Bite Me

on fire. She looked to see ten tiny holes, each smoking, with a clear liquid, not blood running out of it.
    The woman whipped off her hood and sunglasses, but kept the weapon trained on Jody. She was stunning, a pale, Mediterranean beauty with waist-length hair like black silk and almost impossibly large eyes. “That light thing is sweet, but you should get one of these,” she said. “It’s basically just a pellet gun modified to fire chemical pellets, but the chemical, there’s the magic.”
    “It burns like hell,” Jody said.
    “Yes, it does. And I could cut you in half with this before you could get to me. That’s the problem with light weapons, they don’t have range and it doesn’t take much to stop them. Like this suit, for instance. I mean, this thing has aUV light on it, but that’s just to keep you from turning to mist. Can you do that, fledgling?”
    “That’s what Elijah called me,” Jody said.
    “That’s what he called all of us in our day.”
    Jody tried to figure out how to get to the woman. She knew she could move impossibly fast for a human, but this was another vampire, a very old vampire. She had once squared off against Elijah thinking all things were equal among vampires and he’d nearly ended her.
    As if she was reading Jody’s thoughts the vampire fired her weapon and Jody felt her other arm light up with pain from shoulder to elbow.
    “Ouch. Fuck. You bitch!”
    “Bella, not bitch. And what were you going to do to me, fledgling? Do you have any idea what you’ve done? We have been together hundreds of years. You ended pieces of history. You took parts of me.”
    She fired again and Jody’s right leg gave way.
    “What do you mean, pieces?”
    “You don’t know what it is to merge with another being then? With a lover? We were lovers, Rolf, Makeda, and me, for hundreds of years, and now they are gone.”
    “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
    “Both are gone, I could feel it. Funny, I didn’t know I was always aware of their presence until they were gone. Not an hour ago. I’m alone now. I should let you live if only because we’ve lost two. There are fewer than a hundred of us, fledgling, and you might have been one of us.”
    “I didn’t know,” Jody said.
    “I don’t even care anymore. Maybe I’ll just kill you and lie down and wait for the sun to come up. I’ll never even know what happened.”
    “Trust me, that’s not as painless as you think it is,” Jody said.
    “Don’t!” said Bella. She raised her weapon again but this time, when the little UV light came on, Jody pushed off with her good leg, did a high backflip, and fell six stories to the courtyard below.
    She expected to feel bone-crushing pain, hear the crackle of vertebrae, maybe even the crunch of her skull, but instead she felt warm water envelop her. She had landed in the Bay Club’s pool, which meant she must have launched herself a good forty feet away from the roof. Her predator mind, the one that had risen to tell her that the City was hers, now kicked in, assessing survival. She was under water, that was good. The pellet weapon wouldn’t penetrate the water more than a foot before losing it’s effectiveness. Plus, the pool water was flushing out whatever heinous chemical had been burning her. She felt herself healing, even as she hovered at the bottom of the pool. She could stay there indefinitely without breathing if necessary.
    The bad news was that Bella was still up there, and as soon as Jody left the water, the good news would end. It was very unlikely she could take the older vampire hand-to-hand, even if she could get past the pellet weapon, but she could run. Even if she was no faster than Bella, she knew this neighborhood. She’d worked here for years, andshe wasn’t three blocks from Okata’s dismal little apartment.
    She dug in her jacket pocket and found Abby’s phone. It was a weatherized model and the screen was still showing the time. Still four hours until sunup, and that was a guess. She had to cut it extremely close, but if she could bolt away from the Raven with just enough time to find shelter herself, but not enough time for Bella, she just might get away. And maybe in the meantime, Rivera and Cavuto would call out a S.W.A.T. team to storm the black ship. Or the Animals would blow it up, like they had Elijah’s yacht. Maybe Bella would dive into the water after her, although losing the high ground would take away a distinct advantage. Maybe