Bite Me

Amendment, which Gustavo bought because he was already sharing a three-bedroom house in Richmond with nineteen cousins and they didn’t have any room to quarter soldiers.)
    “That’s his signal,” said Rivera. He was wearing his UV-LED leather jacket and felt like a complete dork. “When he sits and does that with his paw he’s found a body.”
    “Or vampire,” added Cavuto.
    “Biscuit,” woofed Marvin.
    “He’s fucking with you,” said Troy Lee. “There’s nothing here.”
    “Maybe in the shed,” said Lash. “There’s no lock on it.”
    “Who would leave anything unlocked in this neighborhood?” asked Jeff.
    “Biscuit please,” woofed Marvin. They had an agreement: As consideration for finding dead things, the cadaver dog, heretofore referred to as Marvin, shall receive one biscuit. There was some flexibility, however, and Marvin understood that in this case, they weren’t looking for dead humans, but dead cats, and despite their inherent tastiness, Marvin was not to eat the findees. “Biscuit,” he rewoofed. Where was the biscuit? It had been months since he’d ledthem to the dead things. (Well, it seemed like months. Marvin wasn’t very good with time.)
    “Open it,” said Troy Lee. “We’ll cover you.”
    Rivera and Cavuto moved to the shed, which was aluminum and had a roof shaped like an old-fashioned barn’s. The Animals moved in a semicircle and trained their weapons on the shed. (Grandma Lee had stayed home to watch wrestling on TV when she realized there weren’t going to be any firecrackers.)
    “On three then,” said Rivera.
    “Wait,” said Cavuto. He turned to Gustavo. “No fuego . Comprende ? Do not fucking light up that flamethrower.”
    “ Sí, ” said Gustavo. They had tested the flamethrower on the basketball court in Chinatown. It had a fairly short, wide spray. In other words, if Gustavo used it in the alley he would probably fry them all.
    Barry turned and sprayed the flamethrower’s pilot light with a stream of vampire cat remedy. The flame went out with a sizzle. “Okay, go.”
    “On three, then,” said Rivera. They all raised their weapons.
    “One,” Rivera nodded to Cavuto and grabbed the switch to his jacket LEDs.
    “Two.” Troy Lee crouched and aimed his Super Soaker to the center of the doors, ready to strafe in any direction. Cavuto drew his Desert Eagle, cocked the hammer, and thumbed off the safety.
    “Three!”
    The cops threw open the doors and lit up their jackets, the Animals leaned in.
    Six surprised kittens and a mother cat looked out from a box set on stacks of five-gallon detergent buckets.
    They all looked around, not saying anything. The Animals lowered their weapons. The cops turned off their jackets.
    “Well, that’s embarrassing,” said Troy Lee.
    “Biscuit,” Marvin woofed.
    They all looked at Marvin. “You suck, Marvin,” said Cavuto. “Those are normal cats.”
    Marvin didn’t understand. He had followed the trail, he had made the signal when he came to the end of the trail. Where was his biscuit?
    “Bad dog, Marvin,” said Lash.
    Marvin growled at him, then turned to Rivera and woofed, “Biscuit.” He was not a bad dog. It wasn’t his fault that no one had taught him how to point up. It wasn’t his fault they weren’t looking up, past the top of the shed, up the wall, to the roof, four stories up. Couldn’t they hear them?
    “Biscuit,” he woofed.
    CHET
    Chet watched the vampire hunters moving below. He understood what they were doing and how badly they were doing it. The other cats had moved away from the edgeof the roof, the smell of flame, the sunlight jackets, and the dog had made them weary. A few of them were survivors of the encounter with the little Japanese swordsman, and Asians in general still freaked them out a little. Although they couldn’t see the life auras that a human vampire could, it was still in their instinct as predators to take the weak and the sick, and the group below appeared to be neither.
    Chet, on the other hand, was less and less of a cat every night. He was bigger than Marvin now, and had lost most of his cat instinct, and whatever he was now, it wasn’t a cat. Although he was still a predator, words kept invading his mind, sounds that produced pictures in his mind. Abstract concepts whirled around in sound and symbols. His kitty brain had been rewired with human DNA, and what had resulted was not only an alpha predator, but a creature with the capacity for revenge,