You Suck (22 page)

D
on’t judge me. I have looked death in the face and made him my bitch! I did what I did out of love, and I don’t want to sound conceited, but OMG, we are heroes! And when I say we, I mean us.

Had I told you before, you would have called me “losah!,” pronounced me perky and cute beyond redemption, but now that I am secure in my own nefarious love lair and whatnot, I can at last confess, that in my naive youth, my favorite literary character was not the tentacled horror Cthulu from Lovecraft as I previously stated in AP English 235, but, in fact, Pippi Longstocking. Before you condemn me for my Pippism, check it out:

Pippi drank a lot of coffee. (Because, like me, she was wise.)

Pippi had unnaturally red hair (as I, myself have had, upon occasion).

Pippi often wore long, stripy socks (as yours truly has been known to do).

Pippi had superhuman strength. (It could happen.)

Pippi kicked ass. (Not unlike your humble narrator.)

Pippi was a kid who lived without parents in her own house. (Go, girl!)

With a monkey. (Haven’t you always wanted a monkey?)

What Longstockings did not have, was the coolest cyber-ninja-sex-magic boyfriend to ever save the world and whatnot. (Props to Pip, but girlfriend needed some yang to rock her yin.)

I call him Foo Dog, because he guards the gate of my temple, if you know what I mean. I’m wearing the jacket he made me right now. I had it on when they came for me, but that’s not the thing. The thing is, I didn’t save myself, I saved love.

So, that night, after I told the Countess how my sweet Foo Dog saved me from the vampyre, the Countess said she was going to go back to the loft to get some money and
feed Chet and get the last of William’s blood for Lord Flood, for their love is truly eternal. And Jared and I were like, “We’ll go, too,” but the Countess sent us back to liberate the vampyre Flood from Jared’s basement and his hideous family. So we were all, “Well, okay.”

But when we got to Jared’s house, Flood was totally gone. And then Steve—I mean Foo Dog—called me and he was all, “I’m getting off work early, I don’t want to leave you out there unprotected.”

So I told him where we were. Then Lord Flood comes walking out of the dark and he’s all, “What? What? What?”

And I’m all, “The Countess went back to the loft.”

And he’s all, “She is in danger. We must away.”

And I was like, “Chill thee thus, for my sweet love-ninja is on the way in his fly ride.”

So Flood was like, “’Kay.”

I see now that my attraction to the vampyre Flood was nothing more than childish infatuation, never to be requited, because he had eyes only for the Countess.

So it was a little awkward when Steve showed up and I had to chill the Lord Flood and make him sit in the backseat to show that my real affections were with Foo Dog, who was formerly known as Steve.

And when we got to the loft, the windows were open, but there were no lights on. And Flood had us drive a block past, then we got out and he walked back. Then he runs up and he’s like, “Elijah’s up there. He’s got her.”

And I’m all, “Then go get her.”

And Steve is like, “No, I’ll go get her.” And he pulls this long coat out of the trunk.

It’s all covered with warts or something, and I’m like, “Nice coat, but you know, vampyre…”

And Steve is like, “They’re UV LEDs. Like the lights we burned the vampires with before.”

And I’m like, “Sweet!”

So Steve starts to put the coat on and Flood stops him and goes, “He’ll hear you coming up the stairs. I’ll go.”

And Steve is all, “You can’t. It will burn you, too.”

And Flood is all, “No it won’t.”

So they are like five minutes behind the car putting together this über-cool ensem of like an old gas mask, and a hoodie, and full-on gloves and everything, until Flood is totally covered, wearing the long coat with the glass warts all over it, looking like one of the cenobites from
Hellraiser
.

And Steve is like, “Don’t hit the switch until you know she’s covered.” And he hands Flood like a black rubber tarp and a baseball bat, which totally sucked the cool right out of the ensem, but I guess was necessary.

Then, just when I’m about to ask how he’s going to get in without being heard, we hear the Countess scream, and Flood runs across the street and about halfway up the side of the building, then turns and runs down it, then across the street, up the side of his building, and goes through the window feet fucking first.

And I’m like, “Whoa.”

And Steve and Jared are like, “Whoa.”

And a second later we hear a thumping, and purple light comes on in the loft windows and the old vampyre comes crashing through the windows on fucking fire, falling like a comet! And he lands on his feet in the middle of the street, hisses once and looks at us, and that’s when Steve holds up one of his UV floodlights, and the vampyre fucking scrams down the alley across the street so fast that he was just a blur.

Next thing, Flood is coming out of the building carrying the Countess, who is wrapped in the black rubber tarp and is totally roofied like a limp rag. And Steve’s all, “Get her in the car.”

And I’m like, “Did you feed Chet?”

And Jared is like, “Hello, Abby, the other vampyres.”

So I’m like, “Shut up. I know.” So we all piled into Steve’s car and we took Flood and the Countess to a hotel off up on Van Ness, which Steve paid for with his Visa, which was generous and mature of him.

It was one of those motels where you have your own entrance to the parking lot so they don’t see you in the hallway, so Flood carried the Countess up to the room, and we carried some stuff that Steve had packed up in the trunk of his car.

It was so sad. Flood just stroked the Countess’s cheek and tried to get her to wake up, but she wouldn’t. And he was all, “Abby, she needs to feed. I wouldn’t ask, but he’s done something to her, she’s hurt.”

And I would have totally done it, but Steve pulled me back, and he picks up this playmate cooler that he had us bring up, and he pulls out these pouches of blood.

And he hands them to Flood and says, “I took them from the university hospital. They could kick me out of school for this.”

And Flood is all, “Thanks.” And he bites a hole in one of the pouches and squeezes it on the Countess’s lips and that’s when I started to cry.

There were like four pouches, and when he was going for the last one, Steve was like, “You need to drink that one.”

And Flood was like, “No way, it’s for her.”

And Steve was like, “You know you do.”

So Flood like nodded and drank the last one himself, and then he just sat there by her, stroking her hair.

Then Steve was like, “Tommy, you know I can reverse your vampirism. I’m pretty sure the process works.”

And Flood just looked at him and nodded. It was so sad. And then the Countess started to moan, and she opened her eyes and she saw the vampyre Flood and she was all, “Hey, baby.” Just like that. And I started crying again like a big wuss and Steve took Jared and me out to the car to give them some space.

And Steve was like, “I made this for you from my jacket.” And he put this leather motorcycle jacket on me that was covered with those glass LED thingies. It was kinda heavy, because there were batteries built into the padding, but
cool. And he was all, “This will keep you safe. The switch is in the snap on the left cuff. Just squeeze it and the lights will come on. They won’t hurt you, but you should wear sunglasses to protect your retinas.” Then he put a pair of totally cyber wraparound sunglasses on me and kissed me. And I kissed him back, hard, with major tongue, and finally he pulled away, as gentle as a butterfly. So then I slapped him, so he wouldn’t think I was a slut. But so he wouldn’t think I was being frigid, I sort of jumped on him and wrapped my legs around him and sort of accidentally rode him to the ground and was accidentally kind of dry-humping him on the pavement when the lights on my jacket came on and people looked out their hotel windows and whatnot, so Jared ended our special romantic moment by hitting my light switch and dragging me off.

And I was all, “You are
THE MAN,
Foo!”

And he was all, “Huh?” Because I hadn’t told him yet that his new name was Foo Dog.

But then he said he actually had to get home and check in or his parents would freak out. And said to watch the masters until I got back, if I got a chance try to talk them into being converted. So we made out on the hood of the Honda for a while and he drove off into night’s cold loneliness like the superhero that he is. (The effect was ruined, kind of, in that Jared caught a ride with him.)

So I went back upstairs and sat at the foot of the masters’ bed, keeping guard and listening to them.

They were talking softly, but I could hear them.

The vampyre Flood was all, “Maybe we should give it a try.”

And the Countess was all, “What, the cure? Tommy, it can’t work. You’ve seen what I can do, you know what you can do. This isn’t biology, this is magic.”

“Maybe it’s not. Maybe it’s science we don’t know yet.”

“It doesn’t matter. We don’t even know if it works.”

“We should try.”

“Why would we try, Tommy? You’ve only been immortal for a couple of weeks. Do you want to give up the power, the—I don’t know—the command over your world?”

“Well—yes.”

“You do?”

“Yeah. I don’t like it, Jody. I don’t like being afraid all the time. I don’t like being alone. I don’t like being a killer.”

“That woman was torturing you, Tommy. That’s never going to happen again.”

“That’s wasn’t the problem. I’d get over her. The problem was that I liked it. I
liked
it.”

Then the Countess was quiet for a while, and I thought it might be dawn or something, but I peeked over the edge of the bed and she was just staring into his eyes. She looked over at me.

“Hey, girlie girl,” the Countess said, and she smiled at me and it felt like a gift or something. It was like, real. Then she took her watch off and threw it to me at the end of the bed. “That has an automatic almanac in it—how about you set the alarm to go off about twenty minutes before sunset,
so you don’t get caught out again, okay?” And I was going to tell her about the jacket that Foo made for me, but I kind of couldn’t talk, so I just nodded and put the watch on and slid back down to the floor.

Then I heard the Countess go, “You aren’t alone. I’m here. We can go where no one knows us, no one is chasing us, and I’ll always be here for you.”

And he goes, “I know. I mean alone from everyone else. Separate. I want to be human, not some foul dead thing.”

“I thought you wanted to be special.”

“I do, but I want to be human special—because of something I did.”

Then it was quiet for a while, and finally the Countess goes, “I love it, Tommy. I’m not afraid all the time like you; just the opposite. I didn’t realize how afraid I used to be until I became like this. I like walking the street knowing that I’m the Alpha animal, hearing and seeing and smelling everything, being part of everything. I like it. I wanted to share that with you”

“It’s okay. You couldn’t have known.”

“I don’t want to be alone either. That’s why I turned you. I love you.”

Then the alarm went off on Lord Flood’s watch, and he shut it off.

Then he’s all, “We can’t go back to the way it was, before, I mean? Where I look after you?”

“It’s not the same world, Tommy. You know that now. We were in the same room in different worlds.”

“Okay then. I love you, Jody.”

“I love you, too,” goes the Countess.

Then they didn’t say anything for a long time, and when my new watch showed that the sun was up, I looked, and they were lying there, holding each other, and I could see the red stains on the pillow from their tears.

And I was like, “Oh, hell no!”

S
o I slept a little that day, and talked to my sweet love-ninja, Foo, a couple of times on the phone, then he came over and we left Jared with some blood for Lord Flood and the Countess when they awoke, and motored to the loft. It took like an hour to clean up all the broken glass and ash and stuff from the night before. We had just finished cleaning and counting the money and making out and whatnot when the alarm went off on the Countess’s watch.

And I was like, “Dude, I’m not ready.”

And he was all, “Dude, you are more ready than anyone I’ve ever known.”

And I was all, “OMG, I am so going to sex you to death if we live through this.”

And then he was all bashful and pretended to be doing something technical so we were ready.

Then, like an hour after sundown, I heard them coming. I was at the kitchen counter when the security door downstairs opened, and when I turned around they were just, like there. Lord Flood called them the Animals, but now they were kind of the
roadkill
. And I like touched the snap on my UV jacket, just to make sure it was there.

So I was all, “Hey, vampyre scum.”

And the formerly black and now gray one, who was like their leader, was all up in my grille, like, “We need the money, where is the money?”

And I was like, “Step off, undead-tard. There’s no money.”

And he was like, “Don’t fuck with us. Flood and the redhead took like six hundred grand from my apartment.”

And I was all, “Actually, its like five hundred and eighty-three thousand eight hundred and fifty-eight.”

And he was all, “Give it!”

And all seven of them were like gathering around me—even the born-again one the Countess had thrashed—like they were going to do the massive gang-suck on me, so I had my finger on my light button all the time, in case I needed to flash-fry the motherfuckers. But I stayed chilly and I was like, “Are you high?”

And he was all, “No, I’m not high. No one is high.”

And they all started whining and whatnot, all, “We can’t even take a bong hit. We can’t drink a beer. Our systems won’t take it. Being sober sucks. We are useless undead stoners.”

So I was all, “Step back and behold, bi-atches.”

And I’m all taking a bottle of Stoli out of the freezer, and mixing in a glass with some of the blood from the pouches, just like the ones we left for the Countess and Lord Flood, and they’re all drooling when they see the blood, so I was thinking,
Don’t make me fry you.

But then I give the glass to the gray vamp, and he’s all, “Sweet.”

And the others are like, “Me, me, me.”

So I’m like mixing Bloody Marys all around, and the greasy hippyish one is like, “Can we dunk pot cookies in this?”

And I’m like, “Of course, stoner vamp.”

And they’re all, “You are a goddess. And we are not worthy. And oh please, may we have some more?” Until they started to drop.

So like two minutes later there’s like this big pile of passed-out vampyres in the kitchen, and I’m all, “Yo, Foo, I got your shit ready.”

And Foo comes out of the bedroom, all cute, holding his UV floodlight like he’s going to save me, then sees that they are all out cold and gives me a big kiss and is like, “You rock.”

And I’m like, “You have no idea, my Manga-haired love toy.”

And he was like, “The sedative in the blood, blah, blah, four hours, blah, blah, nerdspeak, geektalk—”

And I’m like, “Whateva, studmuffin. Handle it.”

So it took like two hours for Foo to do all his medical stuff with the Animals, taking some blood and doing various medical nerdism stuff to it, then putting it back in, but finally he was done and I called Jared to tell him that we were on our way to get Lord Flood and the Countess.

So I like made the other call to make sure everything was all in order and whatnot, and Foo was all, “Are you sure this is what you want to do?”

And I was all, “Foo, theirs is the greatest love of all time. It’s the only thing to do.”

And he was all, “Okay, as long as you’re sure. Because we can do them the same as we did the others.”

And I was all, “No, that won’t work. They have to be together. And you don’t have to live at home anymore. We’ll have a completely sweet love lair.”

So we did it.

B
lue watched from the alley across the street as the Animals came out the security door, empty-handed, and stumbled into the street. She knew she should have gone herself, but that whole getting-burned-up thing had taught her that perhaps it was better to delegate. That they didn’t have her money was bad enough, but that they didn’t have her money and heat was coming off of them was disastrous. “Those dumbfucks can’t get anything right,” she said to herself. “I’m going to have to kill them all over again.”

“I don’t think so,” said a voice from behind her. She whipped around, leading with her long fingernails in a swipe that would have taken off half a man’s face.

Elijah caught her hand. He’d found another tracksuit, this one powder blue. “It’s time to let it go. The genie must go back in the bottle, I’m afraid.”

“Let me go, I need to go get my money.”

“No, my dear, you don’t want to do that. The residents of that loft have recently developed a very unpleasant fashion sense.”

“You’re fucking with my income, paleface.”

“You don’t need to worry about that anymore.”

“Meaning what?”

“It ends here. Come with me, my dear.”

“You want me to come with you? I don’t even know you.”

“Yes, but we share a special relationship.”

“Special? You beat my face into the hood of a Mercedes.”

“Well, yes. Sorry. To the innocent my behavior can sometimes be distasteful.”

“Yeah?
Innocent.
I’ve fucked thousands of guys.”

“Yes, well, I’ve killed enough to fill a city.”

Blue shrugged. “Okay, you win.”

“Revenge is a dish best served cold anyway, don’t you think?”

“Or not at all,” said a male voice behind Elijah.

Elijah and Blue turned. Three of them stood there in
their long coats, looking like sculptures, looking eternal, like they could wait forever.

“Can just anyone sneak up on me now?” said Blue.

“Time to go, Elijah,” said the African woman.

“None of you would be here if it weren’t for me,” Elijah said.

“Yes, and we would have been hunted down and killed a long time ago if we hadn’t adhered to your rules.”

“Ah, my rules,” Elijah said, looking down now.

“How many left to clean?”

Elijah looked across the street to the loft windows, then at Blue. She raised an eyebrow, smiled a little.

“She’s the only one left.” He lied.

“Then finish it.”

“I’d rather not,” Elijah said.

T
he Emperor of San Francisco wept for his city. He had done what he could, called the police, alerted the newspapers, even tried to take to battle himself, but by the time he’d gathered the courage to return to the Marina Safeway, it had been finished, and he could do nothing more than speculate to the uniformed police officers how the window had been broken and why the store was empty. They’d tried to track down the night crew, but none of them seemed to be home. And his city was plagued by vampires.

Now the Emperor wept and consoled the troops, rubbing Bummer behind the ears and gently patting Lazarus
on the ribs as he lay sleeping on the dock. The fog was coming slow off the Bay to night, not windblown like it was so often here.

He heard footsteps before he saw them, then there were five of them. The fiend, the three in the long coats he had seen come in the night before, and a blond woman in a blue party dress. They walked past, and only the fiend turned and paused. The Emperor held Bummer tight, afraid that he would burst into one of his barking fits and all would be lost.

“Old man,” said Elijah. “The City is yours again.” Then he joined the others at the end of the dock.

The Emperor could see their motor yacht waiting outside the breakwater—it had to be two hundred feet long, far too big to enter the marina.

“Very well, then, shall we go?” said Elijah.

“Can I get a coat like that?” asked Blue, nodding toward the tall blond man.

The blond man said, “You’ll get one when you learn the secret handshake and get your decoder ring.”

Blue looked at Elijah. “Is he fuckin’ with me?”

“Yes,” said Elijah. He offered her his arm. She took it, and stepped down into the longboat.

The Emperor watched the vampires disappear into the fog.

R
ivera had six uniforms in SWAT gear with a battering ram ready to take down the door, so he and Cavuto were
more than somewhat surprised when it opened almost as soon as they knocked. A shirtless, sleepy-looking Chinese guy with spiky hair stood in the doorway.

“Yes, can I help you?”

Rivera held up the warrant. “I have a warrant to search this apartment.”

“’Kay,” said the Chinese guy. “Abby, cops are here.”

The skinny broken clown girl appeared at the top of the stairs in a kimono.

“Hey, cops,” said Abby Normal.

“What are you doing here?” Rivera said.

“I live here, cop.” She popped the
p
. Rivera hated that.

“Actually, it’s my apartment,” said the Chinese guy. “Do you need to see ID?”

“Yeah, that would be nice, kid,” said Cavuto. He whipped the kid around and marched him up the stairs as the kid read the warrant.

“Do not bruise the Foo, cop,” said the broken clown girl.

Rivera turned to the uniforms and shrugged apologetically. “Sorry, guys, I guess we got this one.” They shuffled away.

“What are you guys looking for?” asked the Chinese kid. “Maybe we could speed this up.”

“We’re looking for Thomas Flood and Jody Stroud. He’s the one on the lease for this apartment and the one down the street.”

“Oh, yeah. I’m subletting,” said the Chinese kid.

“Steven Wong,” Cavuto read off the kid’s license.

Rivera was feeling very, very bad about this. They had found one more body in the Mission with the blood-loss-and-broken-neck MO—the guy had been naked, supposedly someone had stolen his powder-blue tracksuit, so they logged it as robbery, but then, a week ago, the killings stopped. That didn’t mean it was over. He’d made the mistake of thinking it was over with these two before. Rivera had finally gotten the Christian kid at the Safeway to file charges on the redhead for assault. After a long talk with the other stoners, they’d gotten the Flood kid on the arrest warrant for conspiracy. They’d also implied that somehow Flood and the redhead had gotten their share of the old vampire’s money. Maybe they
had
left town. If they had, well, good, but he still had a slew of unsolved murders.

“You’re subletting from Thomas Flood?”

“I never met him, actually,” said Steve. “We arranged it through the rental agent.”

“Yeah, so step off, cop,” said the skinny girl.

Rivera looked around the apartment. There was no need to tear the place apart. Obviously everything in here was new. Mostly decorated in Pier 1 Imports cheap wicker motif and some punky Urban Outfitter flair, which he guessed was the input of the creepy little girl.

The bronze sculptures were out of character, though. A life-sized nude of a young woman, a large snapping turtle, and a life-sized bronze of a couple posed as if in Rodin’s
The Kiss
.

“These must have been expensive,” Rivera said.

“Not really. I know the artists,” the Chinese kid said. “Some biker guys down the street.”

“Foo’s in biotech,” said the broken clown girl. “He makes like stupid money, cop.”

“Yeah, that’s swell,” said Rivera. He’d watched this neighborhood turn from a rust slum of repair shops and the odd ethnic restaurant to a gentrified hive of hipster professionals in remodeled lofts during the dot-com boom, and it had never turned back. The whole neighborhood was full of kids who spent the equivalent of Rivera’s annual salary on a car they wouldn’t drive a dozen times a year. This kid apparently was just another one.

“So you don’t know these people?” Rivera said, pointing to the warrant.

Steven Wong shook his head. “Sorry, I’ve never met them. I send my rent directly to the rental agency. You might check with them.”

“Okay then. Sorry to bother you.”

“Okay then?” Cavuto said. “That’s it?”

“They’re not here, Nick. These two don’t know where they are.”

“But, that’s not enough.”

“Yeah? You want to spend some time talking to Allison here, see what you can find out?” Rivera nodded toward the broken clown girl.

Cavuto had tried to keep someone between himself and the skinny girl since they’d come upstairs, but now he
looked at her full on and shuddered. “No, I guess that’s it.” He turned and lumbered down the steps.

“You need to check your girlfriend’s ID,” Rivera said to Steve. “You may not be old enough for her.” Then he turned and left as well.

C
hill, Foo,” Abby said. “They’re gone. They won’t be back. Let’s go shopping.”

“Abby, are you sure about this? It seems cruel.” He patted the life-sized sculpture of the couple embraced in a kiss.

“I heard the Countess say once that it was like being in a dream. They just sort of float, all peaceful and dreamy. The main thing is they’re together.”

“You’re sure?”

“Theirs is the greatest love of all time. It would be wrong for them to be apart, Foo.”

“Well, I think we should just change them back. Now that we know the process works.”

“Someday.”

“Now.”

“The Countess doesn’t want that.”

“It’s wrong.”

“How can it be wrong? It’s my idea, and I am their dedicated minion and whatnot. I control the dark.” She ran and jumped into his arms.

“I guess you do,” he said. “Okay, let’s go shopping for stuff for our most fly apartment.”

W
illiam arrived back at the loft just after dark, feeling very much rested and well fed from his hospital stay, but craving a sip or two of the good stuff, and terribly worried about Chet. He let himself into the stairway with his key, but when he rang the bell, no one answered, so he sat down to wait for the redhead and that guy to bring his bottle.