Bite Me_ A Love Story Part 9

Now they watched as the old shopkeeper folded up Grandma Lee's bundle of ingredients and tucked in the paper so it was as tight as a toothpick spliff, then flipped the package over and wrote some Chinese characters on the back with a carpenter's pencil.

"What's it say?" Barry asked Troy Lee.

"It says, 'vampire cat remedy.'"

"No s.h.i.+t?"

"Yeah. Then there's a bunch of warnings about side effects."

An hour later they were sitting around the Lee kitchen table, waiting for the big twenty-quart soup pot on the stove to come to a boil.

Grandma Lee rose from her chair and tottered over to the stove with her package of herbs. Troy Lee joined her, helped her unwrap the package, and held the paper away from the burner as she scooped handfuls of herbs and animal parts into the boiling water. Foul and magical fumes bubbled out of the kettle, like the flatulence of dragons on a demon-only diet.

"This really going to work, Grandma?" Troy Lee asked in Cantonese.

"Oh yeah. We used it when I was a girl in China and some vampire cats invaded the city."

"And they still have the recipe in a shop down on Stockton Street?"

"It's a good recipe." She scooped the last of the package into the water.

"How do you use this stuff, anyway?"

"With firecrackers."

"It's wet, how are you going to use firecrackers?"

"I don't know how, I just like firecrackers."

The Animals covered their noses and started filing out of the kitchen. "That smells like fermented skunk a.s.s," said Jeff.

Grandma said something in Cantonese, followed by "My b.i.t.c.hes," p.r.o.nounced in frighteningly accentless English.

"What? What'd she say?" asked Jeff.

"She says, 'That's how you know it's a good recipe, gents,'" said Troy Lee.

THE EMPEROR.

A dark bas.e.m.e.nt. A thousand sleeping vampire cats. One formerly human vampire. One huge, shaved vampire-cat hybrid. Five matches left. No way out. A half hour, maybe less, until sundown.

The Emperor was not a man to use profanity, but after he a.s.sessed his situation and burned his fingers with his fourth to last match, he said, "Well, this blows."

There was no helping it, sometimes a man, even a brave and n.o.ble man, must speak the harsh truth, and his situation, did, indeed, blow.

He'd tried everything he could think of to escape the bas.e.m.e.nt, from building a stairway to the window with empty fifty-five-gallon drums, to screaming for help like a man on fire, but even on a platform of oil drums he couldn't find the leverage or the strength to move the Dumpster away from the window.

He could hear b.u.mmer and Lazarus whimpering outside in the alley.

All the other windows had been bricked up, all the steel fire doors were bolted, and, of course, the elevators and cables were long gone from the shafts (which he'd discovered after an hour prying the doors open with a metal support bar he'd taken off one of the shelves where Tommy Flood lay curled up with the Chet-thing). A dusty spray of twilight filtered down the elevator shaft from somewhere above, and it was by this that the Emperor ascertained that there was no way to climb the shaft, and that now it was dangerously close to sundown, as the light had turned a dim orange color.

He would fight, oh yes, he would not go down without a battle, but even the magnificently agile little swordsman had gone down to the attacking pounce of cats. What chance did he stand in the dark with only a metal bar? He'd already checked the empty oil drums for accelerants, hoping he might burn his enemies before they awakened, but he'd had no luck. The barrels had had dry goods or something solid in them, and even so, he wasn't sure how he'd avoid being suffocated by burning cat fumes.

Then, in thinking about how he might escape the flames, it occurred to him how he might escape. He made his way back to the storeroom where Chet and Tommy lay, and lit one of his precious matches to get his bearings. Yes, there was still a bolt on the door, and in addition there were enough barrels and shelves to construct a barricade beyond that. The match went out and he felt his way across the room until he touched Tommy's back-cold flesh. He took his ex-friend under the armpits and dragged him off the shelf and across the room, b.u.mping through the door-way as he went. He shoved the body to the side and cringed with the crunch it made, falling onto the immobile bodies of dead cats.

Back through dark, feeling around until he found Chet's fur. He felt for what he thought were the front paws, then backed across the room again, the huge shaved vampire cat in tow. Chet was lighter than Tommy had been, but not by much, and the Emperor was winded. He couldn't afford to sit. The ray of light in the elevator shaft had gone deep red.

He heard b.u.mmer let out a ruff beyond the window.

"Run, men, away! Go away from this place. I'll find you in the morning. Go!"

He never raised his voice to the men, even when they were in peril, and he heard Lazarus whimper at his command, but then the sound of b.u.mmer growling while being dragged away by the scruff of his neck. He would get the message after a block or so. The men were safe.

He pulled the metal door shut, then yanked on it until he heard a click. Then spent the second to the last of his matches looking at the simple bolt, and taking a last look around the room, trying to memorize the layout of the barrels and shelves that he would have to move in the dark.

As the match burned out, he heard stirring in the room outside. There was a rack of metal shelves to the right of the door. He grabbed them and overturned them in the doorway. Yes, the door opened out, but what could it hurt. The more he put between himself and the vampire cats, the better. He scooped up armloads of the clothing at his feet and tossed them over the shelves, then backed across the room, throwing everything he touched in front of him, as if he were tunneling out the other side. Finally, he crawled up in the heavy shelf where Tommy and Chet had been and crouched, facing the door. He felt for the handle of the kitchen knife that he'd tucked in his belt at the small of his back, drew it, and held it before him.

There were distinct cat noises-yowls, hisses, and meows, coming from the room outside. They were awake, up, and moving. There was a tentative scratch at the door, then a whirr of scratching, like someone had turned a power sander on outside, then it stopped as quickly as it had started and all he could hear was his own breathing.

No. There was movement. The slight rustle of cloth, then a low, trilling purr. And it was coming from inside the door, he was sure of it. The Emperor clamped the knife in his teeth and lit his last match. The room was as he thought it would be, a pile of debris and barrels, but swirling out from under shelving in front of the door was a layer of mist, moving across the floor toward him, undulating in tiny waves that approximated the sound of a purr.

13.

Being the Chronicles of Abby Normal, Who, Befouled by the Wicked Taint of Rat Suck, Must Find Her Own Murderer How could I have known that my own tragic failure karma would reach out its slimy tentacles and engeeken my heroic Foo beyond the limits of our white-hot romance?

'Kayso, I was major freaked about the cops almost getting the Countess and I needed to unburden on Foo, which I didn't have a chance, 'cause, as soon as I returned to the love lair, I ran into the comfort of Foo's arms, and rode him gently to the floor where I French-kissed him until he kinda gagged in ecstasy. Then he just threw me off him, like I was a gob of Bubblicious Bubblicious with all the with all the licious licious chewed out of it. chewed out of it.

So he's like, "Not now, Abby. We have a crisis."

"You 'bout to have a crisis, nerdslice"-I go in my most authentic hip-hop 'hood-ho accent-"crisis of my boot heel in your man marbles."

And he totally ignores my hurt feelings and is like, "Jared, get the door! She left the door open!"

So Jared goes all stumbling across the loft to the door, and I'm all, "You're stretching out my boots."

And Jared is all, "Rat fog! Rat fog! Rat fog!"

And I'm all, "Don't call me rat fog, b.i.t.c.h. Who held your hair when you drank that whole bottle of creme de menthe and hurled green for an hour?"

And Foo's like, "Abby, look." All pointing to the little plastic cages on the coffee table, which are kind of empty, then at this steam that's running around the outside of the room and blowing out from under the fridge in the kitchen and whatnot.

And I'm, "'Splain, s'il vous plait s'il vous plait."

And Foo's all, "The rats came awake as vampyres at dusk. And Jared and I were feeding them with the blood that Jody left, by filling their little water bottles. But then when we turned around, the ones we were about to feed were out of their cages. And then we saw some of the cages were still streaming fog out, and the fog was going for the blood bags."

"And they bite," goes Jared.

"Yeah, they bite," goes Foo. And he pulls up his pant leg and shows me where he's been bitten like a dozen times.

And I'm like, "You can't go vamp without me."

And he's all, "No, I'd have to have some of their blood in me, and I was careful not to even get any on me."

Then all of a sudden there's a stream of mist coming up my boot (I was wearing my red Docs) and a little head starts to appear out of it.

Then Foo snags a tennis racket from, like, out of nowhere and smacks the rat head, which goes flying across the room and hits the wall, trailing like a comet tail of mist.

I know! A tennis racket. WTF?

So I'm all, "Where did you get a tennis racket? Is that a secret thing with you?"

"Missing the point," sings Jared, like I'm totally missing the point. "h.e.l.lo? We need to be freaked out that they're going to eat us, Nurse Oblivious."

And right then the mist starts taking form again and coming at me, and Foo bats another half-mist rat across the room.

So I'm all, "Okay, good point. What are we going to do?" And I, like, gesture at the b.u.t.ton on my sun jacket, because Foo has replaced the battery, which is out of a laptop, and I'm ready to toast some rodents.

And Foo's all, "No, not yet. We have to figure out a way to study them. I need to turn them back to rats. And I have to figure out how this mist is manifesting. I mean, technically, it's not possible."

And I'm like, "You mean it's magic?"

"I mean I've never even heard of anything like it in nature."

"Like magic."

He's like, "There's no such thing as magic."

I'm like, "The Countess said it was magic."

He's like, "My grandmother thinks the microwave is magic."

So I'm all, "It's not?"

And Foo's all, "Magic is just science we don't understand yet."

So I'm all, "Told you."

And he like sighs all heavy and does his exasperated science face at me, and he's like, "We have to get them back in their cages. They can't feed when they are in mist form, so we just need to get them feeding and then we can catch them and put them in the cages."

And I'm like, "Can you believe that Tommy couldn't learn to turn to mist in five weeks and your rats did it, like, overnight? He must be a total tard."

"Or we have genius rats," goes Jared, just as Foo is tennis racketing another rat head off his leg.

So I'm all, "Nope, I don't think that's it. Why don't you just put out a little dish of blood and when they turn solid to drink it you can just tennis racket them into a box?"

"We tried that. They figured it out," goes Foo.

And Jared's all, "See. Genius rats."

Then, to Foo, I'm all, "He has a thing for rats."

Foo's like, "Yeah. I got that. They turn back to solid when exposed to UV light, too, but then they start burning."

Then Jared's like, "Once, when Lucifer 2 got stuck in a drain pipe in our garage, we sucked him out with my dad's Shop Vac."

And Foo's like, "That's it. We can suck them up with a Shop Vac."

So I'm like, "That will just blow the mist out the other side?"

"I can put a really weak UV LED in the barrel of the Shop Vac. Maybe that will be enough to turn them solid without burning them. I'll experiment a little while you're gone."

And I'm all, "Foo, you know it makes me hot when you talk all nerdy, but what do you mean, while I'm gone?"

And he's all, "To get the Shop Vac. We don't have a Shop Vac."

So I look at Jared, all wobbly-a.s.sed on my s.k.a.n.kenstein boots, so he's useless, and I'm like, "Well, I'm not dragging a Shop Vac back on the bus or the F car. Give me your car keys." boots, so he's useless, and I'm like, "Well, I'm not dragging a Shop Vac back on the bus or the F car. Give me your car keys."

And Foo's, like, big "OH NOEZ" mouth and anime eyes, like, "Whaaaaa?"

And I'm like, "Unless you really do love your car more than me."

And he's like, "'Kay." And hands them over. Which, as it turns out, was really poor judgment on his part.

More L8z. Gotta jet. The tow truck is here.

'Kayso, it turns out that driving an actual car is way harder than it is in Grand Theft Auto: Zombie Hooker Smackdown. Even though there was only, like, minor damage, it could have been totally avoided if you didn't have to s.h.i.+ft so much. Everything was good going to get the Shop Vac, because I only used first and second gear. It was coming home, when I started feeling confident and decided to see if there was a third gear, that it went kind of wrong. Still, all the screaming and crying on Foo's part was kind of over-emo, considering that after the tow truck lowered the Honda, you couldn't even see any damage if you didn't crawl under and look at where the fire hydrant had sort of rearranged a couple of wiry-looking things. And Hondas are totally waterproof for the most part, so no biggie, right?

So, it was like this- I drive totally ninja all the way to the Ace Hardware in the Castro, but I didn't park because it involves backing up, which is not in my skill set. So I'm, like, double-parked, and I run in and this crusty guy behind the counter is all, "You can't park there."

And I'm like, "f.u.c.k off, b.u.t.t-munch, I have a guy."

'Kayso, I find my gay Builder Bob guy, and he's all, "Darling, how are you? Fab boots!"

And I'm like, "Thanks, I like your ap.r.o.n. I need a Shop Vac."

And he's all, "What size?"

And I'm like, "It needs to hold about a hundred rats."

And he's all, "Girlfriend, we need to party or go shopping and dish."

And I'm, like, totally flattered, because shopping is a sacred thing to gay guys, but I stay on mission, and I'm all, "In red, if you have it." Because red is the new black and because it will match my Docs.