“Colorado.”
Clayborn nodded again, his manner less amused than irritated. “What’s your business here?”
“To get my friend Carmen. Let her go and then we’ll chat over tea and cookies. Where is she? Why did you take her?”
He rolled the cigar between his fingers. “That concerns my business.”
“Which is what?”
Clayborn blinked. When his eyes closed, both wrinkled eyelids looked like the butt ends of overripe avocados. That creepy smile deepened. He pressed the cigar against his nose slits and inhaled. “You smoke?”
“No.”
“Pity. This is a Bolivar Belicosos Fino.” For a guy from a million miles away from here, Clayborn’s Spanish pronunciation was pretty good. Clayborn shifted and slid his free hand into a side pocket of his coat.
I flexed my legs. If he took out anything other than something to light his cigar with, he’d end up with a stump.
He produced a cigar clipper. After trimming the pointed end of the cigar, he put the cigar nub and clipper into his pocket and retrieved a cheap plastic lighter. He brought the cigar to his face. The flesh around his mouth extended to grasp the cigar. He sparked the lighter, bellowed his cheeks, and lit the cigar.
Puffs of spicy, aromatic smoke clouded the air between us. Magicians smoked to distract their audiences. What tricks did this alien joker plan?
“You’re here on business, right?” I asked. “Then what do you want for my friend?”
Clayborn lifted his chin. His eyes narrowed to ebony slits. “Ah, a deal? What have you got?”
I’d give anything to guarantee Carmen’s release. I offered Clayborn my most prized possession:
“Me.”
Chapter
42
After a moment, the smoke lost its pleasant notes and the smell became heavy and stale. Clayborn kept puffing on the cigar and fouling the air. A fan clicked on and the smoke swirled upward through a vent in the ceiling.
Clayborn removed the cigar from his mouth and examined it. “I can’t do that.”
“Why not?” I curled my hands into fists to hide my extending talons.
“Because your friend is worth more to me than you are.”
“How so?” I fought to keep my fangs from sprouting from under my lip. I wanted to attack Clayborn and make him suffer, but I knew this intergalactic mafioso wouldn’t have allowed me here without a scheme to keep me at bay. If I wanted Carmen back, I had to behave myself.
“Let me put this in a context you’ll understand.” Clayborn put the cigar in his lipless mouth and talked around it. “Among my ‘people,’” he made quote marks with his hands, “the name for this planet is Harnaz, which means ‘the forbidden jewel.’ We have myths of heroes risking everything for Harnaz, often tragically.”
“I can help you get to the tragic part and it won’t be a myth.”
Clayborn pulled the cigar out. He paused and let smoke linger in his open mouth before puffing it out. “Since you’re from ‘Colorado,’” he made more quote marks in the air, “you’re not much of a space traveler, are you? If you were, you’d realize what a treasure this planet is.”
He brought the cigar before his face. “Take this for example. Such an aroma. Exquisite. Reminds me of the Luzee, the inhabitants of Quark-42. They consume these extravagant feasts and then emit wonderful olfactory melodies through their various orifices.”
“Let me eat some beans and I’ll fart you a symphony.”
Clayborn stuck the cigar back into his mouth. He snorted, “Ha. Ha. Ha.” Little balls of smoke jetted from his ears.
“What’s this got to do with Carmen?” I asked.
Clayborn tapped an ember from the cigar into the ashtray. “You know about the psychic world?”
“You mean Tarot cards and Ouija boards?”
“I’m talking about the many dimensions of the universe. Coincidences are more than random chance,” Clayborn replied. “Living creatures have psychic energy fields that bind them together. Me. You. Carmen.”
“I only know about the here and now,” I said. “That’s all.”
Clayborn appeared disappointed by my answer, like he was hoping I’d join him on common ground. He kept tapping his cigar. The tiny bumps undulating across his aura formed larger nodules in the energy sheath.
It was good that I made him uncomfortable. “And this interest in the psychic world is what brought you to Earth?”
“Some of my colleagues died testing an invention, the psychotronic device.” Clayborn took a puff. “The infamous Roswell crash. You’ve heard of it?”
I shrugged. But I did know about Roswell and the psychotronic device. That was the reason Odin wanted me to infiltrate government security at Rocky Flats, to recover the psychotronic device from the UFO. When I learned that the device was designed to control humans by manipulating their psychic energy, I destroyed it. We vampires weren’t sharing our humans with any aliens.
“The psychotronic device proved to be a dead end,” Clayborn said. “For now. Manipulating psychic energy is a frustrating challenge. How then can we control humans?”
“Why do you want to control them?”
“Humans are the most violent and treacherous of all creatures. If we want to do business here, we’ll need every advantage.” Clayborn stared at me, as if trying to peer straight through my skull and into my brain.
I matched his gaze until he looked away. Never try a staring contest with a vampire.
“We’ve studied humans for a long time. Even with our superior technology, we know from their stories that they’d fight a military conquest. I’ve read War of the Worlds.” Clayborn looked back at me. “The ability to wage war is the most developed of their society’s traits. We’d be playing to their strongest suit.”
Given the centuries of art and literature, it was telling that the aliens considered war-mongering humanity’s greatest achievement.
“The situation here requires a delicate hand.” Clayborn’s fingers undulated like snakes.
“Of course it does, considering the quarantine.” I couldn’t help but smile. “Gilbert Odin told me about it. You and he are not supposed to be here.”
I wanted this extraterrestrial scumbag to realize I knew of his part in this murderous game. “Why did you kill him?”
Clayborn withdrew the cigar, looked at it, then at me, and frowned, as if the cigar had lost its flavor and I was to blame. “How does that concern you?”
“Because now it concerns Carmen.”
Clayborn pointed one of those tentacled fingers at me. “Only because you got involved.”
I wanted to twist that finger off his hand. “You’re right. Where do we go from here?” I pressed the argument. “The U.S. government has invested a lot in protecting you. Why?”
“Power.” Clayborn rubbed his fingertips together. “Money. We learned that humans are as greedy as they are violent. Why fight them? Why not make it in their interest to give us what we want? We’d approach those in power, the leaders of the largest governments and businesses, and offer to sell our technology.”
“What technology?”
“The easiest to deliver and the most profitable. What we’d appeal to is human vanity. Sell to the emotion, the intangible. Their culture is obsessed with appearances and the trappings of sexuality.”
Appearances and sexuality? “I don’t follow you.”
“You’ve heard of the actualizers of Rizè-Blu?” Clayborn smirked, the kind of smirk I’d expect from a frog after it devoured its insect prey. “I brought them here.”
What would it take for a vampire to let his jaw drop in astonishment? This news. The months of relentless hype on every venue: billboards, television, radio, print, Internet, podcasts, text-message blasts, even urinal cakes. Take our pills. Grow your hair. Lose your hair. Get bigger breasts. A harder erection. Rizè-Blu was making billions and the campaign was only a few months old. And aliens were behind it all?