Bite Me

you liked Godzilla porn.
    It was in the shadow of that architectural abomination that the Emperor had taken his search for the alpha vampire cat. He and the men didn’t spend much time in Wine Country, as he had lost a decade in a bottle somewhere and had since forsworn the grape. But it was his city, and he knew it like the cat-scratch scars on Bummer’s muzzle.
    “Steadfast, gents, steadfast,” said the Emperor, throwing his shoulder against a Dumpster behind a hundred-year-old brick building. Bummer and Lazarus had commenced low, rumbling growls since they’d come into the alley, as if there were tiny semi-trucks idling in their chests. They were close.
    The Dumpster rolled aside on rusty wheels, revealing a basement window with a sheet of plywood loosely fitted into it. The building had once housed a brewery, but had long since been refitted for storage, except for the basement, half of which had been bricked off from the inside. But this window had been forgotten, and it led to an underground chamber completely unknown to the police, where William, and other people who succumbed to the Wine Country’s charms, would seek shelter from the rain or thecold. Of course, you had to be drunk to think it was a good place to stay. Except for the spot by the window, the basement was completely dark, as well as damp, rat infested, and reeking of urine.
    As he pulled away the plywood, the Emperor heard a high sizzling sound, and the smell of burning hair came streaming out the window. Bummer barked. The Emperor turned away and coughed, fanned the smoke away from his face, and then peered into the basement. All over the visible parts of the floor, cat cadavers were smoldering, burning, and reducing to ash as the sun hit them. There were scores of them, and those were just the ones the Emperor could see from the window light.
    “This appears to be the place, gents,” he said, patting Lazarus’s side.
    Bummer snorted, tossed his head, and ruffed three times fast, which translated to, “I thought I would enjoy the smell of burning cats more, but strangely, no.”
    The Emperor got on his hands and knees, then backed through the window. His overcoat caught on the window sill and actually helped him in lowering his great bulk to the floor.
    Lazarus stuck his head in the window and whimpered, which translated to, “I’m a little uneasy about you being in there by yourself.” He measured the distance from the window to the basement floor and pranced, preparing himself to leap into the abyss.
    “No, you stay, good Lazarus,” said the Emperor. “I fearI wouldn’t be able to lift you out once you are down here.”
    With the ashes of burned cats crunching under his shoes the Emperor made his way across the room until he reached the end of the direct light that lay across the floor like a dingy gray carpet. To move farther he’d have to step on the bodies of the sleeping—well, dead—cats, as even in the shadows, he could see that the floor was covered with feline corpses. The Emperor shuddered and fought the urge to bolt to the window.
    He was not a particularly brave man, but had an overly developed sense of duty to his city, and putting himself in harm’s way to protect her was something he was compelled to do, despite the acute case of the willies that was crawling up his spine like an enormous centipede.
    “There must be another entrance,” the Emperor said, more to calm himself than to actually impart information. “Perhaps not large enough for a man, or I would have known.”
    He tentatively nudged a dead cat aside with his toe, cringing as he did it. The vision of the vampire cats engulfing the samurai swordsman filled his head and he had to shake it off before taking another step.
    “A flashlight might have been a good idea,” he said. He didn’t have a flashlight, however. What he had were five books of matches and a cheap, serrated-edged chef’s knife that he’d found in a trash can. This would be the weapon he’d use to dispatch the vampire cat, Chet. In his younger, naïve days, last month, he’d carried a woodensword, thinking to stake the vampires in the heart, movie style, but he’d seen the old vampire nearly torn apart by explosions, gunfire, and spear guns by the Animals when they’d destroyed his yacht, and none of it seemed as effective as had the little swordsman he’d seen in the SOMA. Still, a flashlight would have been nice. He lit a match and held it before him as he moved into