Christopher Moore - Bite Me

And I go to reach for the button on my sleeve, but he’s on me, biting my neck. He’s so strong it’s like trying to fight a statue, and I can hear Jody screaming, and the skin on my neck tearing in shreds. And my vision is like tunneling down to dark, and I’m thinking, I’m fucking dying? What the fuck’s up with that?

Then there’s this loud clang, like a bell, and I feel Tommy pulled off me. And light sort of comes back on. I can see the Countess standing there, holding Foo’s stainless-steel floor lamp like it’s a lance, and she’s obviously just smacked Tommy with it hard enough to knock him off of me. But instead of going at her, he comes scurrying right back at me, smearing blood all over the floor and everything.

And the Countess catches him by the neck from behind and swings him around and out through the broken windows, and the metal frames and everything go with him.

So there’s the scream again, and I’m holding my neck, and I sort of crawl to the big hole that used to be the front wall of the loft, and Tommy is in the middle of the street below, naked, in a big splash of metal and glass, and he’s like crawling up the side of a car to his feet.

And Jody’s beside me. And she’s all, “Tommy! Tommy!”

But he’s limping off down the alley across the street, walking like his legs are still broken, but maybe healing or something as he goes, but hurting like holy-fuck.

So Jody takes my head and turns it to the side and pulls my hand away from the bite. And I feel like I’m going to pass out. But she bends down and licks my neck, like three times, then puts my hand back on the wound.

“Hold that. It’ll heal in a second.” Then she shook me and was all, “Now, where the fuck are my clothes?”

And I’m all, “Under the bed. Vacuum bags.”

I think I passed out then, because next thing I remember, the Countess is standing there in jeans and boots and her red leather jacket, and she’s stuffing bags of blood into my biohazard messenger bag.

And she’s all, “I’m taking this.”

And I’m all, “’Kay.” Then I’m like, “You saved me.”

“I’m taking half the money, too,” she said.

I’m all, “You can’t go. Where will you go? Who will take care of you?”

“Like you did?” she says.

“I’m so sorry,” I said.

And she’s all, “I know. I have to find him. I brought him into this. He never wanted any of this. He just wanted someone to love him.”

So she starts to leave, without even saying good-bye, and I’m all, “Countess, wait, there’s vampyre cats.”

And she stops. And she turns all, “Whaaaa?”

And Jared is all nodding and going, “Really. Really.”

And I’m, “Chet turned a bunch of kitties into vampyre kitties. They attacked the Emperor last night and they ate a meter maid.”

And she was all, “Oh, for fuck’s sake.”

And I’m all, “I know, I know.”

Then she was gone. And Jared was like in the middle of catching some escaped rats and he’s all, “You guys are going to totally lose your security deposit.”

Jody is just gone. Gone. On her own in the night. It’s like Lord Byron said in that poem “Darkness.”

Darkness had no need

Of aid from them-

She was the Universe.

I’d like to go bone my sister now.

I’m paraphrasing.

If you’re looking for a great taco in San Francisco, you go to the Mission district. If you want a plate of pasta, you go to North Beach. Need some dim sum, powdered shark vagina, or ginseng root? Chinatown is your man. Hankering for stupidly expensive shoes? Union Square. Want to enjoy a mojito with an attractive, young professional crowd, well you’ll want to head for the Marina or the SOMA. But if you’re looking for some crack, a one-legged whore, or a guy sleeping in a puddle of his own urine, you can’t beat the Tenderloin, which was where Rivera and Cavuto were investigating the report of a missing person. Well-persons.

“The theater district seems somewhat deserted today,” said Cavuto as he pulled the unmarked Ford into a red zone in front of the Sacred Heart Mission. The Tenderloin was, in fact, also the theater district, which was convenient if you wanted to see a first-rate show in addition to drinking a bottle of Thunderbird and being stabbed repeatedly.

“They’re all at their country homes in Sonoma, you think?” Rivera said, with a sense of doom rising inside him like nausea. Normally at this time of the morning, the Tenderloin sidewalks ran with grimy rivers of homeless guys looking for their first drink of the day or a place to sleep. Down here you did most of your sleeping during the day. Night was too dangerous. There should have been a line around the block at Sacred Heart, people waiting for the free breakfast, but the line barely reached out the door.

As they walked into the Mission, Cavuto said, “You know, this might be the perfect time for you to get one of those one-legged whores. You know, with demand down, you could probably get a freebie, being a cop and all.”

Rivera stopped, turned, and looked at his partner. A dozen raggedy men in the line looked, too, as Cavuto was blocking the light in the doorway like a great, rumpled eclipse.

“I will bring the little Goth girl to your house and film it when she makes you cry.”

Cavuto slumped. “Sorry. It’s all kind of getting to me. Teasing is the only way I know to take my mind off of it.”

Rivera understood. For twenty-five years he’d been an honest cop. Had never taken a dime in bribes, never used unnecessary force, had never given special favors to powerful people, which is why he was still an inspector, but then the redhead happened, and her v -word condition, and the old one and his yacht full of money, and it wasn’t like they could tell anyone anyway. The two hundred thousand that he and Cavuto had taken wasn’t really a bribe, it was, well, it was compensation for mental duress. It was stressful carrying a secret that you could not only not tell, but that no one would believe if you did.

“Hey, you know why there’s so many one-legged whores in the Tenderloin?” asked one guy who was wearing a down sleeping bag like a cape.

Rivera and Cavuto turned toward the hope of comic relief like flowers to the sun.

“Fuggin’ cannibals,” said the sleeping bag guy.

Not funny at all. The cops trod on. “If you only knew,” said Rivera over his shoulder.

“Hey, where is everybody?” asked a woman in a dirty orange parka. “You fuckers doing one of your round-ups?”

“Not us,” said Cavuto.

They moved past the cafeteria line and a sharp young Hispanic man in a priest’s collar caught their eyes over the heads of the diners and motioned for them to come around the steam tables to the back. Father Jaime. They’d met before. There were a lot of murders in the Tenderloin, and only a few sane people who knew the flow of the neighborhood.

“This way,” said Father Jaime. He led them through a prep kitchen and dish room into a cold concrete hallway that led to their shower room. The father extended a set of keys that were tethered to his belt on a cable and opened a vented green door. “They started bringing it in a week ago, but this morning there must have been fifty people turning stuff in. They’re freaked.”

Father Jaime flipped on a light and stood aside. Rivera and Cavuto entered a room painted sunny yellow and lined with battleship gray metal shelves. There was clothing piled on every horizontal surface, all covered, in varying degrees, with a greasy gray dust. Rivera picked up a quilted nylon jacket that was partially shredded and spattered with blood.

“I know that jacket, Inspector. Guy who owns it is named Warren. Fought in Nam.”