Bite Me

conscience, and for the most part, treated him with the deference they might pay royalty, despite the fact that he was a raving loon.
    The street was deserted, but a half a block away the Emperor saw the three-wheeled cart of an S.F.P.D. parking enforcement officer, stopped behind an illegally parked Audi. The cart’s rotating yellow caution lights chased themselves around the surrounding buildings like drunken, jaundiced Tinkerbells, but there was no officer in sight.
    “Strange. It’s long past time when a meter maid should be working. Perhaps we should investigate, gents.”
    But before he could stand, Bummer leapt out of the Emperor’s pocket and made a beeline for the cart, trumpeting himself into the charge with a staccato barking fit. Lazarus took off after the black-and-white fur-rocket, and the oldman ambled along behind, as fast as his great, arthritic legs would carry him.
    They found Bummer on the far side of the Audi, snorting and snuffling inside an empty police uniform, and covered with a fine gray powder. The Emperor’s eyes went wide. He backed across the sidewalk and stood against the fire door of one of the industrial lofts that lined the street. He had seen this before. He knew the signs. But when he had seen the old vampire and his companions board an enormous yacht in the Bay over a month ago, he thought his city rid of the bloodsucking fiends. What now?
    There was a crackling static noise from the police cart: a radio. Call it in . Alert his people to the danger. He rolled to the cart, fumbled with the door catch, and reached for the microphone.
    “Hello,” he said into the microphone. “This is the Emperor of San Francisco, Emperor of San Francisco, protector of Alcatraz, Sausalito, and Treasure Island, and I’d like to report a vampire.” The radio continued to crackle and distant voices ghosted through the ether, uninterrupted.
    Lazarus padded to the old man’s side and barked furiously, “You have to push the button. You have to push the button.” Unfortunately, while the noble retriever understood English, he only spoke dog, and the Emperor did not get the instruction.
    “Button! Button! Button! Button!” Bummer barked, springing up and down in front of the police cart. He scurried around to the door and jumped in on the Emperor’s lap to show him.
    “Yeah, that helps,” growled Lazarus sarcastically. Golden retrievers are not a very sarcastic breed, and he felt a little ashamed and, well, catlike, using that tone of voice. “Okay. Button! Button! Button! Uh-oh.”
    “Button! Button! Button! Uh-oh, what?” barked Bummer.
    A short ruff from the retriever: “Cat.”
    Lazarus boiled out a low growl and laid his ears back against his head.
    The Emperor saw two of them: cats, coming down the sidewalk toward them. But they didn’t look quite natural. The light from the police cart was reflecting back from the cats’ eyes like red coals.
    A screech, there were two more coming across the street. Lazarus turned to face them, snarling now. A chorus of hisses from behind. The Emperor looked in the rearview mirror to see three more cats stalking from behind.
    “Quick, Lazarus, in the cart. Up, boy, in the cart.”
    Lazarus was spinning now, trying to watch all of the cats at once, warning them off with bared teeth and bristled hair. But the cats came on, baring their own teeth.
    “Come now,” said the Emperor into the microphone.
    Something landed hard on the roof of the cart and Bummer yelped. Another thump and the Emperor looked back to see a large cat in the bed of the cart, coming up on two legs and trying to claw around the back window. The old man pulled the door shut. “Run, Lazarus, run!”
    Lazarus caught the first cat in his jaws and was shaking it furiously when the rest fell upon him.
    STEVE
    “There’s nefarious shit afoot, Foo,” said Abby. “Bring portable sun and fry these nosferatu kitties before they nom everyone in the ’hood.”
    Steven “Foo Dog” Wong had no idea what his girlfriend, Abby, was talking about, and it wasn’t the first time. In fact, much of the time he had no idea what she was talking about, but he had learned if he was patient, and listened, and more important, agreed with her, she would mercilessly sex him up, which he liked quite a bit, and occasionally he got the message. He used the same strategy with his maternal grandmother (without the sexing-up part), who spoke an obscure, country dialect of Cantonese, that sounded to