Bite Me

men, weren’t they? She knew she could hold the rapt attention of a young man. She’d take each one, drain him without the others even knowing what happened, then share the experience with Rolf and Bella tomorrow night. It was always fun to bring something new and dangerous to their night.
    She wouldn’t be able to wear her special suit, or take any of the weapons, but it was just as well. She couldn’t leave bodies. Seven. She’d be as full as a tick, ready to pop. She checked that none of them was by the door, hid her weapons under the shopping carts, then lay down and oozed out of the Kevlar bodysuit, across the sidewalk, and under the door.
    Rock and roll was blasting out of the PA system, filling the store with a relentless chainsaw rhythm guitar that drowned all other sound. She swirled around the registers, then started to make her way across the aisles. The firsttwo were empty, then in the third, the old man was sitting all by himself on a milk crate. Scented candles were lit up and down either side of the aisle, as if someone had laid out a landing strip. She could sense the others around her, but her perceptions weren’t as sharp in mist form and the odor and heat from the candles made it nearly impossible to tell how far away they were. Their heartbeats and breathing were lost in the music, but there was blood in the air. All over in the air. She floated up to the ceiling, where she could see over the tops of the shelf gondolas. There were two of them working on the other side of the store, bobbing in time to the music.
    Rolf would have wafted back out the door and called the others, and Bella would have drawn an elaborate plan to stalk them, one at a time, and pick them off when they were alone, but that was exactly why she wasn’t going to do either of those things.
    As she pulled herself into solid form she felt a horrible wrenching in her chest, like her heart caving in on itself. Not a physical pain, but a sudden absence. One of the others was suddenly not there. Rolf. Just not there. She stood there in front of the old man, naked, shaking, trying to bring herself back to the hunt.
    “Don’t scream,” she said.
    THE EMPEROR
    He didn’t like that the men were locked in the walk-in cooler, and he didn’t like that the Animals had tied him up,rubbed liver and steaks all over him, and set him on a milk box, but he had done his duty to his city. He had alerted the only people who would listen to the presence of the black ship, told them what the strange faux-Hawaiian had said about the old vampires coming for them, and he could have some peace of mind in that. They didn’t have to duct tape his hands so tightly, and tape his ankles to the milk box. They could have just asked. Ah, youth.
    She materialized about twelve feet in front of him, nude, nubile, and athletic, so black she might have been made of polished ironwood, yet the death-pallor made her lips appear lavender. Her hair was trimmed close to her scalp, her eyes appeared to be gold, but he couldn’t tell for sure. She shivered for a moment, as if a current was being applied to her body. He watched her muscles tensing and relaxing, rippling under her skin in waves.
    Then she stopped shaking and opened her eyes.
    “Don’t scream,” she said. Blood tears formed in the corners of her eyes.
    “Oh my, if you aren’t lovely,” said the Emperor.
    She smiled and he saw fangs there, and he suddenly felt as if he might wet himself.
    She moved a few steps closer to him. “Are those steaks on your shoulders?” she said.
    “Yes. There’s liver in my pockets as well.”
    She cocked her head as if listening. “Where are the others?”
    “I don’t know,” he said.
    Her hand shot out and in an instant her fingers were wrapped in his beard and she was pulling his head back, not yanking, but pulling with an irresistible strength, as if he’d been hitched to a power winch. “Where are they?”
    He could feel his vertebrae cracking, feel her raking her fangs over his neck. Then the sound of a high-pressure gas burst and she wasn’t there, and there was a length of heavy nylon line in the space where her face had been.
    “Down!” came Lash’s voice, as he, Troy Lee, Jeff, and Drew all rolled out of the shelves where they had been hiding behind rows of toilet paper and paper towels.
    The vampire woman’s head was pinned to a bale of paper towels with the stainless-steel spear from Barry’s spear gun. She screeched like a wildcat and