Free The Undead Kama Sutra by Mario Acevedo

fangs to keep him unconscious but I couldn’t bite and drive.
    So I slugged him across the jaw. “Sorry pal, but I’m on a mission to save the Earth women.”
    His eyes rolled back into their sockets and I expected to see them display TILT !, like a pinball machine.
    I coaxed the truck across the lanes until I was behind Johnson. He kept reading his mirrors, though he seemed clueless that I tailed him in this big white truck, as conspicuous as a beluga whale on roller skates.
    Once at Key West, he continued south on Truman Avenue and parked beside a strip joint called Bottoms Up. I pulled over.
    Johnson hustled out of his Mustang. Bumps like welts formed along his aura, signaling anxiety. He turned against the car like he was going to pee. Johnson lifted his shirt and checked an automatic he had tucked inside the waist of his shorts. His aura calmed.
    Off-duty cops carried guns. Did Johnson check his pistol because he thought he might need it? Against whom? Was he undercover?
    Johnson made a brief call on his cell phone. He climbed the short steps to the porch. A doorman greeted him. When the door opened, a roar spilled out, sounding like that rude, fun place between a drunken riot and bedlam. Johnson disappeared inside.
    The street was too busy for me to abandon the truck there. I turned the corner and parked in a loading zone. I left the driver snoring behind the steering wheel, his chin hooked over the rim. He’d been such a good sport about this—the hijacking and the punch to the face—that I tucked a hundred-dollar bill under his cap.
    I turned the corner when Johnson appeared in a side exit of the Bottoms Up. His aura roiled with excitement. Why theside exit and not the front? He held a cell phone against his cheek and talked with great animation.
    I halted and retreated behind the cover of a myrtle bush. He was two hundred feet away and too far for me to pick up what he was saying.
    Johnson hesitated outside the threshold of the door. He looked down the street as if checking to see whether someone followed him.
    Johnson put his phone away and proceeded at a brisk pace, going west on Windsor Lane. I gave him a minute’s head start. With my contacts out, I would have no problem tailing him.
    He cut left and right through the neighborhood, stopping occasionally to pretend he was making a phone call, as he scanned back over where he’d been. I was able to hang back a block and track him by glimpsing his aura. When he halted, I stayed behind the cover of garden shrubs lining the sidewalk. Because of the shimmer of his aura, I could tell he was only being careful, though I wondered why he seemed to be taking these precautions against being followed. Why had he left his Mustang at the Bottoms Up and where was he going?
    Had he spotted a tail, meaning me, his aura would’ve flared in alarm. Instead it remained at an even, nervous burn.
    Johnson continued in a westerly direction. When he reached Caroline Street, he stopped and glanced around.
    He walked the last block to the marina and got on the dock. He unfastened the lines of a twenty-foot cruiser and got aboard. I kept in the shadows and darted across the marina. Abank of lampposts lit the dock and I couldn’t get closer without being spotted.
    Johnson nudged the throttle and drifted from the dock. He turned the running lights on.
    The harbor was full of boats and I needed something before Johnson motored out of view. Closest to me was a rust bucket of a powerboat. It was an older hull, the cracked vinyl seats mended with duct tape and the windshield missing one panel. Empty cans and the ragged pieces of a Styrofoam cooler littered the floor.
    I checked the tank—it was full—and lowered the outboard Evinrude into the water. The lock on the throttle lever was no problem to break. I reached under the instrument panel, hot-wired the ignition, and fired up the engine.
    Johnson cruised past the buoys and out of the harbor. I kept my distance, at least a quarter mile