Christopher Moore - Bite Me

Now Chet hunted the night, taking down nearly any warm-blooded creature he encountered: rats, birds, squirrels, cats, dogs, and even the occasional human. At first it had only been drunks and other homeless, and the first time he had drained one, his old friend William, who turned to dust in front of him, Chet yowled, ran, and hid under a Dumpster for the rest of the night and all of the next day. There was no regret, simply hunger and elation of the blood rush. It was beyond the satisfaction of the kill, it was positively sexual, something Chet had never known as a normal cat, as he’d been neutered by the animal shelter when still a kitten. But along with speed, strength, and senses far more sensitive than even a human-based vampire, Chet, like his human counterparts, found that he was physically restored to perfection. In other words, his junk was working.

He found that soon after the kill he desperately needed to hump something, and the more squirmy and wailing, the better. Above the smells of bus fumes, cooking food, and urine-bathed curbs that pervaded the City, he caught the scent of a female in heat. She might be a mile away, but given his newly heightened senses, he’d find her.

A wave of excitement undulated under the fur of his spine, fur that had mostly grown back since the humans had shaved him, mated in front of him, and drank his blood, which served to traumatize his little kitty consciousness before he was turned vampire, and motivated a whole new feeling he’d grown into as a vampire cat: vengeance. For since his metamorphosis, it wasn’t just his senses that had expanded. His brain, which before had run a loop of “eat-nap-crap, repeat,” was now growing into a whole new awareness, getting bigger, even as Chet grew. He was a good sixty pounds now, and roughly as smart as a dog, where before he’d only been a little brighter than a brick. Dog. The hated. There was dog on the air. Coming closer. He could smell it-them-two of them. And now he could hear them. He arose from his butt bath and screeched like an electrified lynx. In response, the neighborhood echoed with a chorus of yowls from a dozen other vampire cats.

“Steady, fellows,” said the Emperor. He laid his hand across the neck of the golden retriever and scratched under the chin of the Boston terrier, who squirmed in the great pocket of the Emperor’s overcoat, looking like a frantic, black-and-white, bug-eyed kangaroo mutant.

“Cat! Cat! Cat! Cat! Cat!” barked Bummer, with a spray of doggie slobber across the Emperor’s palm. “Cat! Murder, pain, fire, evil, cat! Can’t you smell them? Everywhere! Must chase, chase, chase, bite, bite, bite, let me go you insane, oblivious old man, I’m trying to save you, for the love of God, CAT! CAT! CAT!”

Unfortunately, Bummer only spoke dog, and while the Emperor could tell that the Boston terrier was upset, he had no idea why. (Anyone who translates dog knows that only about a third of what Bummer said actually meant anything. The rest was just noise he needed to make. Human speech is about the same.) Lazarus, the golden retriever, having battled vampires on and off for the last two months, and being steady by nature, was much calmer about the whole thing, but despite Bummer’s tendency to overreact, he had to admit, the smell of cat was tall in the air, and what was more disturbing, it wasn’t just cat, it was dead cat. Dead cat walking. Wait, what was that? Not cat-cats. Oh, this was not good.

“He’s right about the cat,” Lazarus ruffed, nudging the Emperor’s leg. “We should get out of this neighborhood, maybe go over to North Beach and see if anyone dropped a beef jerky or something. I could sure use a beef jerky. Or we can stay and die. Whatever. I’m good with it.”

“Easy, men,” said the Emperor, alert now that something was amiss. He knelt down, his knees creaking like rusted hinges, and as he looked around, kneaded the spot between Bummer’s ears as if he were readying to make doggy-brain biscuits. He was a great, woolly, thunderstorm of a man-broad shouldered and gray bearded, fine witted and fiercely loyal to the people of his city. He had lived on the streets of San Francisco as long as anyone could remember, and while tourists saw him as a raggedy, homeless wretch, the locals viewed him as a fixture, a rolling landmark, a spirit, and a 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 old man 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!”