Christopher Moore - Bite Me

Lazarus caught the first cat in his jaws and was shaking it furiously when the rest fell upon him.

“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 the uninitiated like someone beating a chicken to death with a banjo. Just wait, and all would become clear. This time, however, Abby, whose tone ran from tragically romantic to passionately dismissive, was sounding much more urgent, and the patience gambit wasn’t going to work. Her voice in his Bluetooth headset was like having a malevolent fairy bite his ear.

“I’m in the middle of something, Abby. I’ll be home as soon as I finish up here.”

“Now, Foo. There’s a herd, or flock, or a-what do you call a bunch of kitties?”

“A box?” Foo offered.

“Fucktard!”

“A fucktard of kitties? Okay, sure, that could be it. A pride of lions, a murder of crows…”

“No. You fucktard! There’s a bunch of vampire kitties about to eat that crazy Emperor guy and his dogs right outside on the street. You need to come save them.”

“A bunch?” Steve was having a hard time getting his head around the idea. He’d only recently gotten his head around the idea of one vampire cat, but a bunch, well, that was more. He was just a couple of months away from having his master’s in biochem at age twenty-one-he wasn’t a fucktard. “Define a bunch,” he said.

“Many. I can’t count them because they’re stalking the golden retriever.”

“And how do you know they’re vampire kitties?”

“Oh, because I drew blood samples from them, ran it in that centrifuge thingy of yours, prepared some slides, and looked at the blood cell structure under a microscope, duh?”

“No, really,” he said. She was flunking high school biology, there’s no way she prepared blood slides. And besides-

“Of course not, you douche nozzle, I know they’re vampires because they’re stalking a golden retriever and a homeless fuck who’s hiding in the vaporized meter maid’s cart. That’s not standard kitty behavior.”

“Vaporized meter maid?”

“The one Chet ate-sucked her to dust. Come now, Foo, turn your sunbeam full-on and get your luscious ninja ass over here.” Steve had rigged the hatchback of his tricked-out Honda Civic with high intensity UV floodlights, which he’d used to flash fry a number of vampires, thus saving Abby and, for the first time in his life, having a girlfriend and someone who thought he was cool.

“I can’t come right away, Abby. The sun lights aren’t in the car.”

“Oh my fucking God, there’s some little old guy with a cane coming out of the alley. Well, he’s toast. Fuck!”

“What?”

“Fuck!”

“What?”

“Oh fuck!”

“What? What? What?”

“Oh-my-fucking-god-ponies-on-a-stick!”

“Abby, you need to be more specific.”

“It’s not a cane, Foo, it’s a sword.”

“What?”

“Come now, Foo. Bring the sun.”

“I can’t, Abby. My car is full of rats.”

The Emperor watched in horror as the cats leapt onto the back of his noble captain, Lazarus. The golden retriever shook himself violently, dislodging two of the fiends, but they were replaced by two more, and three more leapt on top of them, nearly bringing Lazarus to the ground. But they weren’t pack hunters, and as each maneuvered for the throat, another attacker was pushed off, his claws shredding both predator and prey as he fell.

Blood splattered the windscreen of the police cart. Bummer bounced around inside the tiny cabin, barking and snorting, and throwing himself against the glass, covering everything with angry dog slobber.

“Run, Lazarus, run!” The Emperor pounded on the glass, then pushed his forehead against it as he tried to squint back tears of anguish and frustration.

“No!” He would not do it. He would not watch his companion slaughtered. Outrage filled the ancient, boiler-tank of a man and condensed to courage. He was fighting the door latch when half a cat hit the side window and slid down trailing gore.

The door handle snapped off in his hand and he threw it to the floor of the cart. Bummer immediately attacked it and broke a tooth on the metal. Through the haze of blood spray, the Emperor could see another figure in the street. A boy-no, a man, but a small man, Asian-wearing a fluorescent orange porkpie hat and socks, tight plaid trousers that looked as if they’d been teleported out of the 1960s, and a gray cardigan sweater. The little man was brandishing a samurai sword, bringing it down again and again on Lazarus in quick snapping motions, but before he could cry out, the Emperor saw that the sword wasn’t even grazing the retriever’s coat. With each stroke one of the cats fell away, beheaded or cut in half, both halves squirming on the pavement.

There was no spinning, no wind-up or flourish to the swordsman’s movements, just grim efficiency, like a chef chopping vegetables. As his targets moved, he pivoted and stepped just enough to deliver the cut, then snapped the blade back and sent it to its next destination.

The weight and fury removed from his back, Lazarus looked around and whimpered, which translated to: “Whaaa-?”

The swordsman was relentless, step, cut, step, cut. Two cats came at him from under a Volvo and he quickly retreated and swung the sword in a quick, low arc that approximated a golf stroke and sent their heads back over the car to bounce off a metal garage door.

“Behind!” the Emperor warned.

But it was too late. The low attack had thrown the swordsman off-a heavy-bodied Siamese cat launched itself from the roof of a van across the street and landed on the little man’s back. The long sword was useless at such close range. The swordsman arched in pain, even as the Siamese clawed its way up his back. He spun, then threw his feet out before him and fell hard on his back, but the Siamese took the impact and dug its fangs into the swordsman’s shoulder. A half-dozen vampire cats came scurrying out from under cars toward the struggling swordsman.

Lazarus, his fur matted with blood, caught one of the cats by the haunch and bit to the bone. The cat screamed and squirmed in the retriever’s jaws, trying to claw his eyes. The others fell on the swordsman with fang and claw.

The Emperor threw his shoulder against the Plexiglas door of the police cart, but there was no room to move, to gain momentum, and while the entire cart rocked and went up on two wheels under his weight, the door latch would not give. He watched in horror as the swordsman writhed under his attackers.

The Emperor heard a steel fire door hitting brick and light spilled across the sidewalk and into the street. Out of the doorway ran a thin, impossibly pale girl with lavender pigtails wearing pink motocross boots, pink fishnet stockings, a green plastic skirt, wraparound sunglasses, and a black leather jacket that looked studded with glass. Before he could warn her, the girl ran into the street and shouted, “You motherfucking kitties need to step the fuck off!”

The vampire cats attacking the swordsman looked up and hissed, which translated from vampire cat, meant: “Whaaa-?”