Bite Me Read online

  “She didn’t bite him back.”

  And I’m all, “I knew that.”

  And Foo’s like, “There could be hundreds of them.”

  And I’m all, “And Chet led them here. To us.”

  And Foo’s all, “He marked this as his territory before the old vampyre turned him. He sees this as his place. The stairway still smells like cat pee.”

  And I’m like, “That’s not all.”

  And Foo’s all, “What? What?”

  And I totally slip into my dark mistress voice and I’m all, “Chet has changed. He’s bigger.”

  And Foo’s all, “Maybe his coat has just grown back.”

  And I’m all ominous like, “No, Foo, he’s still shaved, but he’s a lot bigger, and I think—” I paused. It was very dramatic.

  And Foo’s like, “Tell me!”

  I sort of fainted all emo into his arms. And he totally caught me like the dark hero of the moors that he is, but then he harshed the romantic drama of it all by tickling me and going, “Tell me, tell me, tell me.”

  So I did, because I was close to peeing myself, and I’m totally not into that kind of thing. “I think we have to worry about the little samurai guy turning, which would not be good, as he is full badass, despite his deeply stupid hat and socks.”

  And Foo was all, “Did he bite them?”

  And I was all, “He was full-on covered in vampyre kitty blood. Maybe some drops got in his mouth. Lord Flood said he accidentally turned that blue ho from one kiss on the bloody lips.”

  And Foo’s like, “Well we need to find him, then. Abby, we may not be able to handle this. We need help.” And he’s all nodding to the statue of the Countess and Lord Flood.

  And I’m all, “Do you know the first thing that will happen if we let them out?”

  And Foo’s all, “Jody will totally kick our asses.”

  And I’m like, “Oui, mon amour, epic ass-kickings pour toi and moi. But you know what’s even scarier?”

  And Foo’s all, “What? What? What?” Because French drives him mad.

  So I’m like, “You still have wood!” And I squeezed his unit and ran into the bedroom.

  ’Kayso, Foo chased me around the loft a couple of times, and I let him catch me twice, just long enough to kiss me before I was forced to slap him—well, you know why—and run away. But as I was prepared to let him think I would surrender to his manly deliciousness, I’m all, “You could turn me to a vamp and I could use my dark powers to scoop Chet’s litter box of destruction.”

  And Foo was all, “No fucking way. I don’t know enough.”

  Then someone started pounding on the door. And not a little “Hey, what’s up?” pound. Like there was a big sale on door pounds down at the Pound Outlet. Buy one, get one free at Pounds-n-Stuff.

  I know. WTF? Privacy much? Pounding on the love lair.

  JODY

  It was like perpetual “not quite lunchtime” in her cubicle at the insurance company, back in ancient history, three months ago, before she was a vampire. Every sundown, for about fifteen seconds, Jody awoke and panicked over the hunger and constraint until she was able to will herself into mist and float in what she thought of as the blood dream, a pleasant, ethereal haze that lasted until sunup, when her body went solid inside the brass shell and for all practical purposes, she became dead meat until sundown came round again. But sometime around the end of the first week of freakouts, she realized that she was touching Tommy. That he was in the bronze shell with her, and unlike her, he couldn’t go to mist. She should have taught him, she knew, just as the old vampyre had taught her, but now it was too late. Maybe, since she couldn’t move enough to tap a message with her finger in Morse code, let alone talk, she could reach out to him, somehow connect with him telepathically. Who knew what kind of powers she might have that the old vampyre had forgotten to tell her about. She concentrated, pushed, even tried to send some sort of pulse to the places where their skin touched, but all she got back was an extended, jagged, electric panic.

  Poor Tommy. He was there all right. Alive and mercilessly aware. She tried to reach him until she could bear the weight of her own hunger and panic no longer. “Abby, if I ever get out of here, your narrow ass is mine,” she thought before fading to mist and blissful escape.

  INSPECTOR RIVERA

  It wasn’t a homicide, strictly speaking, because there was no body, but there was a traffic enforcement officer missing in action, and it had involved the Emperor and a certain block of light industry buildings and artist lofts south of Market Street that Rivera had flagged for notice if anything happened there. And something had definitely happened here, but what?

  He lifted the collar of the empty traffic officer’s uniform with the tip of his pen to confirm that the fine gray ash was not on the sidewalk underneath, and it wasn’t. Inside the uniform, on the sidewalk at the cuffs and collar of the uniform, yes, but not on the sidewalk under the uniform.

  “I don’t see a crime,” said Nick Cavuto, Rivera’s partner, who, if he’d been a flavor of ice cream, would have been Gay Linebacker Crunch. “Sure, something happened here, but it could have just been kids. The Emperor is clearly nuts. Totally unreliable.”

  Rivera stood up and looked around at the blood-soaked street, the ashes, the still-flashing light on the parking cart, and then at the Emperor and his dogs, who had their noses pressed to the back window of their brown, unmarked Ford sedan. Rivera’s flavor was Low-fat Spanish Cynic in an Armani cone. “He said cats did this.”

  “Well there you go, an Animal Control issue. I’ll call them.” Cavuto made a great show of flipping open his mobile and punching at the numbers with his thick sausage fingers.

  Rivera shook his head and crouched over the empty uniform again. He knew what the powder was, and Cavuto knew what the powder was. Sure, it had taken them a couple of months, and a lot of unsolved murders, and watching the old vampire take enough gunfire to kill a platoon of men, only to survive to kill a half-dozen more people, but they had finally caught on.

  “It wasn’t cats,” Rivera said.

  “They promised to leave,” Cavuto said, pausing in his display of percussive dialing. “The creepy girl said they left town.” They, meaning Jody and Tommy, who had promised to leave town and never return. “The Emperor said he saw the old vampire get on a ship—a whole bunch of them sail away.”

  “But he’s totally unreliable,” Rivera said.

  “Most of the time. This is not—”

  Rivera held up a finger to stop him. They had agreed never to use the v-word when others were around. “We have to go see the spooky kid.”

  “Noooo,” Cavuto wailed, then caught himself, realizing that for a man of his size, appearance, and occupation, that whining over having to confront a skinny teenage girl was, well—he was being a huge wuss—that’s what.

  “Man up, Nick, we’ll tell her not only does she have a right to remain silent, it’s an obligation. Besides, I called in backup.”

  “I should probably stay in the car with the Emperor. See if he remembers anything else.”

  Just then there was a commotion at the crime scene tape and a uniformed officer said, “Inspector, this woman wants through. She says she has to see her daughter, who lives in that apartment.” The officer pointed to the fire door of the loft where the spooky kid lived with her boyfriend.

  An attractive blond woman in her late thirties wearing paisley medical scrubs was trying to push past the officer.

  “Let her through,” Rivera said. “Look, Nick, an angel come to protect you.”

  “Oh God save me from fucking neo-hippies,” said Gay Linebacker Crunch.

  5

  The Further Chronicles of Abby Normal, Miserable, Broken-hearted Emo-ho of the Night

  ’Kayso, who is outside my door but Baroness Buzzkill herself, the Motherbot, accompanied by those most crapacious homicide cops, Rivera and Cavuto.

  So I’m all, “Oh joy, does this caffeine fresh clusterfuck come with donut
s?” Which it turned out, it didn’t, so really, WTF is the point of bringing cops?

  And the Mombot is all, “You can’t do this, and who is this boy, and where have you been, and you have no right, and blah, blah, blah, responsibility, worried sick, you’re a horrible, horrible person and you ruined my life with your platform boots and your piercings.”

  Okay, those weren’t her exact words, but the subtext was there. And in retrospect, I may have erred in using the “I’m sleeping over at Lily’s house” gambit for two months running, when I was, in fact, living in my own très cool love lair with a mysterious love ninja. So I decided to turn the tables on her by asking questions, before she got in the rhythm of grilling me and heaping me with mom guilt.

  So I’m all, “How did you find me?”

  And the dark, Hispano cop steps up, and he’s all, “I called her.”

  So I rolled up in his grill. Well, up in the knot of his tie, because he’s taller than me. And I’m all, “I can’t believe you ratted me out. You traitorous fuck!”

  And the cop gets all chilly and he’s all, “I’m not a traitor because I’m not on your side, Allison.” Using my day-slave name, just to fuck with me.

  So I’m all thinking, Okay, cop, I can see that you believe that your shit cannot be shaken, and you are totally trying to come off all sly and badass in front of the Mombot so she might do you a good long time? I know—mating rituals of the ancient and crusty—makes you barf in your mouth a little, huh?

  So I go over to the big gay cop, and I’m all soft-spoken little-girl voice, “I thought we were on the same side because—well—because we know about the nosferatu, and all that money you got from his art collection. We’re not? I’m crushed.” Totally hand to forehead, fake-heartbreak fainting. I was going to cry a little, but my mascara was lined up like the spikes on the gates of hell, and I didn’t want it to go raccoon on me so early in the day, so only a sniffle. I wiped my nose on the big gay cop’s sleeve.

  And the Momster is all, “What? What? Nosferatu? What? Money? What?”

  And Rivera is all, “Excuse us a moment, Mrs. Green, we need to have a word with Allison.”

  So the Mombot starts to go into the bedroom and I’m all, “Oh I don’t think so. You can wait outside,” or something like that, because it turns out I didn’t want her to see the inner sanctum of our love nest, because she’s a nurse and seeing the dog collars, test tubes, centrifuge, and whatnot might give her the wrong idea. (Foo and I like to get our mad scientist freak on in the privacy of the boudoir.)

  So Mom steps outside.

  And Foo is all, “Owned, bitches!” And he did a pathetic imitation of my own superb booty dance of ownage, and I was, at once, touched by his support, yet embarrassed by his tragic lack of rhythm and booticuity.

  And Rivera is all, “Allison, how did you know about the money and the old vampyre and the yacht and you have no proof and blah, blah, I so can’t decide whether I’m the good cop or the bad cop, or if I’m going to still pretend to be badass or totally crap my pants from the verbal death grip you just put on my man sac, blah, blah.”

  And I’m all, “I know it all, cop,” popping the p in cop because it makes both of them flinch a little. “You need to exit and take the Mombot home or I will be forced to expose your evil shit to your masters, and not in the fun way.”

  And the Hispano cop was all chill, nodding and smiling, which harshed my confidence somewhat. And he’s all, “That so, Allison? Well, Mr. Wong here is twenty-one, and you are still a minor, so among other things, we can take him in for contributing to the delinquency of a minor, kidnapping, and statutory rape.” And he folds his arms all, “Take that, bee-atch.” Hip-hop superior.

  So I’m like, “You’re right, he is totally taking advantage of my innocence. Foo, you ginormous perve!” Then I slapped him, but for the drama, not because he might think I was a slut. “I should have known when you had me shave my va-jay-jay into the shape of a beaver!”

  And Foo’s all, “I did not!”

  “Pervy and redundant, don’t you think?” I asked the big gay cop, who wouldn’t know a va-jay-jay if it bounced up to him and sang the “Star-Spangled Banner.” (You ever notice that hardly anything besides the “Star-Spangled Banner” is spangled? There’s no, like, the Raisin-Spangled Scone, or the Flea-Spangled Beagle. I’m just saying.) So, I, like, start to pull up my skirt to further freak him out, like I’m going to flash the beav, which was a bluff, because I am totally trimmed bat-shape and dyed lavender and I was wearing my hot-pink fishnets, which are full-on tights and put the PG-13 on my no-no place.

  But instead of hiding his head and screaming like a little bitch, which is what I was going for, the big gay cop is across the room and has Foo in handcuffs in like seconds, cranking them down tight.

  So Foo is all, “Ow! Ow! Ow!”

  And I’m heartsick at his suffering, so I’m like, “Unhand him, you fascist-ass bear.”

  And Rivera is all, “Allison, we need to come to an understanding, or your boyfriend is going to jail, and even if the charges don’t stick, he can kiss his master’s degree good-bye.”

  Powned! I was forced to lower my skirt in defeat. Foo’s eyes were all anime-huge and started to get tear-spangled, and my noble love ninja looked all pleading to me like, “Please, do not abandon me, despite my obvious emo tendencies.”

  So I’m like, “We’ll give you a hundred thousand dollars to leave our love lair like nothing happened.”

  And Rivera is like, “We’re not interested in your money.”

  And gay bear cop is like, “Wait, where did you get that kind of money, anyway?”

  And Rivera is like, “Never mind, Nick, it’s not about money.”

  And I’m like, “OMG Rivera, your bad cop skills suck ass. It’s always about the money. Don’t you have a TV?”

  And he’s like, “What happened out there this morning?”

  And I’m all, “You know, vampyre kitties, meter maid sucked to dust, samurai in orange socks, Abby’s kung-fu of solar ass-kicking.” Then to Foo: “Foo, the jacket is the sickest shit ever!”

  “Which is a good thing,” Foo translated for the cops.

  And Rivera is all, “Vampyre cats? That’s what the Emperor said.”

  ’Kayso, it’s clear that the cops have doubts, so I explain the whole battle, and Foo’s theory of how Chet is making vampyre kitties, and how we are pretty much fucked nine ways to Kwanzaa because it’s the end of the world and whatnot, and there are metric buttloads of kitties in the City, and only two fly, vampyre-frying solar jackets, mine and Foo’s, and we are being detained by law enforcement assbags instead of saving humanity.

  So Rivera’s all, “What about Flood and the redhead? You helped them, right?”

  Kudos to Inspector Obvious, we’re only living in their loft, spending their money, and hanging our damp towels on their bronzed bodies. I was all, “They left. All the vampyres left. Didn’t you talk to the Emperor? He saw them get on a boat at the Marina?”

  “The Emperor isn’t the most dependable witness,” Rivera says. “And he didn’t say anything about those two, but I find it hard to believe that a cat, even a vampyre cat, even a gang of vampyre house cats took down a full-grown parking enforcement officer.”

  So I was like, “Chet is not a normal vampyre kitty. He’s huge. More huge than normal. He’s getting huger. If you don’t let Foo work his mad science skills to cure him, by next week Chet might be dry-humping the Transamerica Pyramid.”

  Foo was nodding like a manga-haired bobblehead. He was all, “Truth.”

  The big gay Cavuto cop is all, “Can you do that, kid? Can you put this shit storm back in the box?”

  “Absolutely,” says Foo, when he totally has no clue how to catch Chet. “I’ll need some time, but leave the handcuffs on, because that’s how I work best.”

  Foo can be most sarcastic when faced with day dwellers less intelligent than himself, which is almost everyone.

  ’Kayso, Rivera takes the s
leeve of my jacket and starts turning it over, looking at it, all Neanderthal discovers fire face. And he’s all, “Can you make one of these in a leather sport coat? Forty long?”

  And I’m all, “Are you coming on to me?”

  And he gagged a little (which was mean), and he’s all, “No. I am definitely not coming on to you, Allison. Not only are you the most irritating creature on the planet, you are a child.”

  And I’m all, “A child?! A child?! Do these belong to a child?” And I pulled up my top and flashed him. And not just a flash, a full, glorious boobosity.

  And he didn’t say anything. So I turned my headlights on Foo and the big gay cop.

  And they’re all, “Um-uhr-uhr-um—”

  I’m like, “Et tu, Foo?” Which is Shakespearean for, “You traitor!”

  And I ran into the bedroom and locked the door. I was kind of wishing I’d taken a hostage, except really the only weapon I had was a jacket with little light warts all over it, so I was limited to being dangerous to vampyres and emos who get their feelings hurt really easily by my snarky wit.

  ’Kayso, then I stared into the dark abyss that is the meaninglessness of human existence, because there was nothing on cable. And in searching the depths of my soul, I saw that I must stop using sex as a weapon, and that I must only use my powers of seduction for good, unless Foo wants to do something freaky, in which case, I can have him sign a waiver. Now, I realize that the only way for me to righteously explore my strength as a woman is to become nosferatu. And since the Countess and Lord Flood wouldn’t bring me into the fold, I must find my own way to the blood power.

  ’Kayso, in a few minutes Rivera’s at the door all, “Allison, I think you’d better come out here.”

  And I’m all, “Oh no, Inspector, I can’t open the door. I’ve taken all these pills and everything’s all wiggly. You’ll have to break the door down.”

  Then Foo’s all, “Abby, please come out. I need you.” He used his I’m sad, wounded, and locked in the castle tower with all my powers gone voice, which I didn’t even know he had, but it was tragic and I had to come out and humble myself before the cops like a little bitch, despite my new resolve to partake of the dark gift.