Bite Me

anomalies,” said Foo. “I told you, this is very fuzzy science. I don’t like it.”
    Rivera’s phone chirped and he flipped it open and looked at the screen. “The Animals,” he said.
    “And?” asked Cavuto.
    “They’re at a butcher shop in Chinatown. They say they have a way to kill the vampires but they can’t find them.”
    “We can take them Marvin. Tell them we’re on the way.”
    Rivera held the phone like it was a foul dead thing. “I don’t know how.”
    Foo snatched the phone out of Rivera’s hand, nine-keyed a message, hit SEND , and handed it back. “There, you’re on the way. I thought you said the only people who could fix this were in this room.”
    “They are, and now they’re leaving.”
    “Don’t forget your sun jackets,” said Jared. “We charged the batteries and everything. Do you think you’ll be able to turn them on, or should I come along to help?”
    “He’s a kid.” Rivera grabbed Cavuto’s arm. “You can’t hit him.”
    “That’s it, kid. You’re out of the tribe. If I hear you’ve touched a penis, even your own, I’m sending you to butch lesbian jail.”
    “They have that?”
    Rivera looked past his partner at Jared and nodded, slowly, seriously.
    KATUSUMI OKATA
    The burned-up white girl was not healing very quickly and Okata was running out of blood. All he seemed to do was watch her, sketch her, and squeeze his blood into her mouth. While her red hair had returned, and most of the ash had flaked away to reveal white skin underneath, she was still wraith-thin, and she only seemed to breathe two or three times an hour. During the day, she didn’t breathe at all, and he thought that she might be dead forever. She had not opened her eyes, and had made no sound except a low moan when he was feeding her, which subsided as soon as he stopped.
    He was not feeling well himself, and on the second day he became light-headed and passed out on the mat beside her. If she did come alive as a demon, he’d be too weak todefend himself and she would drain the last drops of his life. Strangely, he was not okay with that. He needed to eat and recover and she needed more blood.
    “We will have to find a balance,” he said to the white girl in Japanese. He had been talking to her more lately, and found that he no longer flinched at the sound of his voice inside the little apartment that had been without a human voice for so long. A balance.
    When it was light and she had been still for an hour, he locked up his little apartment, took his sword, and walked into Chinatown, feeling ashamed of the little, old-man steps he was taking because he had become so weak. Perhaps he would actually go into a restaurant and have some tea and noodles, sit until his strength returned. Then he would find a better way to feed the burned-up white girl.
    He only spoke a dozen words of Cantonese, despite having lived near Chinatown for forty years. They were the same dozen words he spoke in English. He told his students at the dojo it was because Bushido and the Japanese language were inseparable, but in fact, it was because he was stubborn and didn’t really like talking to people. His words were: hello, good-bye, yes, no, please, thank you , okay , sorry, and suck my dick . He made it a rule, however, to only say the last three in junction with please and/or thank you, and had only broken that rule once, when a thug in the Tenderloin tried to take his sword and Okata forgot to say please before fracturing the man’s skull with the sheathed katana. Sorry, he’d said.
    It had been over a week since Okata had been to the dojo in Japantown. His students would think he was testing them, and when the time came to face them, he would say through his translator that they should learn to sit. Should learn patience. Should anticipate nothing. Anticipation was desire and didn’t the Buddha teach that desire was the cause of all suffering? Then he would proceed to trounce each and every one of them with the bamboo shinai as an object lesson in suffering. Thank you .
    He didn’t care much for prepared Chinese food, but Japantown was too far to walk, and Japanese food in his neighborhood was too expensive. But noodles are noodles. He’d eat just enough to get his strength back, then he would buy a fish, maybe some beef to help replace his blood, and take them home and prepare them.
    After he slurped down three bowls of soba and drank a pot of green tea at a restaurant named Soup, he made his way