Bite Me

sit. The ray of light in the elevator shaft had gone deep red.
    He heard Bummer 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 Bummer 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 feetand 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
    H ow 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 with all the licious 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, bitch. Who held your hair when you drank that whole bottle of crème 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 plaît .”
    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