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Chapter Eight

She Walks in Beauty

Jody , runway- brush by her like the chill ghosts of rejected suitors What she could never teach Tommy, what she could never really share with hi a victim - afraid of attack, the shadow around the corner, the footsteps behind - to being the hunter It wasn’t the stalking or the rush of taking down prey - To down a dark street, late at night, knowing that you were the most powerful creature there, that there was absolutely nothing, no one, that could fuck with you Until she had been changed and had stalked the city as a vampire, she never realized that virtually every moment she had been there as a woman, she had been a little bit afraid A man would never understand That was the reason for the dress and the shoes - not to attract a minion, but to throw her sexuality out there on display, dare so her as a victih it had come down to confrontation only once, and then she’d been wearing a baggy sweatshirt and jeans, Jody enjoyed kicking ass She also enjoyed - every bit asthat she could It was her secret

Without fear, the City was a great sensual carnival There was no danger in anything she experienced, no anxiety Red was red, yellow didn’tof the four Chinese guys standing by their car just around the corner was just the click and twang of e dick talk She could hear their hearts speed up when they saw her, could s off them She’d learned the smell of fear and imh she’d have been hard-pressed to describe any of that It was just there Like color

You know

Try to describe blue

Withoutblue

See?

There weren’t a lot of people out on the street at this tith of Colue boys heading down to the strip clubs on Broadway, the exodus froiddy and so into the rhyth they saw hilarious - all of the heat and perfu dinners Witnesses

The Chinese guys weren’t harmless, by any means, but she didn’t think they’d attack her, and she felt a twinge of regret One of the at her in Cantonese - so, she could tell by the tone She spun as she walked, s stride, said, "Hey, nano-dick, go fuck yourself!"

There was a lot of bluster and shuffle, the s off hi his life SheThey clustered around their tricked-out Honda and huffed out great breaths of testosterone and frustration Jody grinned, and detoured up a side street, away froht," she said to herself "Mine"

Now off theahead of her His life aura looked like a burned-out bulb, a spot of dark gray around hied determination, as if he knew that if he stopped, he would never start again Froy, ale corduroys thatwhen he walked A wisp of breeze off the Bay brought Jody the acrid sans, of stale tobacco, of despair, of a deep, rotting sickness, and she felt the elation leave her

She slipped coht hadinto place

She h noise so that he could hear her approaching, and when she was beside hi in tiny steps that turned hi

"Hi," she said

He sirl Would you ith ether before he said, "I’ured," Jody said

"I’"

"Nice night for it"

"A little cold, but I don’t feel it I got a whole pocketful of painkillers You want one?"

"No, I’s to think about"

"Just in tiirl once before the end I think that would be all I’d want"

"What’s your name?"

"James James O’Mally"

"James My name is Jody I’m pleased to meet you" She stopped and offered her hand to shake

"The pleasure is allas best he could

She took his face in her hands, and steadied hi ti

"That was lovely," James O’Mally said

"Yes it was," Jody said

"I suppose I’m finished now," James said "Thank you"

"The pleasure was all mine," Jody said "I assure you"

Then she put her ar the back of his head like an infant, and he only trembled a little when she drank

A little later, she bundled his clothes together under her arers The dust that had been Jaray pile on the sidewalk, like a negative shadow, a bleached spot She brushed it flat with her palernail

As she walked away, an hourglass trickle of James trailed out of his clothes behind her and was carried off on the chill bay breeze

The guy working the door of the Glas Kat looked like a raven had exploded on his head, his hair plastered out in a chaos of black spikes TheAnd co about it In rhythmic monotone European robots

Touy had better fangs than he did, was paler, and had seventeen silver rings in his lips (Tommy had counted)

"Bet it’s hard to whistle with those in, huh?" Toave him the money He checked Tommy’s ID and staroup of Japanese girls dressed like tragic Victorian baby dolls breezed by behind To their wrist slashes like they’d just returned fro cloves on the street They, too, looked ed and entered the club Everyone, it appeared, looked ht some black jeans and a black leather jacket at the Levi’s store while Jody was off finding so hideous for her mother for Christ for so cobalt- or fuchsia-colored to weave into his hair And in retrospect, the flannel shirt may have been a mistake He looked like he’d shown up at the sacrificial mass of the daed to an ethereal female chorus of Celtic nonsense With a techno beat And robots co Grumpy robots

He tried to listen around it, the way Jody had taught hi, his newly heightened senses were overloading He tried to focus on people’s faces, their life auras, look through the haze of heat, hairspray, and patchouli for the girl he’d reens

Tommy had felt alone in a crowd before, even inferior to everyone in a crowd, but now he felt, well, different It wasn’t just the clothes and the htened senses or not, he felt like he had his nose pressed against the , looking in The problerabbed his arirl nearly tumbled over backwards, startled

"Fuck! Dude"

"Hi," Toirl froreens She was nearly a foot shorter than he, and a little skinny Tonight she’d gone with the waifish look, wearing striped stockings with holes ripped in them and a shiny red PVC miniskirt She’d traded in her Lord Byron shirt for a tank top, black, of course, with dripping red letters that read got blood? and fishnet gloves that went halfway up her biceps Herdown either side of her face She crooked her finger to get him to bend down so she could shout into his ear over the music

"My name’s Abby Normal"

Tommy spoke into her ear; she smelled of hairspray and as that? Raspberry? "My name is Flood," he said "C Thomas Flood" It was his pen na, he just liked the sound of it "Call me Flood," he added Tommy was a stupid name for a vampire, but Flood - ah, Flood - there was disaster and power there, and a hint of ht

Abby smiled like a cat in a tuna cannery "Flood," she said "Flood"

She was trying it on, it seeined that she’d have a black vinyl binder at school and she’d soon be writing Mrs Flood surrounded by a heart with an arrow through it on the cover in her own blood He’d never seen a girl so obviously attracted to hi with it For a moment he flashed on the three vampire brides of Dracula who try to seduce Jonathan Harker in Stoker’s classic novel (He’d been studying all the va Jody, since it didn’t appear that anyone had written a good how-to book on vampirism) Could he really deal with three luscious va them a kid in a sack the way Dracula does in the book? How many kids a ould it take to keep theh he hadn’t discussed it with Jody, he was pretty sure she was not going to be happy sharing hiht her sacks and sacks full of kids They’d need a bigger apart, because there’d be a lot of bloodstained lingerie to be washed Vaet a castle and a staff when you got your fangs Hoas he going to do all of this? "This sucks," Tommy finally said, overwhelmed by the enormity of his responsibilities

Abby looked startled, then a little hurt "Sorry," she said "You want to get out of here?"

"Oh, no, I didn’t et your heroin?"

"What? No, that matter is taken care of"

"You know, Byron and Shelley did opiates," Abby said "Laudanuh syrup"

Then, for no reason that he could think of, Tohost stories frorabbing his ar his biceps like it was her newest, bestest friend She started pulling him toward the door

"What about your friend?" Toray e first got here, so he went home to redye all of his blacks"

"Of course," To, What the fuck?

Out on the sidewalk, Abby said, "I suppose we need to find somewhere private"

"We do?"

"So you can takeless marionette than ever

Tommy had no idea what to do How did she know? Everyone in that club would have scored higher on the "are you a vampire?" test than he would There needed to be a book, and this sort of thing needed to be in it Should he deny it? Should he just get on with it? What was he going to tell Jody when she woke up next to the skinny irl? He hadn’t really understood wouy, when it seemed that all you had to do was pretend that you didn’t want to have sex with the a vas Was he supposed to conceal that he was a vaet some clue to the female psyche, and so he deferred to advice he’d read in an article entitled "Think He’s Just Pretending to Like You So You’ll Have Sex with Him? Try a Coffee Date"