Christopher Moore - Bite Me

“Ouch. I didn’t think you were a slut.”

“I know, that’s was our bittersweet break-up kiss. I will go grieve now until Lord Flood awakes and we resume the search for the Countess. I’m starving. Do you want to go get a sammy and a Starbucks? I have like ten grand in my messenger.”

He awoke at sundown with her face in his mind’s eye and panic running up his spine. He bolted out of the bedroom into the great room, where Abby was hanging up the phone.

“That was the Countess,” Abby said. “She’s okay. She’ll be here in a few minutes.”

“And you’re okay? You’re alive. You have heat.” He could see the heat coming off her and the healthy life aura around her.

“Yeah, thanks. Foo destroyed my tail.” She turned and looked to the kitchen. “The traitorous racist heartbreaking fucktard!”

“Little harsh,” Tommy said. “He saved your life.”

“Heartbroken. Grieving. Inconsolable. Tail’s gone. Going to have to get totally repierced and tattooed.”

“But you showered and your eye makeup isn’t all racoony anymore.”

“Thanks. I like the blood splatters on your pants.”

“Hi,” said Foo Dog from the kitchen, where he was filling a syringe with what looked like blood. “I have your serum ready, whenever you’re ready.”

“I’m not ready.”

“You have to, you know.”

The doorbell buzzed. Tommy keyed the intercom.

“It’s me,” Jody said.

He buzzed her in and she was at the top of the steps in an instant, then kissing him. He pushed her back and looked at her clothes, shredded at the elbows and knees, stained with blood.

“What happened to you? Where were you?”

“One of the old vampires? She ambushed me on a roof across from the black ship. That weapon they have did this. It’s horrible. We can’t let them get near us with that thing.”

“How did you get away?”

“I was hiding at the bottom of a pool, trying to figure out what to do, when Chet jumped her. I got out of there while Chet was dry-humping her.”

“Yeah. Go Chet!” said Abby.

“Abby!” Jody ran to Abby and hugged her, kissed her on the forehead. “I was so worried about you. You’re alive. Really alive.”

“Yeah. Foo changed me back. I want to be nosferatu again.”

They all turned to face Foo, who was still in the kitchen. “Can’t do it, Abs. You won’t survive a second time. I tried it on the rats. You’re only human.”

“Doomed,” Abby said.

“Jody,” Tommy said, “what about the vampire who attacked you?”

“Gone. Destroyed. Someone rescued me just before she killed me. So there’s only one left, right?”

“They’re all gone,” Tommy said. “Rivera called. The Animals got the other one. There’s only Elijah on the black ship.”

Jody put her hand to his face. “Tommy, we have to talk.”

“I know,” he said.

Foo Dog said, “Jody, I have no way of knowing when Tommy might, uh, expire. He could go faster than Abby was going.”

“Come with me.” Jody took Tommy’s hand and led him into the bedroom. “I’ve got to show you something. You two, do not come into this room, do you hear me?”

“We can’t make crazy monkey love now, Jody. They’ll hear us, and we usually end up breaking all the furniture.”

“You learned how to go to mist, when you were with Chet. You said you learned?”

“Yeah, that’s how I got these clothes. They’re stupid, aren’t they?”

“Tommy, the vampire, the old one, her name was Bella, she told me something. Kiss me. Kiss me and go to mist. Don’t think about it, don’t stop, just melt into the kiss.”

She kissed him and felt him as he faded from solid, and followed him exactly, until they were a single entity, sharing every secret, every fear, every victory, everything, the very essence of who they were, wrapping around each other, winding through each other as each lived the other’s history, as every experience they had, they had together, with comfort and joy, with abandon and passion, without words or boundaries, and as often happens to two in love, time lost all meaning, and they might have stayed there, like that, forever.

When they finally fell out of it they were naked, on the bed, giggling like insane children.

“Wow,” Tommy said first.

“Yeah,” she said.

“So, Okata saved you?”

“Yeah, he needed to save someone. He had always needed to save someone.”

“I know. I’m okay with it, you know?”

“Yeah, I know,” she said.

“I can’t do it, Jody. It’s amazing, and I adore you, but I can’t do it.”

“I know,” she said, because she did. “This is me now, Tommy. I like this, I like the night, I like the power. I like not being afraid. I was never anything until I was this. I love being this.”

“I know,” he said. He knew that she had always been cute, but not beautiful. Always a little dissatisfied with who she was, worried about what men, or her mother, or anyone thought of her. But she was beautiful now. Strong. She was exactly what she wanted to be.

He said, “I need the words, Jody. It’s who I am.”

“I know.”

“I’m not a vampire. I’m a writer. I came here to be a writer. I want to use gelatinous in a sentence. And not just once, but over and over. On the roof, under the moon, in an elevator, on the washing machine, and when I’m exhausted, I want to lay in my own gelatinous sweat and use gelatinous in a sentence until I pass out.”

Jody said, “I don’t think gelatinous means what you think it means.”

“It doesn’t matter. It’s what I need to do. I need to write something. I need to write my little Holocaust girl story.”

“I thought it was a little girl growing up in the segregated South.”

“Yeah, whatever. It’s important.”

“You know I know this already, right?”

“I know, but that’s what I’m saying, I need the words. I love you, but I need the words.”

“I know,” she said. “Let’s go let Foo change you back into a word guy.”

“And you’re going to go away?”

“I have to.”

“I know,” he said. “You know, I think that merging might have ruined me.”

“Why?”

“Because you’re lying there completely naked and I don’t want to sex you up.”

“Really?”

“Let me think about it. No, false alarm, I’m okay.”

“C’mere, writer boy. Let’s break some furniture.”

“Praise Jah’s sweet love for given us a fired-haired snowy biscuit,” Kona said. “Welcome, me sweet deadie sistah. Welcome aboard.”

“Mistress,” Jody said. “Sweet deadie mistress.”

“Troot, mistress. Welcome aboard.”

The ship was a wonder of technology and luxury. Kona had lent Foo Dog his security bracelet and Foo had gone aboard and reset the security so the ship didn’t kill anyone who set foot on board, then he and Kona had walked her through the ship showing her the thousand different ways it had been set to kill a person. It was an elegant, redundant death trap.

“You’ll want to turn the systems back on,” Foo had said. “There’s a reason they had this kind of security.”

Jody said good-bye and led him off the ship. Now that she had one of his UV lasers in one hand and a number of vacuum blood vials in the other she followed the ersatz Rastaman down to the deepest chamber of the ship, where Foo had not gone. They approached a wide, white, waterproof hatch with a small porthole and a heavy stainless-steel wheel securing it.

Kona hit a light switch. “That make just a wee UV, mistress. Make dat dogheart bastid turn solid so he can’t sneak out.”