Waves slapped the fiberglass hull. Rain puddled in the crevasses of Odin’s plastic shroud.

The surface of the water shimmered with the beat of the raindrops. The shimmer took on a metallic sheen and I realized this was from hundreds of little fish leaping from the water. The sheen became pink from the tiny red fish auras.

I looked over the side of the Wave Runner into the murky water. What made them behave like this?

The Wave Runner’s engine stalled. Suddenly an electric charge pulsed through the seat, up my spine, and into my arms and head. My limbs buzzed like the tines of a tuning fork. Glowing blue rings from St. Elmo’s fire curled around my wrists and ankles. The hair lifted from my scalp. My kundalini noir - that black serpent of energy residing in every vampire instead of a heart-coiled in panic. Get out of here.

My hands and feet stayed put. All around, the little fish floated lifelessly in the water.

The Wave Runner rocked backward. Something huge rose from the water in front of me.

A smooth, pewter-gray hump the width of a tennis court rose from the sea. My Wave Runner slipped backward on the water cascading from an enormous rim surrounding the hump.

The object lifted clear of the sea, then hovered noiselessly about fifty feet before me. It had a spherical body bisected by a wide disk.

A flying saucer. A UFO. One straight from the late-night drive-in movies. Those guys with the cheesy special effects had it right all along.

Odin had asked for my help in finding his assassin. Why didn’t he ask these aliens? Unless this UFO was robotic…or was this more of the scheming among the aliens? Odin had told me that extraterrestrials had to keep their visits secret because Earth was under quarantine, which was why he’d hired me before.

Odin also asked that I save the Earth women. But from what, exactly?

The grip of the blaster poked against my belly but I remained paralyzed. Not that the gun would do me much good. The crew of this ship certainly had more dangerous weapons, and if they wanted me dead, they could’ve disintegrated me already.

A hatch about a meter square opened in the belly of the sphere and a faint beam of light fixed upon my craft. Rain sparkled in the light, like confetti. The bundle holding Odin’s remains started to vibrate. The Wave Runner swung around as if its back end had been snagged by an invisible hook.

The bundle strained against the bungee cords. The Wave Runner surged toward the hatch.

The bungee cords tore loose. Odin’s bundle sproinged from the seat and levitated for a moment before floating toward the hatch. The bundle rotated and went headfirst into the UFO. The hatch closed.

The electric charge disappeared. My limbs relaxed. The fish in the water came to life again and fluttered away.

The UFO remained still for a moment. The rain eased and stars appeared in the black patches behind a gray mist above. The UFO rose silently and headed into the sky.

Sayonara, Gilbert Odin.

When the UFO was a speck in the mist, I reached to my waist and pulled out the blaster. Whoever shot Odin had used an alien weapon, maybe this one. I examined the knobs and the strange markings.

The rain stopped abruptly.

I looked up. The UFO loomed directly over me.

Startled, I shrank against the seat. Why had they returned? To abduct and probe me? My sphincter tightened.

I readied to dive into the water. The electric pulse returned and my limbs were paralyzed as before.

The hatch opened again and the beam of light focused on me. The blaster trembled in my hand.

A voice spoke from the light, a feminine voice, calm yet stern-like a warning from a librarian. “Let go of the weapon.”

I released my grip. The blaster floated upward through the hatch.

“Thank you.” The beam vanished. My muscles relaxed. The hatch closed and the UFO rose to zoom upward through the sky. Rain pelted me again.

I’d been hoping the ray gun would even the odds when I found Odin’s killer. Not anymore.

I grasped the handles of the Wave Runner and wondered if it would start again. Thankfully, the engine coughed to life and burbled the water. I swung the Wave Runner east and cranked the throttle full-open.

A half-mile from shore, a couple of fighter jets screeched in my direction. They roared above, two F-16s armed with air-to-air missiles. As they zoomed past, strobe lights blinking, the auras of the pilots looked like crimson smears against the darkness.

The jets pitched upward on the trajectory of the UFO. If the fighters were after the saucer, good luck. Odin’s intergalactic hearse was probably on the other side of the moon by now.

The jets disappeared into the clouds and it was just me and my questions. Didn’t the Air Force debunk UFOs? How would they explain this? Lie, of course.

I returned the Wave Runner to its slip. So far I had the name Goodman, a murder using an alien blaster, UFOs, and a warning to save the Earth women. As far as leads, I had next to bupkus.

The cawing of a crow echoed through the misty darkness.

A crow? What was a crow doing out in such a cold, wet night?

To find me.

The crow meant the Araneum-which translated into “spiderweb” in Latin and was the formal name for the worldwide network of vampires formed to protect us from extermination by humans-wanted me for a job. The Araneum used crows as messengers, and why else would that bird be here?

I felt my shoulders sag. I didn’t need more work; I was on vacation.

A small red aura gave away the crow’s position, where it sat tucked along the bottom of a shack, trying its best to stay out of the rain. The crow cawed again, an irritated squawk of discomfort.

“Shut up, you feathered bastard. I didn’t ask for you to come around.” The crow never brought good news, like I was needed in Cancún to rub sunscreen on horny coeds.

I approached, my wet shoes crunching the sand and broken shells covering the beach. I wondered what the Araneum wanted at this hour. The crow kept its small black head drawn into its shoulders to conserve warmth. This bird didn’t seem pleased to be out here, either. To the Araneum, it didn’t make a difference if you were a vampire or a crow. Duty called.

The crow turned its shivering head toward me and blinked. It struggled to stand, as if its joints had rusted, and then walked toward me in a stiff-legged limp. A shiny metal capsule was clipped to its left leg.

I picked up the crow. Its wet feathers crinkled. The small, warm body trembled. I tucked the crow’s torso under my armpit. The bird squirmed and I clamped my arm to keep it still. I unclipped the capsule, a tube made of filigreed platinum and gold, with a ruby-encrusted cap.

I hunched over to protect the capsule from the rain.

The Araneum used swatches of vampire skin as notepaper, a precaution to maintain secrecy, since the skin would burst into flame when exposed to sunlight. Rumor was the patch of skin came from a condemned vampire. But it was dark and raining. What about exposure to water?

I shook raindrops from the capsule and unscrewed the cap. The odor of rancid meat burst out like a fart. Yep, vampire hide. I extended a talon from my index finger and used the long, narrow tip to draw out the contents.

Surprisingly, there were two items inside: a folded square of onionskin-like parchment-the vampire skin-and a piece of newsprint.

The parchment unfolded to the size of the palm of my hand. A message was written in ornate calligraphy, in brown ink-dried blood? It read:

Our esteemed Felix Gomez,

The vampire underworld has a new threat, the extraterrestrials. Because of your experience with the aliens, we have chosen you to investigate this threat. Under no circumstances are you to allow yourself or any other vampire to be compromised by these extraterrestrials.