Bloodsucking Fiends

Chapter 25 All Dressed Up

Tommy stormed around the loft collecting beer cans and breakfast plates and carrying them to the kitchen. "Bitch!" he said to Peary. "Shark-faced bitch. It's not like I have any experience at this. It's not like there's Cosmo articles on how to take care of a vampire. Bloodsucking, day-sleeping, turtle-hating, creepy-crawling, no-toilet-paper-buying, inconsiderate bitch!"

He slammed an armload of dishes into the sink. "I didn't ask for this. A few friends come over for breakfast and she goes bat-shit. Did I make a fuss when her mother came over with no notice? Did I say a word when she brought a dead guy home and shoved him under the bed? No offense, Peary. Do I complain about her weird hours? Her eating habits? No, I haven't said a word."

"It's not like I came to the City saying, 'Oh, I can't wait to find a woman whose only joy in life is sucking out my bodily fluids. Okay, well, maybe I did, but I didn't mean this."

Tommy tied up a trash bag full of beer cans and threw it in the corner. The crash reverberated through his head, reminding him of his hangover. He cradled his throbbing temples and went to the bathroom, where he heaved until he thought his stomach would turn inside out. He pushed himself up from the bowl and wiped his eyes. Two snapping turtles regarded him from the tub.

"What are you guys looking at?"

Scott's jaw dropped open and he hissed. Zelda ducked under the foot of fouled water and swam against the corner of the tub.

"I need a shower. You guys are going to have to roam around for a while."

Tommy found a towel and wrestled the turtles out of the tub, then stepped in and ran the shower until the water went cold. As he dressed he watched Scott and Zelda wandering around the bedroom, bumping into walls, then backing up and slumping off until they hit another wall.

"You guys are miserable here, aren't you? No one appreciates you? Well, it doesn't look like Jody's going to use you. Whoever heard of a vampire with a weak stomach? There's no reason for all of us to be miserable."

Tommy had been using the milk crates he'd carried Scott and Zelda in as laundry baskets. He dumped the dirty laundry on the floor and lined the crates with damp towels. "Let's go, guys. We're going to the park."

He put Scott in a crate and carried him down the steps to the sidewalk. Then went back up for Zelda and called a cab. When he returned to the street, one of the biker/sculptors was standing outside of the foundry, blotting sweat out of his beard with a bandanna.

"You live upstairs, right?" The sculptor was about thirty-five, long-haired and bearded, wearing grimy jeans and a denim vest with no shirt. His beer belly protruded from the vest and hung over his belt like a great hairy bag of pudding.

"Yeah, I'm Tom Flood." Tommy set the crate on the sidewalk and offered his hand. The sculptor clamped down on it until Tommy winced with pain.

"I'm Frank. My partner's Monk. He's inside."

"Monk?"

"Short for Monkey. We work in brass."

Tommy massaged his crushed hand. "I don't get it."

"Balls on a brass monkey."

"Oh," Tommy said, nodding as if he understood.

"What's with the turtles?" Frank asked.

"Pets," Tommy said. "They're getting too big for our place, so I'm going to take a cab over to Golden Gate Park and let them go in the pond."

"That why your old lady left all pissed off?"

"Yeah, she doesn't want them in the house anymore."

"Fucking women," Frank said in sympathy. "My last old lady was always on me about keeping my scooter in the living room. I still have the scooter."

Obviously, in Frank's eyes, Tommy should be carrying Jody out in a crate. Frank thought he was a wimp. "No big deal," Tommy said with a shrug, "they were hers. I don't really care."

"I could use a couple of turtles, if you want to save cab fare."

"Really?" Tommy hadn't relished the idea of loading the crates into a cab anyway. "You wouldn't eat them, would you? I mean, I don't care, but —"

"No fucking way, man."

A blue cab pulled up and stopped. Tommy signaled to the driver, then turned back to Frank. "I've been feeding them hamburger."

"Cool," Frank said. "I'm on it."

"I have to go." Tommy opened the cab door and looked back at Frank. "Can I visit them?"

"Anytime," Frank said. "Later." He bent and picked up the crate containing Zelda.

Tommy got in the cab. "Marina Safeway," he said. He would be a couple of hours early for work, but he didn't want to stay at the loft and risk another tirade if Jody returned. He could kill the time reading or something.

As the cab pulled away he looked out the back window and watched Frank carrying the second crate inside. Tommy felt as if he had just abandoned his children.

Jody thought, I guess not everything changed when I changed. Without realizing how she got there, Jody found herself at Macy's in Union Square. It was as if some instinctual navigator, activated by conflict with men, had guided her there. A dozen times in the past she had found herself here, arriving with a purse full of tear-smeared Kleenex and a handful of credit cards tilted toward their limit. It was a common, and very human, response. She spotted other women doing the same thing: flipping through racks, testing fabrics, checking prices, fighting back tears and anger, and actually believing salespeople who told them that they looked stunning.

Jody wondered if department stores knew what percentage of their profits came from domestic unrest. As she passed a display of indecently expensive cosmetics, she spotted a sign that read: "Melange Youth Cream — Because he'll never understand why you're worth it." Yep, they knew. The righteous and the wronged shall find solace in a sale at Macy's.

It was two weeks until Christmas and the stores in Union Square were staying open late into the evening. Tinsel and lights were festooned across every aisle, and every item not marked for sale was decorated with fake evergreen, red and green ribbon, and various plastic approximations of snow. Droves of package-laden shoppers trudged through the aisles like the chorus line of the cheerful, sleigh-bell version of the Bataan Death March, ever careful to keep moving lest some ambitious window dresser mistake them for mannequins and spray them down with aerosol snow.

Jody watched the heat trails of the lights, breathed deep the aroma of fudge and candy and a thousand mingled colognes and deodorants, listened to the whir of the motors that animated electric elves and reindeer under the cloak of Muzak-mellowed Christmas carols — and she liked it.

Christmas is better as a vampire, she thought.

The crowds used to bother her, but now they seemed like… like cattle: harmless and unaware. To her predator side, even the women wearing fur, who used to grate on her nerves, seemed not only harmless, but even enlightened in this heightened sensual world.

I'd like to roll naked on mink, she thought. She frowned to herself. Not with Tommy, though. Not for a while, anyway.

She found herself scanning the crowds, looking for the dark aura that betrayed the dying-prey — then caught herself and shivered. She looked over their heads, like an elevator rider avoiding eye contact, and the gleam of black caught her eye.

It was a cocktail dress, minimally displayed on an emaciated Venus de Milo mannequin in a Santa hat. The LBD, Little Black Dress: the fashion equivalent of nuclear weapons; public lingerie; effective not because of what it was, but what it wasn't. You had to have the legs and the body to wear an LBD. Jody did. But you also had to have the confidence, and that she'd never been able to muster. Jody looked down at her jeans and sweatshirt, then at the dress, then at her tennis shoes. She pushed her way through the crowd to the dress.

A rotund, tastefully dressed saleswoman approached Jody from behind. "May I help you?"

Jody's gaze was trained on the dress as if it were the Star of Bethlehem and she was overstocked with frankincense and myrrh. "I need to see that dress in a three."

"Very good," the woman said. "I'll bring you a five and a seven as well."

Jody looked at the woman for the first time and saw the woman looking at her sweatshirt as if it would sprout tentacles and strangle her at any moment.

"A three will be fine," Jody said.

"A three might be a bit snug," the woman said.

"That's the idea," Jody said. She smiled politely, imagining herself snatching out handfuls of the woman's tastefully tinted hair.

"Now let's get the item number off of that," the woman said, making a show of holding the tag so that Jody could see the price. She sneaked a look for Jody's reaction.

"He's paying," Jody said, just to be irritating. "It's a gift."

"Oh, how nice," the woman said, trying to brighten, but obviously disgusted. Jody understood. Six months ago she would have hated the kind of woman she was pretending to be. The woman said, "This will be lovely for holiday parties."

"Actually, it's for a funeral." Jody couldn't remember having this much fun while shopping.

"Oh, I'm sorry." The woman looked apologetic and held her hands to her heart in sympathy.

"It's okay; I didn't know the deceased very well."

"I see," the woman said.

Jody lowered her eyes. "His wife," she said.

"I'll get the dress," the woman said, turning and hurrying away.

Tommy had only been in the Safeway once before when it was still open: the day he applied for the job. Now it seemed entirely too active and entirely too quiet without the Stones or Pearl Jam blasting over the speakers. He felt that his territory had been somehow violated by strangers. He resented the customers who ruined the Animals' work by taking things off the shelves.

As he passed the office he nodded to the manager and headed to the breakroom to kill time until it was time to go to work. The breakroom was a windowless room behind the meat department, furnished with molded plastic chairs, a Formica folding table, a coffee machine, and a variety of safety posters. Tommy brushed some crumbs off a chair, found a coffee-stained Reader's Digest under an opened package of stale bear claws, and sat down to read and sulk.

He read: "A Bear's Got Mom!: Drama in Real Life" and "I Am Joe's Duodenum"; and he was beginning to feel a pull toward the bathroom and the Midwest, both things he associated with Reader's Digest, when he flipped to an article entitled: "Bats: Our Wild and Wacky Winged Friends" and felt his duodenum quiver with interest.

Someone entered the breakroom, and without looking up, Tommy said, "Did you know that if the brown bat fed on humans instead of insects, that one bat could eat the entire population of Minneapolis in one night?"

"I didn't know that," said a woman's voice.

Tommy looked up from the magazine to see the new cashier, Mara, pulling a chair out from the table. She was tall and a little thin, but large-breasted: a blue-eyed blonde of about twenty. Tommy had been expecting one of the box boys and he stared at her for a second while he changed gears. "Oh, hi. I'm Tom Flood. I'm on the night crew."

"I've seen you," she said. "I'm Mara. I'm new."

Tommy smiled. "Nice to meet you. I came in a little early to catch up on some paperwork."

"Reader's Digest?" She raised an eyebrow.

"Oh, this? No, I don't normally read it. I just spotted this article on bats and decided to check it out. They're our wild and wacky winged friends, you know?" He looked at the page as if to confirm his interest. "For instance, did you know that the vampire bat is the only mammal that has been successfully frozen and thawed out alive?"

"I'm sorry, bats give me the creeps."

"Me too," Tommy said, throwing the magazine aside. "Do you read?"

"I've been reading the Beats. I just moved here and I want to get a feeling for the City's literature."

"You're kidding. I've only been here a few months myself. It's a great city."

"I haven't had a chance to look around much. Moving and everything. I left a bad situation back home and I've been trying to adjust."

She didn't look at him when she talked. Tommy assumed at first that it was because she found him disgusting, but after studying her he realized that she was just shy.

"Have you been to North Beach? The Beats all lived there in the fifties."

"No, I don't know my way around yet."

"Oh, you have to go to City Lights Books, and Enrico's. And the bars up there all have pictures of Kerouac and Ginsberg on the walls. You can almost hear the jazz playing."

Mara finally looked up at him and smiled. "You're interested in the Beats?" Her eyes were wide, bright, and crystal-blue. He liked her.

"I'm a writer," Tommy said. It was his turn to look away. "I mean, I want to be a writer. I used to live in Chinatown, it's right next to North Beach."

"Maybe you could give me directions to some of the hot spots."

"I could show you," Tommy said. As soon as he said it he wanted to retract the offer. Jody would kill him.

"That would be wonderful, if you wouldn't mind. I don't know anyone in the City except the other cashiers, and they all have home lives."

Tommy was confused. The manager had said that she had recently lost a child. He assumed that she was married. He didn't want it to appear that he was trying to make a move on her. He didn't really want to make a move on her. But if he were still single, unattached…

No, Jody wouldn't understand. Having never had a girlfriend before, he'd never been tempted to stray. He had no idea how to deal with it. He said, "I could show you and your husband around a little and the two of you could have a night on the town."

"I'm divorced," Mara said. "I wasn't married very long."

"I'm sorry," Tommy said.

Mara shook her head as if to dismiss his sympathy. "It's a short story. I got pregnant and we got married. The baby died and he left." She said it without feeling, as if she had distanced herself emotionally from the experience — as if it had happened to someone else. "I'm trying to make a new start." She checked her watch. "I'd better get back up front. I'll see you."

She stood and started to leave the room.

"Mara," Tommy called and she turned. "I'd love to show you around if you'd like."

"I'd like that. Thanks. I'm working days for the rest of the week."

"No problem," Tommy said. "How about tomorrow night? I don't have a car, but we can meet in North Beach at Enrico's if you want."

"Write down the address." She took a slip of paper and a pen from her purse and handed it to him. He scribbled the address and handed it back to her.

"What time?" she asked.

"Seven, I guess."

"Seven it is," she said, and left the breakroom.

Tommy thought: I'm a dead man.

Jody turned in front of the mirror, admiring the way the LED fit. It was cut down to the small of her back and had a neckline that plunged to the sternum, but was held together at her cleavage with a transparent black mesh. The saleswoman stood beside her, frowning, holding larger sizes of the same dress.

"Are you sure you don't want to try the five, dear?"

Jody said, "No, this one is fine. I'll need some sheer black nylons to go with it."

The saleswoman fought down a grimace and managed a professional smile. "And do you have shoes to match?"

"Suggestions?" Jody asked, not looking away from her reflection. She thought, I wouldn't have been caught dead in something like this a few months ago. Oh hell, I'm caught dead in everything now.

Jody laughed at the thought and the saleswoman took it personally and dropped her polite smile. An edge of disgust in her voice, she said, "I suppose you could complete the look with a pair of Italian fuck-me pumps and some maroon lipstick."

Jody turned to the dowdy woman and gave her a knowing smile. "You've done this before, haven't you?"

After a visit to the shoe department, Jody found herself at the cosmetics counter where an ebullient gay man talked her into "doing her colors" on the computer. He stared at the screen in disbelief.

"Oh my goodness. This is exciting."

"What?" Jody said impatiently. She just wanted to buy some lipstick and get out. She'd satisfied her shopping Jones by reducing the woman in evening wear to tears.

"You're my first winter," said Maurice. (His name was Maurice; it said so on his badge.) "You know, I've done a thousand autumns, and I get springs out the yin-yang, but a winter… We are going to have fun!"

Maurice began piling samples of eye shadow, lipstick, mascara, and powder on the counter next to the winter color palette. He opened a tube of mascara and held it next to Jody's face. "This one's called Elm Blight, it approximates the color of dead trees in the snow. It complements your eyes wonderfully. Go ahead, dear, try it."

While Jody brushed the mascara onto her lashes, using the magnifying mirror on the counter, Maurice read from the Winter Woman's profile.

"'The Winter Woman is as wild as a blizzard, as fresh as new snow. While some see her as cold, she has a fiery heart under that ice-queen exterior. She likes the stark simplicity of Japanese art and the daring complexity of Russian literature. She prefers sharp to flowing lines, brooding to pouting, and rock and roll to country and western. Her drink is vodka, her car is German, her analgesic is Advil. The Winter Woman likes her men weak and her coffee strong. She is prone to anemia, hysteria, and suicide. " Maurice stepped back from the counter and took a deep bow, as if he had just finished a dramatic reading.

Jody looked up from the mirror and blinked, the lashes on her right eye describing a starlike Clockwork Orange pattern against her pale skin. "They can tell all of that from my coloring?"

Maurice nodded and brandished a sable brush. "Here, dear, let's try some of this blush to bring up those cheekbones. It's called American Rust, it emulates the color of a 63 Rambler that has been driven on salted roads. Very winter."

Jody leaned on the counter to allow Maurice access to her cheeks.

A half hour later she looked in the mirror, rotated now to the non-magnified side, and pursed her lips. For the first time she really looked like a vampire.

"I wish we had a camera," Maurice gushed. "You are a winter masterpiece." He handed her a small bag filled with cosmetics. "That will be three hundred dollars."

Jody paid him. "Is there somewhere I can change? I'd like to see how I look with my new outfit."

Maurice pointed across the store. "There's a changing room over there. And don't forget your free gift, dear, the Needless Notions Lotion Collection, a fifty-dollar value." Maurice held up a plastic faux-Gucci gym bag full of bottles.

"Thanks." Jody took the bag and sulked off toward the changing room. Halfway across the store she picked up the sound of the dowdy saleswoman from evening wear and turned to see her talking to Maurice. Jody focused and could hear what they were saying over the crowd and Christmas Muzak.

"How did it go?" asked the woman.

Maurice grinned. "She went away looking like a Donner Party Barbie."

The woman and Maurice exchanged a gleeful high five.

Bitches, Jody thought.

Chapter 26 At the End of the Night…

The Emperor worked a wooden match around the end of a Cuban cigar, drawing and checking until the tip glowed like revolution.

"I don't agree with their ideology," said the Emperor, "but we must give the Marxists their due — they roll a fine cigar."

Bummer snorted and growled at the cigar, then shook himself violently, spraying the Emperor and Lazarus with a fine wet mist.

The Emperor scratched the Boston terrier behind the ears. "Settle down, little one, you needed a bath. If we vanquish our enemy, it will be through gallantry and courage, not the stench of our persons."

Shortly after sunset a member of the yacht club had given the Emperor the cigar and had invited him to use the club showers. Much to the chagrin of the club custodian, the Emperor shared his shower with Bummer and Lazarus, who left the drain hopelessly clogged with the fluff, stuff, and filth such as heroes are made of. Now they were passing the evening on the same dock on which they had slept, the Emperor savoring his cigar while the troops stood watch.

"Where do we go from here? Must we wait for the fiend to kill again before we pick up the trail?"

Bummer considered the questions, working the words over in his doggy brain looking for a «food» word. Not finding it, he began to lick his balls to remove the annoying odor of deodorant soap. Once he achieved the desired balance (of both his ends smelling roughly the same), he padded around the dock marking the mooring posts against seabound invaders. With the borders of the realm firmly established, he went in search of something dead to roll in to remove the last evidence of the shower. The right smell was near, but it was coming in off the water.

Bummer went toward the smell until he stood at the end of the dock. He saw a small white cloud bubbling out over the gunwale of a yacht moored a hundred yards away. Bummer barked to let the cloud know to stay away.

"Settle down, little one," said the Emperor. Lazarus shook some water out of his ears and joined Bummer at the end of the dock. The cloud was halfway between the yacht and the dock, pulsating and bubbling as it moved across the water toward them. Lazarus lowered his head and growled. Bummer added a high whine to the harmony.

"What is it, men?" the Emperor asked. He put his cigar out on the sole of his shoe and secured the remains in his breast pocket before limping, stiff from sitting, to the end of the dock.

The cloud was almost to the dock. Lazarus bared his teeth and snarled at it. Bummer backed away from the edge of the dock, not sure whether to bolt or stand his ground.

The Emperor looked out over the water and saw the cloud. It was not wispy at the edges, but sharply defined, more like a solid mass of gel than water vapor. "It's just a bit of fog, men, don't…"

He spotted a face forming in the cloud that changed as he watched to the shape of a giant hand, then bubbled into the head of a dog.

"Although weather is not my specialty, I would venture to guess that that is no ordinary fog bank."

The cloud undulated into the shape of a huge viper that reared up, twenty feet over the water, as if preparing to strike. Bummer and Lazarus let go with a fusillade of barking.

"Gents, let us away to the showers. I've left my sword by the sink." The Emperor turned and ran down the dock, Bummer and Lazarus close at his heels. When he reached the clubhouse he turned to see the cloud creeping over the lip of the dock. He stood, watching transfixed, as the cloud began to condense into the solid form of a tall, dark man.

The Animals began drifting into the store around midnight, and to Tommy's delight they all seemed at least as hung over as he was. Drew, tall, gaunt, and deadly earnest, had them sit on the register counters and wait for his medical diagnosis. He walked from man to man, looking at their tongues and the whites of their eyes. Then he walked toward the office and seemed to lose himself in concentration. After a moment he went into the office and came back with the truck manifest.

Drew noted the number of cases, then nodded to himself and removed a bottle of pills from his shirt pocket and handed it to Tommy. "Take one and pass it down. Who drank the tequila?"

Simon, who had pulled his black Stetson over his eyes, raised his hand with a slight moan.

"You take two, Simon. They're Valium number fives."

"Housewife heroin," said Simon.

Drew announced, "Everyone drink a quart of Gatorade, a slug of Pepto, three aspirin, some B vitamins, and two Vivarin."

Barry, the balding scuba diver, said, "I don't trust that over-the-counter stuff."

"I'm not finished," Drew said. From his shirt pocket he pulled an aluminum cigar tube, unscrewed the cap, and tipped it into his hand. A long, yellow paper cone slid out. He held it out to Tommy. It smelled like a cross between a skunk and a eucalyptus cough drop. Tommy raised an eyebrow to Drew. "What is it?"

"Don't worry about it. It's recommended by the Jamaican Medical Association. Anybody got a light?"

Simon pitched his Zippo to Drew, who handed it to Tommy.

Tommy hesitated before lighting the joint and looked at Drew. "This is just pot, right? This isn't some weird designer kill-the-family-with-a-chain-saw-and-choke-to-death-on-your-own-vomit drug, right?"

"Not if used as directed," Drew said.

"Oh. Okay." Tommy sparked the Zippo, lit the joint, and took a deep hit. Holding in the smoke — his eyes watering, his face scrunched in gargoyle determination, his limbs contorted as if he had contracted a case of the instant creeping geeks — he offered the joint to Lash, the black business major.

There was a thump on the front door, followed by an urgent pounding that rattled the windows. Tommy dropped the joint and coughed, expelling a blast of smoke and spittle in Lash's face. The Animals shouted and turned, not so much startled by the noise, but tortured by the assault on their collective hangover.

Outside the double automatic doors the Emperor pounded on the frame with his wooden sword. The dogs jumped around his feet barking and leaping as if they had treed a raccoon on the roof of the store.

Tommy, still gasping for breath, dug into his pocket for the store keys and made his way to the door. "It's okay. I know him."

"Everybody knows him," Simon said. "Crazy old fuck."

Tommy turned the key and pulled the doors open. The Emperor fell into the store. Bummer and Lazarus leaped over their master and disappeared down an aisle.

The Emperor thrashed around on the floor and Tommy had to step back to keep from having his shins whacked by the wooden sword.

"Calm down," Tommy said. "You're okay."

The Emperor climbed to his feet and grabbed Tommy by the shoulders. "We have to marshal our forces. The monster is at hand. Quickly now!"

Tommy looked back at the Animals and grinned. "He's okay, really." Then, to the Emperor, "Just slow down, okay. Can I get you something to eat?"

"There's no time for that. We must take the battle to him."

Simon called, "Maybe Drew has something to mellow him out." Drew had recovered the joint and was in the process of relighting it.

Tommy closed and locked the door, then took the Emperor by the arm and led him toward the office. "See, Your Majesty, you're inside now. You're safe. Now let's go sit down and see if we can sort this out."

"Locked doors won't stop him. He can take the form of mist and pass through the smallest crack." The Emperor addressed the Animals. "Arm yourself, while there is still time."

"Who?" Asked Lash. "Who's he talking about?"

Tommy cleared his throat. "The Emperor thinks that there's a vampire stalking the City."

"You're shittin' me," Barry said.

"I've just seen him," the Emperor said, "at the marina. He changed from a cloud of vapor to human form as I watched. He's not far behind me, either."

Tommy patted the old man's arm. "Don't be silly, Your Highness. Even if there were vampires, they can't turn into vapor."

"But I saw it."

"Look!" Tommy said. "You saw something else. I know for a fact that vampires can't change into vapor."

"You know that for a fact?" Simon drawled.

Tommy looked at Simon, expecting to see the usual grin, but Simon was waiting for an answer.

Tommy shook his head. "I'm trying to get things under control here, Simon. You want to give me a break?"

"How do you know?" Simon insisted.

"It was in a book I was reading. You remember, Simon, you read that one too."

Simon looked as if he had just been threatened, which he had. "Yeah, right," he said, pushing his Stetson back down over his eyes and leaning back on the register. "Well, you ought to just call the loony-bin boys for your friend there."

"I'll take care of him," Tommy said. "You guys get started on the truck." He opened the office door and nudged the Emperor toward it.

"What about the men?" asked the Emperor.

"They're safe. Come on in and tell me about it."

"But the monster?"

"If he wanted to kill me, I'd be dead already." Tommy shut the office door behind them.

Big hair, Jody thought. Big hair is the way to go with this outfit. After all these years of trying to tame my hair, all I had to do was dress like an upscale hooker and I would have been fine.

She was walking up Geary Street, her fake Gucci bag of free cosmetics still in hand. There was a new club down here somewhere and she needed to dance, or at least show off a little.

A panhandler wearing a cardboard sign that read, "I am Unemployed and Illiterate (a friend wrote this for me)," stopped her and tried to sell her a free weekly newspaper.

Jody said, "I can pick that up anywhere. It's free."

"It is?"

"Yes. They give it away in every store and cafe in town."

"I wondered why they were laying out there for the taking."

Jody was angry with herself for being pulled into this exchange. "It says 'free' right there on the cover."

The bum pointed to the sign hanging around his neck and tried to look tragic. "Maybe you could give me quarter for it anyway."

Jody started to walk away. The bum followed along beside her. "There's a great article on recovery groups on page ten."

She looked at him.

"Someone told me," he said.

Jody stopped. "I'll give you this if you'll leave me alone." She held out the cosmetics bag.

The bum acted as if he had to think about it. He looked her up and down, pausing at her cleavage before looking her in the eye. "Maybe we could work something out. You must be cold in that dress. I could warm you up."

"Normally," Jody said, "if I met a guy who was unemployed and illiterate who hadn't bathed in a couple of weeks, I'd be standing in a puddle with excitement, but I'm sort of in a bad mood tonight, so take this bag and give me the fucking paper before I pop your little head like a zit." She pushed the bag into his chest, knocking him back against the window of a closed camera store.

The bum offered her the paper tentatively and she snatched it from his hand.

He said, "You're a lesbian, aren't you?"

Jody screamed at him: a high, explosive, unintelligible expulsion of pure inhuman frustration — a Hendrix high note sampled and sung by a billion suffering souls in Hell's own choir. The window of the camera shop shattered and fell in shards to the sidewalk. The store alarm wailed, paltry in comparison to Jody's scream. The bum covered his ears and ran away.

"Cool," Jody said, more than a bit satisfied with herself. She opened the paper and read as she walked up the street to the club.

Outside the club Jody got in line with a crowd of well-dressed wannabees and resumed reading her paper, enjoying the stares of the men on line in her peripheral vision.

The club was called 753. It seemed to Jody that all of the new, trendy clubs had eschewed names for numbers. Kurt and his broker buddies had been big fans of the number-named clubs, which made for Monday-morning recount conversations that sounded more like equations: "We went to Fourteen Ninety-Two and Ten Sixty-Six, then Jimmy drank ten Seven-Sevens at Nineteen Seventeen, went fifty-one fifty and got eighty-sixed." Normally, that many numbers in succession would have had Kurt diving for his PC to establish trend lines and resistance levels. Jody glazed over at the mention of numbers, which would have made living with the broker a bit of an ordeal even if he hadn't been an asshole.

She thought, I wonder if Kurt will be here. I hope so. I hope he's here with the little well-bred, breastless wonder. Oh, she won't care, but he'll die a thousand jealous deaths.

Then she heard the alarm sounding down the street and thought, Maybe I should learn to channel some of this hostility.

"You, in the LED!" said the doorman.

Jody looked up from her paper.

"Go on in," the doorman said.

As she walked past the other people on line she was careful to avoid eye contact. One single guy reached out and grabbed her arm.

"Say I'm your date," he begged. "I've been waiting for two hours."

"Hi, Kurt," Jody said. "I didn't see you."

Kurt stepped back. "Oh. Oh my God. Jody?"

She smiled. "How's your head?"

He was trying to catch his breath. "Fine. It's fine. You look…"

"Thanks, Kurt. Good to see you again. I'd better get inside."

He clawed the air after her. "Could you say I'm your date?"

She turned and looked at him as if she had found him in the back of the refrigerator with green growing on him.

"I have been chosen, Kurt. You, on the other hand, are an untouchable. I don't think you'd be appropriate for the image I'm trying to project."

As she walked into the club she heard Kurt say to the next guy in line, "She's a lesbian, you know."

Jody thought, Yep, I've got to work on controlling my hostility.

The theme of 753 was Old San Francisco; actually, Old San Francisco burning down, which is largely what Old San Francisco used to do. There was an antique hand-pump fire engine in the middle of the dance floor. Cellophane flames leaped from pseudowindows driven by turbine fans. Nozzles in the ceiling drizzled dry-ice smoke over a crowd of young professionals ar-rhythmically sweating in layers of casual cotton and wool. A flannel-clad grunge rocker here; a tie-dyed and dreadlocked Rastafarian there; some neo-hippies; a sprinkling of black-eyed, white-faced New Wave holdovers — looking alienated — contemplating the next body part to have pierced; a few harmless suburban homeboys — here to bust a move, def and phat, in three-hundred-dollar giant gel-filled, glow-in-the-dark, pneumatic, NBA-endorsed sneakers. The doorman had tried to make a mix, but with fashionable micro-brewery beer going for seven bucks a bottle, the crowd was bound to overbalance to the side of privilege and form a thick yuppie scum. Cocktail waitresses in fireman helmets served reservoirs of imported water and thanked people for not smoking.

Jody slinked onto a barstool and opened her paper to avoid eye contact with a droopy-eyed drunk on the next stool. It didn't work.

" 'Scuse me, I couldn't help noticing that you were sitting down. I'm sitting down too. Small world, huh?"

Jody looked up briefly and smiled. Mistake.

"Can I buy you a drink?" the drunk asked.

"Thanks, I don't drink," she said, thinking, Why did I come here? What did I hope to accomplish?

"It's my hair, isn't it?"

Jody looked at the guy. He was about her age and balding, not quite finished with what looked like a bad hair-transplant job. His scalp looked as if it had been strafed with a machine gun full of plugs. She felt bad for him.

"No, I really don't drink."

"How about a mineral water?"

"Thanks. I don't drink anything."

From the stool behind her a man's voice. "She'll drink this."

She turned to see a glass filled with a thick, red-black liquid being pushed in front of her by a bone-white hand. The index and middle finger seemed a little too short.

"They're still growing back," the vampire said.

Jody recoiled from him so hard she nearly went over backward on her barstool. The vampire caught her arm and steadied her.

"Hey, buddy," said Hair Plugs, "hands off."

The vampire let go of Jody's arm, reached across to put his hand on Hair Plugs's shoulder, and held him fast to his seat. The drunk's eyes went wide. The vampire smiled.

"She'll rip out your throat and drink your blood as you die. Is that what you want?"

Hair Plugs shook his head violently. "No, I already have an ex-wife."

The vampire released him. "Go away."

Hair Plugs slid off the stool and ran off into the crowd on the dance floor. Jody leaped to her feet and started to follow him. The vampire caught her arm and wheeled her around.

"Don't," he said.

Jody caught his wrist and began to squeeze. A human arm would have been reduced to mush. The vampire grinned. Jody locked eyes with him. "Let go."

"Sit," he said.

"Murderer."

The vampire threw his head back and laughed. The bartender, a burly jock type, looked up, then looked away. Just another loud drunk.

"I can take you," Jody said, not really believing it. She wanted to break loose and run.

The vampire, still smiling, said, "It would make an interesting news story, wouldn't it? 'Pale Couple Destroys Club in Domestic Disagreement. Shall we?"

Jody let go of his wrist but stayed locked on his eyes. They were black, showing no iris. "What do you want?"

The vampire broke the stare and shook his head. "Little fledgling, I want your company, of course. Now sit."

Jody climbed back onto the stool and stared into the glass before her.

"That's better. It's almost over, you know. I didn't think you would last this long, but alas, it must come to an end. The game has become a bit too public. You have to break from the cattle now. They don't understand you. You are not one of them anymore. You are their enemy. You know it, don't you? You've known it since your first kill. Even your little pet knows it."

Jody started to shake. "How did you get into the loft to get Tommy's book?"

The vampire grinned again. "One develops certain talents over time. You're still young, you wouldn't understand."

Part of Jody wanted to slam her fist into his face and run, yet another part wanted answers to all the questions that had been running through her mind since the night she was changed.

"Why me? Why did you do this to me?"

The vampire stood up and patted her on the shoulder. "It's almost over. The sadness of having a pet is that they always die on you. At the end of the night, you are alone. You'll know that feeling very soon. Drink up." He turned and walked away.

Jody watched him leave, relieved that he was gone, but at the same time disappointed. There were so many questions.

She picked up the glass, smelled the liquid, and nearly gagged.

The bartender snickered. "I never had an order for a double of straight grenadine before. Can I get you something else?"

"No, I've got to go catch him."

She picked up her paper, got up, ran up the steps and out of the club. She found that if she stayed on the balls of her feet, she could actually run in the high-heeled pumps. Chalk one up for vampire strength, she thought.

She grabbed the doorman by the shoulder and swung him around. "Did you see a thin, pale guy in black just leave?"

"That way." The doorman pointed east on Geary. "He was walking."

"Thanks," Jody tossed over her shoulder as she took to the sidewalk, waiting to break into a run until she was out of sight from the club. She ran a block before taking off the pumps and carrying them. The street was empty; only the buzz of wires and the soft padding of her feet on the sidewalk broke the silence.

She'd run ten blocks when she spotted him, a block away, leaning against a lamppost.

He turned and looked at her as she pulled up.

"So, fledgling, what are you going to do when you catch me?" he asked in a soft voice, knowing she would hear. "Kill me? Break off a signpost and drive it though my heart? Rip my head from my shoulders and play puppet with it while my body flops around on the sidewalk?" The vampire pantomimed flopping, rolled his eyes, and grinned.

Jody said nothing. She didn't know what she was going to do. She hadn't thought about it. "No," she said. "How can I stop you from killing Tommy?"

"They always betray you, you know. It's in their nature."

"What if I leave? Don't tell him where I'm going?"

"He knows we exist. We have to hide, fledgling. Always. Completely."

Jody felt strangely calm. Perhaps it was hearing the "we." Maybe it was talking in a normal voice to someone a block away. Whatever it was, she wasn't afraid, not for herself, anyway. She said, "If we have to hide, why all the killings?"

The vampire laughed again. "Did you ever have a cat bring you a bird it had killed?"

"Why?"

"Presents, fledgling. Now if you are going to kill me, please do. If not, go play with your pet while you can."

He turned and walked away.

"Wait!" Jody called. "Did you pull me through the basement window?"

"No," the vampire said without looking back. "I am not interested in saving you. And if you follow me, you will find out exactly how a vampire can be killed."

Gotcha, asshole, Jody thought. He had saved her.

Chapter 27 Bridging the Boredom

Half past midnight. He stood at the top of the southwest tower of the Oakland Bay Bridge, some fifty stories above the gunmetal-cold bay, thinking, Jump or dive? He wore a black silk suit and he paused for a moment, regretting that the suit would be ruined. He liked the feel and flow of silk on his skin. Oh well.

Two miles away Jody was walking up Market Street wishing that she could just get drunk and pass out. I wonder, she thought, if I found someone who was really drunk and drank his blood? No, this damn system of mine would probably identify alcohol as a poison and fight the effects. So many questions. If only I'd remembered to ask them.

She stopped at a phone booth and called Tommy at the store.

"Marina Safeway."

"Tommy, it's me."

"Are you still mad?"

"Not mad enough, I guess. I just wanted to tell you to stay in the store until after daylight. Don't go outside for any reason. And stay around the other guys if you can."

"Why? What's the matter?"

"Just do as I say, Tommy."

"I cleaned up the loft. Mostly, anyway."

"We'll talk about it tomorrow night. Stay at home until I wake up, okay?"

"Are you still going to be pissed?"

"Probably. I'll see you then. Good-bye." She hung up. How could he be so smart sometimes and so ignorant other times? Maybe the vampire was right, a human could never understand her. She suddenly felt very lonely.

She ducked into an all-night diner and ordered a cup of coffee as rent on a booth. She still could enjoy the smell of coffee, even if she couldn't keep it down.

She opened the paper she had bought from the bum with her cosmetics bag and began to read through the personals. "Men Seeking Women," "Women Seeking Men," "Men Seeking Men," "Women Seeking Women," "Men Seeking Small Fuzzy Animals"; there was a wide selection of categories. She scanned over the more mundane entries until her eye settled on one under "Support Groups." "Are You a Vampire? You don't have to face your problem alone. Blood Drinkers Anonymous can help. Mon.-Fri. Midnight. Rm. 212 Asian Cultural Center, Non-Smoking."

It was Friday. It was midnight. She was only ten minutes from the Asian Cultural Center. Could it be this simple?

The first thing she noticed when she walked into room 212 of the Asian Cultural Center is that all of the people sitting in a circle in molded plastic chairs, all twenty of them, were giving off heat signatures. They were all human.

She was backing out of the door when a pear-shaped woman in a leotard and black cape intercepted her and took her hand.

"Welcome," said the woman. She sported a set of rather wicked-looking fangs that caused her to lisp. "I'm Tabitha. We're just getting ready to start. Come on in. There's coffee and cookies."

She led Jody to an orange plastic chair and urged her to sit down. "It's hard the first time, but everyone here has been where you are."

"Not bloody likely," Jody said, wiping a speck of Tabitha's spittle from her cheek.

Tabitha pointed to a plastic medallion that hung from her neck by a heavy silver chain. "See this chip? I've been clean and bloodless for six months. If I can do it, so can you. One night at a time."

Tabitha squeezed her arm, then threw her cape over her shoulder, turned dramatically, and stalked across the room to the cookie table, her cape billowing behind her.

Jody looked at the other occupants of the room. All were talking, most were sneaking looks at her between sips of coffee. The men were all tall and thin with protruding Adam's apples and bad skin. Their dress ranged from business suits to jeans and flannel. They might have been a chess club out for the evening if not for the capes. To a man, they wore capes. Four of seven had fangs. Two sets of four were made of glow-in-the-dark plastic.

Jody focused on two of them whispering in the corner. "I told you, this is a babe-fest. Did you see the redhead?" He sneaked a look.

His partner said, "I think I saw her at Compulsive Cleaners last week."

"Compulsive Cleaners, I was going to try that. How are the odds?"

"Lots of gay guys, but a few babes. Mostly they smell like Pine Sol, but it's hot if you like latex gloves."

"Cool, I'll check it out. I think I'm going to quit going to Adult Children of Alcoholics, everybody's looking to blame, no one's looking to get laid."

Jody thought, I don't know if I want to hear quiet desperation this clearly. She changed her focus to the women in the room.

A six-foot-two brunette woman in a black choir robe and Kabuki-like makeup was complaining to a washed-out blonde wearing a tattered wedding dress. "They want to be tied up, I tie them up. They want to be spanked, I spank them. They want to be called names, I call them names. But try and drink a little of their blood, and they scream like babies. What about my needs?"

"I know," said the blonde. "I asked Robert to sleep in the coffin one time and he left."

"You have a coffin? I want a coffin."

Christ, Jody thought, I've got to get out of here.

Tabitha clapped her hands. "Let's get the meeting started!"

Those who were standing found seats. Several men tried to shove their way into the seats next to Jody. A skinny geek with peanut-butter breath leaned in to her and said, "I was on 'Oprah' on Halloween. 'Men who drink blood and the women who find them disgusting. If you want, you can come by my place and watch the tape after the meeting."

"I'm out of here," Jody said. She jumped up and headed for the door.

Behind her she heard Tabitha saying, "Hi, I'm Tabitha and I'm a bloodsucking fiend."

"Hi, Tabitha," the group said in chorus.

Outside Jody looked up and down the street wondering which way to go, what to do. She paused by a phone booth, realizing that there was no one she could call. Tears welled in her eyes. Why even bother to hope? The only person who had the slightest idea how she felt was the vampire who had made her. And he had made it clear that he wasn't interested in helping her — the evil fucker.

I should set him up with my mother, she thought, then the two of them can look down on humanity together. The thought made her smile.

Then the phone rang. She looked at it for a second, looked around for someone else who would answer it, but except for a guy standing by his car a couple of blocks away, the street was empty.

She picked up the phone. "Hello."

A man's voice said, "I thought you would show up here eventually."

"Who is this?" Jody asked. The man sounded young, his voice was unfamiliar.

"I can't tell you that yet."

"Okay," Jody said.

"Bye."

"Wait, wait, wait, don't hang up."

"Well?"

"You're the one, aren't you? You're real. I mean, you are a real vampire."

Jody held the phone away, stared at the receiver as if it were an alien object. "Who is this?"

"I don't want to tell you my name. I don't want you to be able to find me. Let's just say that I'm a friend."

"That's how most of my friends are," Jody said. "They don't tell me their names or how to find them. It keeps my social calendar pretty clear." Who was this guy? Who could possibly know that she was here, right now?

"Okay, I guess I owe you something. I'm a med student at… at a local college. I did some research on one of the bodies… one of the bodies of the people you killed."

"I didn't kill anyone. I don't know what you're talking about. If I am who you think I am, how did you know I'd be here? I didn't even know I would be here until an hour ago."

"I've been waiting, watching every night for a couple of weeks. I had a theory that you wouldn't have any noticeable body heat, and you don't."

"What are you talking about? No one notices anybody's body heat."

"Look up the street. By the white Toyota. It's running, by the way. If you make a move to come toward me, I'm gone."

Jody looked more closely at the person up the street standing by a white car. The car was running. The man was holding a cell phone and looking at her through some very large binoculars.

"I see you," she said. "What do you want?"

"I'm looking at you through infrared glasses. You're not giving off any body heat, so I know you're the one. My theory was right."

"Are you a cop?"

"No, I told you, I'm a medical student. I don't want to turn you in. In fact, I think I might be able to help you, if you're interested in being helped."

"Talk," Jody said. She held her hand over the phone and focused on the guy by the car. She could hear him talking into the cell phone.

"They gave one of the cadavers to our department after the coroner was done with it. It was a male, about sixty years old, the third victim, I think. I noticed that there was a clean spot on his neck, as if it had been washed. The coroner hadn't put that in his report. I took a tissue sample and put it under a microscope. The tissue in that area was living. Regenerating. I cultured it and it started to die, until I added something on a hunch."

"What?" Jody asked. She didn't know what to think. This man knew she was a vampire, and strangely, she felt an urge to attack. Some protective instinct wanted her to hurt him. Kill him. She fought to stay calm.

"Hemoglobin. I added some human hemoglobin and the tissue started to regenerate again. I ran it through the sequencer. It's not human DNA. It's close, but not human. It doesn't produce heat, doesn't seem to burn fuel the same way that mammalian cells do. The coroner said that he was the one that had drained the blood from the body, but he'd never done that before. And I knew that the guy had been murdered. I made a guess. I saw the ad in the Weekly for a vampire support group, so I've been watching."

Jody said, "Suppose I believe what you're saying. Suppose I believe that you believe this bullshit, how could you help me? Supposing I wanted to be helped?"

"My major is gene therapy. There's a chance I could reverse the process."

"This isn't science. I'm not saying that you're right about your theory. There are a lot of things that you don't know, that can't be explained by science. If you don't know that by now, you will. What you're talking about is magic."

"Magic is just science that we don't know yet. Do you want me to help or not?"

"Why would you want to do that? As far as you know, I kill people."

"So does cancer, but I still work on it. Do you have any idea what kind of competition there is for jobs in my field? It's an all-or-nothing field. I could end up getting my PhD and giving saccharine enemas to rats for five bucks an hour. What I learn from you would put my resume at the top of the stack."

Jody didn't know what to say. Part of her wanted to drop the phone and go after him. Another part wanted to accept his help.

She said, "What do you want me to do?"

"Nothing yet. How can I get hold of you?"

"I can't tell you that. I'll call you. What's your number?"

"I can't tell you that."

Jody sighed. "Look, Mr. Scientific Genius, figure out something. And by the way, I really didn't kill those people."

"Then why are you even listening to me?"

"I guess this conversation is over. Get in your car and get comfortable with asking rats to bend over. Good-bye."

"Wait, we could meet somewhere. Tomorrow. Someplace public."

"No, it has to be at night. Someplace private. You could have cops everywhere." She watched him as she talked. He had put the binoculars down and she could see that he was Asian.

"You're the killer here. Would you meet you someplace private and dark?"

"All right. Tomorrow night. Seven o'clock, at Enrico's on Broadway. That public enough for you?"

"Sure. Can I bring a blood-sample kit? Would you let me?"

"Would you let me?" she asked.

He didn't answer.

"Just kidding," she said. "Look, I don't want to hurt you, but I don't want to get hurt either. When you leave here, drive like hell and take an indirect route home."

"Why?"

"Because I really didn't kill those people, but I know who did, and he's been following me. If he's seen you, you're in danger."

The line was quiet for a minute, just the ghost voices of a cellular connection. Jody watched the Asian guy watching her.

Finally he cleared his throat. "How many of you are there?"

"I don't know," she said.

"I know that all of the victims don't change. It couldn't work. The geometric progression would have the entire human race turned to vampires in a month." He sounded more confident now that he had brought the conversation back to science.

"I'll tell you what I know tomorrow. But don't expect much. I don't know much. Or I'll tell you now if you want to talk face to face, but I don't think it's a good idea to talk about this with you on a cell phone."

"Yeah, you're right. Not now, though. Not here. You understand, don't you?"

Jody nodded, exaggerating the gesture so he could see. "The longer you stand there, the better chance you have of being seen by… by the other one. Tomorrow night, then. Seven o'clock."

"Will you be wearing that dress?"

Jody smiled. "Do you like it? It's new."

"It's great. I didn't think you would be a woman."

"Thanks. Go now."

She watched him climb into the Toyota, the cell phone still in hand. "Promise not to try and track me down?"

"I know where you'll be tomorrow night, remember?"

"Oh yeah. By the way, my name's Steve."

"Hi, Steve. I'm Jody."

"'Bye," he said. He disconnected. Jody hung up the phone and watched him drive away.

She thought, Great, another one to worry about.

It hadn't occurred to her that her condition might be reversible. But then, the med student didn't know about how the body had turned to dust. Science indeed.

Jump or dive, he thought. The silk suit whipped about his legs in the chill wind. The tower's aircraft warning light flashed red across his face and he could see heat swirling off it, dissolving over the bay.

His name was Elijah Ben Sapir. He stood five feet ten inches tall and he had been a vampire for eight hundred years. In human life he had been an alchemist and had spent his time mixing noxious chemicals and chanting arcane incantations trying to turn lead into gold and tap the secret of eternal life. He hadn't been a particularly good alchemist. He had never been able to pull off the gold transformation, although by a bizarre miscalculation of chemistry he did manage to invent Teflon some eight hundred years before DuPont would find a use for it. (It should be noted, though, that archaeologists recently uncovered a Viking rune stone in Greenland that mentions a Jew who entered the palace of Constantine the Magnificent in 1224 selling a line of nonstick hot pokers for the Emperor's torture chamber and was promptly given the bum's rush to the city gates. The accuracy of the story has been questioned, however, as it begins, "I never believed that your letters were true until Gunner and I…" and goes on to recount the sexual exploits of two Vikings and a harem of brown-skinned Byzantine babes.)

Ben Sapir's search for eternal life had been somewhat more successful. Granted, it came with the side effects of drinking human blood and staying out of sunlight, but he had gotten used to that. It was the loneliness that he couldn't abide. Perhaps, after all these years, it would end. He was afraid to hope.

It had been a hundred years since a fledgling had lasted this long. She had been a Yanomamo woman in the Amazon Basin and she had hunted the jungle for three months before she returned to her village and turned her sister. The sisters declared themselves gods and demanded sacrifices from the village. He found them by the river feeding on an old woman, and he took no pleasure in killing them. Perhaps the redhead, perhaps she would be the one.

Dive, he decided. He leaped away from the tower, jackknifed into a dive, and plunged fifty stories to the black water. The challenge was to avoid changing to mist before hitting the water. That was too easy.

The impact of the water ripped the clothes off his back; the stitching of his shoes exploded with the pressure. He surfaced, naked except for one sock that had strangely survived the impact, and began the long swim back to his yacht thinking, I shouldn't have saved her from the sunlight. I must be desperate for entertainment.

Chapter 28 Is That a Blackjack in Your Pocket?

Tommy booted the Emperor out of the store at dawn. It had been a long night trying to keep the crazed ruler away from the Animals while throwing stock and trying to figure out the logistics of his meeting with Mara, all while under the influence of Dr. Drew's polio weed, which seemed to affect the part of the brain that motivates one to sit in the corner and drool while staring at one's hands. When the shift ended, he declined the Animal's invitation for beers and Frisbee in the parking lot, swiped a baguette from the bread-delivery man, and caught the bus home, intent on going straight to bed. He knew his plan was foiled when Frank, the biker/sculptor, met him outside their building holding a familiar-looking bronze turtle.

"Flood, check it out." Frank held up the turtle. "It worked!"

"What worked?" Tommy asked.

"Thick electroplating process. Come on in, I'll show you." Frank turned and led Tommy through the roll-up door into the foundry.

The foundry took up the entire bottom floor of the building, here was a huge furnace making a muffled rumbling sound. There were several large pits filled with sand, and plaster-of-Paris molds lay in them in various states of completion. In the back, near the only windows, stood wax figures of naked women, Indians, Buddhas, and birds, waiting to be cut up and placed in plaster of Paris.

Frank said, "We've been doing a lot of statues for people's gardens. Buddhas are big with the koi-pond types. That's what we needed the turtles for. Monk already sold one of them to a woman in Pacific Heights for five hundred bucks. Sight unseen."

"My turtles?" Tommy said. He looked more closely at the bronze turtle Frank was holding. "Zelda!"

"Can you believe it?" Frank said. "We did them both in less than eight hours. Lost-wax process would have taken days. I'll show you."

He led Tommy to the other side of the shop where a short, portly man in leather and denim was working beside a tall Plexi-glas tank filled with a translucent green liquid.

Frank said, "Monk, this is our neighbor, Tom Flood. Flood, this is my partner Monk."

Monk grunted, not looking up from a compressor that he seemed to be having trouble with. Tommy could see how he had gotten his name. He had a large bowl-shaped bald spot with a fringe of hair around it: the Benedictine version of Easy Rider, Friar Tuck on wheels.

"This," said Frank, gesturing toward the ten-foot tank, "as far as we know, is the biggest electroplating tank on the West Coast."

Tommy didn't know quite how to react. He was still stunned by seeing the bronze likeness of Zelda. "That's just spiffy," he said finally.

"Yeah, dude. We can do anything we can find. No molds, no wax carvings. You just dunk and go. That's how we did your turtles."

Tommy was beginning to get it. "You mean that that is not a sculpture? You covered my turtles with brass?"

"That's it. That liquid is supersaturated with dissolved metal. We sprayed the turtles with a thin metal-based paint that would conduct current. Then we attached a wire to them and dipped them in the tank. The current draws the metal out of the water and it fuses to the paint on the turtle. Leave it a long time and the coating gets thick enough to have structural integrity. Voila, a bronze garden turtle. I don't think anybody's ever done it before. We owe you, man."

Monk grunted in gratitude.

Tommy didn't know whether to be angry or depressed. "You should have told me you were going to kill them."

"I thought you knew, man. Sorry. You can have this one, if you want." Frank presented the bronzed Zelda.

Tommy shook his head and looked away. "I don't think I could look at her." He turned and walked away.

Frank said, "C'mon, man, take it. We owe you one. If you need a favor or something…"

Tommy took Zelda. How would he explain to Jody? "By the way, I've turned your little friends into statues." And this right after they'd had a big fight. He slunk up the steps feeling completely lost.

Jody had left him a note on the counter:

Tommy:

Imperative that you are here when I wake up. If you go out you are in serious, life-threatening trouble. I mean it. I have some very important things to tell you. No time now, I'm going to go out any second. Be here when I wake up.

Jody

"Great," Tommy said to Peary. "Now what do I do about Mara? Who does Jody think she is, threatening me? What does she think she's going to do if I'm not here? I can't be here. Why don't you keep her busy until I get home." Tommy patted the chest freezer and an idea came to him.

"You know, Peary, scientists have frozen vampire bats and thawed them completely unharmed. I mean, how would she know? How many times has she thought it was Tuesday when it was really Wednesday?"

Tommy went to the bedroom and looked in on Jody, who had made it to bed, but not in time to change out of her black dress.

Wow, Tommy thought, she never dresses like that for me.

She looked so peaceful. Sexy, but peaceful.

She'll be angry if she finds out, but she's angry now. It won't really hurt her. I can just take her out tomorrow morning and put her under the electric blanket. By sundown she'll be thawed out and I'll have handled the Mara thing. I can tell Mara that I'm involved. I can't start something new until this is finished. Maybe with the extra time, Jody will have chilled a little.

He smiled to himself.

He opened the lid of the freezer, then went into the bedroom to get Jody. He carried her into the kitchen and laid her in the freezer on top of Peary. As he tucked her into the fetal position he felt a twinge of jealousy. "You guys behave now, okay?" He tucked a few TV dinners around her nice and snug under her arms, then kissed her on the forehead and gently closed the lid.

As he crawled into bed he thought, If she ever finds out about this, she's really going to be pissed.

Tommy had been asleep three hours when the pounding started. He rolled out of bed, stumbled across the dark bedroom, and was blinded when he opened the door into the loft. He was just regaining his eyesight when he opened the fire door and Rivera said, "Are you Thomas Flood, Junior?"

"Yes," Tommy said, bracing himself against the doorjamb.

"I'm Inspector Alphonse Rivera from the San Francisco Police Department." He held up a badge wallet. "You're under arrest" — Rivera pulled a warrant from his jacket pocket — "for abandoning a vehicle on a public street."

"You're kidding," Tommy said.

Cavuto stepped through the door and grabbed Tommy by the shoulder, whipping him around as the big cop pulled his handcuffs from his belt. "You have the right to remain silent…" Cavuto said.

Two hours later Tommy had been processed, probed, and printed, and as Cavuto had expected, Tommy's fingerprints matched those on the copy of On the Road that they had found under the dead bum. It was enough for them to get a search warrant issued for the loft. Five minutes after they entered the loft a mobile crime lab was dispatched along with a forensics team and two coroners' trucks. As far as crime scenes went, the loft in SOMA was the mother lode.

Cavuto and Rivera left the crime scene to the forensics team and returned to the station, where they took Tommy from a holding cell and put him in a pleasantly pink interrogation room furnished with a metal table and two chairs. There was a mirror on one wall and a tape recorder sat on the table. Tommy sat staring at the pink wall, remembering something about how pink was supposed to calm you down. It didn't seem to be working. His stomach was tied in knots.

Rivera had done dozens of interrogations with Cavuto and they always took the same roles: Cavuto was the bad cop, and Rivera was the good cop. Actually Rivera never felt like the good cop. More often he was the I-am-tired-and-overworked-and-I'm-being-nice-to-you-because-I-don't-have-the-energy-to-be-angry cop.

"Would you like a smoke?" Rivera asked.

"Sure," Tommy said.

Cavuto jumped in his face. "Too bad, punk. There's no smoking in here." Cavuto took great pleasure in being the bad cop. He practiced in front of the mirror at home.

Rivera shrugged. "He's right. You can't smoke."

Tommy said, "That's okay, I don't smoke."

"How about a lawyer then?" asked Rivera. "Or a phone call?"

"I have to be at work at midnight," Tommy said. "If it looks like I'm going to be late, I'll use my call then."

Cavuto was pacing the room, timing his path so he could wheel on Tommy with every statement. He wheeled. "Yeah, kid, you're going to be late, about thirty years late, if they don't fry you."

Tommy pushed back in his chair with fright.

"Good one, Nick," Rivera said.

"Thanks." Cavuto smiled around an unlit cigar and backed away from the table where Tommy sat.

Rivera moved up. "Okay, kid, you don't want an attorney. Where do you want to start? We've got you hands-down on two murders and probably three. If you tell us the story, tell us everything, about all the other murders, we might be able to waive the death penalty."

"I didn't kill anybody."

"Don't be cute," Cavuto said. "We found two bodies in your freezer. We've got your fingerprints all over a book that we found under a third body outside your apartment. We've got you staying at the motel where we found a fourth body. And we've got you with a closetful of women's clothing and eyewitnesses that put a woman near where we found a fifth body…"

Tommy interrupted, "Actually, there's only one body in the freezer. The other is my girlfriend."

"You sick fuck." Cavuto drew back as if to hit Tommy. Rivera moved to restrain him. Tommy cowered in his chair.

Rivera led Cavuto to the far side of the room. "Let me take this for a minute." He left Cavuto grumbling to himself and went to the seat across from Tommy.

"Look, kid, we've got you cold, so to speak, on two murders. We've got circumstantial evidence on another. You are going to jail for a very long time, and at this point, the death penalty is looking pretty good. Now if you tell us everything, and don't leave anything out, we might be able to help you out, but you have to give us enough to close all the cases. Do you understand?"

Tommy nodded. "But I didn't kill anybody. I put Jody in the freezer, which I admit is inconsiderate, but I didn't kill her."

Cavuto growled. Rivera nodded in mock acceptance of the story. "Fine, but if you didn't kill them, who did? Did someone you know force you into this?"

Cavuto exploded, "Oh Christ, Rivera! What do you need, a videotape? This little bastard did it."

"Nick, please. Give me a minute here."

Cavuto moved to the table and leaned over it until his face was next to Tommy's. He whispered, raspy and gruff, "Flood, don't think you can use a wiggle and a wink to get yourself out of this. That might work down on Castro, but I'm immune to it here, you got me? I'm going to leave now, but when I come back, if you haven't told my partner your story, I'm going to cause pain. Lots of it, and I won't leave a mark on you." He stood up, smiled, then turned and left the room.

Tommy looked at Rivera. "A wiggle and a wink?"

"Nick thinks you're cute," Rivera said.

"He's gay?"

"Completely."

Tommy shook his head. "I would have never guessed."

"He's a Shriner, too." Rivera tapped a cigarette out of his pack and lit it. "Looks can be deceiving."

"Hey, I didn't think you were allowed to smoke in here."

Rivera blew smoke in Tommy's face. "You had two people in your freezer, and you're giving me shit about smoking."

"Good point."

Rivera sat down and leaned back in the chair. "Tommy, I'm going to give you one more chance to tell me how you killed those people, then I'm going to let Nick back in here and I'm going to leave. He really likes you. This room is soundproof, you know."

Tommy swallowed hard. "You're not going to believe me. It's a pretty fantastic story. There's supernatural stuff involved."

Rivera rubbed his temples. "Satan told you to do it?" he said wearily.

"No."

"Elvis?"

"I told you, it's supernatural."

"Tommy, I'm going to tell you something I've never told anyone before. If you repeat it, I'll deny I said it. Five years ago I saw a white owl with a seventy-foot wingspan swoop out of the sky and pluck a demon off a hillside and take off into the sky."

"I heard that cops get the best drugs," Tommy said.

Rivera got up. "I'm going to bring Nick in."

"No, wait. I'll tell you. It was a vampire. You can thaw Jody out and ask her."

Rivera reached over and turned on the tape recorder. "Now slow down. Start at the beginning and go until we walked you into this room."

An hour later Rivera met Cavuto behind the one-way mirror. Cavuto was not happy. "You know, I'd rather you just threaten that I would beat him up."

"It worked, didn't it?"

"There's nothing there we can use. Not a thing. If he sticks with that story he'll get off on insanity. It's too wild. I want to know how he got the blood out of the bodies."

"The kid thinks he's a writer. He's showing off his imagination. Let's let him sit awhile and get something to eat. I want to find the Emperor."

"That wacko?"

"He's been reporting seeing a vampire for weeks. Maybe he saw the kid doing one of the murders."

Chapter 29 Paying Respects

Gilbert Bendetti liked his job, really liked his job. It was a government job, of sorts, so the benefits were good and the work easy. He liked working nights, too, it was quiet and he was usually in the morgue by himself, so he didn't have to feel self-conscious about his weight or his bad skin. He liked playing with computers and the lab equipment, and he liked answering the phone and acting official. Being the night man at the coroner's office would have been a great job even if he didn't get to fuck the dead, but with that, it was heaven.

Tonight Gilbert was bubbling with anticipation. They had wheeled Miss Right in that afternoon and left him explicit instructions not to put her away, but to let her sit out to thaw for the autopsy. Some psycho had put her in a freezer. Sick bastard had put TV dinners under her arms. Now she was curled up on a gurney, teasing him. That cocktail dress, that red hair — he could hardly wait.

He checked the log and locked his skin books in the desk drawer, then loosened his lab coat and went down the hall to test her for flexibility. The last time he checked she'd started to get a little flexibility, but he knew that inside she was — well — frigid, despite the Salisbury-steak gravy dripping from under her arms.

He pushed through the glass door into the holding room and there she was, just as he had left her, her pouty lips beckoning to him, her lovely legs curled up behind her.

"My angel," Gilbert said, "shall I help you with those pesky panty hose?"

He straightened her legs on the gurney and pushed her skirt up. She was still a little chilly, but she was movable. Good, once rigor mortis set in, passion could put you into positions that would challenge a yoga master. Gilbert had thrown his back out more than once.

Her panty hose were sheer black, but except for her right big toe, her feet were dusty. She must have been walking in her stocking feet. Indulging himself in some foreplay, Gilbert had sucked her big toe clean shortly after they brought her in. Foreplay, sorta.

He considered testing her with the meat thermometer, but she was so perfect, he didn't want to mark that lovely body. He reached up under her skirt, grabbed the waistband of her panty hose, and began to work them down.

"Black lace panties, my goodness…" He tried to remember her name, then checked her toe tag. "My goodness, Jody, how did you know I liked black lace?"

He peeled her panty hose off, stopping to loosen the toe tag first, then ran his hands up her thighs after the lace panties.

"And a natural redhead," Gilbert said, dropping the panties on the floor. He stepped back a moment to admire her and slip out of his lab coat. He locked the wheels on the gurney, pulled the TV dinners out from under her arms, and unzipped his pants.

"This is going to be so good. So good." He climbed over the end of the gurney, careful to stay balanced. Nothing ruined the mood more than toppling to the linoleum and bashing your skull.

He licked a path up the inside of her leg.

"Tommy, that tickles," she said.

Gilbert looked up. No, it's my imagination. He returned to his pleasure.

"No, let me shower first," she said. She sat up.

Gilbert pushed himself backward so violently that the gurney went up on its end, dumping Jody on the floor. Gilbert backed away from her holding his chest, his breath refusing to come, bis withering willy waving in front of him.

Jody climbed to her feet. "Who are you?"

Gilbert couldn't talk. He couldn't breathe. It felt as if barbed wire had been looped around his heart and was being yanked by a team of horses. He backed into a rack of drawers, banging his head.

Jody looked around. "How did I get here? Answer me."

Gilbert gasped and fell to his knees.

"Where's Tommy? And where the fuck are my panties?"

Gilbert was shaking his head. He rolled on his side, took two more tortured breaths, and died.

"Hey!" Jody said. "I need some answers here."

Gilbert didn't answer. Jody watched the black aura of his dying fade away, leaving only the residual heat signature of his body.

"Sorry," she said.

She looked around: the gurney, the big file drawers of the dead, the instruments of dissection — this sure looked like the morgues in the movies. Something had gone seriously wrong while she slept.

She checked her watch, but it was gone. The wall clock over Gilbert's body read 1 a.m.

Why did I wake up so late? I've got to find Tommy and find out what happened.

She picked up her panties from the floor and wiggled into them. The panty hose she left where they lay, instead looking around for her shoes. She didn't see them. She didn't see her purse anywhere either.

Money. I'm going to need cab fare.

She crouched by Gilbert's body and rifled through his pockets, coming up with thirty dollars and some change. Almost as an afterthought she tucked his exposed member back into his pants and zipped him up.

"I did that for your family, not for you," she said. Then thought, I'm getting worse than Tommy, talking to dead people.

She started toward the door, then stopped and looked at the wall of drawers. The scenario cane over her like a sudden sneeze.

Tommy is probably in one of those drawers. The vampire killed him, and when the coroner came, they thought I was dead too. But why did he spare me? And why did it take so long to wake up? Maybe it was that med student. Maybe when I missed the meeting he told the cops when to find me. But he didn't know how to find me.

She went though the glass doors and down the hall where she stopped at the phone and called the loft. No answer. She dialed the Marina Safeway's number.

"Marina Safeway." She recognized Simon McQueen's drawl.

"Simon, this is Jody. I need to talk to Tommy."

"Who? Who did you say you were?"

"It's Jody. Tommy's girlfriend. I need to speak to him."

Simon was quiet for a moment. When he finally spoke, his voice was an octave lower. "You don't know where Flood is?"

"He's not there?"

"Nope."

"Is he okay?"

"In a manner of speakin', he's okay. What about you? You feelin' all right?"

"Yes, Simon, I'm fine. Where's Tommy?"

"Well, ain't you a wonder. You're sure you feel okay?"

"Yes. Where's Tommy?"

"I can't tell you over the phone. I'll come get you. Where are you?"

"I'm not sure; just a second." Jody ran to the front door. The address was printed on the glass. She went back to the phone and gave Simon an address two blocks away.

"Let me get someone to cover my section. I'll be there in a half hour."

"Thanks, Simon." Jody hung up. What in the hell was going on?

While she waited for Simon to arrive, Jody parried the propositions of two guys in a Mercedes who had mistaken her for a hooker. Not an unreasonable mistake considering she was standing barefoot on a back street in a low-cut cocktail dress on a cold San Francisco night. Finally, when she told them she was an undercover cop, their resolve softened and they drove off hanging their heads.

Simon rounded the corner five minutes later and skidded to a stop in a cloud of smoking rubber and testosterone. He threw the door open for her.

"Get in."

Jody leaped into the passenger seat. Simon seemed a little surprised that she hadn't used the two steps mounted under the door. "You're steppin' high tonight, darlin'," Simon said.

Jody closed the door. "Where's Tommy?"

"Hold your horses, I'll take you to him." Simon put the truck in gear and roared off. "You sure you're feeling all right?"

"Yes, I'm fine. Why couldn't you tell me what happened to Tommy on the phone?"

"Well, he's hiding out. Seems the police want him for some murders."

"The Whiplash murders?"

"Those be the ones." Simon looked at her. "Ain't you cold?"

"Oh, I lost my coat."

"And shoes?"

"Yes, and shoes. Some guys were chasing me." Jody knew she didn't sound very convincing.

They were headed down Market toward the Bay Bridge. Simon grinned and pushed his black Stetson back on his head. "You don't get cold, do you, darlin'?"

"What do you mean?"

Simon hit the electric-lock button; Jody heard the lock go thunk at her side. Simon said, "You don't get hot either, do you? Or sick. Do you get sick?"

Jody hugged the door handle. "What are you getting at, Simon?"

Simon reached inside his jacket and came out with a Colt Python revolver. He pointed it at her and cocked it. "Now I know bullets might not kill you, but I'll bet they hurt like hell. And I put some little wood pegs in the hollow points just in case that does the job."

Jody had no idea what a bullet would do to her and she didn't want to find out. "What do you want, Simon?"

Simon pulled the truck into an alley and switched off the engine. "Couple of things. I don't know which I want first until you answer some questions."

"Whatever you want, Simon. You're Tommy's friend. You don't have to be a hard-ass, just ask."

"That's right sweet of you, darlin'. Now tell me, do you get sick?"

"Everybody gets sick, Simon. I get a cold every now and then."

Simon dug the gun into her ribs. "Don't bullshit me now. I know what you are."

Jody looked closely at Simon for the first time. He was burning up, the heat coming off him in red waves, even in the relative warmth of the truck cab. But below the heat aura she saw something else that she hadn't seen the first night she'd met him. Maybe because she hadn't known what to look for. Under the heat signature Simon was ringed by a thin black corona, as she had seen on other people — the death aura, but thinner, as if it was just growing.

She said, "Are you sure you're not just being an asshole again, Simon? Holding up your friend's girlfriend?"

"Don't get slippery on me, Red. I saw you sleeping that day we partied at your house. I touched you. You're cold as a witch's titty. And Flood always complainin' about you sleeping all day. And how he had to have them turtles alive. But I didn't put it all together until the Emperor started screaming about vampires and the cops took Flood away."

"You're nuts, Simon. None of that proves anything. There's no such thing as vampires."

"Oh yeah? Well, you know why they arrested Tommy?"

"No, I didn't know…"

"Because they found you dead in the freezer, that's why. He's in for your murder, missy. I still had some doubts until you called just now. You'll be my first dead piece of ass, not counting the time I choked my chicken over a picture of Marilyn."

Jody was stunned. A wave of panic swept through her, the inner voice shouting, Kill him, hide; kill him, hide. She fought it back. "You're doing this because you want sex?"

"Well, that's part of it. You see, I ain't been well laid for five years — since I picked me up this bug. It's kinda hard to get yourself into a good three-toweler when you got the dick of death. I ain't no ass bandit, though. I let some whore from Oakland fix me up with a speedball. Six of us shared the needle."

"You're dying of AIDS?" Jody asked.

"No need to candy-coat it, darlin'. Just come right out and say it."

"Sorry, Simon, but when someone has a gun on me and tells me he's going to rape me, I forget my manners."

"Ain't going to be no rape unless you want it. The other thing is more important."

"Other thing?"

"I want you to change me into a vampire."

"No, you don't, Simon. You don't know what it's like."

"I don't need to know, darlin'. I know I'm going to die if you don't. It ain't just HIV anymore, it's full-blown. I can hardly get my boots on and off from the sores. The doctor's got me on enough pills to choke a horse. Now do it."

Jody felt for him. For all his arrogant cowboy panache, she could tell he was afraid. "I don't know how, Simon. I don't know how I was changed. It just happened."

He dug the barrel of the gun up under her breast and slid across the seat next to her. "You just bite my damn neck. Now do it!"

"That doesn't work. That would just kill you. I don't know how to turn you into a vampire."

Simon took the gun out of her ribs and held it against her thigh. "I'm going to count to three, then I'm going to shoot you in the leg if you don't start turning me. Then I'm going to count to three and shoot you in the other leg. I didn't want to do this, but you got to see."

Jody could see tears welling up in Simon's eyes. He didn't want to do this, but she knew he would. She wondered even if she knew how to turn him if she would do it. "Simon, please, I really don't know how to turn you. Let me go. Maybe I'll find out."

"I don't have the time, darlin'. If I have to trade the daylight for a lifetime of nights, I'll take the nights. I'm counting now. One!"

"Simon, don't. Just wait."

"Two!"

Jody watched a tear roll out of his eye. She felt his body tense and looked down at the gun. The tendons in his hand were tightening. He was going to do it.

"Three!"

Jody shot out her right hand, palm open, and hit Simon under the chin while sweeping the gun away from her leg with her right. The gun went off, sending a bullet through the floorboard. The explosion covered the noise of Simon's neck snapping but she could feel the crunch against her palm. Simon slumped back in the seat, his head thrown back and mouth open as if he were frozen in a laugh. Over the ringing in her ears Jody could hear his last breath squeaking out of his lungs. The black aura around him faded away.

She reached over and straightened his Stetson. "God, Simon, I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."

Rivera drove. Cavuto sat in the passenger seat smoking and talking on the radio. He keyed the mike. "If anyone sees the Emperor tonight, detain him and call Rivera and Cavuto. He's wanted for questioning but he's not, I repeat not, a suspect. In other words, don't scare him."

Cavuto hung the mike on the dash and said to Rivera, "You really don't think that this is a waste of time?"

"Like I said, Nick, homicide and the coroner are the only ones who know about the blood loss. Our guys wouldn't leak, but even if there was a leak in the coroner's office, I can't imagine anyone telling the Emperor. Whoever did these murders is behaving like a vampire. Maybe he thinks he's a vampire. So to catch him, we have to pretend we're tracking a vampire."

"That's bullshit. We've got enough evidence on the kid to get an indictment right now, and by the time forensics gets done with his apartment we'll have enough for a conviction."

"Yeah," Rivera said, "except for one thing."

Cavuto rolled his eyes. "I know, you don't think he killed anyone."

"And neither do you."

Cavuto chomped his cigar and looked out the car window at a group of winos milling on a corner by a liquor store.

"Do you?" Rivera insisted.

"He knows who did. And if I have to walk his cute little ass right up to the chair to get him to tell, I will."

A call came over the radio. "Go ahead," Cavuto said into the mike.

The dispatcher's voice crackled over the speaker. "Unit ten is holding the Emperor at Mason and Bay. Do you want them to bring him in?"

Cavuto turned to Rivera and raised his eyebrows. "Well?"

"No, tell them we'll be there in five."

Cavuto keyed the mike. "Negative, we're on our way."

Three minutes later Rivera pulled the unmarked Dodge into a red zone behind the cruiser. The two uniformed officers were playing with Lazarus and Bummer, whose armor rattled and clanged as they frisked. The Emperor stood by, his wooden sword still in hand.

Rivera got out of the car first. "Good evening, Your Majesty."

"Give me a fucking break," Cavuto said under his breath as he hoisted his bulk out of the car.

"And a good early morning to you, Inspector." The Emperor bowed. "I see the fiend has us all burning the midnight oil."

Rivera nodded to the uniforms. "We got it, guys, thanks." One of the uniforms was a woman. She shot Rivera a dirty look as she headed for the cruiser.

Rivera turned his attention back to the Emperor. "You've been busy calling in reports of a vampire in the City."

The Emperor frowned. "And I must say, Inspector, I'm a bit disappointed with the lack of promptness of your response."

"Eat me," said Cavuto.

"We've been busy," Rivera said.

"Well, you're here at last." The Emperor waved to Bummer and Lazarus, who were waiting at his heel. "You know the men?"

"We've met," Rivera said with a wave. "Your Majesty, you reported seeing a vampire" — Rivera pulled a notebook out of his jacket pocket — "three different times over the last month and a half." Rivera took a copy of Tommy's mug shot from his notebook and held it out to the Emperor. "Is this the man you saw?"

"Heavens no. That's my friend C. Thomas Flood, aspiring author. A fine, if confused, lad. I arranged for his employment at the Marina Safeway."

"But he's not the man you reported as being a vampire."

"No. The fiend is older, and has sharp features, of Arab descent, I would guess, if he were not so pale."

Cavuto stepped up and took the picture from Rivera. "You reported the body they found in SOMA, but you said you didn't see anything. Did you see this man anywhere near the scene?"

"The victim was a friend of mine, Charlie. He left his mind in Vietnam, I'm afraid, but a good soul just the same. He had been dead for some time when I found him, though. The fiend left him there to rot."

Cavuto bristled. "But you didn't see this vampire guy at the scene either."

"I have seen him in the financial district, once in Chinatown, and at the marina last night. In fact, that young man gave me sanctuary at the Safeway."

Cavuto's beeper went off. He ignored it. "You saw Flood and this vampire guy together?"

"No, I ran from the wharf when the fiend materialized out of mist."

"I'm outta here," Cavuto said, throwing up his hands. He checked his beeper and went back to the car.

Rivera held his ground. "I'm sorry, Your Majesty, my partner needs to learn some manners. Now, if you can just tell me…"

Cavuto beeped the horn and hung his head out the window. "Rivera, come on. They found another one. Let's go."

"Wait a second." Rivera took a business card out of his wallet and gave it to the Emperor. "Highness, could you call me tomorrow, around noon? I'll come get you wherever you are — buy you and the men some lunch."

"Of course, my son."

Cavuto yelled out the car window, "Let's go, this one's fresh."

"Be careful," Rivera said to the Emperor. "Watch your back, okay?"

The Emperor grinned. "Safety first."

Rivera turned and walked to the car. He was still shutting the door as Cavuto pulled away from the curb. Cavuto said, "Another snapped neck. Body's in a pickup off of Market. Uniforms found it five minutes ago."

"Blood loss?"

"They knew enough not to say over the radio. But there's a witness."

"Witness?"

"Homeless guy sleeping in the alley saw a woman leaving the scene. There's an all-points out for a redheaded female in a black cocktail dress."

"You're bullshitting."

Cavuto turned and looked him in the eye. "The Laundromat ninja returns."

"Santa Fucking Maria," Rivera said.

"I love it when you speak Spanish."

The radio crackled again, the dispatcher calling their unit number. Rivera grabbed the mike and keyed it.

"What now?" he said.

Chapter 30 Cops and Corpses

"This guy is pissing me off," Cavuto said, expelling a blue cloud of cigar smoke against the file drawers of the dead. "I hate this fucking guy." He was standing over the body of Gilbert Bendetti, who had a thermometer sticking out of the side of his abdomen.

"Inspector, there's no smoking allowed in here," said a uniformed officer who had been called to the scene.

Cavuto waved to the drawers. "Do you think they mind?"

The officer shook his head. "No, sir."

Cavuto blew a stream of smoke at Gilbert. "And him, do you think he minds?"

"No, sir."

"And you, Patrolman Jeeter, you don't mind, do you?"

Jeeter cleared his throat. "Uh… no, sir."

"Well, good," Cavuto said. "Look on the side of the car, Jeeter. It says 'Protect and Serve, not 'Piss and Moan. »

"Yes, sir."

Rivera came through the double doors, followed by a tall, sixtyish man in a lab coat and silver wire-frame glasses.

Cavuto looked up. "Doc, this guy done, or what?"

The doctor pulled a surgical mask over his face as he approached the body. He bent over Gilbert and checked the thermometer. "He's been dead about four hours. I'd put the time of death between one and one-thirty. I won't be able to tell for sure until I finish the postmortem, but offhand I'd say myocardial infarction."

"I hate this guy," Cavuto repeated. He looked down at Jody's toe tag, which was lying on the linoleum with a chalk circle drawn around it. "Any chance this guy misplaced the redhead?"

The coroner looked up. "None at all. Someone removed the body."

Rivera had his notebook out and was scribbling as the doctor talked. "Any news on the one that just came in, the cowboy? Any blood loss?"

"Again, I can't say for sure, but it looks like a broken neck is the cause of death. There may have been some blood loss, but not as much as we've seen with the others. Since he was sitting up, it could just be settling."

"What about the wound on the throat?" Rivera asked.

"What wound?" the coroner said. "There was no wound on the throat; I checked the body myself."

Rivera's arms fell to his sides, his pen clattered on the linoleum. "Doctor, could you check again? Nick and I both saw distinct puncture wounds on the right side of the neck."

The doctor stood up and walked to the rack of drawers and pulled one out. "Check for yourself."

Cavuto and Rivera moved to either side of the drawer. Rivera turned Simon's head to the side while inspecting his neck. He looked up at Cavuto, who shook his head and walked away.

"Nick, you saw it, right?"

Cavuto nodded.

Rivera turned to the doctor. "I saw the wounds, Doc, I swear. I've been doing this too long to get something like that wrong."

The coroner shrugged. "When was the last time you two slept?"

"Together, you mean?" said Cavuto.

The coroner frowned.

Rivera said, "Thanks, Doc, we've got some more work at the other crime scene. We'll be back. Let's go, Nick."

Cavuto was standing over Gilbert again. "I hate this guy, and I hate that cowboy in the drawer. Did I mention that?"

Rivera tuned on his heel and started toward the doors, then stopped and looked down. There was a distinct footprint on the linoleum in brown gravy. Made by a small foot, a woman's bare foot.

Rivera turned to the coroner. "Doc, you got any women working here?"

"Not down here. Only in the office."

"Fuck! Nick, come on, we need to talk." Rivera stormed through the double doors, leaving them swinging.

Cavuto ambled after him. He paused at the doors and turned back to the coroner. "He's moody, Doc."

The coroner nodded.

"Nothing to the press about the blood loss, if there was any. And nothing about the missing body."

"Of course not. I have no desire to advertise that my office is losing bodies," the coroner said.

Rivera was waiting in the hallway when Cavuto came through the doors. "We've got to cut the kid loose, you know that."

"We can hold him another twenty-four hours."

"He didn't do it."

"Yeah, but he knows something."

"Maybe we should let him go and follow him."

"Give me one more shot at him. Alone."

"Whatever. We've got something else to consider too. You saw those puncture marks on the cowboy's throat the same as I did, right?"

Cavuto chewed his cigar and looked at the ceiling.

"Well?"

Cavuto nodded.

"Then maybe the others had wounds too. Maybe they had wounds that went away. And did you see the footprint?"

"I saw it."

"Nick, do you believe in vampires?"

Cavuto turned and walked down the hall. "I need a stiff one."

"You mean a drink?"

Cavuto glared over his shoulder and growled. Rivera grinned. "I owed you that one."

Tommy guessed the temperature in the cell to be about sixty-five, but even so, his cellmate, the six-foot-five, two-hundred-fifty-pound, unshaven, unbathed, one-eyed psychopath with the Disney-character tattoos, was dripping with sweat.

Maybe, Tommy thought, as he cowered in the corner behind the toilet, it's warmer up there on the bunk. Or maybe it's hard work trying to stare at someone menacingly, without blinking, for six hours when you only have one eye.

"I hate you," said One-Eye.

"Sorry," said Tommy.

One-Eye stood up and flexed his biceps; Micky and Goofy bulged angrily. "Are you making fun of me?"

Tommy didn't want to say anything, so he shook his head violently, trying to make sure that nothing remotely resembling a smile crossed his face.

One-Eye sat down on the bunk and resumed menacing. "What are you in for?"

"Nothing," Tommy said. "I didn't do anything."

"Don't fuck with me, ass-wipe. What were you arrested for?"

Tommy fidgeted, trying to work his way into the cinder-block wall. "Well, I put my girlfriend in the freezer, but I don't think that's a crime."

One-Eye, for the first time since he'd been put in the cell, smiled. "Me either. You didn't use an assault weapon, did you?"

"Nope, a Sears frost-free."

"Oh, good; they're really tough on crimes with assault weapons."

"So," Tommy said, venturing an inch out of the corner, "what are you in for?" Thinking baby-stomping, thinking cannibalism, thinking fast-food massacre.

One-Eye hung his head. "Copyright infringement."

"You're kidding?"

One-Eye frowned. Tommy slid back into his corner, adding, "Really? That's bad."

One-Eye pulled off his ratty T-shirt. The Seven Dwarfs danced across his massive chest between knife and bullet scars. On his stomach, Snow White and Cinderella were locked in a frothy embrace of mutual muffin munching.

"Yeah, I made the mistake of walking around without a shirt. A Disney executive who was up here on vacation saw me down by the wharf. He called their legal pit bulls."

Tommy shook his head in sympathy. "I didn't know they put you in jail for copyright infringement."

"Well, they don't, really. It was when I ripped the guy's shoulders out of their sockets that the police got involved."

"That's not a crime either, is it?"

One-Eye rubbed his temples as if it was excruciating to remember. "It was in front of his kids."

"Oh," Tommy said.

"Flood, on your feet," a guard said from the cell door. Inspector Nick Cavuto stood behind him.

"C'mon, cutie," Cavuto said. "We're going for a last walk."

The blood-high wasn't racing through her with flush and fever as it always had before. No, it was more like the satisfying fullness of a lasagna dinner chased with double espressos. Still, the strength sang in her limbs; she ripped the loft-door dead bolts through the metal doorjamb as easily as she had torn the plastic crime-scene tape the police had put across the door.

Strange, she thought, there is a difference in drinking from a living body.

Her remorse over killing Simon had passed in seconds and the predator mind had taken over. A new aspect of the predator had reared up this time, not just the instinct to hide and hunt, but to protect.

If Tommy was in jail for putting her in the freezer, it meant that the police had also found Peary, and they would try to connect Tommy to the other murders. But if they found another victim while Tommy was behind bars, they would have to set him free. And she needed him to be free, first so that she could find out why he had frozen her, but more important, because it was time to turn the tables on the other vampire, and the only safe way to hunt him was to do it during daylight.

She had bit Simon's neck and used the heel of her hand to pump his heart as she drank. There was no guilt or self-consciousness in the act; the predator mind had taken over. She found herself thinking about the burly fireman who had come to Transamerica to teach the employees earthquake preparedness, which had included a course in CPR. What would he think of one of his students' using his technique to pump lifeblood from the murdered? "I'm sorry, Fireman Frank, I sucked like an Electrolux, but it just wasn't enough. If it's any consolation, I didn't enjoy it."

What little strength she had gained from Simon's blood seemed to evaporate as she walked into the loft. It was in worse shape than the day the Animals had come for breakfast. The futon was bundled against the wall; the books had been taken out of their shelves and spread out on the floor; the cabinets hung open, their contents tumbled across the counters; and a fine patina of fingerprint powder covered every surface. She wanted to cry.

It reminded her of the time she had lived with a heavy-metal bass player for two months, who had torn their apartment apart looking for money for drugs. Money?

She ran to the bedroom and to the dresser where she had stashed the remaining cash the old vampire had given her. It was gone. She threw open the drawer where she kept her lingerie. She'd kept a couple thousand rolled up in a bra, a holdover habit from the days of hiding cash from the bass player. It was there. She had enough for a month's rent, but then what? It wouldn't matter if Tommy didn't stop the other vampire. He was going to kill them both, she was sure of it, and he was going to do it soon.

As she weighed the rolls of bills in her hand, she heard someone open the stairwell door, then footfalls on the steps. She went to the kitchen and waited, crouched behind the counter.

Someone was in the loft. A man. She could hear his heart — smell sweat and stale deodorant coming off him. Tommy's deodorant. She stood up.

"Hi," Tommy said. "Boy, am I glad to see you."

Chapter 31 He Was an Ex-Con, She Was Defrosted…

She started to lean over the counter to give him a hug, then stopped herself. "You look awful," she said.

He was unshaven, his hair stuck out in greasy tufts, and his clothes looked as if he'd slept in them. He hadn't. He hadn't slept at all.

"Thanks," he said. "You look a little tattered yourself."

She raised her hand to her hair, felt a tangle, and let it drop. "And I thought my red hair went so well with freezer burn."

"I can explain that."

She came around the counter and stood before him, not knowing whether to hold him or hit him.

"That's a great dress. Is it new?"

"It was a great dress before the gravy and cobbler melted all over it. What happened, Tommy? Why was I frozen?"

He reached out to touch her face. "How are you? I mean, are you okay?"

"Good time to ask." She glared at him.

He looked in her eyes, then away. "You're very beautiful, you know that?" He crumpled to the floor and sat with his back against the counter. "I'm so sorry, Jody. I didn't want to hurt you. I was just… sort of lonely."

She felt tears welling in her eyes and wiped them away. He was genuinely sorry, she could tell. And she had always been a sucker for pathetic apologies, going back as far as the time the bass player she was seeing hocked her stereo. Or had that been the construction worker? "What happened?" she pressed.

He stared at the floor and shook his head. "I don't know. I wanted someone to talk about books with. Someone who thought I was special. I met a girl at work. I was just going to meet her for coffee, nothing else. But I didn't think you'd understand. So I… well, you know."

Jody sat down on the floor in front of him. "Tommy, you could have killed me."

"I'm sorry!" he screamed. "I'm afraid of you. You scare the hell out of me sometimes. I didn't think it would hurt you or I wouldn't have done it. I just wanted to feel special, but you're the special one. I just wanted to talk to someone who sees things the way I do, who can understand how I feel about things. I want to take you out and show you off, even during the day. I've never really had a girlfriend before. I love you. I want to share things with you."

He looked down, would not meet her gaze.

Jody took his hand and squeezed it. "I know how you feel. You don't know how well I know. And I love you too."

Finally he looked at her, then pulled her into his arms. They held each other for a long time, rocking each other like crying children. A half hour passed, ticked off with tear-salty kisses, before she said, "Do you want to share a shower? I don't want to let go of you, and it'll be dawn soon."

Warmed and cleaned by the shower, they danced, still wet, though the dark bedroom, to fall together on the bare mattress. For Tommy, being with her, in her, was like coming to a place where he was safe and loved, and those dark and hostile things that walked the world outside were washed away in the smell of her damp hair, a soft kiss on the eyelid, and mingled whispers of love and reassurance.

It had never been like this for Jody. It was escape from worry and suspicion and from the predator mind that had been rising for days like a shark to blood. There was no urge to feed, but a different hunger drove her to hold him deep and long and still, to envelop and keep him there forever. Her vampire senses rose to the touch of his hands, his mouth — as if finally her sense of touch had grown to feel life itself as pleasure. Love.

When they finished she held his face against her breast and listened to his breathing becoming slow as he fell asleep. Tears crept from the corners of her eyes as dawn broke, releasing her from the night's last thought: I'm loved at last, and I have to give it up.

Tommy was still sleeping at sundown. She kissed him gently on the forehead, then nipped his ear to wake him. He opened his eyes and smiled. She could see it in the dark; it was a genuine smile.

"Hey," he said.

She snuggled against him. "We've got to get up. There's things to do."

"You're cold. Are you cold?"

"I'm never cold." She rolled out of bed and went to the light switch. "Eyes," she warned as she flipped on the light.

Tommy shielded his eyes. "For the love of God, Montressor!"

"Poe?" she said. "Right?"

"Yep."

"See? I can talk books."

Tommy sat up. "I'm sorry. I didn't give you a chance. I guess we were always talking about — about your condition."

She smiled and snatched a pair of jeans and a flannel shirt from the pile of clothes on the floor.

"I talked to the other vampire the other night. That's why I left the note."

Tommy was wide awake now. "You talked to him? Where?"

"In a club. I was mad at you. I wanted to go out. Show off."

"What did he say?"

"He said it's almost over. Tommy, I think he's going to try and kill you, maybe both of us."

"Well, that sucks."

"And you've got to stop him."

"Me? Why me? You're the one with X-ray vision and stuff."

"He's too strong. I get the feeling he's really old. He's clever. I think that the longer that you're a vampire, the more you can do. I'm starting to feel… well, sharper as time goes on."

"He's too strong for you, but you want me stop him? How?"

"You'll have to get to him while he's sleeping."

"Kill him? Just like that? Even if I could find him, how would I kill him? Nothing hurts you guys — unless you have some kryptonite."

"You could drag him into the sunlight. Or cut his head off — I'm sure that would do it. Or you could totally dismember him and scatter the pieces." Jody had to look away from him when she said this. It was as if someone else was talking.

"Right," Tommy said, "just shovel him into a garbage bag and get on the forty-two bus. Leave a piece at every stop. Are you nuts? I can't kill anyone, Jody. I'm not built that way."

"Well, I can't do it."

"Why don't we just go to Indiana? You'll like it there. I can get a union job and make my mom happy. You can learn to bowl. It'll be great — no dead guys in the freezer, no vampires…

"By the way, how'd you… I mean, where did you thaw out?"

"In the morgue. With a pervert all ready to live out his wet dreams on me."

"I'll kill him!"

"Not necessary."

"You killed him? Jody, you can't keep —"

"I didn't kill him. He just sort of died. But there's something else."

"I can't wait."

"The vampire killed Simon."

Tommy was shaken. "How? Where?"

"The same way as the others. That's why the cops let you go."

Tommy took a minute to digest this, sat for a moment looking at his hands. He looked up and said, "How did you know I was in jail?"

"You told me."

"I did?"

"Of course. You were so tired last night. I'm not surprised you don't remember." She buttoned up the flannel shirt. "Tommy, you've got to find the vampire and kill him. I think Simon was his last warning before he takes us."

Tommy shook his head. "I can't believe he got Simon. Why Simon?"

"Because he was close to you. Come on, I'll make you coffee." She started into the kitchen and tripped over the brass turtle. "What's this?"

"Long story," Tommy said.

Jody looked around, listened for the sound of turtle claws. "Where's Scott and Zelda?"

"I set them free. Go make coffee."

Rivera and Cavuto sat in an unmarked cruiser in the alley across the street from the loft, taking turns dozing and watching.

It was Rivera's turn to watch while Cavuto snored in the driver's seat. Rivera didn't like the way things were going. Weird shit just seemed to follow him. His job was to find evidence and catch bad guys, but too often, especially in this case, the evidence pointed to a bad guy who wasn't a guy at all: wasn't human. He didn't want to believe that there was a vampire loose in the City, but he did. And he knew he'd never convince Cavuto, or anybody, for that matter. Still, he'd dug out his mother's silver crucifix before he left the house. It was in his jacket pocket next to his badge wallet. He had been tempted to take it out and say a rosary, but Cavuto, despite his growling snore, was a light sleeper, and Rivera didn't want to endure the ridicule should the big cop wake up in the middle of a Hail Mary.

Rivera was getting ready to wake Cavuto and catch a nap when the lights went on in the loft.

"Nick," he said. "Lights are on."

Cavuto woke, instantly alert. "What?"

"Lights are on. The kid's up."

Cavuto lit his cigar. "And?"

"I just thought you'd want to know."

"Look, Rivera, the lights coming on is not something happening. I know that after ten or twelve hours it seems like something, but it's not. You're losing your edge. The kid leaving, the kid strangling someone, that's something happening."

Rivera was insulted by the admonition. He'd been a cop as long as Cavuto and he didn't have to take crap like that. "Eat shit, Nick. It's my turn to sleep anyway."

Cavuto checked his watch. "Right."

They watched the windows for a while, saying nothing. Shadows moved inside the loft. Too many shadows.

"There's someone else up there," Rivera said.

Cavuto squinted at the shadows and grabbed a pair of binoculars from the seat. "Looks like a girl." Someone passed by the window. "A redhead with a lot of hair."

Tommy took a sip of his coffee and sighed. "I don't even know where to start. This is a big city and I don't know my way around that well."

"Well, we could just wait here for him to come get us." Jody looked at his cup, watched the heat waves coming off the coffee. "God, I miss coffee."

"Can't you just wander around until you feel something? Lestat can…"

"Don't start with that!"

"Sorry." He took another sip. "The Animals might help. They'll want revenge for Simon. Can I tell them?"

"You might as well. Those guys do just enough drugs that they might believe you. Besides, I'm sure the story was in the paper this morning."

"Yeah, I'm sure it was." He put his cup down and looked at her. "How did you know about Simon?"

Jody looked away. "I was in the morgue when they brought him in."

"You saw him?"

"I heard the cops talking. I slipped out during the excitement when they found the dead pervert."

"Oh," Tommy said, not quite sure of himself.

She reached out and took his hand. "You'd better go. I'll call a cab."

"They took all the money," Tommy said.

"I have a little left." She handed him two hundred-dollar bills.

He raised his eyebrows. "A little?"

Jody grinned. "Be careful. Stay around people until it gets light. Don't get out of the cab unless there are a lot of people around. I'm sure he doesn't want any witnesses."

"Okay."

"And call me if anything happens. Try to be back here by sundown tomorrow, but if you can't, call and leave me a message where you are."

"So you can protect me?"

"So I can try to protect you."

"Why don't you come with me?"

"Because there's two cops in the alley across the street watching the loft. I saw them from the window. I don't think we want them to see me."

"But it's dark in the alley."

"Exactly."

Tommy took her in his arms. "That is so cool. When I get back, will you read to me naked, hanging from the ceiling beam in the dark?"

"Sure."

"Dirty limericks?"

"Anything."

"That's so cool."

Five minutes later Tommy stood at the bottom of the stairs with the fire door cracked just enough to see when his cab arrived. When the blue-and-white DeSoto cab pulled up, he opened the fire door and a furry black-and-white comet shot past him.

"Bummer! Stop!" the Emperor shouted.

The little dog skipped up the steps with a yap and a rattle every step of the way; his pie-pan helmet was hanging upside down by the chin strap, hitting the edge of each step. He stopped at the top of the stairs and commenced a leaping, barking, scratching attack on the door.

Tommy leaned against the wall holding his chest. He thought, Good, a heart attack will sure mess up the vampire's murder plans.

"Forgive him," the Emperor said. "He always seems to do this when we pass your domicile." Then, to Lazarus, "Would you be so kind as to retrieve our comrade-in-arms?"

The golden retriever bounded up the stairs and snatched Bummer out of the air in mid-leap, then carried him down by the scruff of the neck as the rat dog struggled and snarled.

The Emperor relieved Lazarus of his squirming charge and shoved the smaller soldier into the oversized pocket of his coat. He buttoned the flap and smiled at Tommy. "Dogged enthusiasm in a handy reclosable package."

Tommy laughed, more nervous than amused. "Your Highness, what are you doing here?"

"Why, I am looking for you, my son. The authorities have been asking after you in regard to the monster. The time to act is at hand." The Emperor waved his sword wildly as he spoke.

Tommy stepped back. "You're going to put someone's eye out with that thing."

The Emperor held his sword at port arms. "Oh, quite right. Safety first."

Tommy signaled to the cabdriver over the Emperor's shoulder. "Your Highness, I agree, it's time to do something. I'm on my way to get some help."

"Recruits!" the Emperor exclaimed. "Shall we join forces against evil? Call the City to arms? Drive evil back to the dark crevice from whence it came? Can the men and I share your cab?" He patted his still squirming pocket.

Tommy eyed the cabdriver. "Well, I don't know." He pulled open the rear door and leaned in. "Dogs and royalty okay?" he asked the cabbie.

The driver said something in Farsi that Tommy took for a yes.

"Let's go." Tommy stepped back and motioned for the Emperor to get in.

Lazarus jumped into the back seat with a rattle of armor, followed by the Emperor and Tommy. As soon as the cab had gone a block, Bummer settled down and the Emperor let him out of his pocket. "Something about your building vexes him. I don't understand it."

Tommy shrugged, thinking about how he was going to tell the Animals about Simon's death.

The Emperor rolled down the window and he and his men rode through the City with their heads out the window, squinting into the wind like mobile gargoyles.

Cavuto slapped Rivera on the shoulder, startling him out of sleep. "Wake up. Something's going down. A cab just pulled up and that old wacko just came around the corner with his dogs."

Rivera wiped his eyes and sat up. "What's the Emperor doing here?"

"There's the kid. How in the hell did he get hold of the old wacko?"

They watched as Tommy and the Emperor talked, Tommy glancing from time to time at the cabdriver. A few minutes passed and they loaded into the cab.

"Here we go," Cavuto said as he started the car.

"Wait, let me out."

"What?"

"I want to see where the girl goes. Who she is."

"Just go ask her."

"I'm out of here." Rivera picked up the portable radio from the seat. "Stay in touch. I'll send for another car."

Cavuto was rocking in the driver's seat, waiting to go. "Call me on the cell phone if you see the girl. Keep it off the radio."

Rivera stopped halfway out of the car. "You think it's the girl from the morgue, don't you?"

"Get out," Cavuto said. "He's leaving."

The cab pulled away. Cavuto let them get a block away, then pulled out after them, leaving Rivera standing in the dark alley fingering the crucifix in his pocket.

Four stories above him, on the roof of a light industrial building, Elijah Ben Sapir, the vampire, looked down on Rivera, noting how much heat the policeman was losing though the thinning spot in his hair. "Jump or dive?" he said to himself.

Chapter 32 All for One, and… Well, You Know

They might have been the Magnificent Seven or the Seven Samurai. If each of them had been a trained professional, a gunfighter with a character flaw, or a broken warrior with a past — or if each had a secret reason for joining a suicide mission, an antihero's sense of justice, and a burning desire to put things right — they might have become an elite fighting unit whose resourcefulness and courage would lead them to victory over those who would oppose or oppress. But the fact was, they were a disorganized bunch of perpetual adolescents, untrained and unprepared for anything but throwing stock and having fun: the Animals.

They sat on the registers as Tommy paced before them telling them about the vampire, about Simon's death, and giving them the call to action while the Emperor stood by quoting passages from Henry the Fifth's speech at the Battle of Agincourt.

"The cops aren't going to believe it, and I can't do it alone," Tommy said.

The Emperor said, "'We few, we lucky few… "

"So who's with me?"

The Animals didn't say a word.

"Barry," Tommy said, "you're a scuba diver. You've got some balls, right? Sure, you're balding and going to fat, but this is a chance to make a difference."

Barry looked at this shoes.

Tommy jumped to Drew, who hung his head so that his greasy blond hair covered his face. "Drew, you have the most complete knowledge of chemistry of anyone I've ever met. It's time to use it."

"We've got a truck to unload," Drew said.

Tommy moved to Clint; stared into his thick glasses, ruffled his curly black hair. "Clint, God wants you to do this. This vampire is evil incarnate. Sure, you're a little burned out, but you can still strike a blow for righteousness."

"Blessed are the meek," said Clint.

"Jeff!" Tommy said. The big jock looked up, as if the key to the universe lay in the fluorescent lights. "Jeff, you're big, you're dumb, your knee is blown out, but hey, man, you look good. We might be able to use that."

Jeff began whistling.

Tommy moved on. "Lash, your people have been oppressed for hundreds of years. It's time to strike back. Look, you don't have your MBA yet — they haven't completely juiced you of your usefulness yet. Would Martin Luther King back down from this challenge? Malcolm X? James Brown? Don't you have a dream? Don't you feel good, like you knew that you would, now?"

Lash shook his head. "I have to study in the morning, man."

"Troy Lee? Samurai tradition? You're the only trained fighter here."

"I'm Chinese, not Japanese."

"Whatever. You're a kung-fu guy. You can reach into a guy's pocket and take his wallet before he knows it's gone. No one has reflexes like you."

"Okay," Troy said.

Tommy stopped on his way to the next man. "Really?"

"Sure, I'll help you. Simon was a good friend."

"Wow," Tommy said. He looked to Gustavo. "Well?"

Gustavo shook his head.

"Viva Zapata!" Tommy said.

"Leave him alone," Troy Lee said. "He's got a family."

"You're right," Tommy said. "Sorry, Gustavo."

Troy Lee got up and stood in front of the other Animals. "But you fuckers. You worthless bags of dog meat. If Simon could see you he'd shoot every one of you. This could be the best party we ever had."

Drew looked up. "Party?"

"Yeah," Troy Lee said, "party. We drink some brews, kick some ass, dismember some monsters — maybe pick up some babes. Christ, Drew, who knows what kind of shit we could get into. And you're going to miss it."

"I'm in," said Drew.

"Me too," said Barry.

Troy looked at Jeff and Clint. "Well?" They nodded.

"Lash, you in?"

"Okay," Lash said without conviction.

"Okay," Tommy said. "Let's throw the truck. We can't start until morning anyway. We'll figure out a plan and get some weapons then."

Troy Lee held up a finger. "One thing. How do we find the vampire?"

Tommy said, "Okay, let's get to work."

Morning found the Animals in the Safeway parking lot, drinking beer and discussing the strategy for finding and disposing of a monster.

"So, as far as you know, drugs don't affect them?" Drew asked.

"I don't think so," Tommy said.

"Well, no wonder he's pissed off," Drew said.

"What about guns?" Jeff asked. "I've got Simon's shotgun at my house."

Tommy thought for a moment before answering. "They can be hurt; I mean, damaged. But Jody heals incredibly fast — this guy might even be faster. Still, I'd rather have a twelve-gauge against him than nothing."

Barry said, "A stake through the heart always works in the movies."

Tommy nodded. "It might work. We could try it. If we get that far, we can cut him up, too."

"Spearguns," Barry said. "I've got three of them. A CO2 model and two that use elastics. They won't shoot far, but they might pin him down while we cut him up."

"I've got a couple of short fighting swords," Troy Lee interjected. "Razor sharp."

"Good," Tommy said. "Bring 'em."

"I'll bring the Word," Glint said. He'd been shouting "Get thee behind me, Satan," all night, putting the Animals on edge.

"Why don't you just go home and pray," Lash said, giving Glint a push. "We need some action here." He turned from Glint and addressed the group. "Look, guys, spearguns and swords are great, but how do we find this guy? The cops have been looking for him for three months, and they obviously haven't had any luck. If he's really after Tommy, then the best thing we can do is ambush him at Tommy's apartment. And I'm not sure I want to face him when he's awake. Simon was my friend too, but he was also one of the quickest people I ever met and the vampire took him out like he was a baby. And the paper said that he was armed. I don't know…"

"He's right," Drew said. "We're fucked. Anyone want to catch the ferry to Sausalito and terrorize some yuppie artists? I've got mushrooms."

"Shrooms! Shrooms! Shrooms!" the Animals chanted.

Suddenly there was a staccato clanging, like someone banging on a garbage-can lid with a stick, which is pretty much what it was. The Emperor, who had been silent all night, stepped into the circle. "Before your spines go to jelly, men, take heart. I've been thinking."

"Oh, no!" someone shouted.

"I think I have a way to find the fiend and dispose of him before sundown."

"Right," Drew said sarcastically. "How?"

The Emperor picked up Bummer and held out the little dog as if he were displaying the Holy Grail. "Pound for pound, a better soldier never marched, and a better tracker never sniffed out a sewer rat. I've been so stupid."

"Beg your pardon, Your Majesty," Tommy said. "But what the fuck are you talking about?"

"Until last night I didn't know that the lovely young woman with whom you share your abode was a vampire. Yet every time we passed your building Bummer went into a frenzy. He's been the same each time we've encountered the fiend himself. I believe he has a special sensitivity for the smell of vampires."

They all stared at him, waiting.

"Gather your courage and your weapons, good fellows. We'll meet here in two hours and remove this evil from my city. And a little dog shall lead us."

The Animals looked at Tommy, who shrugged and nodded. They had a new leader now. "Two hours, guys," Tommy said. "The Emperor's in charge."

Cavuto watched the Animals disperse though his field glasses. He was sitting in the parking lot at Fort Mason, a hundred yards from the Safeway. He put down the binoculars and dialed Rivera's number on his cellular phone.

"Rivera."

"Anything happening there?" Cavuto asked.

"No, I don't think that anything will now that it's daylight. The lights stayed off after the kid left, but I could hear a vacuum cleaner running. The girl's up there but she didn't turn on the light."

"So she likes to clean in the dark."

"I think she can see in the dark."

"I don't want to talk about it," Cavuto said. "Anything else?"

"Not much. Some kids were dropping pebbles on me from the roof. The guys in the foundry below the kid's apartment are moving around now. A couple of bums are doing some close-order public urinating in the alley. What's happening there?"

"The kid worked all night, drank some beers with the crew; they just split up but the kid and the wacko are still here."

"Why don't you call in some relief?"

"I don't want this out of our hands until we know more. Stay by the phone."

"Anything from the coroner?"

"Yeah, just got off the phone with him. Massive blood loss from the guy in the truck. None from the guy in the morgue. Heart attack. They still haven't found the girl's body."

"That's because she was cleaning house all night."

"Gotta go," Cavuto said.

Tommy and the Emperor were waiting in the parking lot when the Animals returned in Troy Lee's Toyota and began unloading equipment.

"Stop, stop, stop," Tommy said. "We can't run all over the City with spearguns and swords."

"And shotguns," Jeff said proudly, jacking a shell into the chamber of Simon's shotgun.

"Put that back in the car."

"No problem," Drew said, holding up a roll of Christmas wrap. "Dallas, November 22, 1963."

"What?" Tommy said.

"Lee Harvey Oswald walks into the book depository with a Venetian blind. Minutes later Jackie's scooping brains off the trunk of a Lincoln. Anybody asks, we're all giving Venetian blinds to our moms for Christmas."

"Oh," Tommy said. "Okay."

Clint climbed out of the Toyota wearing a choir robe, a half dozen crosses hung around his neck. He held a Baggie full of crackers in one hand, a squirt gun in the other. "I'm ready," he said to Tommy and the Emperor.

"Snacks," Tommy said, nodding to the Baggie. "Good thinking."

"The Heavenly Host," Clint said. He brandished the squirt gun. "Loaded with holy water."

"That stuff doesn't work, Clint."

"O ye of little faith," Clint said.

Bummer and Lazarus had left the Emperor's side and were nosing up to Clint. "See, they know the power of the Spirit."

Just then Bummer jumped and snatched the Baggie, then took off around the corner of the store, followed closely by Lazarus, Clint, and the Emperor.

"Stop him," Clint shouted at an old man coming out of the store. "He's taken the body of Christ."

"Don't hurt him," the Emperor shouted. "He's the only hope for saving the City."

Tommy took off after them. As he passed the bewildered old man, Tommy said, "Last week they were playing cards with Elvis.What can I say?"

The old man seemed to accept this and hurried off.

Tommy caught up with them behind the store, where the Emperor was holding Bummer in one hand and fending off Clint with his wooden sword with the other, while Lazarus licked the last few crumbs out of the torn plastic bag.

"He ate the blessed Savior!" Clint wailed. "He ate the blessed Savior!"

Tommy caught Clint around the waist and pulled him away. "It's okay, Clint. Bummer's a Christian."

Jeff rounded the corner, his size-fourteen Reeboks clomping like a quarter horse. He looked at the empty Baggie. "Oh, I get it. They freeze-dried him, right?"

Drew came around the corner, followed by Lash and Troy Lee.

"Do we have a partying platoon, or what?" Drew said.

Jeff said, "I never knew that they freeze-dried Jesus, did you?"

Lash checked his watch. "We've got less than six hours before it gets dark. Maybe we should get started."

Tommy released Clint and the Emperor lowered his sword.

"We need something to give Bummer the scent," the Emperor said. "Something that the fiend has touched."

Tommy dug into his jeans pocket and pulled out one of the hundreds that Jody had given him. "I'm pretty sure that he touched this, but it's been a while."

The Emperor took the hundred and held it to Bummer's nose. "It shouldn't matter. His senses are keen and his heart is righteous." To Bummer he said, "This is the scent, little one. Find this scent."

He put Bummer down and the little dog was off with a yap and a snort. The vampire hunters followed, losing sight of Bummer as he rounded the store. When they came around to the front of the store, the manager was coming out, holding a snarling Bummer in his arms.

"Flood, is this your dog?"

"He's his own man," the Emperor said.

"Well, he just ran in and blew snot all over the cash in register eight. You train him to find money?"

The Emperor looked down to the hundred-dollar bill in his hand, then at Tommy. "Perhaps we should find something else to put him on the scent."

"Where was the last place you saw the vampire?" Tommy asked.

The gate guard at the Saint Francis Yacht Club wasn't buying a word of it.

"Really," Tommy said. "We're here to decorate for the Christmas party." The Animals waved their gaily wrapped weapons to illustrate the point. "And the Archbishop has come along to perform midnight mass." Tommy pointed to Clint, who grinned and winked through his thick glasses.

"Deus ex machina," Clint said, exhausting his Latin. "Shalom," he added for good measure.

The guard tapped his clipboard. "I'm sorry, gentlemen, I can't let you through without a membership or a guest pass."

The Emperor cleared his throat royally. "Good man, each moment you delay may be paid for with human suffering."

The guard thought that he might have just been threatened, hoped, in fact, that he had, so he could pull his gun, and was just letting his hand drop to his gun belt when the phone in the gate booth rang.

"Stay here," he instructed the vampire hunters. He answered the phone and nodded at it, then looked across Marina Boulevard to where a brown Dodge was parked. He hung up the phone and came out of the booth.

"Go on in," he said, obviously not happy about it. He pushed a button, the gate rose, and the Animals went in, headed for the East Harbor. Two minutes later the brown Dodge pulled up and stopped by the gate. Cavuto rolled down the window and flashed his badge.

"Thanks," he said to the guard. "I'll keep an eye on them for you."

"No problem," said the guard. "You ever get to shoot anyone?"

"Not today." Cavuto said. He drove though the gate, staying just out of sight of the Animals.

At the end of the dock the Animals and the Emperor stared forlornly at the big white motor yacht moored a hundred yards out into the harbor. Bummer was in the midst of a yapping fit.

"You see," said the Emperor, "he knows that the fiend is aboard."

"You're sure that's the boat that he came off of?"

"Most definitely. It chills my spine to think of it — the mist forming into a monster."

"That's great," Tommy said, "but how do we get aboard?" He turned to Barry, who was applying sunscreen to his bald spot. "Can you swim it?"

"We could all swim it," Barry said. "But how do we keep the gun dry? I could go get my Zodiac and take us all out there, but it'll take a while."

"How long?"

"Maybe an hour."

"We've got four, maybe five hours until sunset," Lash said.

"Go," Tommy said. "Get it."

"No, wait," said Drew, looking at the rows of yachts in the nearby slips. "Jeff, can you swim?"

The big power forward shook his head. "Nope."

"Good," Drew said. He took the Christmas-paper-wrapped shotgun from Jeff, then grabbed him by the arm and threw him into the water. "Man overboard! Man overboard! We need a boat."

The few owners and crew members who were performing maintenance on the nearby boats looked up. Drew spotted a good-sized life raft on the stern of a sixty-footer. "There, you guys, get that."

The Animals scrambled after the raft. The yacht's crew helped them get it over the side into the water.

Jeff, flailing in the water, had slapped his way back to the dock. Drew pushed him away with the shotgun. "Not yet, big guy." Over his shoulder he shouted, "Hurry, you guys! He's drowning!"

Tommy, Barry, and Lash were paddling the rubber raft for all they were worth. The yachtsmen and the Emperor shouted instructions, while Drew and Troy Lee watched their friend trying not to drown.

"He's doing really well for a non-swimmer," Drew said calmly.

"Doesn't want to get his hair wet," said Troy with Taoist simplicity.

"Yeah, can't waste that two hours of blow-drying."

Tommy moved to the front of the raft and held his paddle out to Jeff. "Grab it."

Jeff flailed and thrashed, but didn't grab the paddle.

"If he stops paddling his head will go under," Troy called. "You'll have to grab him."

Tommy whacked Jeff on the head with the plastic paddle. "Grab it!" The power forward slipped under for a second and bobbed to the surface again.

"That's one!" Drew called.

"Now grab it," Tommy yelled. He raised the paddle as if to strike again. Jeff shook his head violently and reached for the paddle as he went under again.

"That's two!"

Tommy pulled the paddle up with Jeff on the end while Barry and Lash wrestled the big man into the boat.

"Well done, men," the Emperor said.

The yachtsmen stood at the end of the dock, watching in amazement. Drew turned to them. "We're going to need that raft for a while, okay?"

One of the crewmen started to protest and Drew jacked a shell into the shotgun, ripping the wrapping paper. "Big shark hunt. We need the raft."

The crewman nodded and backed away. "Sure, as long as you need it."

"Okay," Tommy called. "Everybody in the raft."

Drew and Troy Lee helped the Emperor get into the raft, then handed over Bummer and Lazarus and climbed in themselves. The Emperor stood at the front of the raft as they made their way across the harbor to the Sanguine II.

Twenty yards from the yacht Bummer began barking and bouncing around the raft. "The fiend is definitely on board," the Emperor said. He picked up Bummer and shoved him into his pocket. "Well done, little one."

It took five minutes to get everyone on board and the life raft secured to the stern. "How we doing on time, Lash?" Tommy asked.

"We're looking at four, maybe four and a half hours of daylight. Will he wake up at sunset or dark?"

"Jody usually wakes up right at sunset. So let's say four."

"Okay, everybody," Tommy said, "let's spread out and find the vampire."

"I don't know if that's a good idea," said Jeff. He was dripping and his lips had gone blue with the cold. The Animals looked at him. He was embarrassed by the attention. "Well, in all of the horror movies, the people split up and the monster picks them off one by one."

"Good point," Tommy said. "Everybody stay together; find this fucker and get it over with." He raised a gift-wrapped spear-gun in salute. "For Simon!"

"For Simon!" the Animals shouted as they followed Tommy below.

Chapter 33 Ship of Fools

Tommy led them down a narrow hallway and into a large room paneled in dark walnut and furnished with heavy, dark wood furniture. Paintings and bookshelves filled with leather volumes lined the walls; strands of gold wire running across the front of the shelves to hold the books in place in rough seas were the only evidence that they were on a boat. There were no windows; the only light came from small spotlights recessed into the ceiling that shone on the paintings.

Tommy paused in the middle of the room, fighting the urge to stop and look at the books. Lash moved to his side.

"See that?" Lash asked. He nodded toward a large painting — bright colors and bold shapes, squiggles and lines — that hung between two doors at the far end of the room.

Tommy said, "Looks like it should be hung on a fridge with ladybug magnets."

"It's a Miro," Lash said. "It must be worth millions."

"How do you know it's an original?"

"Tommy, look at this yacht; if you can afford a boat like this, you don't hang fakes." Lash pointed to another, smaller painting of a woman reclining on a pile of satin cushions. "That's a Goya. Probably priceless."

"So what's your point?" Tommy asked.

"Would you leave something like that unguarded? And I don't think that you can run a boat this size without a crew."

"Swell," Tommy said. "Jeff, let me have that shotgun."

Jeff, still shivering from his dunk, handed over the gun.

"Shell in the chamber," Jeff said.

Tommy took the gun, checked the safety, and started forward. "Keep your eyes open, guys."

They went through the door to the right of the Miro into another hallway, this one paneled in teak. Paintings hung along the walls between louvered teak doors.

Tommy paused at the first door and signaled for Barry to back him up with a speargun as he opened it. Inside, row upon row of suits and jackets hung on motorized tracks. Above the tracks, shelves were filled with hats and expensive shoes.

Tommy pushed aside some of the suits and peered between them, looking for a set of legs and feet. "No one here," he said. "Did anyone bring a flashlight?"

"Didn't think about it," Barry said.

Tommy backed out of the closet and moved to the next door. "It's a bathroom."

"A head," Barry corrected, looking around Tommy's shoulder into the room. "There's no toilet."

"Vampires don't go," Tommy said. "I'd say this guy had this boat built for him."

They moved down the hall checking each room. There were rooms full of paintings and sculpture, crated, labeled, and stacked in rows; another with oriental carpets rolled and stacked; a room that looked like an office, with computers, a copy machine, fax machines, and filing cabinets; and another head.

They followed the hallway around a gentle curve to the left, where it traced the line of the bow of the boat. At the apex there was a teak spiral staircase that led to a deck above and one below. Light spilled down from above. The hallway curved around the bow and back to the stern.

"The hallway must go back to that other door in that big room." Tommy said. "Lash, you, Clint, Troy, and Jeff check the rooms on that side. Your Majesty, Barry, Drew, come with me. Meet us back here."

"I thought we were going to stay together," Jeff said.

"I don't think you're going to find anything down there. If you do, yell like hell."

The Emperor patted Lazarus's head. "Stay here, good fellow. We shan't be long."

Tommy pointed upward with the shotgun and mounted the stairs. He emerged onto the bridge and squinted against the light coming through the windows. He stepped aside and looked around the bridge while the others came up the stairs behind him.

"It looks more like the bridge of a starship," Tommy said to the Emperor as he came up.

Low consoles filled with switches and screens ran along the front of the bridge under wide, streamlined windows. There were five different radar screens blipping away. At least a dozen other screens were scrolling figures and text; red, green, and amber lights glowed along the rows of toggle switches over three computer keyboards. The only thing that looked remotely nautical to Tommy was the chrome wheel at the front of the bridge.

"Anybody know what any of this stuff is?" Tommy asked.

Barry said, "I'd say that this is the crew that we were wondering about. This whole thing is automated."

Barry stepped up to one of the consoles and all the screens and lights winked out.

"I didn't touch anything," Barry said.

The foghorn on Alcatraz sounded and they looked out the window toward the abandoned prison. The fog was making its way across the bay toward shore.

"How's our time?" Tommy asked.

Drew checked his watch. "About two hours."

"Okay, let's check that lower deck."

As they came down the steps, Lash said, "Nothing. More art, more electronics. There's no galley, and I can't figure out where the crew sleeps."

"There is no crew," Tommy said as he started down the steps to the lower deck. "It's all run by machines."

The floor of the lower deck was made of diamond-plate steel; there were no carpets and no wood: pipes and wires ran around the steel bulkheads. A steel pressure hatch opened into a narrow passageway. Light from the bridge two decks above spilled a few feet into the passageway, then it was dark.

"Drew," Tommy said, "you got a lighter?"

"Always," Drew said, handing him a disposable butane lighter.

Tommy crouched and went through the hatch, took a few steps, and clicked the lighter.

"This must lead to the engines," Lash said. "But it should be bigger." He knocked on the steel wall, making a dull thud. "I think this is all fuel around us. This thing must have an incredible range."

Tommy looked at the lighter, then back at Lash, whose black face was just highlights in the flame. "Fuel?"

"It's sealed."

"Oh," Tommy said. He moved a few more feet and barked his elbow on the metal ring of a pressure hatch. "Ouch!"

"Open it," Drew said.

Tommy handed him the shotgun and lighter and grabbed the heavy metal ring. He strained against it but it didn't budge. "Help."

Lash snaked past Drew and joined Tommy on the ring. They put their weight on it and pushed. The wheel screeched in protest, then broke loose. Tommy pulled the hatch open and was hit with the smell of urine and decay.

"Christ." He turned away coughing. "Lash, give me the lighter."

Lash handed him the lighter. Tommy reached through the hatch and lit it. There were bars just inside the hatch, beyond that a rotting mattress, some empty food cans, and a bucket. Red-brown splotches smeared the gray walls, one in the shape of a handprint.

"Is it the fiend?" the Emperor asked.

Tommy moved back from the hatch and handed back the lighter. "No, it's a cage."

Lash looked in. "A prison cell? I don't get it."

Tommy slid down the bulkhead and sat on the steel floor, trying to catch his breath. "You said this thing had an incredible range. Could stay out to sea for months, probably?"

"Yeah," Lash said.

"He has to store his food somewhere."

Inside the vampire's vault, just above his face, a computer screen was scrolling information. A schematic of the Sanguine II lit up one side of the screen with nine red dots representing the vampire hunters and Lazarus. Green dotted lines traced the patterns of their movements since they had boarded the ship. Another area of the screen recorded the time they had boarded and another showed exterior views of the yacht: the raft tied up at the rear, the dock, fog sweeping over the Saint Francis clubhouse. Radar readouts showed the surrounding watercraft, the shoreline, Alcatraz, and the Golden Gate in the distance. Optical disk drives recorded all the information so the vampire could replay it upon awakening.

Motion detectors had, upon sensing Barry's presence near the console on the bridge, activated switches that rerouted all of the ship's control to the vault. The Sanguine II was wide awake and awaiting its master.

"How's our time, Lash?" Tommy asked.

"About an hour."

They were gathered at the stern of the yacht, watching the fog roll into shore. They had searched the entire ship, then gone back through it again, opening every closet, cupboard, and access panel.

"He's got to be here."

"Perhaps," said the Emperor, "we should go ashore and set Bummer on another trail."

At the mention of his name Bummer yapped and worked his head out of the Emperor's pocket. Tommy scratched his ears.

"Let him out."

The Emperor unbuttoned his pocket and Bummer leaped out, bit Tommy on the ankle, and shot through the hatch.

"Ouch!"

"Follow him," the Emperor said. "He's on the trail." He ran through the hatch, followed by the Animals and Tommy, limping slightly.

Five minutes later they were standing on the diamond-plate floor of the engine room. Bummer was scratching at the floor and whining.

"This is stupid," Barry said. "We've been through this area three times."

Tommy looked at the section of floor where Bummer was scratching. There was a rectangular seam, ten feet long by three feet wide, sealed with a rubber gasket. "We didn't look under the floor."

"It's water under the floor, isn't it?" Jeff said.

Tommy got down on his knees and examined the seam. "Troy, give me one of those swords."

Troy Lee handed him a fighting sword. Tommy worked the tip under the rubber gasket and the blade sank into the seam. "Get that other sword into this crack and help me pry it up."

Troy worked his sword into the seam and they counted to three. The edge of the panel popped up. The other Animals caught the edge and lifted. The floor panel came up, revealing a coffin-length stainless-steel vault two feet below the floor. Bummer leaped into the opening in the floor and began running around the vault, leaping and barking.

"Well done, little one," the Emperor said.

Tommy looked at the Animals, who were holding the floor panel up on its edge. "Gentlemen, I'd like you to meet the owner of this vessel."

Drew let go of the floor panel and jumped into the opening with the vault. There was just enough room in the opening for him to move sideways around the vault. "It's on hydraulic lifts. And there's a shitload of cables running in and out of it."

"Open it," Troy Lee said, holding his sword at ready.

Drew pulled at the lid of the vault, then let go and knocked on the side. "This thing is thick. Really thick." He reached up and took Troy's sword, worked the blade under the lid, and pried. The sword snapped.

"Christ, Drew! That sword cost a week's pay."

"Sorry," Drew said. "We're not going to pry this baby open. Not even with a crowbar."

Tommy said, "Lash, how's our time?"

"Forty minutes, give or take five."

To Drew, Tommy said, "What do you think? How do we get it open? A torch?"

Drew shook his head. "Too thick. It'd take hours to get through this. I say we blow it."

"With what?"

Drew grinned. "Common items you can find in your own kitchen. Someone's going to need to go back to the store and get me some stuff."

Cavuto watched Troy Lee's Toyota turning around, put down his binoculars, and quickly backed the cruiser into a driveway behind the shower buildings. He hit the redial on his cell phone and the gate guard answered on the first ring.

"Saint Francis Yacht Club, gate."

"This is Inspector Cavuto again. I need to know the registered owner of the Sanguine Two."

"I'm not supposed to give out that information."

"Look, I'm going to shoot some guys in a minute. You want to help, or what?"

"It's registered to a Dutch shipping company. Ben Sapir Limited."

"Have you seen anyone coming to or from that boat? Crew? Visitors?"

There was a pause while the guard checked his records. "No, nothing since it came into harbor. Except that it fueled up last night. Paid cash. No signature. Man, that baby's got some fuel capacity."

"How long has it been here?"

Another pause. "A little over three months. Came in on September fifteenth."

Cavuto checked his notebook. The first body was found on the seventeenth of September. "Thanks," he said to the guard.

"Those guys you had me let in are causing trouble. They took a boat."

"They're coming back through the gate. Let them do what they want. I'll take responsibility."

Cavuto disconnected and dialed the number of Rivera's cell phone.

Rivera answered on the first ring. "Yeah."

"Where are you?" Cavuto could hear Rivera lighting a cigarette.

"Watching the kid's apartment. I got a car. You?"

"The kid and the night crew are on a big motor yacht at the Saint Francis yacht club-hundred-footer. Boat's called the Sanguine Two; registered to a Dutch shipping company. They've been out there a couple of hours. Two of them just left."

"He didn't seem like the yachting type."

"No shit. But I'm staying with the kid. The Sanguine Two pulled into port two days before the first murder. Maybe we should get a warrant."

"Probable cause?"

"I don't know — suspicion of piracy."

"You want to call in some other units?"

"Not unless something happens. I don't want the attention. Any movement from your girl?"

"No. But it's getting dark. I'll let you know."

"Just go knock on the damn door and find out what's going on."

"Can't. I'm not ready to interview a murder victim. I haven't had any experience in it."

"I hate it when you talk like that. Call me." Cavuto rung off and began rubbing a headache out of his temples.

Jeff and Troy Lee were running through the Safeway aisles, Troy shouting out items off Drew's list while Jeff pushed the cart.

"A case of Vaseline," Troy said. "I'll get it out of the stockroom. You grab the sugar, and the Wonder Grow."

"Got it," Jeff said.

They rendezvoused at the express lane. The cashier, a middle-aged woman with bottle-blond hair, glared at them over her rose-tinted glasses.

"C'mon, Kathleen," Troy said. "That eight-items-or-less bullshit doesn't apply to employees."

Like everyone who worked days at the Safeway, Kathleen was a little afraid of the Animals. She sighed and began running the items over the scanner while Troy Lee shoved them into bags: ten five-pound bags of sugar, ten boxes of Wonder Grow fertilizer, five quarts of Wild Turkey bourbon, a case of charcoal lighter, a giant box of laundry detergent, a box of utility candles, a bag of charcoal, ten boxes of mothballs…

When she got to the case of Vaseline, Kathleen paused and looked up at Jeff. He gave her his best all-American-boy smile. "We're having a little party," he said.

She huffed and totaled the order. Jeff threw a handful of bills on the counter and followed Troy out of the store, pushing the cart at a dead run.

Twenty minutes later the Animals were scrambling through the Sanguine II with the bags of supplies for Drew, who was crouched in the opening with the stainless-steel vault. Tommy handed down the boxes of fertilizer.

"Potassium nitrate," Drew said. "No recreational value, but the nitrates make a nice bang." He tore the lid off a box and dumped the powder into a growing pile. "Give me some of that Wild Turkey."

Tommy handed down some bottles. Drew twisted the cap off one and took a drink. He shivered, blinked back a tear, and emptied the rest of the bottle into the dry ingredients. "Hand me that broken sword. I need something to stir with."

Tommy reached for the sword and looked up at Lash. "How we doing?"

Lash didn't even look at his watch. "It's officially dark," he said.

Chapter 34 Hell Breaks Loose

A wave of anxiety washed over Jody as she woke up. "Tommy," she called. She leaped out of bed and went into the living area, not stopping to turn on the light.

"Tommy?"

The loft was quiet. She checked the answering machine: no messages.

I'm not going to do this again, she thought. I can't handle another night of worrying.

She'd cleaned up the mess from the police search the night before, put lemon oil on the wood, scrubbed out the sinks and the tubs, and watched cable TV until dawn. All the time she thought about what Tommy had said about sharing, about being with someone who could understand what you saw and how you felt. She wanted that.

She wanted someone who could run the night with her, someone who could hear the buildings breathe and watch the sidewalks glow with heat just after sundown. But she wanted Tommy. She wanted love. She wanted the blood-high and she wanted sex that touched her heart. She wanted excitement and she wanted security.

She wanted to be part of the crowd, but she wanted to be an individual. She wanted to be human, but she wanted the strength, the senses, and the mental acuity of the vampire. She wanted it all.

What if I had a choice, she thought, if that medical student could cure me, would I go back to being human? It would mean that Tommy and I could stay together, but he would never know the feeling of being a god, and neither would I. Never again.

So I leave; what then? I'm alone. More alone than I've ever been. I hate being alone.

She stopped pacing and went to the window. The cop from the night before was out there, sitting in a brown Dodge, watching. The other cop had followed Tommy.

"Tommy, you jerk. Call me."

The cop would know where Tommy was. But how to get him to tell? Seduce him? Use the Vulcan nerve pinch? Sleeper hold?

Maybe I should just go up there and knock on the door, Rivera thought. "Inspector Alphonse Rivera, San Francisco PD. If you have a few minutes, I'd like to talk to you about being dead. How was it? Who did it? Did it piss you off?"

He adjusted himself in the car seat and took a sip from his coffee. He was trying to pace his smoking. No more than four cigarettes an hour. He was in his forties now and he couldn't handle the four-pack-a-night stakeouts — going home with his throat raw, his lungs seared, and a vicious ache in his sinuses. He checked his watch to see if enough time had passed since he'd last lit up. Almost. He rolled down the car window and something caught him by the throat, cutting off his breath. He dropped his coffee, feeling the scald in his lap as he reached in his jacket for his gun. Something caught his hand and held it like a bear trap.

The hand on his throat relaxed a bit and he sucked in a short breath. He tried to turn his head and the clamp on his throat cut off his breath again. A pretty face came through the window.

"Hi," Jody said. She loosened her grip on his throat a degree.

"Hi," Rivera croaked.

"Feel the grip on your wrist?"

Rivera felt the bear trap on his wrist tighten, his hand went numb, and his whole arm lit up with pain.

"Yes!"

"Okay," Jody said. "I'm pretty sure I can crush your windpipe before you could move, but I wanted you to be sure too. You sure?"

Rivera tried to nod.

"Good. Your partner followed Tommy last night. Do you know where they are now?"

Again Rivera attempted to nod. On the seat next to him, the cell phone chirped.

She released his arm, snatched the gun out of his shoulder holster, flipped off the safety, and pointed it at his head, all before he could draw a single breath. "Take me there," she said.

Elijah Ben Sapir watched the red dots moving around on the video screen above his face. He had awakened feeling gleeful about killing the fledgling's toy boy, then he saw that his home had been invaded. He was hit with an emotion so rare it took him a while to recognize it. Fear. It had been a long time since he'd been afraid. It felt good.

The dots on the screen were moving around on the stern of the boat, scrambling in and out of the main cabin above. Every few seconds a dot would disappear off the screen, then reappear. They were getting in and out of a raft at the stern.

The vampire reached up and flipped a series of toggle switches. The big diesels on either side of his vault roared to life. Another toggle and an electric winch began grinding in the anchor.

"Move, move, move!" Tommy shouted into the cabin. "The engines started."

Barry came through the hatch carrying a bronze statue of a ballerina. Tommy waited at the stern of the yacht with Drew. Troy Lee, Lash, Jeff, Glint, and the Emperor and his troops were already in the raft, trying to find room to move around the paintings and statues.

"Over," Tommy said, taking the statue from Barry as the squat diver went over the side into the arms of the waiting Animals, almost capsizing the raft. Tommy threw the statue down to the Emperor, who caught it and went to the floor of the raft with its weight.

Tommy threw a leg over the railing, and looked back. "Light it, Drew. Now!"

Drew bent and held his lighter to the end of a wax-coated strip of cloth that ran across the stern deck and through the hatch to the main cabin. He watched the flame follow the trail for a few feet, then stood and joined Tommy at the rail. "It's going."

They went over the rail backward and the Animals obliged them by stepping aside and letting them both hit the floor of the raft unimpeded. The raft lurched and righted itself. Tommy fought for breath to give a command.

"Paddle, men!" the Emperor shouted.

The Animals began to beat the water with their paddles. There was a loud clunking noise from the yacht as the transmission engaged and the raft was rocked as the twin screws engaged and began pushing the yacht away from them.

"Rivera," Rivera said into the cell phone.

"The yacht is moving," Cavuto said. "I think I just aided these guys in looting it." He unzipped a leather case on the car seat, revealing a huge chrome-plated automatic pistol, a Desert Eagle.50-caliber. It fired bullets roughly the weight of a small dog and kicked like a jackhammer. One shot could reduce a cinder block to gravel.

"I'm on my way," Rivera said.

"What about the girl?" Cavuto slammed a clip into the Desert Eagle, dropped another one into his jacket pocket.

"She's — she'll be fine. I'm at Van Ness and Lombard. I'll be there in about three minutes. Don't call in backup."

"I'm not — oh Jesus Christ!"

"What?"

"The fucking thing just blew up."

A fountain of flame shot from the stern of the Sanguine II, a second passed, and the rest of the yacht disappeared in a cloud of flame that rose into the sky above her. She had cleared the breakwater and was perhaps three hundred yards out into the bay when the fuse reached Drew's incendiary cocktail.

The raft had just made the dock when the explosion went off. Tommy leaped onto the dock and watched the mushroom cloud dissipate. The shock wave rolled in and Tommy reached back to the raft and caught the Emperor before he went into the water.

Debris rained down around them. A pool of fire and unexploded diesel fuel spread out across the water, illuminating the whole area with a dancing bright orange.

"Is this a party boat, or what?" Drew shouted.

The Animals scrambled out of the raft onto the dock and began handing up the objets d'art. Tommy stood aside and watched the burn. Bummer cowered in the Emperor's arms.

"Do you think we got him?"

Jeff handed the Degas ballerina to Troy and looked over his shoulder. "Fucking A, we got him. Nice mix, Drew."

Drew took a bow and almost went over the edge of the dock.

The Emperor said. "I can't help but think that the explosion may have attracted the attention of the authorities, gentlemen. I would recommend a speedy retreat."

Drew looked at the burning slick. "I wish I had some acid. This would be great on acid."

Jeff jumped down into the raft and handed up the last painting, the Miro. He looked past Troy Lee, who was wrestling up the heavy frame, and said, "Whoops."

"What?" Troy said.

Jeff nodded past him and the Animals turned around. Cavuto had a very large, very shiny pistol pointed at them.

"No one move!"

They didn't. The spearguns were stacked on the dock. Glint held the shotgun loosely at his side as he prayed. He dropped it.

"Drop it," Cavuto said.

"I did," said Clint.

"That's true, he did," Tommy said. "And before you asked. He should get extra credit for that."

Cavuto motioned with the pistol. "Everybody down. On your faces. Now!" The Animals dropped. Lazarus barked.

The Emperor stepped forward. "Officer, these young men have —"

"Now!" Cavuto screamed. The Emperor dropped to the dock with the Animals.

The screens went dark an instant before he was slammed against the side of the vault. He tumbled inside, feeling his flesh burn on the steel with every turn. The vault glowed red with the heat and had filled with smoke from the seared wires and the vampire's clothing.

After a few seconds the tumbling stopped. The vampire was jammed into one end of the vault, his face against his knees. His skin was stinging and he tried to will it to heal, but it had been days since he had fed, so the healing came slowly.

He located the lid by finding the smashed CRT and radar screens. Salt water sprayed in a fine mist from behind the screens. He pushed on the lid but it didn't move. He felt for the latches and released them, then heaved against the lid with force that would have crumpled a car fender, yet the lid stayed fast. The heat of the explosion had welded it shut.

I should have killed him last week, the vampire thought. This is what I get for indulging my pleasures.

He reached into the broken CRT, looking for the source of the spraying water, then concentrated his will and went to mist. The transition was slow, weak as he was, but when he had finally lost his solid form he followed the path of the water and wormed his way through the pinhole to the open ocean.

The vault lay on the bottom in a hundred and twenty feet of water and as soon as the vampire escaped, the pressure of four atmospheres condensed him to his solid shape. He tried to force himself to mist, failed, then swam toward the orange glow at the surface, thinking, The boy dies first, then a new suit.

He broke the surface in the midst of the flame slick, then scissor-kicked hard enough to bring himself completely out of the water and tried to go to mist. His limbs dissolved in the air, their vapor whipped by the flame and standing out white in the rolling black diesel smoke, but he could not hold. He fell back into the water, followed by a vortex of vapor that condensed back to solid form under water. Frustrated and angry, he began the swim around the breakwater toward the yacht club.

Cavuto panned the Desert Eagle back and forth across the heads of the prostrated Animals as he moved forward to get their weapons. Lazarus growled and backed away as the big cop approached. Sirens sounded in the distance. Crew members and yacht owners were popping out of the hatches of nearby yachts like curious prairie dogs.

"Inside!" Cavuto shouted, and the yachters ducked for cover.

Cavuto heard footsteps on the dock behind him and swung quickly around. The gate guard, looking down the cavelike barrel of the Eagle, stopped as if he'd hit a force field. Cavuto swung back to cover the Animals.

Over his shoulder Cavuto said, "Go back to the gate and call nine-one-one. Tell them to send me some backup."

"Right," the guard said.

"All right, scumbags, you're under arrest. And if any of you even twitches, I'll turn you into a red stain. You have the right…"

The vampire came out of the water like a wet comet and landed on the dock behind the Animals. He was burned black and his clothes hung in sooty shreds. Cavuto fired without thinking and missed. The vampire looked up long enough to grin at him, then reached down and snatched Tommy by the back of his shirt and yanked him up like a rag doll.

Cavuto aimed and fired again. The second shot hit the vampire in the thigh, taking out a three-inch chuck of flesh. The vampire dropped Tommy, turned on Cavuto, and leaped. The third bullet caught the vampire in the abdomen, the impact spraying flesh and spinning him in the air like a football. He landed in a heap at Cavuto's feet. The big cop tried to back away to get another shot off, but before he could aim, the vampire snatched the gun out of his hand, taking most of the skin off his trigger finger. He leaped backward, clawing inside his jacket for his detective special as the vampire tossed the Desert Eagle over his shoulder and climbed to his feet. "You are a dead man," he growled.

Cavuto watched the gaping wounds in the vampire's leg and stomach pulsing, bubbling, and filling with smoke. He caught the butt of his revolver just as the vampire leaped, his fingers outstretched to drive into Cavuto's chest.

Cavuto ducked, heard a hiss and a loud thunk, and looked up, amazed that he was still alive. The vampire had stopped an inch from him. A gleaming spear through his leg had pinned him to the dock. The black kid stood a few yards away, a gas-powered speargun in hand.

The vampire wrenched himself around and clawed at the spear. Cavuto yanked out his gun, but with his damaged finger he ended up flinging it off the dock. He heard the sound of tires behind him, then a car coming down the dock. A second spear thunked through the vampire's shoulder.

Tommy threw the speargun aside. The Animals were all on their feet. "Troy, throw me the sword!"

Troy Lee picked up the fighting sword from the deck and threw it at Tommy. Tommy sidestepped; the sword whizzed by him and clattered on the dock near Cavuto, who was standing motionless, stunned at almost seeing his own death.

"Handle first, you doofus," Tommy said as he ran after the sword.

The vampire yanked the spear out of his shoulder and reached for the one in his leg.

The Emperor picked up his wooden sword from the deck and charged the vampire. Lash caught him by the collar, yanking him aside as Barry fired a third spear, hitting the vampire in the hip. Jeff let go with a blast from the shotgun.

The vampire jerked with the impact of the shot and screamed.

Tommy dived for the fighting sword at Cavuto's feet. The big cop lifted him to his feet.

"Thanks," Tommy said.

"You're welcome," Cavuto said.

"I didn't kill those people."

"I'm figuring that out," Cavuto said.

A brown car skidded to a stop on the dock. Tommy looked up for an instant, then turned and headed toward the vampire, who was clawing at the spear in his leg. His wounds bubbled and seethed with vapor; his body was trying to heal even as new damage was inflicted on it.

Tommy raised the sword over the vampire's head and closed his eyes.

"No!" It was Jody's voice.

Tommy opened his eyes. Jody was on her knees, shielding the vampire, who had given up the struggle and was waiting for the final blow. "No," Jody said. "Don't kill him."

Tommy lowered the sword. Jody looked at Jeff, who still held the shotgun. "No," she said. Jeff looked at Tommy, who nodded. Jeff lowered the shotgun.

"Kill the fiend, now!" cried the Emperor, still struggling against Lash's hold on his coat.

"No," Jody said. She pulled the spear out of the vampire's leg and he screamed. She patted his head. "One more," she said quietly. She yanked the spear out of his hip and he gasped.

Jody propped the vampire up on her lap. The Animals and Cavuto stood watching, not sure what to do. Clint prayed quietly, barely audible over the approaching siren.

"Blood," the vampire said. He looked into Jody's eyes. "Yours."

"Give me that sword, Tommy." Jody said.

He hesitated and raised the sword to strike.

"No!" She covered the vampire with her body.

"But Jody, he's killed people."

"You don't know anything, Tommy. They were all going to die anyway."

"Get out of the way."

Jody turned to Cavuto. "Tell him. All the victims were terminally ill, weren't they?"

Cavuto nodded. "The coroner said that none of them had more than a few months."

Tommy was almost in tears. "He killed Simon."

"Simon had AIDS, Tommy."

"No way. Not Simon. Simon was the animal of the Animals."

"He was hiding it from you guys. He was scared to death. Now, please, give me the sword."

"No, get out of the way."

Tommy reared back for the killing blow. He felt a hand on his shoulder, then another one catch his sword arm and pull it down. He looked around to see the Emperor.

"Let him go, son. The measure of a man's power is the depth of his mercy. Give me the sword. The killing is over."

The Emperor worked the sword out of Tommy's grip and handed it to Jody. She took it, ran the blade across her wrist, then held the wound to the vampire's mouth. He took her arm in his hands and drank.

Jody looked at Cavuto. "Your partner is handcuffed to the wheel of the car. Get him and walk away before anyone else gets here. I need the car. I don't want to be followed either."

Cavuto dropped back into cop mode. "Bullshit."

"Go get your partner and go. Do you want to explain this?"

"What?"

"All this." Jody pulled her arm out of the vampire's mouth and gestured around the dock. "Look, the murders will stop. I promise. We're leaving and we're never coming back. So let it drop. And leave Tommy and these guys alone."

"Or what?" Cavuto said.

Jody cradled the old vampire and lifted him as she stood up. "Or we'll come back." She carried the vampire to the cruiser and put him in the back seat and crawled in with him. Rivera was sitting in the front seat. Cavuto came to the side of the car and handed his handcuff key through the window to Rivera.

"I told you," Rivera said.

Cavuto nodded. "We're fucked, you know? We have to let them go."

Rivera unlocked the handcuffs and got out of the car. He stood next to Cavuto, not sure what to do next.

Jody stuck her head out the back window of the cruiser. "Come on, Tommy, you drive."

Tommy turned to the Emperor, who nodded for him to go, then to the Animals. "You guys, get that stuff off the dock. In Troy's car. Get out of here. I'll call you at the store tomorrow."

Tommy shrugged, got in the car, and started it. "What now?"

"To the loft, Tommy. He needs a dark place to heal."

"I'm not comfortable with this, Jody. I want you to know that. I'd like to know what your relationship is to this guy."

The vampire moaned.

"Drive," she said.

They pulled off the dock, leaving the Animals scrambling around collecting the art and the two policemen staring at them in amazement.

She said, "I love you, Tommy, but I need someone who's like me. Someone who understands. You know how that is, right?"

"So you run off with the first rich older guy that comes along?"

"He's the only one, Tommy." She stroked the vampire's burned hair. "I don't have any choice. I hate being alone. And if he died, then I'd never know about what I am."

"So you two are going away? You're leaving me?"

"I wish I could think of some other way. I'm sorry."

"I knew you'd break my heart."

Chapter 35 Sculptures

Sunset cast a warm orange across the great Pyramid, while below, the Emperor enjoyed a cappuccino on a concrete bench and Bummer and Lazarus battled for the remains of a three-pound porterhouse.

"Men, would that I could let you, like Cincinnatus, retire like gentlemen soldiers to the country, but the City is still in need. The fiend is vanquished, but not the despair of my people. Our responsibility is legion."

A family of tourists passed the Emperor, hurrying to get to the cable-car stop at California Street before dark, and the Emperor tipped his cup in salute. The father, a balding fat man in an Alcatraz sweatshirt, took the Emperor's gesture as a request for spare change and said, "Why don't you get a job?"

The Emperor smiled. "Good sir, I have a job. I am Emperor of San Francisco and Protector of Mexico."

The tourist scrunched his face in disgust. "Look at you. Look at your clothes. You stink. You need a bath. You're nothing but a bum."

The Emperor looked down at the fraying cuffs of his dirty wool overcoat, his rib-worn gray corduroys, stained with splatters of vampire blood, the holes in his filthy sneakers. He raised an arm and took a sniff, then hung his head.

The tourists walked away.

Cavuto and Rivera sat in leather wingback chairs in front of the fireplace in Cavuto's Cow Hollow apartment. The fireplace was burning, the fire crackling and dancing as it fought off the damp chill of the bay. The room was furnished with rugged oak antiques, the bookshelves filled with detective novels, the walls hung with guns and posters from Bogart movies. Rivera drank cognac; Cavuto, Scotch. On the coffee table between them stood a three-foot-high bronze statue of a ballerina.

"So what do we do with it?" Cavuto asked. "It's probably stolen."

"Maybe not," Rivera said. "He might have bought it from Degas himself."

"The black kid says it's worth millions. You think he's right?"

Rivera lit a cigarette. "If it's authentic, yeah. So what do we do with it?"

"I've only got a couple of years before I retire. I've always wanted to own a rare-book shop."

Rivera smiled at the thought. "The wife wants to see Europe. I wouldn't mind having a little business of my own. Maybe learn to play golf."

"We could turn it in and just finish our time. They're going to move us out of homicide after this, you know that? We're too old for narcotics. Probably vice — night after night of screaming hookers."

Rivera sighed. "I'll miss homicide."

"Yeah, it was quiet."

"I've always wanted to learn about rare books," Rivera said.

"No golf," Cavuto said. "Golf is for pussies."

Tommy moved the futon so he could sit facing the two statues, then sat down to admire his handiwork. He'd worked all day in the foundry below, covering Jody and the vampire with the thin coat of conductive paint and putting them into the bronzing vats. The two biker sculptors had been more than happy to help, especialy when Tommy pulled a handful of cash out of the grocery bag that the Emperor had delivered.

The statues looked very lifelike. They should, they were still alive under the bronze coating, except for Zelda, who stood next to the two vampires. Tommy had put Jody in a leotard before he applied the paint. He'd dressed the vampire in a pair of his own jockey shorts. It was amazing how fast the vampire had healed after drinking Jody's blood. The worst part had been waiting — waiting outside the bedroom where Jody had carried the vampire, waiting for them to go out at sunrise, listening to the soft murmur of their voices. What had they been talking about?

Overall, the vampire looked pretty good. Almost all the damage to his body had healed by morning. Jody, even bronzed, looked beautiful. The finishing touch had been to drill ear holes through the thick bronze coating so he could talk to her.

"Jody, I know that you're probably really, really mad. I don't blame you. But I didn't have a choice. It's not forever, it's just until I can figure out what to do. I didn't want to lose you. I know you wanted to just go away and I think you would have, but he wouldn't have. He would never have let me live."

Tommy waited, as if he would get some response from the statue. He picked up the grocery bag of money from the floor and held it up.

"By the way, we're rich! Cool, huh? I'll never make fun of Lash for studying business again. In less than a day he fenced the art from the yacht and got us ten cents on the dollar. Our cut's over a hundred thousand. The guys flew to Vegas. We tried to give a share to the Emperor, but he would only take enough to buy a meal for Bummer and Lazarus. He said that money would distract him from his responsibilities. Great, huh?"

He dropped the money and sighed.

"Those two cops believed you. They're going to leave us alone. They reported that the killer was on board the yacht when it went up. Lash gave the gate guard some money to back up their story. I couldn't believe they were going along with it. I think the big cop kind of likes me.

"I'm going to write a book about this. I came here to find adventure and being with you sure has been that. And I don't want to give it up. I know we're not the same. And we shouldn't feel lonely when we have each other. I love you. I'm going to figure I something out. I've got to sleep now. It's been days."

He got up and went to Jody. "I'm sorry," he said. He kissed the cold bronze lips and was turning to go into the bedroom when the phone rang.

"It's probably the Animals calling from some casino," he said as he picked up the phone.

"Hello."

"Uh, hi," a man's voice said. "Could I speak to Jody, please?"

Tommy pulled the phone away and looked at it, then put it to his ear and said, "Jody's… well… she's deceased."

"I know. Can I speak to her?"

"You sick fuck."

"Is this C. Thomas Flood? The guy from the paper?"

Who was this guy? "Look, buddy, that was a mistake. They got the guy who did those murders."

"Look, my name is Steve. I can't tell you my last name. Not until I'm sure it's safe. I'm a med student at Berkeley. I spoke to Jody the other night. We were supposed to meet the other night at Enrico's, but she never showed up. I'm kind of glad, I met a nice girl who works at the Safeway with you. Anyway, when I saw Jody's name in the paper I took a chance and looked up the number."

"If you saw the paper, you know what happened to Jody," Tommy said. "This isn't very funny."

The line was silent for a moment, then Steve said, "Do you know what she is?"

Tommy was shocked. "Do you?"

"So you do know?"

"She is, I mean was, my girlfriend."

"Look, I'm not trying to blackmail you or anything. I don't want to turn you in. I talked to Jody about reversing her condition. Well, I think I've found a way to do it."

"You're kidding."

"No. Tell her. I'll call you back tomorrow night. I know she's not up during the day."

"Wait," Tommy said. "Are you serious about this? I mean, you can make her human again?"

"I think so. It will probably take a few months. But I've been able to do it with cloned cells in the lab."

Tommy covered the mouthpiece and turned to the statue of Jody. "There's a guy here that says he can help you. We can be…"

Vapor was streaming out of the ear holes in the brass and swirling into a cloud in the middle of the room. Tommy dropped the phone and backed away from the cloud. He could hear Steve's voice calling for him on the phone.

Tommy backed against the counter in the kitchen. "Jody, is that you?"

The cloud was pulsating, sending out tendrils, or were they limbs? It was as if it was condensing into a solid shape.

Jody thought, Oh Tommy, you can't believe what I learned last night. You're going to have the adventure of your life, lover. And it's going to be such a long life. The things you'll see — I can't wait to show them to you.

She became solid, stood before him, naked, smiling.

Tommy held the phone to his chest. "You're pissed, aren't you?"

"I was never going to leave you, Tommy. I love you."

"But what about him?" Tommy pointed to the bronzed vampire.

"I had to make him think that I was going to go with him so I could find out what I needed to know. I've learned a lot, Tommy. I'm going to teach you." She started moving toward him.

"He taught you the mist thing, huh?"

"That, and how a vampire is made."

"No kidding. That could come in handy."

"And soon," she said. She looked back at the old vampire. "The bronzing was a pretty good trick. I didn't exactly know what I was going to do with him after I found out what I needed to know. Maybe later we can figure out a way to let him out and still be safe."

"So, you're not mad? You're really not leaving?"

"No. I thought I would have to leave, but I never wanted to. You and I are going to be together for a very long time."

Tommy smiled. "Great, this guy on the phone says…"

"Hang up, Tommy. And come here."

"But he says… he can change you back."

"Hang up." She took the phone from him and set it down on the counter, then moved into his arms and kissed him.