Bite Me

partner. “Fifteen unplayed messages? Are we out of the service area or something?”
    “You turned it off when we were zeroing in on that litter of dangerous kittens.”
    Rivera tried to drink his coffee while handling the phone and ended up pulling the car over to the curb. “They’re all from the Emperor. Something about a ship down at Pier Nine being full of old vampires.”
    “No,” said Cavuto. “There are no more vampires until I’ve had two full cups of coffee and a healthy piss. That’s my personal rule.”
    Cavuto keyed the radio and checked into dispatch. They did most of their communications by cell phone these days, but there were still rules. If you were a rolling unit, dispatch needed to know where you were.
    “Rivera and Cavuto,” said the dispatcher. “I have you guys tagged to call if there are any cases of cats attacking humans, is that right?”
    “Roger, dispatch.”
    “Well, live the dream, Inspector, we have report of a giant cat attacking a man at Baker and Beach. We have a unit on the scene reporting nothing.”
    Cavuto looked at Rivera. “That’s the Palace of Fine Arts. The Marina is new territory.”
    “There might not be anything now. The uniforms don’t know to look for clothes with dust and I don’t want them to. Tell them we’re on the way.”
    “Dispatch, we are responding. Tell unit on scene that we’ll take care of it. Part of an ongoing investigation of a 5150 making false reports.” Cavuto grinned and looked at his partner.
    “Nice improvisation.”
    “Yeah, but I think this cat might be out of the bag, Rivera.”
    “I hope not.”
    They rolled up to the great faux stone classical dome, the only building left from the World Exposition of 1911, when San Francisco was trying to show the world that it had recovered from the earthquake of ’06. The uniform unit was on the far side of the reflection pool, standing by their squad car. Cavuto waved them on. “We got this, guys. Thanks.”
    What there wasn’t, was a huge shaved vampire cat attacking a guy.
    “You think it’s a hoax?” asked Cavuto.
    “Pretty outrageous coincidence if it is.”
    Cavuto got out of the car and let Marvin out, who waited for his leash to be attached, then dragged Cavuto over to a tree by the pond to have a wee. Swans who had settled under the trees for the night stirred and gave Marvin dirty looks.
    “Nothing here,” said Cavuto. “Marvin’s not doing his signal thing.”
    Rivera’s phone chirped and he looked at the screen. “It’s Allison Green, the creepy little Goth girl.”
    “If she called this in I will put her in Juvi overnight.”
    “Rivera,” Rivera said into the phone.
    “Turn your sun jackets on right now,” she said. “Right fucking now, both of you.”
    Rivera looked at Cavuto. “Turn on the LEDs on your coat, Nick.”
    “What?”
    “Do it. She’s not fucking with us.” Rivera hit the switch on the cuff of his sun jacket and the LEDs came on blindingly bright. A few blocks away they heard a man scream. Marvin barked.
    “Oh, très bon, cop. Byez,” Abby said. The line went dead.
    “The fuck was that about?” said Cavuto.
    ROLF
    Rolf was actually looking forward to shooting someone. After hundreds of years, you get bored with killing, with hunting. The three of them had gone through cycles of stealthy killing of the unwanted, to outright slaughter of whole villages, to long periods where there was no killing at all. But it had been fifty years since he’d actually had to shoot someone. The change of pace was nice.
    Of course, it was messy, bodies, waste of good blood, but better that than having policemen running around telling people about them. No matter what kind of debaucheries they had indulged in over the years, and there had been many kinds—these too went in cycles—the one rule they held fast to was “stay hidden.” And to stay hidden, you couldn’t permit yourself to get so bored that you didn’t care about living. Well, surviving.
    Maybe it was just the two cops from last night. Elijah, in a rare moment of lucidity finally admitted that there were only two policemen that he knew of, and because they hadtaken money from the sale of the old vampire’s art collection, they did not want the secret known. Clearly though, they were beyond their depth with the cats.
    He and Bella had made short work of the smaller cats. They used rapid-fire pellet guns, nearly silent, that fired pellets containing a liquid that destroyed vampire