Bite Me

to get stolen while I’m up there snapping your neck with my junk hanging out.”
    Foo was trying to think of a better bluff when a dark sleeve shot by him and he heard the door lock buzz downstairs. He looked up at Jared. “What the fuck have you done?”
    “Hi,” Tommy said in Foo’s ear.
    “He sounded so sad,” Jared said.
    THE OLD ONES
    At sundown the three awoke inside a titanium vault under the main cabin and checked the monitors that were wired like a nervous system to every extremity of the black ship.
    “Clear,” said the male. He was tall and blond and he’d been lean in life, so he remained so, would remain so, forever. He wore a black silk kimono.
    The two females cranked open the hatch and climbed out into what appeared to be a walk-in refrigerator. The male closed the hatch, pushed a button concealed behind a shelf, and a stainless-steel panel slid across the hatch. They walked out of the fridge, into the empty galley.
    “I hate this,” said the African female. She had been Ethiopian in life, descended from royalty, with a high forehead and wide eyes that slanted like a cat’s. “It was to this face that Solomon lost his heart,” Elijah had told her, holding her face in his hands as she died. And so he called her Makeda, after the legendary Queen of Sheba. She didn’t remember her real name, for she had worn it for only eighteen years, and she had been Makeda for seven centuries.
    “It’s different,” said the other female, a dark-haired beauty who had been born on the island of Corsica a hundred years before Napoleon. Her name had been Isabella. Elijah had always called her Belladonna. She answered to Bella.
    “It’s not that different,” said Makeda, leading the way up a flight of steps to the cockpit. “It seems like we just did this. We just did this—when?”
    “A hundred and fifty years ago. Macao,” said the male. His name was Rolf, and he was the middle child, the peace-maker, turned by Elijah in the time of Martin Luther.
    “See what I mean,” said Makeda. “All we do is sail around cleaning up his messes. If he does this again I’m going to have the boy drag him out onto the deck during the day and video it while he burns. I’ll watch it every night on the big screen in the dining room and laugh. Ha!” Although the oldest, Makeda was the brat.
    “And what if we die with the sire?” asked Rolf. “What if you wake up in the vault on fire?” He palmed a black glass console and a panel whooshed open in the bulkhead. The cockpit, big enough to host a party for thirty, waslined in curving mahogany, stainless steel, and black glass. The stern half was open to the night sky. But for the ship’s wheel, it looked like an enormous Art Deco casket designed for space travel.
    “I’ve died before,” said Makeda. “It’s not that bad.”
    “You don’t remember,” said Bella.
    “Maybe not. But I don’t like this. I hate cats. Shouldn’t we have people for this?”
    “We had people,” said Rolf. “You ate them.”
    “Fine,” said Makeda. “Give me my suit.”
    Rolf touched the glass console again and a bulkhead opened to reveal a cabinet filled with tactical gear. Makeda pulled three black bodysuits from the cabinet and handed one each to Rolf and Bella. Then she slid out of her red silk gown and stretched, naked, her arms wide like Winged Victory, her head back, fangs pointed at the skylight.
    “Speaking of people,” said Bella. “Where’s the boy? I’m hungry.”
    “He was feeding Elijah when we awoke,” said Rolf. “He’ll be along.”
    Elijah was kept below in a vault similar to their own, except the prime vampire’s vault was airtight, locked from the outside, and was fitted with an airlock system so the boy could feed him.
    “Irie, me undead dreadies,” said the pseudo-Hawaiian as he came up the steps, barefoot and shirtless, carrying a tray of crystal balloon goblets. “Cap’n Kona bringin’ ya the jammin’ grinds, yeah?”
    The vampires each spoke a dozen languages but none of them had the slightest idea what the fuck Kona was talking about.
    When he saw Makeda stretching, the blond Rastafarian stopped and nearly dumped the goblets off the tray. “Oh, Jah’s sweet love sistah, dat smoky biscuit givin’ me da rippin’ stiffy like dis fellah need to poke squid with that silver sistah on de Rolls-Royce, don’t you know?”
    Makeda fell out of her “Nike” posture and looked at Rolf. “Huh?”
    “I think he said he would enjoy