CHAPTER TWO
I blinked myself awake. My eyes focused on a wooden chest of drawers, then closer to me, a blanket and sheets bundled around my body. Seconds ago I had been in Globeville, on the floor of Coyote’s hovel.
Now where am I?
Startled, I jerked and knocked my skull against a headboard. My gaze roved across a bedroom, lit by a smoking flame inside the glass chimney of an antique oil lamp. I sat up and took in the rest of my surroundings.
A ceramic pitcher and a large bowl sat on a washstand. Also antique. A rug stretched between the bed and a door. Bustiers, garter belts, and stockings dangled inside an open armoire. Framed pictures hung from walls papered in an Art Nouveau pattern. Heavy drapes covered a set of windows. Clothes—somehow I knew these were my clothes—lay on the seat of a plush armchair in the far corner. A pair of tall shiny boots stood alongside the chair. My boots. A wide-brimmed black hat was perched on a gun belt coiled on the back of the chair. My hat. My gun.
Everything looked like props from a western. Piano music, laughter, and the murmur of lively conversation from downstairs completed the perception. Where was I? A saloon? The air smelled of lilac perfume and spunk. I contemplated the armoire and its display of women’s undergarments. Not a saloon. A bordello.
I tucked my arm under the pillow, and my fingers touched the cold metal form of a pistol. I slipped out a bird’s head pocket revolver, what was known in the Wild West as a hideout gun. The markings on the barrel read Johnson & Bye .32 caliber. It was nickel plated with mother-of-pearl grips—a pimp’s heater. I also knew it was mine, which begged the question: Was I a pimp? Why the need for a loaded gun under my pillow? Was I here for business or pleasure?
Or was this a dream?
I weighed the little pistol in my hand and looked about the room. Sniffed. No dream—the details were too real. Then what was going on?
As I slid the revolver back under the pillow, a hazy memory floated through my mind. That of Coyote and the smoke and the maggot and his last words before I had fallen unconscious.
You’ll never know what to expect, so be ready.
Be ready for what? Had Coyote transported me through a psychic portal like he’d done last year, when he sent Jolie and me to a different planet to rescue Carmen? No, this felt different. This was more than a new place; this was a new time, a new reality.
I was naked beneath the covers, and I extended my hairy leg from under the blanket. Why couldn’t I see my aura? I blinked and realized I wasn’t wearing my contacts. I should see my aura!
I caught my reflection in a floor mirror that faced the bed. My reflection? How was this possible? I locked in on my image, the panic settling into wonder. A very macho shoe brush of a mustache obscured my upper lip. When the hell had I grown that womb-broom? And when was the last time I had seen my reflection? Not since before I was turned. Studying my eyes, I realized they didn’t shine with a vampire’s red glow as they should. They looked … normal. Human.
I held my arm over the bedcover and noticed a shadow. I waved my arm and the shadow followed. I waved both of my arms, and they both cast a shadow. My shadow. The first time I’d seen mine in years.
My mood sagged. Was I no longer an immortal bloodsucker?
Then deep inside, my kundalini noir stirred, as if it too had been knocked out for the journey, stretching and squirming like a serpent crawling out of its den. That was good news. A kundalini noir confirmed that I was still a vampire.
I willed my fangs to extend. They snapped out, and I ran my tongue across their sharp points. Fangs, check. I opened my hands and spread my fingers. Talons, check.
Examining my hands and arms, I noticed they were a nice shade of Mexican brown. I scrubbed my skin to see if any makeup rubbed off. None did. This complexion was all Felix Gomez. A similar phenomenon had happened years before, the result of a rare spider’s bite, and it hadn’t ended well. I hoped this was different.
Scars blemished my arms, both legs, my torso. Welted flesh with stitch marks, wrinkled burned skin, puckered bullet wounds. Some old, some fresh, and more than I had earlier. I must have pissed off a lot of people in this place, just like home. And more disturbingly, the welter of scars across my belly looked like I had sustained a fatal wound. Yet here I was.
A hundred questions piled inside my mind. Were there other vampires? Did I have to hide my supernatural persona? How about the Araneum—the underground network of vampires—did they exist? Why did Coyote send me here? What did he expect me to do? How was I supposed to get back?
Disconnected thoughts tumbled through my head. Fragmented images. Passages from Coyote’s book, scribbled on pages that had shriveled into black ash. Large chunks of awareness failed to congeal like I was suffering from amnesia.
Footfalls approached outside the door. Footfalls that echoed in a hallway. The quick steps of a woman wearing heels.
My kundalini noir remained calm, alert, cautious. Not certain if supernaturals had to hide in this world, I retracted my fangs and talons, just in case. I fixed my eyes on the door, to a crystal doorknob with an old-fashioned keyhole underneath. The knob turned.
A woman entered. Cherubic face with rouged cheeks. Curls of brunette hair were pinned to the top of her head, exposing the nape of a graceful neck. A short robe in a floral print was cinched around her curvy frame. Dark stockings covered her legs and she wore heeled sandals fastened with silk ribbons.
She hung a fresh towel on a rack of the washstand. I was staring at her back when a name popped into my head. I said, “Eunice.” That was her name, I was certain. But how did I know?
She turned and swiveled large blue eyes toward me. One eyebrow lifted. “What’s that look? Ready for another throw?”
“Depends.” A roll in the sack with her sounded like a great welcome to wherever I was, but somehow I felt like I had to be somewhere soon. I was not a pimp; I made my living solving other people’s problems, and a big problem needed my attention. “What time is it?”
She grasped a gold pocket watch—my watch—from the washstand and flicked it open. “Nine twenty-two.”
I looked to the curtains and didn’t see any light spill past them. It should be dark outside but just to make sure, I asked, “AM or PM?”
Her brow knit. “What?”
“Morning or night?”
She gave her pretty head a slow shake, and a smile curved her painted lips. “Did I rattle your brain that much, Felix? If so, I should charge you extra.”
She got my name right, and that reassured me. “Then which is it? Night or day?”
“Night,” she answered, puzzled. “Just an hour since I left you.”
I considered Eunice and my vintage surroundings. “What year is this?”
Her expression wilted. “Now you’re being worrisome.”
“Humor me. What year?”
“Eighteen eighty-seven. June 3rd. Friday.”
I let the date sink in. “Where are we?”
“Quit acting loopy. You haven’t turned into a hop-head, have you?”
“A what?” Then I remembered that vintage slang, hop-head—opium fiend. I sat up and swung my legs off the bed. “No, I haven’t been hitting the pipe. Please, Eunice, where are we?”
She sauntered dramatically to the window and threw the drapes back. Windows panes divided a night sky into dark rectangles. The reflection of streetlamps smeared the glass. She extended one hand, palm upward, and announced, “Behold, St. Charles on the Platte River of the West Kansas Territories.”
Her statement hammered me square. I was still in Denver, but if this was 1887, the name she offered was wrong by about thirty years. St. Charles was the original moniker for the town before William Larimer and a bunch of other cronies—make that founding fathers—jumped an earlier claim on the settlement. They greased their subterfuge by offering to name the place after the then-governor of Kansas. Hence, Denver. And by 1887 the West Kansas Territories had become the state of Colorado. But none of that had happened here. How much else had changed from what I knew as history?
A set of men’s drawers lay on the rug by the bed. My drawers for sure. I stepped into them and padded barefoot to the window. I looked down from a second story onto a bustling street. A crowd of mostly men, in late nineteenth-century frontier or city clothes, wandered the sidewalks below. The few women wore Victorian dress. Shadows shrank and grew from people as they circulated past gas lanterns perched on tall poles at the street corners. More light spilled from windows and doors facing the sidewalk. Horses with riders trotted over the hard-packed, dirt street. Other horses plodded along, pulling wagons. People milled about, chatting with one another, while others darted across the busy intersection. The ambiance seemed unusually festive.
“Why the crowd?” I asked. “Is it a holiday?”
“Holiday?” she replied. “It’s a payday weekend. Folks come into town spending money like lonely sailors on liberty, thank goodness.”
A three-story, brick building stood across the road, flanked by similar structures to the left and right. The location seemed vaguely familiar. “We’re at the corner of Market and 20th,” I said, a memory gathering.
“Yeah,” Eunice said. “But given all the nonsense you’ve been talking, I’m surprised anything came to mind.”
A horseless wagon rumbled down Market, smoke and sparks puffing from a tall stack fixed to a barrel-like engine at the front of the vehicle. Levers and pistons jutted from the engine, steering the front wheels. A circular port on the engine, with an orange light shining through, made the machine resemble a mechanical Cyclops. A man sitting at the rear of the bed guarded the load of crates. I studied the vehicle to find the driver and didn’t see one. The wagon stuttered and lurched along a crooked path as if it were blind. People scrambled out of its way.
“What is that?” I asked.
Eunice peeked out the window. “An automatic buckboard.”
That did not sound familiar. “Who is driving it?”
“It’s automatic. It steers itself. More or less, anyway.” She squinted at my face. “You seemed sane and sober when you came in. Did you fall off a horse and the concussion is just catching up? Maybe another woman kicked you in the head?”
I turned back to the mirror and focused on my face. Besides the mustache, my hair was longer. Greasy strands curled past the tops of my ears and down my neck. I’d always kept it short and neat. My eyes gleamed from inside chiseled sockets, accented by thick eyebrows.
I was looking at myself, of that I was certain. But I was new here. What happened to the Felix I’d replaced? Had he taken my place back in Coyote’s shack in Globeville? Was he as confused as I was? Or was there only one Felix—me—and I had been dropped mid-stream into another existence? I thought hard about what Coyote had told me, hoping for clues to help me understand my predicament, but none came.
“You’re not that easy on one’s constitution, Felix,” Eunice said, breaking me out of my fugue. “So quit staring at yourself. You’ll wear out the mirror.”
“Sorry, I’m a little distracted.”
“A little? A man looks at his reflection in this place, he should be expecting to see a girl bent over in front of him, her titties slapping together, the two of them making a show.”
Glancing to Eunice, I grinned. Maybe next time.
I stepped to the washstand. My pocket watch lay beside the bowl, and I examined the fob at the end of the gold chain. A bronze medallion. Make that a medal; a military award. It featured a trident and a musket forming a cross, a silver star shined where they intersected. Two sharks flanked the trident. The words along the top of the medal read: Por Valor—For Valor. And along the bottom: Batalla por Isla Tiburón, Golfo de California—Battle for Shark Island, Gulf of California. Shark Island? Was there such a place? And when did this happen? I turned the medal over. The reverse featured a stylized eagle, spread wings with squared tips, and beneath the bird’s claws: Ejercito de Aztlan—Army of Aztlan.
Aztlan, the mythical birthplace of the Aztecs. Aztlan exists? And it had an army? And they gave me a medal?
I clasped the medal in my hand and closed my eyes. I saw Asian men, Chinese infantry fighting with and against Mexican soldiers. Water surged around my ankles, water that ran red and warm from bodies strewn along a beach, mowed down by steam-powered Gatling guns. Artillery blasts and screams jolted me, and my eyes sprang open, ending the vision.
I set the medal beside a bunch of coins I assumed were mine. Choosing a silver half-dollar (Seated Liberty, United States of America), I read its date: 1872. To see if I retained my supernatural strength, I levered the coin over the knuckle of my index finger and used my thumb and middle finger to crease it. The coin bent, though not as easily as I remembered it should.
Eunice watched, astonished.
Apparently, she didn’t know I had preternatural powers. I pressed the coin between my hands until it was flat again. “It’s a parlor trick, that’s all.” I flipped the coin to her. “Keep it.”
She snatched the coin midair and then tried to bend it. “How did you—”
“It’s a trick, I just told you.”
I approached the armchair and gave my clothing the once-over. Nice duds. I did dress well. Curious about my choice of primary shooting iron, I slipped the revolver from its holster on the cartridge belt, waxed brown leather with polished brass fittings. The pistol was a Richards-Mason cartridge conversion of a Colt Navy, the octagonal barrel shortened for a quick draw. Its bluing was worn, the metal nicked and scratched like a well-used tool. A saloon girl had been carved into both ivory grips, yellowed with hairline cracks.
I flipped open the loading gate to see a nice fat cartridge waiting to do its duty. The markings stamped on the rim read .45 Colt. You hit a man with a slug from this, he goes down and he stays down. Hmmm, an original Navy was .36 caliber so mine had been bored out and modified to accept a bigger round. I levered the hammer to half-cock and rotated the cylinder, the mechanism indexing with precise and satisfying clicks. Odd that I carried this antiquated, custom-made piece given the more modern choices that should be available. So even in this alternative setting I marched out of step. I lowered the hammer onto an empty chamber and returned the revolver to its holster. Brass cartridges filled the loops stitched to the gun belt and brought a menacing heft to my rig. People fucked with me, I was going to fuck back.
Eunice chuckled.
“What’s so funny?” I asked.
“You’re such a typical pistolero. You come to a whorehouse and spend more time playing with your gun than with pussy.”
“Guns keep me alive, darling.” I set my gaze on her crotch. “The day that little clam kills someone, let me know and I’ll put it in my holster.”
“It’s broken plenty of hearts, does that count?”
“Unfortunately, no.” I scooped my clothes and laid them on one of the arms of the chair. I pulled on a white undershirt and sat on the seat cushion.
“Are you leaving?” she asked.
“I’ve got to be someplace at ten.” How did I know this?
“Will you be back?”
I also knew that I wouldn’t. “Don’t hesitate to take another customer.” I plucked socks from inside my boots. My right boot had a sheath, with dagger, sewn inside the calf. My left boot, a small leather holster, most certainly for the Johnson & Bye. Only a rough man would be so well armed.
“You paid for the night,” Eunice noted, sadly. I must’ve been a favorite client.
I slipped my socks on, then my trousers.
“No refunds,” she added, “or credit for the next time.”
I shrugged.
“Where are you going?” she asked, still petulant.
The answer came to me without thinking, yet the thought of my destination was ice-cold with foreboding.
“To see the Dragon.”