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Chapter Four

Red and White and Dead all Over

Rapoc stuffing and chicken feathers lay in great, fluffy drifts across the roo, the futon cover, pieces of a fuzzy, Muppet-skin rug, and the crushed remains of a couple of cheap-ass Pier 1 paper lanterns Sparks crackled from the bare wires over the breakfast bar, where the pendulu The loft looked as if sorenade into the y and the only survivors had had their fur blown off

"Well, that was different," Jody said, still a little breathless She was lying across the coffee table, looking out theat a streetlight frole, naked except for one sleeve of her red leather jacket She was smeared with blood from head to toe, and even as Toover

"If I’d known," To tio" He lay across the room where she had thrown hi that had once been a bookshelf, also s only a sock

As he pulled a pencil-sized splinter of bookcase out of his thigh, Toht have been a little hasty about yelling at Jody for turning hih he couldn’t really remember much of it, he was pretty sure he’d just had thesex ever Apparently what he had read about va else - it was just anotherinto a bat and the inability to cross running water

"Did you know that was going to happen?" Tommy asked

"I had no idea," Jody said, still on the coffee table, and looking more to Tommy every , and s to make you buy me dinner and take me to a movie first"

Tommy chucked the bloody bookcase splinter at her "I don’tto do it, Ito be like that?"

"Hoould I know that?"

"I thought ht you spent with the old vampire"

Jody sat up "I didn’t do hi to find out about how to be a vampire And his name is Elijah"

"Oh, so now you’re on a first-name basis"

"Oh, for the love of God, To as an a all the life out of it"

Toeted on his pile of rubble and started to pout, but winced when he tried to push out his lower lip and it caught on his fangs She was right He’d always been like that, always overthinking, overanalyzing "Sorry," he said

"You have to just be part of the world now," Jody said softly "You can’t put everything into categories, separate yourself fro says, let it be"

"Sorry," Tohts out of his head, closed his eyes, and listened to his heartbeat, and Jody’s heartbeat co from across the room

"It’s okay," Jody said "Sex like that does sort of beg for a postmortem"

Tommy smiled, his eyes still closed "So to speak"

Jody stood up and crossed the roo She offered him her hand to help him up "Careful, the back of your head is kind of stuck in the dry wall"

To "I’"

She pulled hi a little drained myself"

"My bad," To into hi into her He rubbed a place on his shoulder where the punctures fros hadn’t quite healed yet

She kissed the spot he was rubbing "You’ll heal faster when you’ve had fresh blood"

Tommy felt an ache, like a sudden cramp in his stomach "I really need to eat"

Jody led hi in the corner, hiding unsuccessfully behind the wicker hareat roo as left of her red leather jacket (really ether on one side where they’d been torn off "Sorry," she said, "I’ers"

Toer, Jody He’s dinner"

"Uh-huh," Jody said, nodding and shaking her head at the sa her appear like a bloodstained, bobble-head doll "You go You’re new"

"Me? Don’t you know soet him I’ll wait"

Tommy looked at her On top of the blood that streaked and s stuck to her here and there, as well as white chicken feathers in her hair from one of the exploded cushions He had feathers and cat hair stuck to his chest and legs "We’re going to have to shave hi away froe cat "Maybe a shower first"

"Good idea" To No sex!"

"Why, we already lost the cleaning deposit?"

"Those shower doors are glass"

"Okay But can I wash your - "

"No," she said She took his hand and dragged him into the bathrooth ca a thirty-five-pound cat After a couple of false starts, which had the-cream-covered cat around the loft, they discovered the value of duct tape as a groo tool Because of the tape, they weren’t able to shave his feet When they were finished, Chet looked like a big-eyed, potbellied, protohuman in fur-lined, duct-tape space boots - the feline love child of Golem and Doddy the house elf

"I’ on the bed next to Jody as they considered the bound and shaven Chet on the floor before them "He looks creepy"

"Pretty creepy," Jody said "You’d better drink Your wounds aren’t healing" All her scratches, bruises, and love bites were co creaood as new

"How?" Tommy asked "How do I knohere to bite him?"

"Try the neck," Jody said "But sort of feel around for a vein with your tongue before you bite, and don’t bite hard" She was trying to sound confident in her instructions, but she was in unexplored territory asTommy about the particulars of varown-up huet the power and phone turned on in the loft - it e, and after a series of boyfriends for whom she had been little more than an accoutrement, whose lifestyles she had affected, from heavy-metal anarchists to financial-district yuppies, she liked being the pacesetter for a change Still, when it ca on ani it more if she really could turn into a bat The only ti anie, live snapping turtles fro herself to even try biting into the armored reptiles Tommy had named them Scott and Zelda, which hadn’t helped Now Zelda was functioning as a lawn ornahts and Scott was encased in bronze and standing next to the old vareat room The biker sculptors downstairs had bronzed theiven Tommy the idea to bronze Jody and the old vampire in the first place

"Are you sure this is okay?" Toe shaved cat "I mean, you said that ere only supposed to hunt the sick and the weak - the black auras Chet’s aura is shiny and pink"

"It’s different with animals" She had no idea if it was different with animals She’d eaten a moth once, whole - snatched it out of the air and downed it before she could think about it She realized now that there were a lot more questions she should have asked Elijah when she had had the chance "Besides, you’re not going to kill hiht," Tommy said He put his mouth on Chet’s kitty neck "Like thith?"

Jody had to turn away to keep fro creao," Jody said

" ’Kay" Tommy bit and started to moan almost immediately Not a ue stuck on the ice-cube tray in the freezer Chet seeainst his kitty bonds Maybe there was so to the vaht

"Okay, that’s enough," Jody said

Toe shaved cat

"Tommy, let off You need to leave soe cat, To" She was kidding, a little bit

To hard now, and a little color had coet his attention She spotted a vase of flowers on the night-stand

She pulled out the flowers and tossed the water on To The cat shuddered but otherwise remained immobile

"Okay, then," Jody said It was a heavy, stoneware vase, soy flowers he’d brought her froood that way, soy flowers before he’d even done anything to apologize for Really, you couldn’t ask for uy - which is why Jody slowed to half speed as she brought the vase around in a wide arc that ended with it s hie shaved cat yowled Miraculously, the vase did not break

"Thanks," To the blood from his mouth There was a crescent- in, healing

"Sure," Jody said, staring at the vase Great vase, she thought Elegant, fragile porcelain was all well and good for the collector’s case or the tea party, but for the girl who finds herself in need of a vessel that can deliver a wallop, Jody was suddenly sold on the sturdy value of stoneware

"Tastes like cat breath," To to Chet The punctures fros had already healed "Is it supposed to?"

Jody shrugged "What’s cat breath taste like?"

"Like tuna casserole left out in the sun for a week" Being froht everyone knehat tuna casserole tasted like Having been born and raised in Car eaten by the extinct people on Nick at Nite

"I think I’ry, but not cat-breath hungry She wasn’t sure what she was going to do about feeding She couldn’t very well try to live off Toardless of the rush and the sense that she was serving nature’s cause by taking only the weak and the sick, she didn’t like the idea of preying on huure out what their new life was going to be like Things had been happening too quickly since Tommy and his friends had taken down the old vaht if we can You don’t want to lose your driver’s license - we may need a valid ID to rent a new place"

"A new place?"

"We have to move, Tommy I told Inspectors Rivera and Cavuto that I would leave town You don’t think they’ll check?" There had been two homicide detectives who had followed the trail of bodies to the old vampire, and ultimately the discovery of Jody’s delicate condition She’d promised them that she’d take the old vao

"Oh yeah," Too back to work at the Safeway either?"

He wasn’t stupid, she kneasn’t stupid, so as he so slow to see the obvious? "No, I don’t think that would be a good idea," Jody said "Since you’re going to pass out cold at sunrise, just the way I do"

"Yeah, that’d be eht hits you and you burst into flaainst that"