Bite Me

left elbow stopped working.
    “Fuck, how much ammo does that thing have?”
    “More than I’ll need to turn you to soup,” Bella said. “Oh look, no swimming pool.”
    “Shame, I guess you won’t get to enjoy another kitty fuck.”
    The gun spat. Jody’s right arm folded behind her with a splash of pain.
    Bella ran her nails over her breast. “Didn’t happen. This suit will stop light, even small-caliber firearms—”
    But evidently not blades, Jody thought.
    Because she was a vampire, and things happened more slowly to her predator eyes, she saw the blade come over Bella’s shoulder, enter her body at her left trapezius, and zip across her chest and her kitty-dick-proof suit to exit just under her right arm. Bella’s head and right arm slid right, her left arm and the rest of her body fell left. She had a rather surprised expression on her face that stayed there, even as her mouth continued to work soundlessly, as if she really, desperately wanted to finish that last sentence.
    “Hello,” Okata said.
    Jody looked past the swordsman to the sign on the corner that read: JACKSON STREET .

24
A Love Story?
    JODY
    It wasn’t the first time she’d crept out of a guy’s apartment in the middle of the night with her shoes in her hand, but it was the first time where the decision had been because she didn’t want to kill the guy. He was so little, so frail, so lonely. She had taken people before who had the black ring in their life aura like Okata’s, and they had thanked her. It had been mercy, relief, the end of pain, yet she couldn’t make herself do it. She’d left him there, not to die alone, although he probably would, and not because he had been so kind to her, saving her, which he had, but because the prints weren’t finished. He was a strange little man, a hermit and a swordsman, and he carried some great pain in him, but above all that, he was an artist, and she couldn’t bear to stop that. So she’d left.
    Now she was back.
    He sheathed his sword and tried to lift her to her feet. Her limbs still felt like they were on fire, and she could move only her right arm on her own. She nodded toward Bella’s pellet weapon. “Give it to me, Okata.” She made a grasping motion.
    He leaned her in a sitting position against the wrought-iron railing that surrounded the steps to his apartment, then retrieved the weapon and fit it into her hand. Then he held the barrel firmly and said something stern in Japanese.
    “No, I’m not going to off myself,” she said, and she smiled.
    He let go of the barrel of the gun and she sprayed Bella’s corpse with pellets until the gun stopped firing, then she threw the gun over the rail and motioned for Okata to help her into his apartment. Bella’s body was nothing more than slimy chunks of meat by the time Okata got her through the door. In the morning, when the sun hit it, there would be only a charred stain on the sidewalk with burned gobs of plastic that had been a Kevlar suit, shoes, and sunglasses.
    Okata helped her to the shower, where he rinsed out her wounds, then dried her off and retrieved the last bit of the pig’s blood, which he’d kept in the refrigerator.
    Jody felt a horrible twinge of guilt. He’d been waiting for her, probably had been outside looking for her when Bella had chased her around the corner.
    After she drank the blood, and her legs had healed enough to hold her weight, she went to his workbench andturned on the light. The last print was there. Not finished, but two of the woodblocks had been finished, the black and the red. There she was, in the shower, her red hair streaming behind her in the water, black bits of ash puddling at her feet.
    Okata was beside her, looking at the print critically, as if there was something he might have to fix at any second. She bent down and looked back from the angle of the print into his face.
    “Hey,” she said. “Thank you.”
    “Okay,” he said.
    “Sorry,” she said.
    FOO DOG
    Abby lay on the futon in the loft’s great room. The empty rat cages were stacked in the corner of the room and Foo had unscrewed one of the plywood panels over the windows to let some light in. He’d been monitoring Abby’s vital signs since six in the morning. At least she had vital signs. She hadn’t even started with those. At noon, she opened her eyes.
    “Foo, you dick, I’m mortal.”
    “You’re okay!” He threw his arms around her.
    She pushed him away. “Where’s Tommy? Where’s the