rings and such from the crew - I knew of some places in Mexico City where I could convert those into cash. But the first order of business was getting some less conspicuous garb.

When I landed, it must have been high noon. I changed out of the flight suit into my tourist outfit, not the one that was brain and blood spattered, and checked myself out. The claws were long gone, they just melted back to my fingers after I finished Atkins. Using my reflection from the instrument panel, I saw that the fangs were also gone. I was confident I could call forth my new natural defenses when pressed. My nails were no longer spotted, I'd have to pay attention, it was a likely sign I needed to feed the little buggers.

There was no time to hang around here, I'd landed on one of the white sandy beaches on the Caribbean Coast. There would be enough Anglos in the area for me to mix in with and if needed, I could head further into the Caribbean to avoid capture. They had their own undead legends I could play off to hide both my feeding and my passing.

While it would take some time for anything to reach here from San Antonio, I also had to consider if the Navy had anything in the area. It was a risk I had been willing to take versus the risk of the Federales mobilizing if I had landed closer to Mexico City.

I had buzzed over Cozumel when landing, so Cancun was north of here. I started jogging. I wasn't as winded as I had feared after 8 weeks in orbit. It actually felt pretty good, there was a light breeze coming off the ocean, which smelled much better than recycled sweat socks, and the warmth of the sun on my back was much welcome. The shirt was light weight, but it had a NASA logo on it. I pulled it off, both as camouflage and to work on a tan. I might be a bloodsucker, but that didn't mean I had to be as pale as a fish's underbelly.

I started jogging past some Europeans, I could catch snippets of Greek, French, and some continental Spanish. I'd had a year of it at Annapolis and I'd been living on the fringe of barrios most of my childhood. The result was I could order a churro and cuss out a Gringo, but other than that, it never really stuck, I didn't have the aptitude.

So, you can imagine my surprise when I understood that they were talking about me and my physique. I don't know what I got from my father, I didn't even know who he was, but I got my looks, and my entry to the Academy for that matter, from my mother. I don't know if it was genetic or just plain environmental, but I also got her scruples. My senior year of high school, when she finally realized I was good enough to go to college and escape the trap she was in, she dressed herself up real nice and snagged herself a congressman.

I helped in that I manned the camera that produced the porn film she was poised to release. It was amazing how willing he was to sponsor me to any of the military academies, I just had to pick one. She then told me that my dad had been a Jarhead, so off I went to Annapolis. The best education I received there was learning how to get back at someone whose face you couldn't smash in.

Anyway, I realized that the group of Europeans were all male, which explained their interest in my bod. I could hear the sounds of Cancun, probably a mile up the shore and I decided now was a good as ever. I was shameless as I traipsed down to the water and cooled off. If they had been American, gay or not, I wouldn't have done what I did next, but I sealed the deal by skinny-dipping in the crystal blue waters.

When I came up, one of the Spaniards was holding a towel and smiling coyly my way. "I noticed you forgot your's gorgeous." he offered in his native tongue.