Clayborn licked the eyeball to moisten it and screwed it back into the socket. “I remain true to my principles.”

Alien on the right nodded. “So you see, it would be pointless to question him.”

Jolie massaged Clayborn’s neck. “Then you’ll help us find Carmen. I can’t abandon my friend.” Her aura brightened with anger.

“Our friend,” I added.

The leader answered, “Like I mentioned, that was a Class 4 violation. We have the Class 1s and 2s to investigate first.”

“Too bad for your friend,” said alien on the left. “We have our orders.”

“Meaning Clayborn keeps his secrets.”

“Probably.” The leader beckoned that I turn Clayborn over to him. “We need to take him.”

Jolie’s aura raged with defiance. “You said dead or alive?” Her talons extended quick as hornets’ stingers. With a move that would’ve been invisible to mortal eyes, Jolie’s talons scissored Clayborn’s neck. One second she was standing behind him, clasping his neck. An instant later she backed away, her hands held up. “Then take him.”

Clayborn wobbled in place. His knees buckled, his body sagged, and his head tipped forward. Purple blood gushed from the neck toward the alien cop trio.

They recoiled in horror. By the time they gathered themselves, Clayborn had plopped dead between them. His head plunked facedown into the sand. I held the empty hoop of wire.

The leader paced forward and examined the corpse. He sighed with disappointment.

I extended my talons and readied myself for the attack. “Don’t try to take us.”

The leader shook his head. “Earthlings are outside my jurisdiction. I’m pissed because you just cost me a bonus.” He shoved the pistol into a holster. He waved to his comrades. “Grab his arms and legs.” The leader picked up Clayborn’s head and jammed his fingers into the nostrils and mouth. He held the head like a bowling ball and at an angle, to keep the still dripping stump from soiling him with purple blood.

“What about Carmen?” Jolie asked.

“Can’t help you.”

“How can we find her?”

“Know any detectives?”

Jolie pointed at me.

The leader stopped and gave me the once-over. “Good luck, lady.”

He followed the others up the ramp but slipped and caught himself before falling again. “I’ll be glad to get home,” he muttered. “This isn’t worth the overtime.”

The ramp retracted into the hatch, which then closed. The hum started once more. The saucer lifted and the three landing struts folded flush with the belly. The saucer rose into the sky, going faster and faster, and became a black circle that shrank into the void of night.

I stared into the spot where I’d last seen the saucer disappear. Jolie sat on the bottom lip of the helicopter cargo door. Her aura tightened and waves of despair pulsed through it. Her shoulders quaked and she rubbed her eyes. “Damn it, I wish I could cry.”

She turned her vampire eyes to me. This was the first time I’d ever seen tapetum lucidum clouded with grief. “Where is Carmen? How can we get her back?”

She might as well have asked me to shit rocket fuel.

I looked back to the stars. Carmen was among them, not in a spiritual sense but for real. In a UFO, like she’d always wished for, but not under these circumstances. All my life I’d looked up at the night sky and wondered when and if it were possible to cruise among them. Now I knew it was not only possible but that I had to. How? And when?

“Call me a coward?” Antoine’s voice carried across the marsh. He marched toward us, splashing through the muck, his orange aura signaling a fight.

“You’re late for the festivities,” I told him.

“Late hell.” He pointed to the sky. “They left early.” Antoine hefted a two-by-four with a big nail sticking out one end. “I needed something to even the odds. Took me forever to find this.”

“Antoine, I can’t even give you credit for trying. They had blasters and God knows what else. A board with a nail in it wouldn’t have done much.”

Antoine swung the two-by-four like a ball bat. “Let me hit you and then you tell me.” He turned to Jolie. “What’s up, babe?”

She started to explain. Antoine walked up to her and they hugged. A moment later, Antoine tore himself from her and flung the two-by-four into the sky. “Useless bastards.” The board whirled and splashed into the marsh a hundred meters away.

Jolie checked her phone. “It’s still dead.”

Antoine leaned into the pilot’s side of the cockpit and flicked switches. “Same here.”

I said, “We better get moving before the government comes looking for their helicopter. Antoine, you lead the way.”

He tugged at Jolie’s hand. She pulled free, straightened up, and marched alongside him up the sandy road. I followed right behind.

Antoine began to trot. Jolie and I took up the pace.

“What about you, Felix?” He quickened the trot into a run. “How do you plan on bringing Carmen back?”

What was my answer? I glanced back to the sky and the stars. Carmen was a long distance away, even for a vampire.

I headed back to Colorado on I-10. I drove straight through, stopping only to gas my Cadillac and to hide in the restroom of a Houston diner while I waited for the sunrise to pass. Some big, bad vampire I was, loitering in the stall of a men’s room. Times like these made me wish for another spider bite…almost.

Afterward I sat at the counter and ordered a large coffee and a breakfast burrito to go. Outside, I dumped half of the coffee from the Styrofoam cup. Back in my car I set the coffee in a console cup holder and unwrapped the burrito, which I lay on my lap. From the console I pulled out a plastic squirt bottle of type A-negative. I filled the cup so the mixture was fifty-fifty blood and coffee. I took a sip and added a little more blood. I pumped a couple of squirts of blood into the burrito. Mmmm, egg, jalapeño, and type A.

I didn’t want to think about what had happened in the last two weeks, I only wanted to get home. The enormity of the loss of Carmen overwhelmed me. This was worse than her being dead for good. In this case, the great sea of space and getting Carmen back seemed as impossible as me plucking a star from the heavens.

I couldn’t do anything about it, and worrying didn’t do anything except leave me frazzled and feeling helpless.

Something rapped against my car. I looked up. A crow peeked over the upper left corner of the windshield.

A crow? This meant the Araneum wanted something.

The bird’s claws scratched across the roof of the Cadillac. The little black head appeared over my side window and tapped again, this time impatiently.

I felt a queasy hollowness and I knew I was in trouble. I had failed in my mission. I found out about the alien threat but the cost had been losing Carmen.

My appetite vanished and I put the burrito and coffee away. I scrolled the window down. The crow perched on the windowsill, facing me. A filigreed capsule the size of my little finger was clipped to the crow’s right leg.

I caressed the crow’s warm, soft head. The beady eyes expressed no emotion. With my other hand, I slipped the capsule from its leg.

I spread my knees and held the capsule low between my legs to keep it in shadow. I unscrewed the jeweled ruby cap from the platinum-and-gold capsule. The familiar and rancid smell of flayed vampire skin wafted upward. I used my little finger to pull out a roll of parchment.

I unrolled the tissue-thin paper and read this note.

We’ve been texting you. Check your cell phone.

Araneum

So the Araneum had gone snippy on me. I had a new cell phone but no car charger, so I had left the phone off to conserve the battery. I turned the phone on and got an alert that I had several voice mails and a text message waiting.