with the note to unfold it with my good hand. The parchment opened to a rectangle the size of a poker card. The message appeared as if it had been written on an old manual typewriter.

Our esteemed Felix Gomez, Find the creator of the zombies. Destroy him and all the zombies. Immediately. We expect your usual thoroughness. Report when completed. Araneum The crooked letters were typed in the brown color of dried blood. In what aisle of Office Depot would you find such a typewriter ribbon? I’ve learned to decipher these messages because the Araneum must pay a thousand dollars for each word, they’re so stingy with information. First clue, creator of the zombies. Meaning the Araneum knows someone is reanimating the dead. Second clue, zombies. Plural. I’ve only seen one. The Araneum knows there are more. Third clue. Him. Gender, male. Although these notes were annoyingly brief, they were precise. Fourth clue. Immediately. Meaning the threat is big. Nothing about who and where. Typical. The reverse of the note was blank. I reread the front to make sure I didn’t miss anything. I balled up the note and flicked it away. The note arced into the sunlight, flashed and crackled and turned into a puff of smoke. I had my orders. My Kawasaki lay in sad, broken pieces around me. I had much work to do, beginning with finding a way back to Denver. I pointed the capsule at the crow. “You’re not getting any points for a dramatic entrance. Why couldn’t you have come to my office?” The crow preened and picked at its wings. The dirt was gone and its feathers gleamed shiny and fresh. The crow marched close to my side and extended one leg. The clip on the capsule was bent so I worked it to cinch tight around the shank. The crow stamped its foot to test the security of the capsule. A breeze started up the ravine, murmuring through pines and aspens, and stirred the dust. The crow faced the breeze and spread both wings to cup the wind. The crow levitated straight up, claws and the capsule dangling. The crow continued up, up, not moving its wings, riding the wind with an expert grace. The claws retracted and the crow receded into a black speck in the blue sky. Show-off. I could levitate, though not high or far. Plus it took a lot of work. You don’t get anything for free in this world. I struggled to my feet and dismissed the wreckage of my Kawasaki with a sigh and a shrug. I climbed up the ravine along the trail of scattered motorcycle parts. Every step jarred me like a swat across my back with a burning two-by-four. Once on the shoulder of the narrow highway I dug into my jacket pocket for my cell phone, which fell apart in pieces. A white minivan came down the mountain and I flagged it. An enormous dog in the van barked and lunged at the rear windows. The driver’s window lowered. A woman wearing a ball cap and sunglasses studied me and the pieces of metal and glass decorating the skid marks leading off the road. “You okay?” she asked, amazed no doubt that I was upright. “I’m better than I look,” I lied. “Blowout and I hit this.” I raked my boot through the gravel on the asphalt. “Any way you could give a ride into town?” “Where exactly?” I had to get home. “Near Sloan’s Lake.” “No problem,” she answered. The cargo door on the opposite side popped open. I hobbled around the front of the van. The dog’s barking grew more fierce. A girl of about ten sat in the passenger’s front seat; she eyed me like I was a specimen from Ripley’s Believe It or Not. Remembering the little Iraqi girl reappearing in my dreams, I got a flutter of the heebie-jeebies from this girl’s stare. But she was a tiny blonde with a Hannah Montana T-shirt and weighed all of sixty pounds. My paranoia turned into embarrassment. The day I couldn’t handle this waif was the day I’d drive a stake through my own sternum. I slid open the cargo door, and the raucous barking thundered out. A boy-considering the resemblance, the girl’s younger brother-moved guardedly across the middle seat to make room for me. The dog in the back-the mongrel offspring of a St. Bernard and a cave bear-flashed yellow teeth and bashed against a wire grid barrier behind the middle seats. The van rocked as the hairy beast lunged from side to side. The boy put his hand on a latch at the front of the grid. He kept his wary little eyes on me. His arm seemed spring-loaded to throw the latch open. No wonder this woman wasn’t afraid of picking up hitchhikers. Make a wrong move and you’re meat scraps. “Buttercup, easy now,” the woman cooed. “Don’t be a bad girl.” Buttercup? That prehistoric monster? I buckled in, keeping as far right as I could to stay out of the line of vision from the interior mirror. Buttercup poked her snarling muzzle through the wire grid and sprayed doggie drool against the back of my neck. Buttercup had good reason to snarl. I picked up the aroma of young human flesh layered in the strong smell of Buttercup’s canine musk. In the ancient bloodsucker days, these kids would’ve been a banquet for us vampires. But now, it’s hands off. We drove down the winding mountain road into the suburbs of Denver, turning through Golden and reaching Wheat Ridge. The Sloan’s Lake area was another five miles away. I caught the girl staring at me through the right outside mirror. This ride was about to get dramatic. Her big blue eyes moved in a searching pattern. She unclasped her safety belt and whirled about to stare at me over the side of her seat. The driver eased up on the gas. “What are you doing?” The girl’s eyebrows pinched together and her eyes became loaded with suspicion. “Mom, why can’t I see him in the mirror?”