Bite Me

pulled herself away and leapt at Drew, who was leveling a Super Soaker. Lash yanked the spear gun and the nylon line whipped her around. Jeff and Troy Lee opened garden sprayers on her from the front, while Drew unloaded the Super Soaker from the back.
    She screeched and writhed in the streams, but her flesh was coming off in great slimy chunks, as if she were wax and had been dropped into a foundry furnace. It was all over in ten seconds, and every item for twenty feet in either direction had been knocked off the shelves, the Emperor was on his back, unable to right himself, and the ancient vampire was a puddle of red goo that still bubbled as it broke down.
    “What do you know,” said Troy Lee. “Grandma’s tea worked.”
    Lash nodded and threw the spear gun to the floor with a clank. “Clint! Clean up on aisle four!”
    JODY
    Because she never liked going to the gym, Jody decided to stake out the Raven from the roof of an office building next door instead of on the Bay Club. The fact that she’d been able to leap from brick balcony to brick balcony until she was on the roof, six floors up, proved what she had always maintained, at least when she was alive: working out is narcissistic bullshit. She almost wished that the girls she’d worked with at the Transamerica Building could see her now—all of them stuffing themselves into Spandex and nylon after work and heading to the Bay Club or 24 Hour Fitness in hope of meeting someone who wasn’t a creep and, in the case of the Bay Club members, someone who was rich.
    She imagined them saying, “Do you want to come with us? We can get you a guest pass. Mohitos afterward?”
    “No thanks,” she’d say. “I’m going to go bench-press an Audi a couple of sets, grab the satchel with the three-hundred grand I stashed on a roof up the street, and go back to my loft and fuck my immortal boyfriend until dawn.”
    Okay, that wasn’t really what she was going to do, but she for goddamn sure was not going to the gym and getting all sweaty so she could meet guys. She didn’t even want to be on the roof of the gym, knowing that there was unprotected fitness going on below.
    She could see the Raven across the Embarcadero, and the Rasta kid was doing nautical stuff with different instruments. At least she thought he was doing nautical stuff. He could have just been dicking around with expensive equipment. None of the vampires was there. There were lights coming from a few of the ports below the cockpit, but she didn’t see any movement. The sense of immediacy that had driven her here had evaporated somewhat. She thought about calling Tommy, but didn’t have any idea what his new cell phone number might be. She used Abby’s phone and dialed Foo’s number, but it went to voice mail, which she didn’t see as a good sign.
    If the other two vampires were out of the ship, and she had to wait for them to return, she’d never get a shot at them from this far away. If they didn’t come back until dawn, she’d be caught outside at sunrise. There was a warehouse by the pier, perhaps that roof. And she’d set herself a time limit. If they didn’t show by a half-hour before sunup, she’d head back to the loft. Even at a slow, human jog she’d make it in plenty of time.
    She’d have to sneak down the back of the building, though. You didn’t want people to see you jumping two or three stories at a time. She understood why the vampires had to keep their secret, she really did, but not at the expense of them killing her friends.
    “Good view?” A woman’s voice came from behind her.
    Jody rolled and whipped around, pulling Foo’s UV laser from the waistband of her jeans. She didn’t have on the sun-glasses so she pointed the laser at the figure coming across the roof toward her, closed her eyes, turned away, then fired. The laser buzzed out a blue beam that lasted two seconds, then started making a high-pitched whining sound as it recharged its capacitor.
    “Oh, very nice,” came the voice.
    It was definitely a woman, amazing figure, wearing a skin-tight black suit, a black mask, and sunglasses, and carrying some sort of weapon. She looked like a superhero.
    Jody was on her feet, in a crouch. The laser thing was still charging, but maybe it would fire a weaker blast, give her time to move.
    “Nah, nah, nah.” The woman raised her weapon, and fired. A stuttering stream of pellets peppered Jody’s arm and she lost hold of the laser. Jody felt as if her arm were