Jolie shuffled the drawings. “Is this going to work?”

“It has to,” I replied.

“What if you run into Goodman?”

“I hope I do. Because then he dies.”

There was a knock on the door and Leslie announced herself. I answered. She brought in a tray with a carafe and three heavy mugs. She set the tray on the table next to the writing pad.

Antoine took the carafe and filled a mug. The steamy aroma told us it was Peruvian Andean Gold and type B-positive.

“Is the blood fresh?” he asked.

Leslie rolled her right sleeve and showed us the new bandage on the inside of her forearm. “Any fresher and you’d need to fang me.”

Antoine nodded appreciatively and sipped his coffee.

I poured the blend into the other two mugs.

“Do you need anything else?” Leslie unrolled her sleeve and covered her arm again.

Antoine shook his head. Jolie acted as if she hadn’t heard. I thanked the chalice and dismissed her.

Antoine snagged a chair with his foot. “Jolie, sit already. You acting this nervous is going to curdle the blood in my coffee.”

Jolie stopped and stared at him. Her aura slowly dimmed, like she had turned down the burner on a stove. Grabbing another chair, she spun it around to sit astride it. She crossed her arms and propped them on the top of the chair’s back. I gave her a cup, which she sipped. Her aura dimmed a little more. Good.

Jolie said what all of us knew but none of us wanted to say: “You know that if we can’t rescue Carmen we’ll have to kill her.”

Her tone was heavy and ominous, but she was right. The protocol set by the Araneum was that no vampire could be detained under conditions that could expose the existence of the undead world. Spending the night in a drunk tank was one exception. Either the vampire was freed or, if that was not possible, the vampire would be annihilated along with evidence of its existence.

Antoine rubbed the creases growing on his forehead. “Does the Araneum know about this?”

“I haven’t said anything to them,” I replied.

“When will we tell them?” Jolie asked.

“If we fail to get Carmen out.”

Jolie stared at me. “Or destroy her.”

We all had the same question. How do you kill a friend?

“We fail and it’s shit creek,” Jolie continued. “Felix, it’s vampires like you and me that the Araneum would dispatch to handle a situation like this.” Jolie put her hand on Antoine’s knee. “No offense big guy, but you’re not the kind of muscle they’d call for this.”

Antoine waved her off. “None taken. The less I hear from the Araneum, the better.”

His aura percolated with worry. He was an artist, not a fighter. Conversion to the undead doesn’t change one’s basic nature. A crook is still a crook, a liar remains a liar, a decent musical guy, well, he’s still musical and decent, if you overlook the penchant for occasionally biting people on the neck and sucking their blood.

Antoine flipped through the writing pad and found a likeness I’d drawn of Clayborn. “Is this the alien?”

“Yeah.”

Antoine took the pad, studied the drawing, and passed it to Jolie.

She grunted dismissively and laid the pad back on the table. “That’s one ugly motherfucker. Probably got chased off his home planet for scaring the neighborhood kids.”

“Where is this Clayborn from?” Antoine asked.

Jolie chuffed. “What? You’re going to send this troll a Christmas card?”

Antoine let the sarcasm slide. “How was Carmen captured?”

“I don’t know,” I answered uncomfortably. “She went to meet a couple, boyfriend and girlfriend, for fun. You know Carmen. Turns out it was a trap.”

Jolie rose from her chair. “You know this couple?”

“I do. In fact I introduced them to Carmen.” Saying this made me feel like a dumb ass.

“Are they still at the hotel?”

“Probably.”

Jolie’s talons extended into spikes. “Good.”

Antoine downed the last of his coffee and blood. He stood from the table. “I better get going. Hunter Army Airfield is not close.”

“Either of the chalices will take you there,” I said.

Antoine returned my pen. “How exactly are you going to get in the hotel?”

Jolie unsnapped her denim vest and arched her back to stretch the tank top across her breasts. “I know men. Some stupid bastard won’t know what hit him.”

“And you, Felix?” Antoine asked. “They’ll be expecting you to come back for Carmen. They’ve certainly got your name and face on some watch list. How do you plan to get in? Transform into a wolf?”

“Nope. Nothing that complicated.” I slipped the pen back into my pocket. “I’ll be coming right through the service door.”

Iclimbed into the middle seat of the Chevy van. Leslie the chalice had used her mortuary makeup magic and fixed me up with a mustache, soul patch, and a wig. The rug gave me a disheveled look, like I hadn’t found my way to a barber’s chair since I’d crossed the border from Mexico.

Another Mexican climbed in behind me, so I was squeezed in the middle next to Pablo from Nicaragua.

Angelo Sosa, the foreman, handed us Styrofoam cups of coffee and said in Spanish, “Here’s so you sleepyheads are awake when we get to the hotel. Don’t spill anything on your uniforms, you clumsy tarugos.”

We were the night maintenance crew for the Grand Atlantic. That a bunch of immigrants were let onto a secure site should surprise no one. Back in Colorado, the newspapers had discovered that undocumented workers, most of them from Mexico (where else?), were tending the landscaping and cleaning toilets inside the perimeter of the satellite complex at Buckley Air Force Base. Weeds and dirty toilets don’t take care of themselves.

I had zapped Angelo earlier and made him forge identity papers for my application and assign me to this crew.

He looked inside the van and counted heads. He lingered for a moment on my face, his expression perturbed. My post-hypnosis control wasn’t perfect but was still good enough. I smiled at him. He smiled back and slammed the door shut.

The van pulled away from the curb and followed a panel truck loaded with clean laundry. Our headlights cut a swath through the darkness. The driver turned up the stereo and sang along to a ballad in Spanish.

We drove out of Bluffton and over the bridge onto Hilton Head Island. Traffic was light. I pretended to sip from my cup. Even with premium blood, this frog water wouldn’t have been drinkable.

How was Carmen? My kundalini noir curled anxiously. How had they captured her? What was it like being in that capsule? She had looked okay, even peaceful.

Whom was I kidding? She was on her way to a kennel on another planet.

How many other women had Goodman pimped for the aliens? And at what price? In what other evil plans was our government in cahoots with Clayborn?

The fingers of my right hand closed as if gripping the edge of Carmen’s cylinder. Before daybreak, she’d be free.

Step one was getting on this van.

Step two was getting past the guard. We made the final turn toward the resort. The headlights made the guard in a black SWAT uniform stand in relief against his shadow cast on the wall of the guardhouse.

The driver turned the stereo down. He asked, “What’s with the guard’s getup? Why all the guns?”

Pablo replied, “You know how it is. Somebody skips on their hotel tab and they blame us. Good thing we work in this country. The rich gringos have someone to blame for their troubles.”

The panel truck halted at the striped traffic bar blocking the road. The guard went to the driver’s window and shined a flashlight. He was handed a paper, which he scanned by the beam of the flashlight and then stuck his head through the driver’s window.