Bloodsucking Fiends

Chapter 15 Learning the Licks

They took their shoes off and did it again. The second time was less urgent and they tried to impress each other with their respective repertoires of mattress tricks. Jody was careful not to appear too experienced and Tommy pulled on everything he had ever read, from Penthouse to National Geographic, trying not to appear too naive, while fighting the urge to shout "Gee whiz" with her every move. There was entirely too much thinking involved on both their parts and they finished thinking, Well, that was pretty okay. Jody's fangs stayed safely sheathed behind her canines.

She said, "What was that you shouted at the end?"

"It was a Bantu love cry. I think it translates, 'Oh baby, polish my lip saucer. »

"Interesting," Jody said.

They lay there for a while, not talking, feeling uncomfortable and a little embarrassed. Whatever intimacy they shared physically was not echoed emotionally. They were strangers.

Tommy felt that he should confess something personal, something to match the outrageous trust she had put in him by telling him her secret. At the same time he was curious, and a little bit afraid. It wasn't as if she had shown him a hidden tattoo. She was a vampire. How do you match that? How do you file that? Under "Adventure," he thought. I wanted adventure, and here it is.

"Tommy," she said, not looking at him, talking more or less to the ceiling, "I'll understand if you don't want to stay, but I'd like you to."

"I've never lived with anyone before. This is all new to me. I mean, you probably have a lot more experience than I do at this."

"Well, not exactly like this. I've lived with a few guys."

"A few?"

"Ten, I think. But not under these circumstances."

"Ten? You must be ancient. No offense. I mean, I knew that you were older, but I thought it was just a few years. Not centuries."

She rolled over and looked him in the eye. "I'm twenty-six."

"Sure, you look twenty-six. But you've probably looked this way for years. You probably have pictures of yourself with Abraham Lincoln and stuff, right?"

"No, I'm twenty-six. I've been twenty-six for about six months."

"But how long… I mean… Were you born like…"

"I've been a vampire for four days."

"So you're twenty-six."

"That's what I've been telling you."

"And you've lived with ten guys?"

She got out of bed and started gathering her clothes. "Look, I don't use the best judgment when it comes to relationships. Okay?"

He turned away from her. "Well, thanks a lot."

"I didn't mean you. I meant in the past."

He sat on the edge of the bed and hung his head. "I feel so used."

"Used?" She leaped over the bed and stood in front of him. "Used?" She put her finger under his chin and lifted it until he was looking at her. "I've trusted you with the biggest secret I have. I've offered to share my life with you."

"Oh, like that's an exclusive privilege." He pulled away from her and resumed pouting.

Jody snatched a shoe off the floor and prepared to whack him with it, then remembered what she had done to Kurt and dropped it. "Why are you being such an asshole?"

"You drank my blood!"

"Yeah, well, I'm sorry about that."

"You didn't even ask."

"And you didn't protest, either."

"I thought it was a sex thing."

"It was."

"It was?" He stopped pouting and looked up at her. "Does that turn you on?"

Jody thought, Why are men never prepared for the toxic radiation of afterglow? Why can't they ride it through without becoming detached whiners or aggressive jerks? They don't get it, that cuddling afterward has nothing to do with warm, fuzzy feelings; it's just the most intelligent way to ride the wave of post-coital depression.

"Tommy, I came so hard, my toes curled. No man has ever made me feel like that before." How many times have I said that? she thought.

"Yeah?"

She nodded.

He smiled, feeling proud of himself. "Let's do it again."

"No, we need to talk."

"Okay. But then…"

"Put on your clothes."

Tommy scampered naked out of the bedroom to get a fresh pair of jeans from his suitcase. As he dressed, the infinite possibilities of life swam through his head. Only a week ago he had been staring down the barrel of a life spent in a factory town — of a union job, of a series of financed Fords, a mortgage, too many kids, and a wife who'd go to fat. Sure, there was a certain nobility in being responsible and raising a family — seeing that they never did without. But when his father told him on his eighteenth birthday that he needed to start planning his retirement, he felt his future tighten on him like an anaconda. His father had made it clear that the money for college wasn't there — so after he went to the City and starved, he could come home and get a job down at the factory and get down to the business of being an adult. But not now. He was a City guy now, part of the world; he was involved with a vampire, and the danger of living a normal, boring life had passed completely. He knew he should be afraid, but he was too elated to think about it.

He slid into his jeans and ran back to the bedroom, where Jody was getting dressed. "I'm hungry," he said. "Let's go out and get something to eat."

"I can't eat," she said.

"Not at all?"

"Not as far as I know. I can't even keep a glass of water down."

"Wow. Do you have to have blood every day?"

"I don't think so."

"Does it have to be — I mean, can you use animals, or does it have to be people?"

Jody thought about the moth she had eaten and felt as if she'd just downed a cocktail mixed of two parts shame and five parts disgust, with a twist of nausea. "I don't know, Tommy. I didn't exactly get an instruction book."

He was bouncing around the room like a hyperactive child. "How did it happen? Did you sell your soul to Satan? Am I going to turn into a vampire? Are you in a coven or something?"

She wheeled on him. "Look, I don't know. I don't know anything. Let me get dressed and we'll go get something for you to eat. I'll explain then, okay?"

"Well, you don't have to bite my head off."

"Maybe I do," she snarled, surprised at the acid in her voice.

Tommy backed away from her, his eyes wide with fear. She felt horrible. Why did I say that? This was happening too often, this loss of control — showing her burned hand to the bum on the bus, knocking Kurt out, eating the moth, and now threatening Tommy; none of it seemed to be by choice. It was as if vampirism carried with it a crampless case of rattlesnake PMS.

"I'm sorry, Tommy. This has been hard."

"It's okay." He picked up the jeans she had destroyed and began emptying the pockets. "I guess these are done for." He pulled out the business card that the motel manager had given him. "Hey, I forgot to tell you. This cop wants to talk to you."

Jody stopped in the middle of tying her shoes. "Cop?"

"Yeah, an old lady was killed at the motel last night. There were a zillion cops around when I got there this morning. They wanted to talk to everyone that was staying in the motel."

"How was she killed, Tommy? Do you know?"

"Somebody broke her neck and…" He stopped and stared at her, backing away again toward the bathroom.

"What?" she demanded. "Her neck was broken and what?"

"She'd lost a lot of blood," he whispered. "But there weren't any wounds." He bolted into the bathroom and shut the door.

Jody could hear him throw the lock. "I didn't kill her, Tommy."

"That's fine," he said.

"Open the door. Please."

"I can't, I'm peeing." He turned on the water.

"Tommy, come out, I'm not going to hurt you. Let's go get you something to eat and I'll explain."

"You go ahead," he said. "I'll catch up to you. Wow, I really had to go. Must have been all that coffee I drank today."

"Tommy, I swear I didn't know anything about this until you told me."

"Look at this," he said through the door, "I found that crucifix I lost last week. And what's this? My lucky vial of holy water."

"Tommy, stop it. I'm not going to hurt you. I don't want to hurt anybody."

"Oh, my garlic wreath. I wondered where I'd put that." Jody grabbed the door knob and yanked. The doorjamb splintered and the door came away in her hand. Tommy dived into the tub and peeked over the edge at her.

She said, "Let's go get you something to eat. We need to talk." He pulled himself up slowly, ready to dive down the drain if she made a move. She backed away.

He looked at the ruined doorjamb. "We're going to lose our deposit now; you know that, right?" Jody threw the door aside and offered her hand to help him out of the tub. "Can I buy you some fries? I'd really like to watch you eat some French fries."

"That's weird, Jody."

"Compared to what?"

They walked to Market Street where, even at ten o'clock, the sidewalks were crowded with bums and hustlers and teams of podiatrists who had escaped the Moscone Convention Center to seek out burgers, pizzas, and beer in the heart of the City. Jody watched the heat ghosts trailing the street people while Tommy handed out coins like a meter-maid angel trying to atone for a lifetime of giving chickenshit tickets.

He dropped a quarter into the palm of a half-fingered glove worn by a woman who was pretending to be a robot, but who looked more like a golem newly shaped from gutter filth. Jody noticed a black aura around the woman, as she had seen around the old man on the bus; she could smell disease and the rawness of open lesions and she almost pulled Tommy away.

A few steps away she said, "You don't have to give them all money just because they ask, you know."

"I know, but if I give them money I don't see their faces when I'm about to fall asleep."

"It doesn't really help. She'll just spend it on booze or drugs."

"If I was her, so would I."

"Good point," Jody said. She took his arm and led him into a burger joint named No Guilt: orange Formica tables over industrial-gray carpet, giant backlit transparencies of food glistening with grease, and families gleefully clogging their arteries together. "Is this okay?"

"Perfect," Tommy said.

They took a table by the window and Jody trembled while Tommy ordered a brace of burgers and a basket of fries.

She said, "Tell me about the woman who was killed."

"She had a dog, a little gray dog. They found them both in the dumpster at the motel. She was old. Now she'll always be old."

"Pardon?"

"People always stay the age that they died at. My big brother died of leukemia when I was six. He was eight. Now when I think of him, he's always eight, and he's still my big brother. He never changes, and the part of me that remembers him never changes. See. What about you?"

"I don't have any brothers or sisters."

"No, I mean, are you going to stay the same? Will you always look like this now?"

"I haven't thought about it. I guess it could be true. I know I heal really fast since it happened."

The waitress brought Tommy's food. He squirted ketchup on the fries and attacked. "Tell me," he said around a mouthful of burger.

Jody started slowly as she watched his every bite with envy, telling him first about her life before the attack, of growing up in Monterey and dropping out of community college when her life didn't seem to be moving fast enough. Then of moving to San Francisco, of her jobs and her loves and the few life lessons she had learned. She told him about that night of the attack in too much detail, and in the telling she realized how little she understood about what had happened to her. She told him about waking up, and of how her strength and senses had changed, and it was here that words began to fail her — there were no words to describe some of the things she had seen and felt. She told him about the call at the motel and about being followed by the other vampire. When she had finished she felt more confused than when she had started.

Tommy said, "So you're not immortal. He said that you could be killed."

"I guess; I don't seem to change. All my childhood scars are gone, the lines on my face. My body seems to have lifted a little."

Tommy grinned. "You do have a great body."

"I could lose five pounds," Jody said. She inhaled sharply and her eyes went wide, as if she'd just remembered some explosives she'd left in the oven. "Oh my God!"

"What?" Tommy looked around, thinking she had seen something frightening, something dangerous.

"This is horrible."

"What is it?" Tommy insisted.

"I just realized — I'm always going to be a pudgette. I have jeans I'll never get into. I'm always going to need to lose five pounds."

"So what, every woman I've ever known thought she needed to lose five pounds."

"But they have a chance, they have hope. I'm doomed."

"You could go on a liquid diet," Tommy said.

"Very funny." She pinched her hip to confirm her observation. "Five pounds. If he'd only waited another week to attack. I was on the yogurt-and-grapefruit diet. I would have made it. I'd be thin forever." She realized that she was obsessing and turned her attention to Tommy. "How's your neck, by the way?"

He rubbed the spot where she had bitten him. "It's fine. I can't even feel a mark."

"You don't feel weak?"

"No more than usual."

Jody smiled. "I don't know how much I… I mean, I don't have any way of measuring or anything."

"No, I'm fine. It was kind of sexy. I just wonder how I healed so fast."

"It seems to work that way."

"Let's try something." He held his hand by her face. "Lick my finger."

She pushed his hand away. "Tommy, just finish eating and we can go home and do this."

"No, it's an experiment. My cuticles get split from cutting boxes at the store. I want to see if you can heal them." He touched her lower lip. "Go ahead, lick."

She snaked out a tentative tongue and licked the tip of his finger, then took his finger in her mouth and ran her tongue around it.

"Wow," Tommy said. He pulled his finger out and looked at it. His cuticle, which had been split and torn, had healed. "This is great. Look."

Jody studied his cuticle. "It worked."

"Do another." He thrust another finger in her mouth.

She spit it out. "Stop that."

"Come on." He pushed at her lips. "Pleeeeze."

A big guy in a Forty-Niners sweatshirt leaned over from the table next to them and said, "Buddy, do you mind? I've got my kids here."

"Sorry," Tommy said, wiping vampire spit on his shirt. "We were just experimenting."

"Yeah, well, this isn't the place for it, okay?"

"Right," Tommy said.

"See?" Jody whispered. "I told you."

"Let's go home," Tommy said. "I've got a blister on my big toe."

"No fucking way, writer-boy."

"It's low in calories," Tommy coaxed, prodding her foot with his sneaker. "Good, and good for you."

"Not a chance."

Tommy sighed in defeat. "Well, I guess we've got more to worry about than my toe or your weight problem."

"Like what?"

"Like the fact that last night I saw a guy in the store parking lot that I think was the other vampire."

Chapter 16 Heartwarming and UL-Approved

There was a bum sleeping on the sidewalk across the street from the loft when they returned. Tommy, full of fast food and the elation of being twice laid, wanted to give the guy a dollar. Jody stopped him and pushed him up the steps. "Go on up," she said. "I'll be there in a minute."

She stood in the doorway watching the bum for movement. There was no heat signature around him and she assumed the worst. She waited for him to roll over and start laughing at her again. She was feeling strong and a little cocky from the infusion of Tommy's blood, so she had to fight the urge to confront the vampire, to get dead in his face and scream. Instead she just whispered, "Asshole," and closed the door. If his hearing was as acute as her own, and she was sure it was, he had heard her.

She found Tommy in bed, fast asleep.

Poor guy, she thought, running all over town doing my business. He probably hasn't slept more than a couple of hours since we met.

She pulled the covers over him, kissed him on the forehead, and went to the window in the front room to watch the bum across the street.

Tommy was dreaming of bebop-driven sentences read by a naked redhead when he woke to find her sleeping next to him. He threw his arm over her and pulled her close, but there was no response, no pleasant groan or reciprocal snuggle. She was out.

He pushed the light button on his watch and checked the time. It was almost noon. The room was so dark that the watch dial floated in his vision for a few seconds after he released the button. He went to the bathroom and fumbled around until he found the light switch. A single fluorescent tube clicked and sputtered and finally ignited, spilling a fuzzy green glow through the door into the bedroom.

She looks dead, he thought. Peaceful, but dead. Then he looked at himself in the bathroom mirror. I look dead too.

It took him a minute to realize that it was the fluorescent lighting that had sucked the life out of his face, not his vampire girlfriend. He affected a serious glare and thought about how they would describe him in a hundred years, when he was really famous and really dead.

Like so many great writers before him, Flood was known for his troubled countenance and sickly pallor, especially under fluorescent lighting. Those who knew him said that even in those early years they could sense that this thin, serious young man would make his presence known as a great man of letters as well as a sexual dynamo. His legacy to the world was a trail of great books and broken hearts, and although it is well known that his love life was his downfall, he felt no regret, as illustrated in his Nobel Prize acceptance speech: "I have followed my penis into hell and returned with the story."

Tommy bowed deeply before the mirror, careful to keep the Nobel Prize medal from banging the sink, then began to interview himself, speaking clearly and slowly into his toothbrush.

"I think it was shortly after my first successful bus transfer that I realized the City was mine. Here I would produce some of my greatest work, and here I would meet my first wife, the lovely but deeply disturbed Jody…"

Tommy waved the microphone/toothbrush away as if the memories were too painful to recall, but actually he was trying to remember Jody's last name. I should know her maiden name, he thought, if just for historical purposes.

He glanced into the bedroom where the lovely but deeply disturbed Jody was lying naked and half-covered on the bed. He thought, She won't mind if I wake her up. She doesn't have to be at work or anything.

He approached the bed and touched her cheek. "Jody," he whispered. She didn't stir.

He shook her a bit. "Jody, honey."

Nothing.

"Hey," he said, taking her shoulders. "Hey, wake up." She didn't respond.

He pulled the covers off her as his father used to do to him on cold winter mornings when he wouldn't get up to go to school. "Up and at 'em, soldier — ass in the air and feet on the floor," he said in his best drill-sergeant bark.

She looked really great lying there naked in the half-light from the bathroom. He was getting a little turned on.

How would I feel, he thought, if I woke up and she was making love to me? Why, I believe that I would be pleasantly surprised. I think that would be better than waking up to frying bacon and the Sunday funnies. Yes, I'm sure she'll be pleased.

He crawled into bed with her and ventured a tentative kiss. She was a little cold and didn't move a muscle, but he was sure she liked it. He ran a finger down the valley between her breasts and over her stomach.

What if she didn't wake up? What if we do it and she doesn't wake up at all? How would I feel if I woke up and she told me that we had done it while I slept? I'd be fine with it. A little sad that I missed things, but I wouldn't be mad. I'd just ask her if I had a good time. Women are different, though.

He tickled her just to get a reaction. Again, she didn't move.

She's so cold. With her not moving at all it might be a little morbid. Maybe I should wait. I'll tell her that I thought about it and decided that it wouldn't be courteous. She'll like that.

He sighed deeply, got out of bed and pulled the covers over her. I should buy her something, he thought.

Jody snapped into consciousness and bit down on something hard. She opened her eyes and saw Tommy sitting on the edge of the bed. She smiled.

"Good morning," he said.

She reached for whatever was in her mouth.

Tommy caught her hand. "Don't bite down. It's a thermometer." He checked his watch, then pulled the thermometer out of her mouth and read it. "Ninety-five point two. You're on your way."

Jody sat up and looked at the thermometer. "On my way to what?"

He smiled bashfully. "On your way to body temperature. I bought you an electric blanket. It's been on for like six hours."

She ran her hand over the blanket. "You've been warming me up?"

"Pretty cool, huh?" Tommy said. "I went to the library and got books too. I've been reading all afternoon." He picked up a stack of books and began to shuffle through them, reading the titles and handing each to her in turn. "A Reader's Guide to Vampirism; Vampire Myths and Legends; Those That Stalk the Night — kind of an ominous title, huh?"

She held the books as if they were made of wormy fruit. The covers depicted monstrous creatures rising from coffins, attacking women in various states of undress, and hanging around castles perched on barren mountains. The letters in the titles dripped blood. "These are all about vampires?"

"That's just the nonfiction that they had on hand. I ordered a bunch more through the library exchange. Check out some of the fiction." He picked up another stack from the floor.

"A Feast of Blood; Red Thirst; Fangs; Dracula; Dracula's Dream; Dracula's Legacy; Fevre Dream; The Vampire Lestat — there must have been a hundred novels."

Jody, a little overwhelmed, stared at the books. "There seems to be a theme here on the covers."

"Yeah," Tommy said. "Vampires seem to have an affinity for lingerie. Do you have any particular craving for sexy nightgowns?"

"Not really." Jody had always thought it a little silly to spend a lot of money on something that you only put on long enough for someone to take it off you. Evidently, though, if you went by these book covers, vampires looked at lingerie as garnish.

"Okay," Tommy said, picking up a notebook from the floor and making a check mark. "No lingerie fetish. I've made a list of vampire traits with boxes to check either 'fact' or 'fiction. Since you missed the lecture, I guess we'll have to just test them."

"What lecture?"

Tommy put down his pen and looked at her as if she'd gotten into the express lane with a cartful of groceries and a two-party check. "Everybody knows that there's always an orientation lecture in vampire books. Usually it comes from some old professor guy with an accent, but sometimes it's another vampire. You obviously missed the lecture."

"I guess so," Jody said. "I must have been busy chasing women in lingerie."

"That's okay," Tommy said, returning to the list. "Obviously you don't have to sleep in your native soil." He checked it off. "And we know that everyone you bite doesn't necessarily turn into a vampire."

"No, a jerk, maybe…"

"Whatever," Tommy said, moving on in the list. "Okay, sunlight is bad for you." He made a check mark. "You can enter a house without being invited. How about running water?"

"What about it?"

"Vampires aren't supposed to be able to cross running water. Have you tried crossing any running water?"

"I've taken a couple of showers."

"Then that would be fiction. Let me smell your breath." He bent close to her.

She turned her head and shielded her mouth. "Tommy, I just woke up. Let me brush my teeth first."

"Vampires are supposed to have the 'fetid breath of a predator, or, in some cases, 'breath like the rotting smell of the charnel house. C'mon, give us a whiff."

Jody reluctantly breathed in his face. He sat up and considered the list.

"Well? "she asked.

"I'm thinking. I need to get the dictionary out of my suitcase."

"What for?"

"I'm not sure what a charnel house is."

"Can I brush my teeth while you look?"

"No, wait, I might need another whiff." He went to his suitcase and dug out the dictionary. While he looked up "charnel house," Jody cupped her hand and smelled her own breath. It was pretty foul.

"Here it is," he said, putting his finger on the word. "'Noun. A mausoleum or morgue. A structure where corpses are buried or stored. See morning breath! I guess that we check 'fact' on that one."

"Can I brush my teeth now?"

"Sure. Are you going to shower?"

"I'd like to. Why?"

"Can I help? I mean, you're much more attractive when you're not room temperature."

She smiled. "You really know how to charm a girl." She got out of bed and went into the bathroom. Tommy waited on the bed.

"Well, come on," she said as she turned on the water.

"Sorry," he said, leaping to his feet and wrestling out of his shirt.

She stopped him at the bathroom door with a firm hand on the chest. "One second, mister. I have a question for you."

"Shoot."

"Men are pigs: fact or fiction?"

"Fact!" Tommy shouted.

"Correct! You win!" She leaped into his arms and kissed him.

Chapter 17 This Month's Makeover: The Faces of Fear

Simon McQueen had once climbed onto the back of a ton of pissed-off beef named Muffin and been promptly stomped into mush in front of an amazed rodeo crowd, and still managed to pinch the bottom of a female paramedic as he was carried away on a stretcher, singing a garbled version of "I've Got Friends in Low Places." Simon McQueen had once picked a fight with a gang of skinheads and managed to render three of them unconscious before a knife in the stomach and a jackboot to the head rendered him helpless. Simon had jumped out of an airplane, fallen off the roof of a Lutheran church, run over a police car in his pickup truck, smuggled a thousand pounds of marijuana across the border from Mexico inside a stuffed cow, and swum halfway to Alcatraz Island on a dare before the Coast Guard fished him out of the bay and revived him. Simon had done all these things without the slightest tic of fear. But tonight, laid out across register 3 in his skintight Wranglers and his endangered-species Tony Lama boots with the silver spurs, his black Stetson pulled down over his face, Simon McQueen was frightened. Frightened that one of his two great secrets was about to become known.

The other Animals were sharing tales of their weekend adventures, exaggerating aspects of binges and babes, while Glint professed to God that they knew not what they did.

Simon sat up, pushed back his Stetson, and said, "Y'all wouldn't know a piece of ass if it sloshed upside your head."

The Animals fell silent, each trying to formulate a new and exciting way to tell Simon to fuck off, when Tommy came through the door.

"Fearless Leader!" Lash exclaimed.

Tommy grinned and faked a tap-dance step. "Gentlemen," he said. "I have reached out and touched the face of God — film at eleven."

Simon was wildly irritated by this added distraction from his worrying. "What happened, you go down to Castro Street and get converted?"

Tommy waved the comment away. "No, Sime — I can call you Sime, can't I? You see, last night, about this time" — he checked his watch — "there was a naked redhead hanging from the ceiling of my new loft, reading Kerouac aloud to me. If I die now, it was not all in vain. I'm ready to throw stock. How's the truck?"

"A big one," Troy Lee answered. "Three thousand cases. But the bitch is, the scanner is broken. We have to use the order books."

Troy's comment jabbed Simon like bad gas pain. He considered going home sick, but without his help the Animals would never be able to finish the truck before morning. A lump of fear rose in his throat. He couldn't use the order books. Simon McQueen couldn't read.

"Let's get to it then," Tommy said.

The Animals threw themselves into their work with an abandon they usually reserved for partying. Razor box-cutters whizzed, price guns clicked, and cardboard piled up in shoulder-high drifts at the ends of the aisles.

In addition to throwing the extra-large load, they had to allow an extra hour to write their stock orders. Normally the orders were done with a bar-code scanner, but with the scanner down, each man would have to go through a huge loose-leaf order book, writing in items by hand. By 5 A.M. they had most of the stock on the shelves and Simon McQueen was considering letting his box-cutter slip and cutting his leg so he could escape to the emergency room. But that might reveal a secret worse than illiteracy.

Tommy came into Simon's aisle carrying the order book. "You better get started, Sime." He held out the book and a pencil.

"I still got a hundred cases to throw," Simon said, not looking up. "Let someone else start."

"No, you've got the biggest section. Go ahead." Tommy bumped Simon on the shoulder with the book.

Simon looked up, then dropped his cutter and slowly took the book from Tommy. He opened the book and stared at the page, then at the shelf, then at the book.

Tommy said, "Order light on the juices, we've got a lot of stock in the back room."

Simon nodded and looked at the book, then at the shelf of vegetables before him.

Tommy said, "You're on the wrong page, Simon."

"I know," Simon snapped. "I'm just finding my place." He flipped through the pages, then stopped on a page of cake mixes and began looking at the shelf of vegetables. He could feel Tommy's gaze on him and wished that the skinny-little-faggot-book-reading-prick-bastard would just go away and leave him alone. "Simon."

Simon looked up, his eyes pleading.

"Give me the book," Tommy said. "I think I'm going to order everybody's section tonight. It'll give you guys more time to throw stock and I need to get more familiar with the store anyway."

"I can do it," Simon said.

"I know," Tommy said, taking the book. "But why waste your talent on this bullshit?"

As Tommy walked away, Simon took his first deep breath of the night. "Flood," he called, "I'm buying the beers after shift."

Tommy didn't look back. "I know," he said.

Jody stood by the window in the dark loft watching the sleeping bum who lay on the sidewalk across the street and cursing under her breath. Go away, you bastard, she thought. Even as she thought it, she felt a measure of security in knowing exactly where her enemy was. As long as he lay on the sidewalk, Tommy was safe at the grocery store.

She had never felt the need to protect someone before. She had always been the one looking for protection, for a strong arm to lean on. Now she was the strong arm, at least when the sun was down. She had walked Tommy down the steps and waited with him until the cab arrived to take him to work. As she watched the cab pull away, she thought, This must be how my mother felt when she put me on the school bus that first time — except that Tommy doesn't have a Barbie lunch box. She kept an eye on the vampire lying on the sidewalk across the street.

Hours passed at the window and she asked the same questions over and over again, coming up with no solution to her problem, and no logic to the vampire's behavior. What did he want? Why had he killed the old woman and left her in the dumpster? Was he trying to frighten her, threaten her, or was there some kind of message to it all?

"You're not immortal. You can still be killed."

If he was going to kill her, why didn't he just do it? Why pretend to be a sleeping bum, watching her, waiting?

He has to find shelter before daylight. If I can just outlast him, maybe… Maybe what? I can't follow him or I'll be caught in the sunlight too.

She went to the bedroom and dug the almanac Tommy had given her out of her backpack. The sun would rise at 6:12 A.M. She checked her watch. She had an hour.

She waited at the window until six o'clock, then headed out of the loft to confront the vampire. As she went through the door she instinctively reached out to click off the lights, only to realize that she hadn't turned any on. If I live through this, she thought, I'm going to save a fortune on utilities.

She left the door at the top of the stairs unlocked, then went down the steps and propped the big fire door open with a soda can she found on the landing. She might have to get back in fast, and she didn't want to be slowed down by keys and locks.

Her muscles buzzed as she approached the vampire, the fight-or-flee instinct running through her like liquid lightning. A few feet away she picked up a foul smell, a rotting smell coming from the vampire. She stopped and swallowed hard.

"What exactly is it that you want?" she asked.

The vampire didn't move. His face was covered by the high collar of his overcoat.

She took another step forward. "What am I supposed to be doing?"

The smell was stronger now. She concentrated on the vampire's hands, trying to sense some movement that would warn her of an attack. There was none.

"Answer me!" she demanded. She stepped up and pulled the collar away from his face. She saw the glazed eyes and a bone jutting from the neck just as a hand clamped across her face and jerked her back off her feet.

She tried to reach behind her to claw her attacker's face but he jerked her to the side. She opened her mouth to scream and two of his fingers slipped into her mouth. She bit down hard. There was a scream and she was free.

She wheeled on her attacker, ready to fight, his severed fingers still in her mouth.

The vampire stood before her, cradling his bloody hand.

"Bitch," he said. Then he grinned.

Jody swallowed his fingers and hissed at him. "Fuck you, asshole. Come on." She fell into a crouch and waved him on.

The vampire was still grinning. "The taste of vampire blood has made you brave, fledgling. Don't take it too far."

His hand had stopped spurting blood and was scabbing over as she watched. "What do you want?"

The vampire looked at the sky, which was turning pink, threatening dawn.

"Right now I want to find a place to sleep," he said too calmly. He ripped the scab from his fingers and slung a spray of blood in her face. "Until we meet again, my love." He wheeled and ran across the street into an alley.

Jody stood watching and shaking with the need for a fight. She turned and looked at the dead bum: the decoy. She couldn't leave him here to attract police — not this close to the loft.

She glanced at the lightening sky, then hoisted the dead bum onto her back and headed back to the loft.

Tommy ran up the stairs and burst into the loft eager to share his discovery about Simon's illiteracy, but once through the door, he was knocked back by a stinging rotten odor like bloated roadkill.

What's she done now? he thought.

He opened the windows to air the place out and went to the bedroom, careful to open the door just wide enough to slip through without spilling sunlight on the bed. The smell was much stronger here and he gagged as he turned on the light.

Jody was lying on the bed with the electric blanket pulled up to her neck. Dried blood was crusted over her face. A wiggling wave of the willies ran up Tommy's spine, stronger than any he had felt since his father had first told him the secret of ball-park hot dogs. ("Snouts and butt holes," Dad had said, during the seventh-inning stretch. "I've got the willies," said Tommy.)

There was a note on the pillow by Jody's head. Tommy crept forward and snatched it off the pillow, then backpedaled to the door to read it.

Tommy,

Sorry I'm such a mess. It's almost dawn and I don't want to get stuck in the shower. I'll explain tonight.

Call Sears and have them deliver the largest chest freezer that they have. There's money in my backpack. I missed you last night.

Love,

Jody

Tommy backed out of the room.

Chapter 18 Bugeater of the Barbary Coast

Tommy woke up on the futon feeling as if he had been through a two-day battle. The loft was dark but for the streetlights spilling through the windows and he could hear Jody running the shower in the other room. The new freezer was humming away in the kitchen. He rolled off the futon and groaned. His muscles creaked like rusty hinges and his head felt as if it were stuffed with cotton — like a low-grade hangover — not from the few beers he had shared with the Animals after work, but from the verbal beating he had taken from the appliance salesman at Sears.

The salesman, a round hypertensive named Lloyd, who wore the last extant leisure suit on the planet (powder blue with navy piping), had begun his assault with a five-minute lament on the disappearance of double knits (as if a concerted effort by a Greenpeace team in white vinyl shoes and gold chains might bring double knits back from the brink of extinction), then segued into a half-hour lecture on the tragedies visited on those poor souls who failed to purchase extended warranties on their Kenmore Freezemasters. "And so," Lloyd concluded, "he not only lost his job, his home, and his family, but that frozen food that could have saved the children at the orphanage spoiled, all because he tried to save eighty-seven dollars."

"I'll take it," Tommy said. "I'll take the longest warranty you have."

Lloyd laid a fatherly hand on Tommy's shoulder. "You won't regret this, son. I'm not one for high pressure myself, but the guys that sell these warranties after delivery are like the Mafia — they'll call you at all hours, they'll hound you, they'll find you wherever you go and they will ruin your life if you don't give in. I once sold a microwave to a man who woke up with a horse's head in his bed."

"Please," Tommy begged, "I'll sign anything, but they have to deliver it right now. Okay?"

Lloyd pumped Tommy's hand to start the flow of cash. "Welcome to better living through frozen food."

Tommy sat up on the futon and looked at the behemoth freezer that was humming in the half-light of the kitchen. Why? he thought. Why did I buy it? Why did she want it? I didn't even ask for an explanation from her, I just blindly followed her instructions. I'm a slave, like Renfield in Dracula. How long before I start eating bugs and howling at night?

He got up and walked, in his underwear and one sock, into the bedroom; the smell of decay was strong enough to make him gag. It was the smell that had driven him to sleep on the futon in the living room rather than crawl into bed with Jody. He'd fallen asleep reading Bram Stoker's Dracula to get some perspective on the love of his life.

She's the devil, he thought, staring at the steam creeping out from under the bathroom door. "Jody, is that you?" he asked the steam. The steam just crept.

"I'm in the shower," Jody said from the shower. "Come on in."

Tommy went to the bathroom and opened the door. "Jody, we need to talk." The bathroom was thick with steam — he could barely make out the shower doors.

"Close the door; it smells in there."

Tommy moved closer to the shower. "I'm worried about the way things are going," he said.

"Did you get the freezer?"

"Yes, that's part of what I wanted to talk to you about."

"You got the biggest one they had, right?"

"Yes, and a ten-year extended-service agreement."

"And it's a chest model, not an upright?"

"Yes, dammit, but Jody, you didn't even tell me why I was buying it and I just did it. Since I met you, it's like I have no will of my own. I've been sleeping all day. I'm not doing any writing. I hardly even see daylight anymore."

"Tommy, you work midnight to eight. When do you think you would sleep?"

"Don't twist my words. I will not eat bugs for you." She's the devil, he thought.

"Will you do my back?" She slid the shower door open and Tommy was transfixed by the water cascading between her breasts. "Well?" she said, cocking a hip.

Tommy slipped out of his briefs, pulled off his sock, and stepped into the shower. "Okay, but I'm not eating any bugs."

After a mad naked dash through the bedroom they sat on the futon toweling off and looking at the new freezer.

"It certainly is large," Jody said.

"I bought a dozen TV dinners so it wouldn't look so empty."

Jody said, "You'll have to take them out; put them in the regular fridge."

"Why? I don't think they'll fit."

"I know, but I have something to put in there and I don't think you'll want your TV dinners in there with it."

"What?"

"Well, you know that bad smell in the bedroom?"

"I was going to mention that. What is it?"

"It's a body."

"You killed someone?" Tommy slid away from her on the futon.

"No, I didn't kill anyone. Let me explain."

She told him about the bum, about creeping up on him thinking he was the vampire, and of the battle that ensued.

Tommy said, "Do you think he was trying to kill you?"

"I don't think so. It's as if he wants to show me how superior he is or something. Like he's testing me."

"So you bit off his fingers?"

"I didn't know what else to do."

"What was it like?"

"Honestly?"

"Of course?"

"It was a rush. It was an incredible rush."

"Better than drinking my blood?"

"Different."

Tommy turned his back on her and began to pout. Jody moved to him and kissed his ear.

"It was a fight, Tommy. I didn't come or anything, but I swear, I felt stronger after I… after I swallowed."

"So that's why you were all crusty with blood when I got home?"

"Yes, it was almost dawn when I got the body upstairs."

"That's another thing," Tommy said. "Why did you bring that stinky thing up here?"

"The police already found one body at the motel, and they have my name. Now they find another that was killed in the same way right next to where we live. I don't think they'd understand."

"So we're going to keep it in the freezer?"

"Just until I figure out what to do with him."

"I'm not comfortable with you calling it 'him. »

"Just until I figure out what to do with it, then."

"There's a big bay out there."

"And how would you suggest that we get it down there without being seen?"

"I'll think about it."

Jody stood, wrapped a towel around herself, and walked back to the bedroom. "I'm going to put it in now; you might want to transfer your TV dinners." She paused at the door. "And I'm out of clean clothes. You're going to need to go to the Laundromat."

"Why don't you go?"

Jody regarded him gravely. "Tommy, you know I can't go out during the day."

"Oh no," Tommy said. "Don't pull that. I don't know of a single Laundromat that's not open all night. Besides, I can't be your slave full-time. I have to have some time to get some writing done. And I might be taking on a student."

"What kind of student?"

"A guy at work — Simon — he can't read. I'm going to offer to teach him."

"That's sweet of you," Jody said. She shook her hair out, let her towel fall to the floor, and struck a centerfold pose. "Are you sure you don't want to do the laundry?"

"No way. You have no power over me."

"Are you sure?" She licked her lips sensually. "That's not what you said in the shower."

I will resist her evil, Tommy thought. I will not give in. He stood and started gathering his clothes. "Don't you have a body to move?"

"All right then," Jody snapped. "I'll do the laundry while you're at work tonight." She turned and went into the bedroom.

"Good. I'll be out here looking for some tasty bugs," Tommy whispered to himself.

Midnight found Jody trudging down the steps with a trash bag full of laundry slung across her back. As she stepped onto the sidewalk and turned to lock the door she realized that she hadn't the slightest idea where to find a Laundromat in this neighborhood. The rolling steel door to the foundry was open and the two burly sculptors were working inside, bracing a man-sized plaster mold for pouring. She considered asking them for directions, but thought it might be better to wait and meet them when she was with Tommy. The interior of the foundry was glowing red with the heat from the molten bronze in the crucible, making it appear to her heat-sensitive vision like hell's own studio.

She stood for a moment watching waves of heat spill out the top of the door, to swirl and dissipate in the night sky like dying paisley ghosts. She wanted to turn to someone and share the experience, but of course there was no one, and if there had been, they wouldn't have been able to see what she saw.

She thought, In the kingdom of the blind, a one-eyed man can get pretty lonely.

She sighed heavily and was starting toward Market Street when she heard a sharp staccato tapping of toenails at her heels. She dropped the laundry and wheeled around. A Boston terrier growled and snorted at her, then backed away a few feet and fell into a yapping fit that bordered on canine apoplexy, his bug eyes threatening to pop out of his head.

"Bummer, stop that!" came a shout from the corner.

Jody looked up to see a grizzled old man in an overcoat coming toward her wearing a saucepan on his head and carrying a wickedly pointed wooden sword. A golden retriever trotted along beside him, a smaller saucepan strapped to his head and two garbage-can lids strapped to his sides, giving the impression of a compact furry Viking ship.

"Bummer, come back here."

The little dog backed away a few more steps, then turned and ran back to the man. Jody noticed that the little dog had a miniature pie pan strapped over his ears with a rubber band.

The old man picked up the terrier in his free hand and trotted up to Jody. "I'm very sorry," he said. "The troops are girded for battle, but I fear they are a bit too eager to engage. Are you all right?"

Jody smiled. "I'm fine. Just a little startled."

The old man bowed. "Allow me to introduce myself…"

"You're the Emperor, aren't you?" Jody had been in the City for five years. She'd heard about the Emperor, but she'd only seen him from a distance.

"At your service," said the Emperor. The terrier growled suspiciously and the Emperor shoved the little dog, head first, into the oversized pocket of his overcoat, then buttoned the flap. Muffled growls emanated from the pocket.

"I apologize for my charge. He's long on courage, but rather short on manners. This is Lazarus."

Jody nodded to the retriever, who let out a slight growl and backed away a step. The garbage-can lids rattled on the sidewalk.

"Hi. I'm Jody. Pleased to meet you."

"I hope you will forgive my presumption," the Emperor said, "but I don't think it's safe for a young woman to be out on the street at night. Particularly in this neighborhood."

"Why this neighborhood?"

The Emperor moved closer and whispered. "I'm sure that you've noticed that the men and I are dressed for battle. We are hunting a vicious, murdering fiend that has been stalking the City. I don't mean to alarm you, but we last saw him on this very street. In fact, he killed a friend of mine right across the street not two nights ago."

"You saw him?" Jody asked. "Did you call the police?"

"The police will be of no help," the Emperor said. "This is not the run-of-the-mill scoundrel that we are used to in the City. He's a vampire." The Emperor lifted his wooden sword and tested the point against the tip of his finger.

Jody was shaken. She tried to calm herself, but the fear showed on her face.

"I've frightened you," the Emperor said.

"No — no, I'm fine. It's just… Your Majesty, there are no such things as vampires."

"As you wish," the Emperor said. "But I think it would be prudent for you to wait until daylight to do your business."

"I need to do my laundry or I won't have any clean clothes for tomorrow."

"Then allow us to escort you."

"No, really, Your Majesty, I'll be fine. By the way, where is the nearest Laundromat?"

"There is one not far from here, but it's in the Tenderloin. Even during the day you wouldn't be safe alone. I really must insist that you wait, my dear. Perhaps by then we will have exterminated the fiend."

"Well," Jody said, "if you insist. This is my apartment, right here." She dug the key out of her jeans and opened the door. She turned back to the Emperor. "Thank you."

"Safety first," the Emperor said. "Sleep well." The little dog growled in his pocket.

Jody went inside and closed the door, then waited until she heard the Emperor walk away. She waited another five minutes and went back onto the street.

She shouldered the laundry and headed toward the Tenderloin, thinking, This is great. How long before the police actually listen to the Emperor? Tommy and I are going to have to move and we haven't even decorated yet. And I hate doing laundry. I hate it. I'm sending our laundry out if Tommy won't do it. And we're going to have a cleaning lady — some nice, dependable woman who will come in after dark. And I'm not buying toilet paper. I don't use it and I'm not going to buy it. And something has to be done about this asshole vampire. God, I hate doing laundry.

She had gone two blocks when a man stepped out of a doorway in front of her. "Hey momma, you need some help."

She jumped in his face and shouted, "Fuck off, horndog!" with such viciousness that he screamed and leaped back into the doorway, then meekly called «Sorry» after her as she passed.

She thought, I'm not sorting. It all goes in warm. I don't care if the whites do go gray; I'm not sorting. And how do I know how to get out bloodstains? Who am I? Miss Household Hints? God, I hate laundry.

The clothes jumped and played and dived over each other like fabric dolphins. Jody sat on a folding table across from the dryer watching the show and thinking about the Emperor's warning. He'd said, "I don't think it's safe for a young woman to be out on the street at night." Jody agreed. Not long ago she would have been terrified if she'd found herself in the Tenderloin at night. She couldn't even remember coming down here during the day. Where had that fear gone? What had happened to her that she could face off with a vampire, bite off his fingers, and carry a dead body up a flight of stairs and shove it under the bed without even a flinch? Where was the fear and loathing? She didn't miss it, she just wondered what had happened to it.

It wasn't as if she were without fear. She was afraid of daylight, afraid of the police discovering her, and of Tommy rejecting her and leaving her alone. New fears and familiar fears, but there was nothing in the dark that frightened her, not the future, not even the old vampire — and she knew now, having tasted his blood, that he was old, very old. She saw him as an enemy, and her mind casted for strategies to defeat him, but she was not really afraid of him anymore: curious, but not afraid.

The dryer stopped-fabric dolphins dropped and died as if caught in tuna nets. Jody jumped off the table, opened the dryer, and was feeling the clothes for dampness when she heard footsteps on the sidewalk outside the Laundromat. She turned to see the tall black man she had chased into the doorway coming into the Laundromat, followed by two shorter men. All three wore silver L.A. Raiders jackets, high-top shoes, and evil grins.

Jody turned back to the dryer and started stuffing her clothes into the trash bag. She thought, I should be folding these.

"Yo, bitch," the tall man said.

Jody looked to the back of the Laundromat. The only door was in the front, behind the three men. She turned and looked up at them. "How about those Raiders?" she said with a smile. She felt a pressure in the roof of her mouth: the fangs extending.

The three men split up and moved around the folding table to surround her. In another life, this had been her worst nightmare. In this life she just smiled as two of them grabbed her arms from behind.

She saw a bead of sweat on the tall man's temple as he approached her and reached out to tear the front of her shirt. She ripped her right arm loose and caught the tall man's wrist as the sweat bead began to drip. She snapped his forearm and bones splintered though skin and muscle as she swung him, headfirst, through the glass door of the dryer. She reached over her shoulder and grabbed one of the Raider fans by the hair and smashed his face into the floor, then wheeled on her last attacker and shoved him back into the edge of the folding table, snapping his spine just above the hips and sending him spinning backward over a deck of washing machines. The bead of sweat hit the floor near the man with the smashed face.

Amid the hum of fluorescent lights and the moans of the man with the broken back, Jody loaded the rest of her laundry into the trash bag. She thought, This stuff is going to be nothing but wrinkles by the time I get home. Tommy's doing the laundry next time.

As she reached the door she ran her tongue over her teeth and was relieved to find her fangs had retracted. She looked over her shoulder at the carnage and shouted, "Forty-fucking-Niners!"

The man with the broken back moaned.

Chapter 19 Judy's Delicate Condition

For the first few weeks Tommy was uncomfortable having a dead guy in the freezer, but after a while the dead guy became a fixture, a familiar frosty face with every TV dinner. Tommy named him Peary after another arctic explorer.

During the day, after he came home from work and before he crawled into bed with Jody, Tommy puttered around the loft talking first to himself, then, when he became comfortable with the idea, to Peary.

"You know, Peary," Tommy said one morning after he had pounded out two pages of a short story on his typewriter, "I am having a little trouble finding my voice in this story. When I write about the little farm girl in Georgia walking barefoot to school on the dirt road, I sound like Harper Lee, but when I write about her poor father, unjustly sentenced to a chain gang for stealing bread for his family, I start to sound a little like Mark Twain. But when the little girl grows up to become a Mafia don, I'm falling into more of a Sydney Collins Krantz style. What should I do?"

Peary, safe with his lid closed and his light off, did not answer.

"And how am I supposed to concentrate on literature when I'm reading all these vampire books for Jody? She doesn't understand that a writer is a special creature — that I'm different from everyone else. I'm not saying I'm superior to other people, just more sensitive, I guess. And did you notice that she never does any of the shopping? What does she do all night while I'm at work?"

Tommy was making an effort to understand Jody's situation, and had even devised a series of experiments from his reading to try and discover the limitations of her new situation. In the evening when they woke, after they shared a shower and a tumble or two, the scientific process would begin.

"Go ahead, honey, give it a try," Tommy said, shortly after he'd read Dracula.

"I am trying," Jody said. "I don't know what I'm supposed to try to do."

"Concentrate," Tommy said. "Push."

"What do you mean, push? I'm not giving birth, Tommy. What am I supposed to push on?"

"Try to grow fur. Try to make your arms change into wings."

Jody closed her eyes and concentrated — strained, even — and Tommy thought a little color came into her face.

Finally she said, "This is ridiculous." And it was determined that Jody could not turn into a bat.

"Mist," Tommy said. "Try to turn into mist. If you forget your key sometime, you can just ooze under the door to get in."

"It's not working."

"Keep trying. You know how your hair gathers in the shower drain? Well, if it gets clogged, you can just flow down there and dig out the clog."

"There's some motivation."

"Give it a try."

She tried and failed and the next day Tommy brought some Drano home from the store instead.

"But I could take you to the park and throw a Frisbee for you."

"I know, but I can't."

"I'll buy you all kinds of chew toys — a squeaky duck if you want."

"I'm sorry, Tommy, but I can't turn into a wolf."

"In the book, Dracula climbs down the castle wall face down."

"Good for him."

"You could try it on our building. It's only three stories."

"That's still a long way to fall."

"You won't fall. He doesn't fall in the book."

"And he levitates in the book, doesn't he?"

"Yeah."

"And we tried that, didn't we?"

"Well, yeah."

"Then I'd say that the book is fiction, wouldn't you?"

"Let's try something else; I'll get the list."

"Mind reading. Project your thoughts into my mind."

"Okay, I'm projecting. What am I thinking?"

"I can tell by the look on your face."

"You might be wrong, what am I thinking?"

"You'd like me to stop badgering you with these experiments."

"And?"

"You want me to take our clothes to the Laundromat."

"And?"

"That's all I'm getting."

"I want you to stop rubbing garlic on me while I'm sleeping."

"You can read thoughts!"

"No, Tommy, but I woke up this evening smelling like a pizza joint. Stop it with the garlic."

"So you don't know about the crucifix?"

"You touched me with a crucifix?"

"You weren't in any danger. I had a fire extinguisher right there in case you burst into flames."

"I don't think it's very nice of you to experiment on me while I'm sleeping. How would you feel if I rubbed stuff on you while you were sleeping?"

"Well, it depends. What are we talking about?"

"Just don't touch me while I'm sleeping, okay? A relationship is based on mutual trust and respect."

"So I guess the mallet and the stake are out of the question?"

"Tommy!"

"Kmart had a sale on mallets. You were wondering if you were immortal. I wasn't going to try it without asking you."

"How long do you think it will take for you to forget what sex feels like?"

"I'm sorry, Jody. Really, I am."

The question of immortality did, indeed, bother Jody. The old vampire had said that she could be killed, but it was not the sort of thing that you could easily test. It was Tommy, of course, after a long talk with Peary while trying to avoid working on his little Southern-girl story one morning, who came up with the test.

Jody awoke one evening to find him in the bathroom emptying ice cubes out of a tray into the big claw-foot tub.

He said, "I was a lifeguard one summer in high school."

"So?"

"I had to learn CPR. I spent half the summer pumping pissy pool water out of exhausted nine-year-olds."

"So?"

"Drowning."

"Drowning?"

"Yeah, we drown you. If you're immortal, you'll be fine. If not, the cold water will keep you fresh and I can revive you. There's about thirty more trays of ice stacked up on Peary. Could you grab some?"

"Tommy, I'm not sure about this."

"You want to know, don't you?"

"But a tub of ice water?"

"I've run all the possibilities down — guns, knives, an injection of potassium nitrate — this is the only one that can fail and not really kill you. I know you want to know, but I don't want to lose you to find out."

Jody, in spite of herself, was touched. "That's the sweetest thing anyone ever said to me."

"Well, you wouldn't want to kill me, would you?" Tommy was a little concerned about the fact that Jody had been feeding on him every four days. Not that he felt sick or weak; on the contrary, he found that each time she bit him he was energized, stronger, it seemed. He was throwing twice as much stock at the store and his mind seemed sharper, more alert. He was making good progress on his story. He was starting to look forward to being bitten.

"Come on then," he said. "In the tub."

Jody was wearing a silk nighty that she let drop to the floor. "You're sure if this doesn't work…"

"You'll be fine."

She took his hand. "I'm trusting you."

"I know. Get in."

Jody stepped into the cold water. "Brisk," she said.

"I didn't think you could feel it."

"I can feel temperature changes, but they don't bother me."

"We'll experiment on that next. Under you go."

Jody lay down in the tub, her hair spread across the water like crimson kelp.

Tommy checked his watch. "After you go under, don't hold your breath. It's going to be hard, but suck the water into your lungs. I'll leave you under for four minutes, then pull you out."

Jody took deep breaths and looked at him, a glint of panic in her eyes. He bent and kissed her. "I love you," he said.

"You do?"

"Of course." He pushed her head under the water.

She bobbed back up. "Me too," she said. Then she went under.

She tried to make herself take in the water but her lungs wouldn't let her and she held her breath. Four minutes later Tommy reached under her arms and pulled her up.

"I didn't do it," she said.

"Christ, Jody, I can't keep doing this."

"I held my breath."

"For four minutes?"

"I think I could have gone hours."

"Try again. You've got to inhale the water or you'll never die."

"Thanks, coach."

"Please."

She slipped under the water and sucked in a breath of water before she could think about it. She listened to the ice cubes tinkling on the surface, watched the bathroom light refracting through the water, occasionally interrupted by Tommy's face as he looked down on her. There was no panic, no choking — she didn't even feel the claustrophobia that she had expected. Actually, it was kind of pleasant.

Tommy pulled her up and she expelled a great cough of water, then began breathing normally.

"Are you okay?"

"Fine."

"You really did drown."

"It wasn't that bad."

"Try it again."

This time Tommy left her under for ten minutes before pulling her up.

After the cough, she said, "I guess that's it."

"Did you see the long tunnel with the light at the end? All your dead relatives waiting? The fiery gates of hell?"

"Nope, just ice cubes."

Tommy turned around and sat down hard on the bathroom rug with his back to the tub. "I feel like I was the one that got drowned."

"I feel great."

"That's it, you know. You are immortal."

"I guess so. As far as we can test it. Can I get out of the tub now?"

"Sure." He handed her a towel over his shoulder. "Jody, are you going to leave me when I get old?"

"You're nineteen years old."

"Yeah, but next year I'll be twenty, then twenty-one; then I'll be eating strained green beans and drooling all over myself and asking you what your name is every five seconds and you'll be twenty-six and perky and you'll resent me every time you have to change my incontinence pants."

"That's a cheery thought."

"Well, you will resent it, won't you?"

"Aren't you jumping the gun a little? You have great bladder control; I've seen you drink six beers without going to the bathroom."

"Sure, now, but…"

"Look, Tommy, could you look at this from my point of view? This is the first time I've had to really think about this as well. Do you realize that I'll never have blue hair and walk with tiny little steps? I'll never drive really slow all the time and spend hours complaining about my ailments. I'll never go to Denny's and steal all the extra jelly packets and squirrel them away in a giant handbag."

Tommy looked up at her. "You were looking forward to those things?"

"That's not the point, Tommy. I might be immortal, but I've lost a big part of my life. Like French fries. I miss eating French fries. I'm Irish, you know. Ever since the Great Potato Famine my people get nervous if they don't eat French fries every few days. Did you ever think about that?"

"No, I guess I didn't."

"I don't even know what I am. I don't know why I'm here. I was made by some mystery creature and I don't have the slightest idea why, or what he wants from me, or what I am supposed to be doing. Only that he's messing with my life in ways I can't understand. Do you have any idea what that is like?"

"Actually, I know exactly what that's like."

"You do?"

"Of course, everybody does. By the way, the Emperor told me that they found another body today. In a Laundromat in the Tenderloin. Broken neck and no blood."

Chapter 20 Angel

If Inspector Alphonse Rivera had been a bird, he would have been a crow. He was lean and dark, with slick, sharp features and black eyes that shone and shifted with suspicion and guile. Time and again his crowlike looks landed him in the undercover role of coke dealer. Sometimes Cuban, sometimes Mexican, and one time Colombian, he had driven more Mercedes and worn more Armani suits than most real drug dealers, but after twenty years in narcotics, on three different departments, he had transferred to homicide, claiming that he needed to work among a better class of people — namely, dead.

Oh, the joys of homicide! Simple crimes of passion, most solved within twenty-four hours or not at all. No stings, no suitcases of government money, no pretense, just simple deduction — sometimes very simple: a dead wife in the kitchen; a drunken husband standing in the foyer with a smoking thirty-eight; and Rivera, in his cheap Italian knock-off suit, gently disarming the new widower, who could only say, "Liver and onions." A body, a suspect, a weapon, and a motive: case solved and on to the next one, neat and tidy. Until now.

Rivera thought, If my luck could be bottled, it would be classified a chemical weapon. He read through the coroner's report again. "Cause of death: compression fracture of the fifth and sixth vertebrae (broken neck). Subject had lost massive amounts of blood — no visible wounds." On its own, it was a uniquely enigmatic report, but it wasn't on its own. It was the second body in a month that had sustained massive blood loss with no visible wounds.

Rivera looked across the desk to where his partner, Nick Cavuto, was reading a copy of the report.

"What do you think?" Rivera said.

Cavuto chewed on an unlit cigar. He was a burly and balding, gravel-voiced, third-generation cop — six degrees tougher than his father and grandfather had been because he was gay. He said, "I think if you have any vacation time coming, this would be the time to take it."

"So we're fucked."

"It's too early for us to be fucked. I'd say we've been taken to dinner and slipped the tongue on the good-night kiss."

Rivera smiled. He liked the way Cavuto tried to make everything sound like dialogue from a Bogart movie. The big detective's pride and joy was a complete set of signed first-edition Dashiell Hammett novels. "Give me the days when police work was done with a snub nose and a lead sap," Cavuto would say. "Computers are for pussies."

Rivera returned to the report. "It looks like this guy would have been dead in a month anyway: 'a ten-centimeter tumor on the liver. Malignancy the size of a grapefruit."

Cavuto shifted the cigar to the other side of his mouth. "The old broad at the Van Ness Motel was on her way out too. Congestive heart disease. Too weak for a bypass. She ate nitro pills like they were M&M's."

"The euthanasia killer," Rivera said.

"So we're assuming this was the same guy?"

"Whatever you say, Nick."

"Two killings with the same MO and no motive. I don't even like the sound of it." Cavuto rubbed his temples as if trying to milk anxiety out through his tear ducts. "You were in San Junipero during the Night Stalker killings. We couldn't take a piss without tripping over a reporter. I say we lock this down. As far as the papers are concerned, the victims were robbed. No connection."

Rivera nodded. "I need a smoke. Let's go talk to those guys that got hit at the Laundromat a couple of weeks ago. Maybe there's a connection."

Cavuto pushed himself out of the chair and grabbed his hat off the desk. "Whoever voted for nonsmoking in the station house should be pistol-whipped."

"Didn't the President sponsor that bill?"

"All the more reason. The pussy."

Tommy lay looking at the ceiling, trying to catch his breath and extricate his right foot from a hopeless tangle in the sheets. Jody was drawing a tic-tac-toe in the sweat on his chest with her finger.

"You don't sweat anymore, do you?" he asked.

"Don't seem to."

"And you're not even out of breath. Am I doing something wrong?"

"No, it was great. I only get breathless when… when I…"

"When you bite me."

"Yeah."

"Did you…"

"Yes."

"Are you sure?"

"Are you?"

"No, I faked." Tommy grinned.

"Really?" Jody looked at the wet spot (on her side, of course).

"Why do you think I'm so winded? It's not easy to fake the ejaculation part."

"I, for one, was fooled."

"See."

He reached down and unwrapped the sheet from his foot, then he lay back and stared at the ceiling. Jody began to twist the sweaty locks of his hair into horns.

"Jody," Tommy said tentatively.

"Hmmm?"

"When I get old, I mean, if we're still together…"

She yanked on his hair.

"Ouch. Okay, we'll still be together. Have you ever heard of satyriasis?"

"No."

"Well, it happens to real old guys. They run around with a perpetual hard-on, chasing teenage girls and humping anything that moves until they have to be put in restraints."

"Wow, interesting disease."

"Yeah, well, when I get old, if I start to show the symptoms…"

"Yeah?"

"Just let it run its course, okay?"

"I'll look forward to it."

Rivera held a plastic cup of orange juice for the mass of plaster and tubes that was LaOtis Small. LaOtis sipped from the straw, then pushed it away with his tongue. The body cast ran from below his knees to the top of his head, with holes for his face and outgoing tubes. Cavuto stood by the hospital bed taking notes.

"So you and your friends were doing laundry when an unarmed, redheaded woman attacked you and put all three of you in the hospital? Right?"

"She was a ninja, man. I know. I get the kick-boxing channel on cable."

Cavuto chomped an unlit cigar. "Your friend James says that she was six-four and weighed two hundred pounds."

"No, man, she was five-five, five-six."

"Your other buddy" — Cavuto checked his notepad for the name — "Kid Jay, said that it was a gang of Mexicans."

"No, man, he dreamin'; it was one ninja bitch."

"A five-and-a-half-foot woman put the three of you big strong guys in the hospital?"

"Yeah. We was just mindin' our own bidness. She come in and axed for some change. James tell her no, he got to put a load in the dryer, and she go fifty-one-fifty on him. She a ninja."

"Thank you, LaOtis, you've been very helpful." Cavuto shot Rivera a look and they left the hospital room.

In the hallway Rivera said, "So we're looking for a gang of redheaded, ninja Mexicans."

Cavuto said, "You think there's a molecule of truth in any of that?"

"They were all unconscious when they were brought in, and obviously they haven't tried to match up their stories. So if you throw out everything that doesn't match, you end up with a woman with long red hair."

"You think a woman could do that to them and manage to snap the neck of two other people without a struggle?"

"Not a chance," Rivera said. His beeper went off and he checked the number. "I'll call in."

Cavuto pulled up. "Go ahead, I'm going back in to talk to LaOtis. Meet me outside emergency."

"Take it easy, Nick, the guy's in a body cast."

Cavuto grinned. "Kind'a erotic, ain't it?" He turned and lumbered back toward LaOtis Small's room.

Jody walked Tommy up to Market Street, watched him eat a burger and fries, and put him on the 42 bus to work. Killing the time while Tommy worked was becoming tedious. She tried to stay in the loft, watched the late-night talk shows and old movies on cable, read magazines, and did a little cleaning, but by two in the morning the caged-cat feeling came over her and she went out to wander the streets.

Sometimes she walked Market among the street people and the convention crowds, other times she took a bus to North Beach and hung out on Broadway watching the sailors and the punks stagger, drunk and stoned, or the hookers and the hustlers running their games. It was on these crowded streets that she felt most lonely. Time and again she wanted to turn to someone and point out a unique heat pattern or the dark aura she sensed around the sick; like a child sharing the cloud animals flying through a summer sky. But no one else could see what she saw, no one heard the whispered propositions, the pointed refusals, or the rustle of money exchanging hands in alleys and doorways.

Other times she crept through the back streets and listened to the symphony of noises that no one else heard, smelled the spectrum of odors that had long ago exhausted her vocabulary. Each night there were more nameless sights and smells and sounds, and they came so fast and subtle that she eventually gave up trying to name them.

She thought, This is what it is to be an animal. Just experience — direct, instant, and wordless; memory and recognition, but no words. A poet with my senses could spend a lifetime trying to describe what it is to hear a building breathe and smell the aging of concrete. And for what? Why write a song when no one can play the notes or understand the lyrics? I'm alone.

Cavuto came through the double doors of the emergency room and joined Rivera, who was standing by the brown, City-issue Ford smoking a cigarette.

"What was the call?" Cavuto asked.

"We got another one. Broken neck. South of Market. Elderly male."

"Fuck," Cavuto said, yanking open the car door. "What about blood loss?"

"They don't know yet. This one's still warm." Rivera flipped his cigarette butt into the parking lot and climbed into the car. "You get anything more out of LaOtis?"

"Nothing important. They weren't doing their laundry, they went in looking for the girl, but he's sticking with the ninja story."

River started the car and looked at Cavuto. "You didn't rough him up?"

Cavuto pulled a Cross pen out of his shirt pocket and held it up. "Mightier than the sword."

Rivera cringed at the thought of what Cavuto might have done to LaOtis with the pen. "You didn't leave any marks, did you?"

"Lots," Cavuto grinned.

"Nick, you can't do that kind of —"

"Relax," Cavuto interrupted. "I just wrote, 'Thanks for all the information; I'm sure we'll get some convictions out of this, on his cast. Then I signed it and told him that I wouldn't scratch it out until he told me the truth."

"Did you scratch it out?"

"Nope."

"If his friends see it, they'll kill him."

"Fuck him," Cavuto said. "Ninja redheads, my ass."

Four in the morning. Jody watched neon beer signs buzzing color across the dew-damp sidewalks of Polk Street. The street was deserted, so she played sensory games to amuse herself — closing her eyes and listening to the soft scratch of her sneakers echoing off the buildings as she walked. If she concentrated, she could walk several blocks without looking, listening for the streetlight switches at the corners and feeling the subtle changes in wind currents at the cross streets. When she felt she was going to run into something, she could shuffle her feet and the sound would form a rough image in her mind of the walls and poles and wires around her. If she stood quietly, she could reach out and form a map of the whole City in her head — sounds drew the lines, and smells filled in the colors.

She was listening to the fishing boats idling at the wharf a mile away when she heard footsteps and opened her eyes. A single figure had rounded the corner a couple of blocks ahead of her and was walking, head down, up Polk. She stepped into the doorway of a closed Russian restaurant and watched him. Sadness came off him in black waves.

His name was Philip. His friends called him Philly. He was twenty-three. He had grown up in Georgia and had run away to the City when he was sixteen so he wouldn't have to pretend to be something he was not. He had run away to the City to find love. After the one-night stands with rich older men, after the bars and the bathhouses, after finding out that he wasn't a freak, that there were other people just like him, after the last of the confusion and shame had settled like red Georgia dust, he'd found love.

He'd lived with his lover in a studio in the Castro district. And in that studio, sitting on the edge of a rented hospital bed, he had filled a syringe with morphine and injected it into his lover and held his hand while he died. Later, he cleared away the bed pans and the IV stand and the machine that he used to suck the fluid out of his lover's lungs and he threw them in the trash. The doctor said to hold on to them — that he would need them.

They buried Philly's lover in the morning and they took the embroidered square of fabric that was draped on the casket and folded it and handed it to him like the flag to a war widow. He got to keep it for a while before it was added to the quilt. He had it in his pocket now.

His hair was gone from the chemotherapy. His lungs hurt, and his feet hurt; the sarcomas that spotted his body were worst on his feet and his face. His joints ached and he couldn't keep his food down, but he could still walk. So he walked.

He walked up Polk Street, head down, at four in the morning, because he could. He could still walk.

When he reached the doorway of a Russian restaurant, Jody stepped out in front of him and he stopped and looked at her.

Somewhere, way down deep, he found that there was a smile left. "Are you the Angel of Death?" he asked.

"Yes," she said.

"It's good to see you," Philly said.

She held her arms out to him.

Chapter 21 Angel Dust

The bed of Simon's pickup was full of beer-sodden Animals enjoying the morning fog and speculating on the marital status of the new cashier. She had smiled at Tommy when she arrived, driving the Animals into a psychosexual frenzy.

"She looked like she was being towed through the store by two submarines," said Simon.

"Major hooters," said Troy Lee. "Major-league hooters."

Tommy said, "Can't you guys see more in a woman than T and A?"

"Nope," said Troy.

"No way," said Simon.

"Spoken like a guy who has a live-in girlfriend," said Lash.

"Yeah," Simon said. "How come we never see you with the little woman?"

"Seagull! "shouted Barry.

Simon pulled a pump shotgun from under a tarp in the truck bed, tracked on a seagull that was passing over, and fired.

"Missed again!" shouted Barry.

"You can't kill them all, Simon," Tommy said, his ears ringing from the blast. "Why don't you just cover your truck at night?"

Simon said. "You don't pay for twenty coats of hand-rubbed lacquer to cover it up."

The shotgun went under the tarp and the manager came through the front doors of the store. "What was that? What was that?" He was scanning the parking lot frantically as if he expected to see someone with a shotgun.

"Backfire," Simon said.

The manager looked for the offending car.

"They were heading toward the Marina," Tommy said.

"Well, you tell me if they come back," the manager said. "There's a noise ordinance in this city, you know." He turned to go back into the store.

"Hey, boss," Simon called. "The new girl, what's her name?"

"Mara," the manager said. "And you guys leave her alone. She's had a rough time of it lately."

"She single?" Troy asked.

"Off limits," the manager said. "I mean it. She lost a child a few months ago."

"Yes, boss," the Animals said in unison. The manager entered the store.

Simon ripped a beer from a six-pack ring. He held another out to Tommy. "Fearless Leader, another brew?"

"No, I've got to get home."

"Me too," said Simon. "I've got to clean the bird shit off the beast. You need a ride?"

"Sure, can we stop in Chinatown? I want to pick something up for Jody."

Simon shook his head. "You worry me, son. Men have been pussy-whipped to death, you know." He downed his beer and crushed the can. "Out of the truck, girls; Fearless Leader and I have to shop for tampons."

"Pull!" Troy shouted.

A half dozen beer cans arced into the air. The shotgun came out and Simon pumped out two quick shots. The beer cans fell to the parking lot unharmed. The shotgun went under the tarp. The manager came through the front door.

Simon said, "I saw it, boss. Was a baby-blue 72 Nova with a stuffed gerbil on the aerial. Call it in."

Jody's hands were covered with a greasy dust: the remains of Philly. The body had decomposed to dust in seconds after she finished drinking, leaving a pile of empty clothes. After staring at the pile for a moment, she shook off the shock and gathered the clothes into a bundle, which she carried into a nearby alley.

The blood-high raced through her like an espresso firehose. She leaned against a dumpster, holding the clothes to her breast like a security blanket. The alley tilted in her vision, then righted, then spun until she thought she would be sick.

When the alley stopped moving, she fumbled through the clothing until she found a wallet. She opened it and pulled out the contents. This bundle of rags had been a person; "Phillip Burns," the license said. He carried crinkled photos of friends, a library card, a dry-cleaning receipt, a bank card, and fifty-six dollars. Phillip Burns in a convenient, portable package. She pocketed the wallet, threw the clothes into the dumpster, then wiped her hands on her jeans and stumbled out of the alley.

I killed someone, she thought. My God, I killed someone. What should I feel?

She walked for blocks, not really looking where she was going, but listening to the rhythm of her own steps under the roar of the blood-high in her head. Philly had spilled into her shoes and she stopped and sat on the curb to dump him out.

What is this? she thought. This isn't anything. This isn't what I was before I was a vampire. What is this? This is impossible. This isn't a person. A person can't reduce to dust in seconds. What is this?

She took off her socks and shook them out.

This is fucking magic, she thought. This isn't some story out of one of Tommy's books. This isn't something you can experiment with in the bathroom. This is not natural, and whatever I am, it isn't natural. A vampire is magic, not science. And if this is what happens when a vampire kills, then how are the police finding bodies? Why is there a guy in my freezer?

She put on her shoes and socks and resumed walking. It was starting to get light and she quickened her pace, checked her watch, then broke into a run. She'd made a habit of checking the time of sunrise every morning in the almanac so she wouldn't be caught too far from home. Five years in the City had taught her the streets, but if she was going to run she had to learn the alleys and backstreets. She couldn't let anyone see her moving this fast.

As she ran, a voice sounded in her head. It was her voice, but not her voice. It was the voice that put no words to what her senses told her, yet understood. It was the voice that told her to hide from the light, to protect herself, to fight or flee. The vampire voice.

"Killing is what you do," the vampire voice said.

The human part of her was revolted. "No! I didn't want to kill him."

"Fuck him. It is as it should be. His life is ours. It feels good, doesn't it?"

Jody stopped fighting. It did feel good. She pushed the human part of her aside and let the predator take over to race the sun for her life.

Nick Cavuto paced around the chalk outline of the body as if he were preparing to perform a violent hopscotch on the corpse. "You know," Cavuto said, looking over at Rivera, who was trying to fend off a reporter from the Chronicle at the yellow crime-scene tape, "this guy is pissing me off."

Rivera excused himself from the reporter and joined Cavuto by the body. "Nick, keep it down," he whispered.

"This stiff is making my life difficult," Cavuto said. "I say we shoot him and take his wallet. Simple gunshot wound, robbery motive."

"He didn't have a wallet," said Rivera.

"There you have it, robbery. Massive blood loss from gunshot wound, broke his neck when he hit the ground."

The reporter perked up. "So it was a robbery?"

Cavuto glared at the reporter and put his hand on his thirty-eight. "Rivera, what do you say to a murder-suicide? Scoop over there killed this guy, then turned the gun on himself — case closed and we can go get some breakfast."

The reporter backed away from the line.

Two coroner's assistants moved to the body, pushing a gurney with a body bag on it. "You guys done here?" one of them asked Cavuto.

"Yeah," Cavuto said. "Take him away."

The coroners spread the body bag out and hoisted the body onto it. "Hey, Inspector, you want to bag this book?"

"What book?" Rivera turned. A paperback copy of Kerouac's On the Road was lying in the chalk line where the body had been. Rivera slipped on a pair of white cotton gloves and pulled an evidence bag from his jacket pocket. "Here you go, Nick. The guy was a speed reader. Snapped his neck on a meaningful passage."

Jody glanced at the lightening sky, ducked down an alley, and fell into a trot. She was only a block from home, she'd make it in long before sunrise. She leaped over a dumpster, just to do it, then high-stepped through a pile of crates like a halfback through fallen defenders. She was strong in the blood — high, quick and light on her feet, her body moved, dodged, and leaped on its own — no thought, just fluid motion and perfect balance.

She'd never been athletic in life: the last kid to be picked for kickball, straight C's in phys ed, no chance as a cheerleader; the self-conscious, one-step dancer with the rhythmic sense of an inbred Aryan. But now she reveled in the movement and the strength, even as her instincts screamed for her to hide from the light.

She heard the policemen's voices before she saw the blue and red lights from their cars playing across the walls at the end of the alley. Fear tightened her muscles and she nearly fell in mid-step.

She crept forward and saw the police cars and coroner's wagon parked in front of the loft. The street was full of milling cops and reporters. She checked her watch and backed down the alley. Five minutes to sunrise.

She looked for a place to hide. There was the dumpster, even a few large garbage cans, three steel doors with massive locks, and a basement window with steel bars. She ran to the window and tried the bars. They moved a bit. She checked her watch. Two minutes. She braced her feet against the brick wall and pulled on the bars with her legs. Rusty bolts tore out of the mortar and the bars moved another half inch. She tried to peer into the window, but the wire-reinforced glass was clouded with dirt and age. She yanked on the bars again and they screamed in protest and came loose. She dropped the grate and was drawing back to kick out the glass when she heard movement behind the window.

Oh my God, there's someone inside!

She looked around to the dumpster, some fifty feet away. She looked at her watch. If it was right, the sun was up. She was…

The glass shattered behind her. Two hands came through the window, grabbed her ankles, and pulled her inside as she went out.

"These here turtles are defective," Simon said.

"It's okay, Simon," said Tommy.

They were in a Chinatown fish market, where Tommy was trying to purchase two massive snapping turtles from an old Chinese man in a rubber apron and boots.

"You no know turtle!" the old man insisted. "These plime, glade-A turtle. You no know shit about turtle."

The turtles were in orange crates to immobilize them. The old man sprayed them down with a garden hose to keep them wet.

"And I'm telling you, these turtles are defective," Simon insisted. "Their eyes are all glazed over. These turtles are on drugs."

Tommy said, "Really, Simon, it's okay."

Simon turned to Tommy and whispered, "You have to bargain with these guys. They won't respect you if you don't."

"Turtle's not on dlugs," said the old man. "You want turtle, you pay forty bucks."

Simon pushed his black Stetson back on his head and sighed. "Look, Hop Sing, you can do time for selling drugged turtles in this city."

"No dlugs. Fuck you, cowboy. Forty bucks or go away."

"Twenty."

"Thirty."

"Twenty-five and you clean 'em."

"No," Tommy said. "I want them alive."

Simon looked at Tommy as if he had farted in neon. "I'm trying to negotiate here."

"Thirty," said the old man. "As is."

"Twenty-seven," Simon said.

"Twenty-eight or go home," said the old man.

Simon turned to Tommy. "Pay him."

Tommy ticked off the bills and handed them to the old man, who counted them and put them in his rubber apron. "You cowboy friend no know turtle."

"Thanks," Tommy said. He and Simon picked up the crates with the turtles and loaded them into the bed of Simon's truck.

As they climbed into the cab, Simon said, "You got to know how to deal with those little fuckers. Ever since we nuked them, they got a bad attitude."

"We nuked the Japanese, Simon, not the Chinese."

"Whatever. You should'a made him clean them for you."

"No, I want to give them to Jody alive."

"You're a charmer, Flood. A lot of guys would've just paid the ransom with candy and flowers."

"Ransom?"

"She's got your nooky held hostage, ain't she?"

"No, I just wanted to get her a present — to be nice."

Simon sighed heavily and rubbed the bridge of his nose as if fighting a headache. "Son, we need to talk."

Simon had distinctive ideas about the way women should be handled, and as they drove to SOMA he waxed eloquent on the subject while Tommy listened, thinking, If they knew about him, Simon would be elected the Cosmo Nightmare Man for the next decade.

"You see," Simon said, "when I was a kid in Texas, we used to walk through the watermelon fields kickin' each of them old melons as we went until one was so ripe and ready that it busted right open. Then we'd reach in and eat the heart right out of it and move on to the next one. That's how you got to treat women, Flood."

"Like kicking watermelons?"

"Right. Now you take that new cashier. She wants you, boy. But you're thinkin', I got me a piece at home so I don't need her. Right?"

"Right," Tommy said.

"Wrong. You got one at home that you're buying presents for and saying sweet things and tiptoeing around the house so as not to upset her and generally acting like a spineless nooky slave. But if you put it to that new cashier, then you got one up on your old lady. You can do what you want, when you want, and if she gets pissy and don't put out, you go back to your cashier. Your old lady has to try harder. There's competition. It's supply and demand. God bless America, it's nooky capitalism."

"I'm lost. I thought it was like watermelon farming."

"Whatever. Point is, you're whipped, Flood. You can't have no self-respect if you're whipped. And you can't have no fun." Simon turned on Tommy's street and pulled the truck over to the curb. "Something going on here."

There were four police cars parked in the street in front of the loft and a coroner's van was pulling away.

"Wait here," Tommy said. He got out of the car and walked toward the cops. A sharp-featured Hispanic cop in a suit met Tommy in the middle of the street. His badge wallet hung open from his belt; he was holding a plastic bag. Inside it Tommy saw a dog-eared copy of On the Road. He recognized the coffee stains on the cover.

"This street is closed, sir," the cop said. "Crime investigation."

"But I just live right there," Tommy said, pointing to the loft.

"Really," the cop said, raising an eyebrow. "Where are you coming from?"

"The fuck's going on here, pancho?" Simon said, coming up behind Tommy. "I got a truckful of dyin' turtles and I ain't got all damn day."

"Oh Christ," Tommy said, hanging his head.

Chapter 22 A Nod to the Queen of the Damned

It only took five minutes to convince the police that Tommy had been at work all night and had seen nothing. Simon had done most of the talking. Tommy was so shocked to see his book in the cop's hand that he couldn't find the answers to even the simplest questions. He was, however, able to convince the cop that his shocked state came from a body having been found outside his apartment. Sometimes it paid to play on the "I just fell off the turnip truck from Indiana" image.

They hauled the turtles up the steps and set the crates on the floor in the kitchen area.

"Where's the little woman?" Simon asked, eyeing the huge chest freezer.

"Probably still sleeping," Tommy said. "Grab yourself a beer out of the fridge. I'll check on her."

Tommy palmed open the bedroom door, then slipped through and closed it behind him. He thought, I've got to keep Simon out of here. He's going to want Jody to get up and…

The bed was empty.

Tommy ran to the bathroom and looked in the tub, thinking that Jody might have been caught there at sunrise, but except for a rust ring, the tub was empty. He looked under the bed, found nothing but an old sock, then tore open the closet door and pushed the hanging clothes aside. Panic rose in his throat and came out in a scream of "No!"

"You okay in there?" Simon said from the kitchen.

"She's not here!"

Simon opened the door. "You got a nice crib here, Flood. You inherit some money or something?" Simon said. Then he spotted the panic on Tommy's face. "What's the matter?"

"She's not here."

"So, she probably went out early to get a doughnut or something."

"She can't go out during the day," Tommy said before he realized what he was saying. "I mean, she never goes out early."

"Don't sweat it. I thought you were going to teach me to read. Let's drink some beers and read some fucking books, okay?"

"No, I have to go look for her. She could be out in the sun…"

"Chill, Flood. She's fine. The worst that could happen is she's out with another guy. You might be a free man." Simon picked up a book from the stack by the bed. "Let's read this one. What's this one?"

Tommy wasn't listening. He was seeing Jody's burned body lying in a gutter somewhere. How could she let it happen? Didn't she check the almanac? He had to look for her. But where? You can't search a city the size of San Francisco.

Simon threw the book back on the stack and headed out of the bedroom, "Okay then, Slick, I'm out of here. Thanks for the beer."

"Okay," Tommy said. Then the idea of spending the day alone, waiting, threw him into another wave of panic. "No, Simon! Wait. We'll read."

"That one on the top of the stack," Simon said. "What's that one?"

Tommy picked it up. "The Vampire Lestat, by Anne Rice. I hear it's good."

"Then grab a beer and let's get literate."

Rivera, bleary-eyed and looking as if he had slept in his suit, sat at his desk looking over his notes. No matter how he shuffled them, they didn't make sense, didn't show a pattern. The only link between the victims was the way they had died: no motive. They wouldn't get the autopsy report for another twelve hours, but there was no doubt that the same person had done the killings.

Nick Cavuto came through the squad room door carrying a box of doughnuts and a copy of the San Francisco Examiner. "They fucking named him. The Examiner is calling him the Whiplash Killer. Once they name the killer, our problems double. You got anything?"

Rivera waved to the notes spread over his desk and shrugged. "I'm out of it, Nick. I can't even read my own writing. You take a look."

Cavuto took a maple stick from the box and sat down across from Rivera. He grabbed a handful of papers and began leafing through them, then stopped and flipped back. He looked up. "You talked to this Flood kid this morning, right?"

Rivera was looking at the doughnuts. His stomach lurched at the thought of eating one. "Yeah, he lives across the street from where we found the body. He works at the Marina Safeway — was working at the time of the murder."

Cavuto raised an eyebrow. "The kid was staying at the motel where we found the old lady."

"You're kidding."

Cavuto held out the notes for Rivera to read. "List of guests. A uniform talked to the kid, said he was at work, but no one confirmed it."

Rivera looked up apologetically. "I can't believe I missed that. The kid was a little squirrelly when I talked to him. His friend did most of the talking."

Cavuto gathered up the papers. "Go home. Shower and sleep. I'll call the manager of the Safeway and make sure the kid was working at the time of the murders. We'll go there tonight and talk to the kid."

"Okay, then let's ask him how he's getting the blood out of the bodies."

Tommy had spent two hours trying to explain the difference between vowels and consonants to Simon before he gave up and sent the cowboy home to wax his truck and watch "Sesame Street." Maybe Simon wasn't meant to read. Maybe he was meant to be all instinct and no intelligence. In a way, Tommy admired him. Simon didn't worry, he took things at face value as they happened. Simon was like the strong, free and easy Cassady to Tommy's introspective, overanalytical Kerouac. Maybe he would put Simon in his story of the little girl growing up in the South. The story he would be working on if he weren't worrying about Jody.

He sat all day on the couch, reading The Vampire Lestat until he couldn't concentrate anymore, then he paced the apartment, checking his watch and railing to Peary, who listened patiently from the freezer.

"You know, Peary, it's inconsiderate of her not to leave me a note. I don't have any idea what she does while I'm at work. She could be having a dozen affairs and I wouldn't even know."

He checked the almanac eight times for the time the sun would set.

"I know, I know, until I met Jody, nothing really ever happened to me. That's why I came here, right? Okay, I'm being unfair, but maybe I'd be better off with a normal woman. Jody just doesn't understand that I'm not like other guys. That I'm special. I'm a writer. I can't handle stress as well as other guys — I take it personal."

Tommy heated up a frozen dinner and left the freezer lid open so Peary could hear him better.

"I have to look to the future, you know. When I'm a famous writer I'm going to have to go on book tours. She can't go with me. What can I say, 'No, I'm sorry, but I can't go. If I go away my wife will starve to death'?"

He paced around the turtles, who were struggling in their crates. One of them raised his spiny head and considered Tommy.

"I know how you guys feel. Just waiting for someone to eat you. You think I don't know how that feels?"

When he could no longer look them in the eye, he carried the turtles into the bathroom, then returned to the living room and tried to get through a few more chapters of The Vampire Lestat.

"This is wrong," he said to Peary. "It says that vampires don't have sex after they are turned. Of course it only talks about male vampires. What if she's been faking? You know, she could be frigid except for when she drinks my blood."

He was working himself into a frenzy of sexual insecurity — something that felt familiar and almost comfortable — when the phone rang. He yanked it off the cradle.

"Hello."

A woman's voice, surprised but trying to not to show it, said, "Hello. I'd like to speak to Jody, please."

"She's not here," Tommy said. "She's at work," he added quickly.

"I called her at work and they said she left her job over a month ago."

"Uh, she has a new job. I don't know the number."

"Well, whoever you are," the woman said, losing the pretense of politeness, "would you tell her that she still has a mother. And tell her that it is common courtesy to tell your mother when you change your phone number. And tell her that I need to know what she is going to do for the holidays."

"I'll tell her," Tommy said.

"Are you the stockbroker? What was it… Kurt?"

"No, I'm Tommy."

"Well, it's only two weeks until Christmas, Tommy, so if you're still around, we'll be meeting."

"I'll look forward to it," Tommy said. Like I look forward to a root canal, he thought.

Jody's mom hung up. Tommy put down the phone and checked his watch. Only an hour to sunset. "She's alive," he said to Peary, "I'm sure of it. If she survived her mother, she can survive anything."

She heard steam rushing through pipes, rats scurrying in shredded paper, the spinnerets of spiders weaving webs, the footsteps of a heavy man, and the padding and panting of dogs. She opened her eyes and looked around. She was on her back on the basement floor, alone. Cardboard boxes were scattered about the room. Moonlight and sounds of movement spilled through the broken window.

She got up and stepped up on a crate to look out the window. She was met by a yap and a snort and the growling countenance of a bug-eyed dog with a pan strapped to his head.

"Ack!" She wiped the slime from her cheek.

The Emperor fell to his knees and reached through the window. "Oh goodness, are you all right, dear?"

"Yes, I'm fine. I'm fine."

"Are you injured? Shall I call the police?"

"No, thank you. Could you give me a hand?" She would have leaped through the window, but it wasn't a good idea in front of the Emperor. She took his hand and let him pull her through the window.

Once on her feet in the alley, she dusted off her jeans. Bummer had fallen into a yapping fit. The Emperor picked up the little dog and stuffed him into his oversized coat pocket.

"I must apologize for Bummer's behavior. There's no excuse for it, really, but he is a victim of inbreeding. Being royalty myself, I make allowances. If it's any consolation, it was only on Bummer's insistence that we ventured down this alley and found you."

"Well, thanks," Jody said. "I don't know exactly what happened."

"Check your valuables, dear. You've obviously been accosted by some ne'er-do-well. Perhaps we should find you some medical attention."

"No, I'm just a little shaken up. I just need to get home."

"Then please allow me and my men to escort you to your door."

"No, that's okay. My loft is just at the end of the alley."

The Emperor held up his finger to caution her. "Please, my dear. Safety first."

Jody shrugged. "Well, all right. Thanks." Bummer was squirming and snorting inside the Emperor's buttoned pocket like — well, like a pocketful of dog. "Can he breathe in there?"

"Bummer will be fine. He's just a bit overexcited since we've gone to war. His first time in the field, you know."

Jody eyed the Emperor's cruelly pointed wooden sword. "How goes the battle?"

"I believe we are closing in on the forces of evil. The fiend will be vanquished and victory will soon be ours."

"That's nice," Jody said.

When Tommy heard her coming up the stairs he threw his book across the room, ran to the loft door, and yanked it open. Jody was standing on the landing.

"Hi," she said.

Tommy was torn between taking her in his arms and pushing her down the steps. He just stood there. "Hi," he said.

Jody kissed him on the cheek and walked passed him into the loft. Tommy stood there, trying to figure out how to react. "Are you okay?" Once he was sure she wasn't hurt, he'd tear into her for staying out all day.

She fell onto the futon like a bag of rags. "I had a really bad night."

"Where were you?"

"I was in a basement, about half a block from here. I would have called, but I was dead."

"That's not funny. I was worried. They found a body out front last night."

"I know, I saw the cops all over the place outside, just before dawn. That's why I couldn't get back."

"The cops had my copy of On the Road in an evidence bag. I think I'm in trouble."

"Was your name in it?"

"No, but obviously my fingerprints were all over it. How did it get there?"

"The vampire put it there, Tommy."

"How did he get it? It was here in the loft."

"I don't know. He's trying to freak us out. He's leaving the bodies near us so the police will connect us to the killings. He doesn't have to leave bodies at all, Tommy. He's killing these people in a way that leaves evidence."

"What do you mean, he doesn't have to leave bodies at all?"

"Tommy, come here. Sit down. I have to tell you something."

"I don't like the tone of your voice. This is bad news, isn't it? This is the big letdown, isn't it? You were with another guy last night."

"Sit down and shut up, please."

Tommy sat and she told him. Told him about the killing, about the body turning to dust, and about being dragged into the basement.

When she had finished, Tommy sat for a moment looking at her, then moved away from her on the futon. "You took the guy's money?"

"It seemed wrong to throw it away."

"And killing him didn't seem wrong?"

"No, it didn't. I can't explain it. It felt like I was supposed to."

"If you were hungry you should have told me. I don't mind, really."

"It wasn't like that, Tommy. Look, I don't know how to file this — emotionally, I mean. I don't feel like I killed someone. The point I'm trying to make is that the body crumbled to dust. There was no body. The people the vampire is killing aren't dying from his bite. He's breaking their necks before they die. He's doing all this on purpose to scare me. I'm afraid he might hurt you to get at me. I've suspected it for a long time, but I didn't want to say anything to you. If you want to leave, I'll understand."

"I didn't say anything about leaving. I don't know what to do. How would you feel if I told you I had killed someone?"

"It would depend. This guy wanted to die. He was in pain. He was going to die anyway."

"Do you want me to leave?"

"Of course not. But I need you to try and understand."

"I am trying. That's all I've been doing. Why do you think I've been doing all these experiments? You act like this is easy for me. I've been a mess all day worrying about you and you're in a basement a few steps away. What about that? Who dragged you into the basement?"

"I don't know."

"Whoever it was saved your life. Was it the vampire?"

"I said, I don't know."

Tommy went across the room and pick up the paperback of The Vampire Lestat. "This guy, Lestat, he can tell when there's another vampire around. He can sense it. Can't you sense it?"

"Right, and that's why we have a dead guy in the freezer. No, I can't sense it."

Tommy held up the book. "There's a whole history of the vampire race in here. I think this Anne Rice knows a real vampire or something."

"That's what you thought about Bram Stoker, too. And I spent an hour standing on a chair trying to turn into a bat."

"No, this is different. Lestat isn't evil, he likes humans. He only kills murderers that are without remorse. He knows when there are other vampires around. Lestat can fly."

Jody jumped up and ripped the book out of his hand. "And Anne Rice can write, Tommy, but I'm not throwing that in your face."

"You don't have to get personal."

"Look, Tommy, maybe there's some truth in one of these books that you're reading, but how do we know which one? Huh? Nobody gave me a fucking owner's manual when I got these fangs. I'm doing the best that I can."

Tommy looked away from her, then at his shoes. "You're right, I'm sorry. I'm confused and I'm a little scared. I don't know what I'm doing either. Hell, Jody, you might have AIDS now, we don't know."

"I don't have AIDS. I know I don't."

"How do you know? It's not like we can send you down to the clinic to test you or anything."

"I know it, Tommy. I could feel it if I did. Except for sunlight and food, I'm not even allergic to anything anymore. Hand lotions and soaps I couldn't get near before without breaking into a rash don't affect me. I've done a few experiments of my own. My body won't let anything hurt me. I'm safe. Besides…" Jody paused and grinned, waiting for him to ask.

"Besides what?"

"He was wearing a condom."

Tommy resumed staring at his shoes, said nothing, then looked up at her and laughed. "That's incredibly sick, Jody."

She nodded and laughed.

"I love you," he said, moving to her and taking her in his arms.

"Me too," she said, hugging him back.

"That's really sick, you know that?"

"Yep," she said. "Tommy, I don't want to break this beautiful moment, but I have to take a shower." She kissed him and pushed him away gently, then headed into the bathroom.

"Uh, Jody," he called after her, "I got a present for you in Chinatown today."

There's an explanation for this, she thought, standing in the bathroom, looking at the turtles. There is a perfectly good reason why there are two huge snapping turtles in my tub.

"Do you like them?" Tommy was standing in the doorway behind her.

"These are for me, then?" She tried to smile. She really did.

"Yeah, Simon helped me get them home. I didn't think I could carry them on the bus. Aren't they great?"

Jody looked in the tub again. The turtles were trying to crawl on top of each other. Their claws screeched on the porcelain when they moved.

"I don't know what to say," Jody said.

"I thought that we could feed them fish and stuff, and you'd have a blood supply right here at home. Besides me, I mean."

She turned and regarded Tommy. Yes, he was serious. He was really serious. "You haven't…"

"Their names are Scott and Zelda. Zelda is missing a toe on her back foot. That's how you tell them apart. Do you like them? You seem a little reticent."

A little, she thought. You couldn't have brought me flowers or jewelry, like most guys. You had to say it with reptiles. "I don't suppose there's any chance that you saved the receipt?"

Tommy's face avalanched into disappointment. "You don't like them."

"No, they're fine. But, I really wanted to take a shower. I'm not sure I want to be naked in front of them."

"Oh," Tommy said, brightening. "I'll take them into the living room."

He pulled a towel off the rod and began maneuvering over the tub, trying to get a drop on Zelda. "You have to be careful; they can take off a finger in those jaws."

"I see," Jody said. But she didn't see at all. The idea of biting one of the spiny creatures in the tub gave her an industrial-size case of the creeps.

Tommy lunged and came up with Zelda, wrapped in swaddling clothes and snapping at his face. "She hates being picked up." Zelda's claws tore at the towel and Tommy's shirt as she attempted to swim through midair. He set the turtle on her back on the bathroom floor and readied the towel to lunge into the tub for Scott. "Lestat can call animals to him when he's hungry. Maybe you can train them."

"Stop it with the Lestat stuff, Tommy. I'm not sucking turtles."

He turned to her and slipped, falling into the tub. Scott snapped, barely missing Tommy's arm, and latched on to the sleeve of his denim shirt. "I'm okay. I'm okay. He didn't get me."

Jody pulled him from the tub. Scott was still attached to his sleeve and was determined not to let go.

Turtles hate heights. They don't even like being a few feet off the ground. It's the main reason they have resisted evolution for so long — fear of heights. Turtle thinking goes thus: Sure, first our scales turn into feathers and the next thing you know we're flying and chirping and perching on trees. We've seen it happen. Thanks, but we're staying right here in the mud where we belong. You're not going to see us flying full-tilt boogie into a sliding glass door.

Scott was not letting go of the sleeve, not as long as Tommy was standing. "Help me," Tommy said. "Pry him off."

Jody looked for a place on the turtle to grab — reached out and pulled back several times. "I don't want to touch him."

The phone rang.

"I'll get it," Jody said, running out of the bathroom.

Tommy dragged Scott to the doorway, keeping his feet safely away from Zelda's jaws. "I forgot to tell you…"

"Hello," Jody said into the phone. "Oh, hi, Mom."

Chapter 23 Mom and Terrapin Pie

"She's in town," Jody said. "She's coming over in a few minutes." Jody lowered the phone to its cradle.

Tommy appeared in the bedroom doorway, Scott still dangling from his sleeve. "You're kidding."

"You're missing a cufflink," Jody said.

"I don't think he's going to let go. Do we have any scissors?"

Jody took Tommy by the sleeve a few inches above where Scott was clamped. "You ready?"

Tommy nodded and she ripped his sleeve off at the shoulder. Scott skulked into the bedroom, the sleeve still clamped in his jaws.

"That was my best shirt," Tommy said, looking at his bare arm.

"Sorry, but we've got to clean this place up and get a story together."

"Where did she call from?"

"She was at the Fairmont Hotel. We've got maybe ten minutes."

"So she won't be staying with us."

"Are you kidding? My mother under the same roof where people are living in sin? Not in this lifetime, turtleboy."

Tommy took the turtleboy shot in stride. This was an emergency and there was no time for hurt feelings. "Does you mother use phrases like 'living in sin'?"

"I think she has it embroidered on a sampler over the telephone so she won't forget to use it every month when I call."

Tommy shook his head. "We're doomed. Why didn't you call her this month? She said you always call her."

Jody was pacing now, trying to think. "Because I didn't get my reminder."

"What reminder?"

"My period. I always call her when I get my period each month — just to get all the unpleasantness out of the way at one time."

"When was the last time you had a period?"

Jody thought for a minute. It was before she had turned. "I don't know, eight, nine weeks. I'm sorry, I can't believe I forgot."

Tommy went to the futon, sat down, and cradled his head in his hands. "What do we do now?"

Jody sat next to him. "I don't suppose we have time to redecorate."

In the next ten minutes, while they cleaned up the loft, Jody tried to prepare Tommy for what he was about to experience. "She doesn't like men. My father left her for a younger woman when I was twelve, and Mother thinks all men are snakes. And she doesn't really like women either, since she was betrayed by one. She was one of the first women to graduate from Stanford, so she's a bit of a snob about that. She says that I broke her heart when I didn't go to Stanford. It's been downhill since then. She doesn't like that I live in the City and she has never approved of any of my jobs, my boyfriends, or the way I dress."

Tommy stopped in the middle of scrubbing the kitchen sink. "So what should I talk about?"

"It would probably be best if you just sat quietly and looked repentant."

"That's how I always look."

Jody heard the stairwell door open. "She's here. Go change your shirt."

Tommy ran to the bedroom, stripping off his one-sleever as he went. I'm not ready for this, he thought. I have more work to do on myself before I'm ready for a presentation.

Jody opened the door catching her mother poised to knock.

"Mom!" Jody said, with as much enthusiasm as she could muster. "You look great."

Frances Evelyn Stroud stood on the landing looking at her youngest daughter with restrained disapproval. She was a short, stout woman dressed in layers of wool and silk under an eggshell cashmere coat. Her hair was a woven gray-blond, flared and lacquered to expose a pair of pearl earrings roughly the size of Ping-Pong balls. Her eyebrows had been plucked away and painted back, her cheekbones were high and highlighted, her lips lined, filled, and clamped tight. She had the same striking green eyes as her daughter, flecked now with sparks of judgment. She had been pretty once but was now passing into the limbo-land of the menopausal woman known as handsome.

"May I come in," she said.

Jody, caught in the half-gesture of offering a hug, dropped her arms. "Of course," she said, stepping aside. "It's good to see you," she said, closing the door behind her mother.

Tommy bounded from the bedroom into the kitchen and slid to a stop on stocking feet. "Hi," he said.

Jody put her hand on her mother's back. Frances flinched, ever so slightly, at the touch. "Mother, this is Thomas Flood. He's a writer. Tommy, this is my mother, Frances Stroud."

Tommy approached Frances and offered his hand. "Pleased to meet you…"

She clutched her Gucci bag tightly, then forced herself to take his hand. "Mrs. Stroud," she said, trying to head off the unpleasantness of hearing her Christian name come out of Tommy's mouth.

Jody broke the moment of discomfort so they could pass into the next one. "So, Mom, can I take your coat? Would you like to sit down?"

Frances Stroud surrendered her coat to her daughter as if she were surrendering her credit cards to a mugger, as if she didn't want to know where it was going because she would never see it again. "Is this your couch?" she asked, nodding toward the futon.

"Have a seat, Mother; we'll get you something to drink. We have…" Jody realized that she had no idea what they had. "Tommy, what do we have?"

Tommy wasn't expecting the questions to start so soon. "I'll look," he said, running to the kitchen and throwing open a cabinet. "We have coffee, regular and decaf." He dug behind the coffee, the sugar, the powdered creamer. "We have Ovaltine, and…" He threw open the refrigerator. "Beer, milk, cranberry juice, and beer — a lot of beer — I mean, not a lot, but plenty, and…" He opened the chest freezer. Peary stared up at him through a gap between frozen dinners. Tommy slammed the lid."… that's it. Nothing in there."

"Decaf, please," said Mother Stroud. She turned to Jody, who was returning from balling up her mother's cashmere coat and throwing it in the corner of the closet. "So, you've left your job at Transamerica. Are you working, dear?"

Jody sat in a wicker chair across the wicker coffee table from her mother. (Tommy had decided to decorate the loft in a Pier 1 Imports cheap-shit motif. As a result it was only a ceiling fan and a cockatoo away from looking like a Thai cathouse.)

Jody said, "I've taken a job in marketing." It sounded respectable. It sounded professional. It sounded like a lie.

"You might have told me and saved me the embarrassment of calling Transamerica only to find out that you had been let go."

"I quit, Mother. I wasn't let go."

Tommy, trying to will himself invisible, bowed his way between them to deliver the decaf, which he had arranged on a wicker tray with cream and sugar. "And you, Mr. Flood, you're a writer? What do you write?"

Tommy brightened. "I'm working on a short story about a little girl growing up in the South. Her father is on a chain gang."

"You're from the South, then?"

"No, Indiana."

"Oh," she said, as if he had just confessed to being raised by rats. "And where did you go to university?"

"I, um, I'm sort of self-educated. I think experience is the best teacher." Tommy realized that he was sweating.

"I see," she said. "And where might I read your work?"

"I'm not published yet." He squirmed. "I'm working on it, though," he added quickly.

"So you have another job. Are you in marketing as well?"

Jody intervened. She could see steam rising off Tommy. "He manages the Marina Safeway, Mother." It was a small lie, nothing compared to the tapestry of lies she had woven for her mother over the years.

Mother Stroud turned a scalpel gaze on her daughter. "You know, Jody, it's not too late to apply to Stanford. You'd be a bit older than the other freshmen, but I could pull a few strings."

How does she do this? Jody wondered. How does she come into my home and within minutes make me feel like dirt on a stick? Why does she do it?

"Mother, I think I'm beyond going back to school."

Mother Stroud picked up her cup as if to sip, then paused. "Of course, dear. You wouldn't want to neglect your career and family."

It was a verbal sucker punch delivered with polite, extended-pinky malice. Jody felt something drop inside her like cyanide pellets into acid. Her guilt dropped through the gallows' trap and jerked with broken-neck finality. She regretted only the ten thousand sentences she had started with, "I love my mother, but…" You do that so people don't judge you cold and inhuman, Jody thought. Too late now.

She said, "Perhaps you're right, Mother. Perhaps if I had gone to Stanford I would understand why I wasn't born with an innate knowledge of cooking and cleaning and child-rearing and managing a career and a relationship. I've always wondered if it's lack of education or genetic deficiency."

Mother Stroud was unshaken. "I can't speak for your father's genetic background, dear."

Tommy was grateful that Mother Stroud's attention had turned from him, but he could see Jody's gaze narrowing, going from hurt to anger. He wanted to come to her aid. He wanted to make peace. He wanted to hide in the corner. He wanted to wade in and kick ass. He weighed his polite upbringing against the anarchists, rebels, and iconoclasts who were his heroes. He could eat this woman alive. He was a writer and words were his weapons. She wouldn't have a chance. He'd destroy her.

And he would have. He was taking a deep breath to prepare to light into her when he saw a swath of denim disappearing slowly under the frame of the futon: his dismembered shirt sleeve. He held his breath and looked at Jody. She was smiling, saying nothing.

Mother Stroud said, "Your father was at Stanford on an athletic scholarship, you know. They would have never let him in otherwise."

"I'm sure you're right, Mother," Jody said. She smiled politely, listening not to her mother, but to the melodic scraping of turtle claws on carpet. She focused on the sound and could hear the slow, cold lugging of Scott's heart.

Mother Stroud sipped her decaf. Tommy waited. Jody said, "So how long will you be in the City?"

"I just came up to do some shopping. I'm sponsoring a benefit for the Monterey Symphony and I wanted a new gown. Of course I could have found something in Carmel, but everyone would have seen it already. The bane of living in a small community."

Jody nodded as if she understood. She had no connection to this woman, not anymore. Frances Evelyn Stroud was a stranger, an unpleasant stranger. Jody felt more of a connection with the turtle under the futon.

Under the futon, Scott spotted a pattern of scales on Mother Stroud's shoes. He'd never seen Italian faux-alligator pumps, but he knew scales. When you are lying peacefully buried in the muck at the bottom of a pond and you see scales, it means food. You bite.

Frances Stroud shrieked and leaped to her feet, pulling her right foot free of her shoe as she fell into the wicker coffee table. Jody caught her mother by the shoulders and set her on her feet. Frances pushed her away and backed across the room as she watched the snapping turtle emerge from under the futon merrily chomping on the pump.

"What is that? What is that thing? That thing is eating my shoe. Stop it! Kill it!"

Tommy hurdled the futon and dived for the turtle, catching the heel of the shoe before it disappeared. Scott dug his claws into the carpet and backed off. Tommy came up with heel in hand.

"I got part of it."

Jody went to her mother's side. "I meant to call the exterminator, Mother. If I'd had more notice…"

Mother Stroud was breathing in outraged yips. "How can you live like this?"

Tommy held the heel out to her.

"I don't want that. Call me a cab."

Tommy paused, considered the opportunity, then let it pass and went to the phone.

"You can't go out without shoes, Mother. I'll get you something to wear." Jody went to the bedroom and came back with her rattiest pair of sneakers. "Here, Mom, these will get you back to the hotel."

Mother Stroud, afraid to sit down anywhere, leaned against the door and stepped into the sneakers. Jody tied them for her and slipped the uneaten pump into her mother's bag. "There you go." She stepped back. "Now, what are we going to do for the holidays?"

Mother Stroud, her gaze trained on Scott, just shook her head. The turtle had wedged himself between the legs of the coffee table and was dragging it around the loft.

A cab pulled up outside and beeped the horn. Mother Stroud tore her gaze away from the turtle and looked at her daughter. "I'll be in Europe for the holidays. I have to go now." She opened the door and backed out through it.

"'Bye, Mom," Jody said.

"Nice meeting you, Mrs. Stroud," Tommy called after her.

When the cab pulled away, Tommy turned to Jody and said, "Well, that went pretty well, didn't it? I think she likes me."

Jody was leaning against the door, staring at the floor. She looked up and began to giggle silently. Soon she was doubled over laughing.

"What?" Tommy said.

Jody looked up at him, tears streaming her face. "I think I'm ready to meet your folks, don't you?"

"I don't know. They might be sort of upset that you're not a Methodist."

Chapter 24 The Return of Breakfast

The Emperor lay spread-eagle on the end of a dock in the Saint Francis Yacht Club Marina, watching clouds pass over the bay. Bummer and Lazarus lay beside him, their feet in the air, dozing. The three might have been crucified there, if the dogs hadn't been smiling.

"Men," the Emperor said, "it seems to me now that there is, indeed, a point to that Otis Redding song about sitting on the dock of the bay. After a long night of vampire hunting, this is a most pleasant way to spend the day. Bummer, I believe a commendation is in order. When you led us down here, I thought you were wasting our time."

Bummer did not answer. He was dreaming of a park full of large trees and bite-sized mailmen. His legs twitched and he let out a sleepy ruff each time he crunched one of their tiny heads. In dreams, mailmen taste like chicken.

The Emperor said, "But pleasant as this is, it tastes of guilt, of responsibility. Two months tracking this fiend, and we are no closer to finding him than when we started. Yet here we lay, enjoying the day. I can see the faces of the victims in these clouds."

Lazarus rolled over and licked the Emperor's hand.

"You're right, Lazarus, without sleep we will not be fit for battle. Perhaps, in leading us here, Bummer was wiser than we thought."

The Emperor closed his eyes and let the sound of waves lapping against the piers lull him to sleep.

Lying at anchor, a hundred yards away, was a hundred-foot motor yacht registered in the Netherlands. Belowdecks, in a watertight stainless steel vault, the vampire slept through the day.

Tommy had been asleep for an hour when pounding on the door downstairs woke him. In the darkness of the bedroom he nudged Jody, but she was out for the day. He checked his watch: 7:30 A.M.

The loft rocked with the pounding. He crawled out of bed and stumbled to the door in his underwear. The morning light spilling though the loft's windows temporarily blinded him and he barked his shin on the corner of the freezer on his way through the kitchen.

"I'm coming," he yelled. It sounded as if they were using a hammer on the door.

He did a Quasimodo step and slid down the stairs, holding his damaged shin in one hand, and cracked the downstairs door. Simon peeked through the crack. Tommy could see a ball-peen hammer in his hand, poised for another pound.

Simon said, "Pardner, we need to have us a sit-down."

"I'm sleeping, Sime. Jody's sleeping."

"Well, you're up now. Wake up the little woman, we need breakfast."

Tommy opened the door a little wider and saw Drew dazzling a stoned and goofy grin behind Simon. "Fearless Leader!"

All the Animals were there, holding grocery bags, waiting.

Tommy thought, This is how Anne Frank felt when the Gestapo came to the door.

Simon pushed through the door, causing Tommy to hop back a step to avoid having his toes skinned. "Hey."

Simon looked at Tommy's erection-stretched jockey shorts. "That just a morning wood, or you in the middle of something?"

"I told you, I was sleeping."

"You're young, it could still grow some. Don't feel bad."

Tommy looked down at his insulted member as Simon breezed past him up the stairs, followed by the rest of the Animals. Glint and Lash stopped and helped Tommy to his feet.

"I was sleeping," Tommy said pathetically. "It's my day off."

Lash patted Tommy's shoulder. "I'm cutting class today. We thought you needed moral support."

"For what? I'm fine."

"Cops came by the store last night looking for you. We wouldn't give them your address or anything."

"Cops?" Tommy was waking up now. He could hear beers being popped open in the loft. "What did the cops want with me?"

"They wanted to see your time cards. They wanted to see if you were working on a bunch of nights. They wouldn't say why. Simon tried to distract them by accusing me of leading a black terrorist group."

"That was nice of him."

"Yeah, he's a sweetheart. He told that new cashier, Mara, that you were in love with her but were too shy to tell her."

"Forgive him," Clint said piously. "He knows not what he does."

Simon popped out onto the landing. "Flood, did you drug this bitch? She won't wake up."

"Stay out of the bedroom!" Tommy shook off Lash and Clint and ran up the stairs.

Cavuto chewed an unlit cigar. "I say we go to the kid's house and lean on him."

Rivera looked up from a stack of green-striped computer printout. "Why? He was working when all the murders happened."

"Because he's all we've got. What about the prints on the book; any thing?"

"There were half a dozen good prints on the cover. Nothing the computer could match. Interesting thing is, none of the prints were the victim's. He never touched it."

"What about the kid; a match?"

"No way to tell, he's never been printed. Let it go, Nick. That kid didn't kill these people."

Cavuto ran his hand over his bald head as if looking for a bump that would hold an answer. "Let's arrest him and print him."

"On what charges?"

"We'll ask him. You know what the Chinese say, 'Beat a kid every day; if you don't know why, the kid will. »

"You ever think about adopting, Nick?" Rivera flipped the last page of the printout and threw it into the wastebasket by his desk. "Justice doesn't have shit. All the unsolved murders with massive blood loss involve mutilation. No vampires here."

For two months they had avoided using the word. Now, here it was. Cavuto took out a wooden match, scraped it against the bottom of his shoe, and moved it around the tip of his cigar. "Rivera, we will not refer to this perp by the V-word again. You don't remember the Night Stalker. This fucking Whiplash Killer thing the press has picked up is bad enough."

"You shouldn't smoke in here," said Rivera. "The sprout eaters will file a grievance."

"Fuck 'em. I can't think without smoking. Let's run sex offenders. Look for priors of rapes and assaults with blood draining. This guy might have just graduated to killing. Then let's run it with cross-dressers."

"Cross-dressers?"

"Yeah, I want to put this thing with the redhead to bed. Having a lead is ruining our perfect record."

She woke to a miasma of smells that hit her like a sockful of sand: burned eggs, bacon grease, beer, maple syrup, stale pot smoke, whiskey, vomit and male sweat. The smells carried memories from before the change — memories of high school keggers and drunken surfers face-down in puddles of puke. Hangover memories. Coming as they did, right after a visit from her mother, they carried shame and loathing and the urge to fall back into bed and hide under the covers.

She thought, I guess there's a few things about being human that I don't miss.

She pulled on a pair of sweatpants and one of Tommy's shirts and opened the bedroom door. It looked as if the good ship International Pancakes had run aground in the kitchen. Every horizontal surface was covered with breakfast jetsam. She stepped through the debris, careful not to kick any of the plates, frying pans, coffee cups, or beer cans that littered the floor. Beyond the freezer and the counter she spotted the shipwreck survivor.

Tommy lay on the futon, limbs akimbo, an empty Bushmill's bottle by his head, snoring.

She stood there for a moment running her options over in her head. On one hand, she wanted to fly into a rage; wake Tommy up and scream at him for violating the sanctity of their home. A justifiable tantrum was strongly tempting. On the other hand, until now Tommy had always been considerate. And he would clean everything up. Plus, the hangover he was about to experience would be more punishment than she could dole out in a week. Besides, she wasn't really that angry. It didn't seem to matter. It was just a mess. It was a tough decision.

She thought, Oh heck, no harm, no foul. I'll just make him coffee and give him that "I'm-so-disappointed-in-you" look.

"Tommy," she said. She sat down on the edge of the futon and jostled him gently. "Sweetheart, wake up; you've destroyed the house and I need you to suffer for it."

Tommy opened one bloodshot eye and groaned. "Sick," he said.

Jody heard a convulsive sloshing in Tommy's stomach and before she could think about it she had caught him under the armpits and was dragging him across the room to the kitchen sink.

"Oh my God!" Tommy cried, and if he was going to say anything else it was drowned out by the sound of his stomach emptying into the sink. Jody held him up, smiling to herself with the satisfaction of the self-righteously sober.

After a few seconds of retching, he gasped and looked up at her. Tears streamed down his face. His nose dripped threads of slime.

Cheerfully, Jody said, "Can I fix you a drink?"

"Oh my God!" His head went back into the sink and the body-wrenching heaves began anew. Jody patted his back and said "Poor baby" until he came up for air again.

"How about some breakfast?" she asked.

He dived into the sink once again.

After five minutes the heaves subsided and Tommy hung on the edge of the sink. Jody turned on the faucet and used the dish sprayer to hose off his face. "I guess you and the guys had a little party this morning, huh?"

Tommy nodded, not looking up. "I tried to keep them out. I'm sorry. I'm scum."

"Yes, you are, sweetheart." She ruffed his hair.

"I'll clean it up."

"Yes, you will," she said.

"I'm really sorry."

"Yes, you are. Do we want to go back to the futon and sit down?"

"Water," Tommy said.

She ran him a glass of water and steadied him while he drank, then aimed him into the sink when the water came back up.

"Are you finished now?" she asked.

He nodded.

She dragged him into the bathroom and washed his face, rubbing a little too hard, like an angry mother administering an abrasive spit-bath to a chocolate-covered toddler. "Now you go sit down and I'll make you some coffee."

Tommy staggered back to the living room and fell onto the futon. Jody found the coffee filters in the cupboard and began to make the coffee. She opened the cupboard to look for a cup but the Animals had used them all. They were strewn around the loft, tipped over or half full of whisky diluted by melted ice.

Ice?

"Tommy!"

He groaned and grabbed his head. "Don't yell."

"Tommy, did you guys use the ice from the freezer?"

"I don't know. Simon was bartending."

Jody brushed the dishes and pans from the lid of the chest freezer and threw it open. The ice trays, the ones Tommy had bought for the drowning experiment, were empty and scattered around the inside of the freezer. Peary's frosty face stared up at her. She slammed the lid shut and stormed across the room to Tommy.

"Dammit, Tommy, how could you be so careless?"

"Don't yell. Please don't yell. I'll clean it up."

"Clean it up my ass. Someone was in the freezer. Someone saw the body."

"I think I'm going to be sick."

"Did they come into the bedroom while I was sleeping? Did they see me?"

Tommy cradled his head as if it would crack at any moment and spill his brains onto the floor. "They had to get to the bathroom. It's okay; I covered you up so the light wouldn't get to you."

"You idiot!" She snatched up a coffee cup and prepared to throw it at him, then caught herself. She had to get out of here before she hurt him. She shook as she set the cup on the counter.

"I'm going out, Tommy. Clean up this mess." She turned and went to the bedroom to change.

When she emerged, still shaking with anger, Tommy was standing in the kitchen looking repentant.

"Will you be home before I leave for work?"

She glared at him. "I don't know. I don't know when I'll be back. Why didn't you just put a sign on the door, 'See the Vampire'? This is my life you're playing with, Tommy."

He didn't answer. She turned and walked out, slamming the door.

"I'll feed your turtles for you," he called after her.