Christopher Moore - You Suck

Blue shrugged. "Okay, you win."

"Revenge is a dish best served cold anyway, don't you think?"

"Or not at all," said a male voice behind Elijah.

Elijah and Blue turned. Three of them stood there in their long coats, looking like sculptures, looking eternal, like they could wait forever.

"Can just anyone sneak up on me now?" said Blue.

"Time to go, Elijah," said the African woman.

"None of you would be here if it weren't for me," Elijah said.

"Yes, and we would have been hunted down and killed a long time ago if we hadn't adhered to your rules."

"Ah, my rules," Elijah said, looking down now.

"How many left to clean?"

Elijah looked across the street to the loft windows, then at Blue. She raised an eyebrow, smiled a little.

"She's the only one left." He lied.

"Then finish it."

"I'd rather not," Elijah said.

The Emperor of San Francisco wept for his city. He had done what he could, called the police, alerted the newspapers, even tried to take to battle himself, but by the time he'd gathered the courage to return to the Marina Safeway, it had been finished, and he could do nothing more than speculate to the uniformed police officers how the window had been broken and why the store was empty. They'd tried to track down the night crew, but none of them seemed to be home. And his city was plagued by vampires. Now the Emperor wept and consoled the troops, rubbing Bummer behind the ears and gently patting Lazarus on the ribs as he lay sleeping on the dock. The fog was coming slow off the Bay tonight, not windblown like it was so often here.

He heard footsteps before he saw them, then there were five of them. The fiend, the three in the long coats he had seen come in the night before, and a blond woman in a blue party dress. They walked past, and only the fiend turned and paused. The Emperor held Bummer tight, afraid that he would burst into one of his barking fits and all would be lost.

"Old man," said Elijah. "The City is yours again." Then he joined the others at the end of the dock.

The Emperor could see their motor yacht waiting outside the breakwater—it had to be two hundred feet long, far too big to enter the marina.

"Very well, then, shall we go?" said Elijah.

"Can I get a coat like that?" asked Blue, nodding toward the tall blond man.

The blond man said, "You'll get one when you learn the secret handshake and get your decoder ring."

Blue looked at Elijah. "Is he fuckin' with me?"

"Yes," said Elijah. He offered her his arm. She took it, and stepped down into the longboat.

The Emperor watched the vampires disappear into the fog.

Rivera had six uniforms in SWAT gear with a battering ram ready to take down the door, so he and Cavuto were more than somewhat surprised when it opened almost as soon as they knocked. A shirtless, sleepy-looking Chinese guy with spiky hair stood in the doorway.

"Yes, can I help you?"

Rivera held up the warrant. "I have a warrant to search this apartment."

" 'Kay," said the Chinese guy. "Abby, cops are here."

The skinny broken clown girl appeared at the top of the stairs in a kimono.

"Hey, cops," said Abby Normal.

"What are you doing here?" Rivera said.

"I live here, cop." She popped the p. Rivera hated that.

"Actually, it's my apartment," said the Chinese guy. "Do you need to see ID?"

"Yeah, that would be nice, kid," said Cavuto. He whipped the kid around and marched him up the stairs as the kid read the warrant.

"Do not bruise the Foo, cop," said the broken clown girl.

Rivera turned to the uniforms and shrugged apologetically. "Sorry, guys, I guess we got this one." They shuffled away.

"What are you guys looking for?" asked the Chinese kid. "Maybe we could speed this up."

"We're looking for Thomas Flood and Jody Stroud. He's the one on the lease for this apartment and the one down the street."

"Oh, yeah. I'm subletting," said the Chinese kid.

"Steven Wong," Cavuto read off the kid's license.

Rivera was feeling very, very bad about this. They had found one more body in the Mission with the blood-loss-and-broken-neck MO—the guy had been naked, supposedly someone had stolen his powder-blue tracksuit, so they logged it as robbery, but then, a week ago, the killings stopped. That didn't mean it was over. He'd made the mistake of thinking it was over with these two before. Rivera had finally gotten the Christian kid at the Safeway to file charges on the redhead for assault. After a long talk with the other stoners, they'd gotten the Flood kid on the arrest warrant for conspiracy. They'd also implied that somehow Flood and the redhead had gotten their share of the old vampire's money. Maybe they had left town. If they had, well, good, but he still had a slew of unsolved murders.

"You're subletting from Thomas Flood?"

"I never met him, actually," said Steve. "We arranged it through the rental agent."

"Yeah, so step off, cop," said the skinny girl.

Rivera looked around the apartment. There was no need to tear the place apart. Obviously everything in here was new. Mostly decorated in Pier 1 Imports cheap wicker motif and some punky Urban Outfitter flair, which he guessed was the input of the creepy little girl.

The bronze sculptures were out of character, though. A life-sized nude of a young woman, a large snapping turtle, and a life-sized bronze of a couple posed as if in Rodin's The Kiss.

"These must have been expensive," Rivera said.

"Not really. I know the artists," the Chinese kid said. "Some biker guys down the street."

"Foo's in biotech," said the broken clown girl. "He makes like stupid money, cop."

"Yeah, that's swell," said Rivera. He'd watched this neighborhood turn from a rust slum of repair shops and the odd ethnic restaurant to a gentrified hive of hipster professionals in remodeled lofts during the dot-com boom, and it had never turned back. The whole neighborhood was full of kids who spent the equivalent of Rivera's annual salary on a car they wouldn't drive a dozen times a year. This kid apparently was just another one.

"So you don't know these people?" Rivera said, pointing to the warrant.

Steven Wong shook his head. "Sorry, I've never met them. I send my rent directly to the rental agency. You might check with them."

"Okay then. Sorry to bother you."

"Okay then?" Cavuto said. "That's it?"

"They're not here, Nick. These two don't know where they are."

"But, that's not enough."

"Yeah? You want to spend some time talking to Allison here, see what you can find out?" Rivera nodded toward the broken clown girl.

Cavuto had tried to keep someone between himself and the skinny girl since they'd come upstairs, but now he looked at her full on and shuddered. "No, I guess that's it." He turned and lumbered down the steps.

"You need to check your girlfriend's ID," Rivera said to Steve. "You may not be old enough for her." Then he turned and left as well.

"Chill, Foo," Abby said. "They're gone. They won't be back. Let's go shopping."

"Abby, are you sure about this? It seems cruel." He patted the life-sized sculpture of the couple embraced in a kiss.

"I heard the Countess say once that it was like being in a dream. They just sort of float, all peaceful and dreamy. The main thing is they're together."

"You're sure?"

"Theirs is the greatest love of all time. It would be wrong for them to be apart, Foo."

"Well, I think we should just change them back. Now that we know the process works."

"Someday."

"Now."

"The Countess doesn't want that."

"It's wrong."

"How can it be wrong? It's my idea, and I am their dedicated minion and whatnot. I control the dark." She ran and jumped into his arms.

"I guess you do," he said. "Okay, let's go shopping for stuff for our most fly apartment."