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Abby said, "Ohhad an ass baby!"
"What are you trying to say?" asked Jared
What she had been trying to say, although she didn’t know it at the time, was that under no circumstances should Jared be left alone in an apartment with an abundance of time and espresso, which is what Foo had just done So after feeding, watering, and naiven French names from Abby’s copy of Baudelaire’s Les Fleurs du Mal), Jared began brewing espressos and was nine demitasse cups into the afternoon when he decided to act out the remainder of his unwritten vampire adventure novel, The Dark of Darkness, for a hundred rats caged in plastic and two vampires encased in bronze
"So the evil Blood Queen dons her chrooes after Lucifer 2 But Jared Whitewolf is on her like a fat kid on a cupcake, parrying her bloith his dagger of death, or Dee Dee, as it is known" Jared pirouetted, a e six, and slashed the air, low and fast, with the double-edged dagger held backhand so as to sever his iinary enemy’s femoral artery, a move he’d learned in Soul Assassin Five on the Xbox (although it was harder to do while wearing platforer was real enough, twelve inches of double-edged high-carbon stainless steel with a dragon hilt Jared carried it because he thought it made him look badass when doormen took it away from him at clubs
"And he strikes her weapon in half!" he said, leaping and bringing the blade around a little too fast He turned his ankle, lost his balance, and as he fell, the dagger put a deep nick in the bronze statue
"Ow!" He sat on the floor holding his ankle and rocking back and forth in the yoga position known as the "freaked-out half-lotus" Then he noticed the gash he’d put in the bronze, directly over Jody’s right clavicle
"I’m sorry, Countess," Jared said, still a little breathless from his battle "I didn’t mean to hurt you It’s just that I had to save Lucifer 2 You’d do the sa for Lord Flood if he was in the story"
Jared buffed at the bronze with his sleeve, but the gash was deep and wasn’t going to go aith polishing "Abby’s going to killon Toothpaste We used it on the wall that time we drank Abby’srooer drop to the floor, climbed to his feet, winced, then limped off to the bathroom to look for toothpaste
He located a tube of all natural tartar control with baking soda just as the sun dropped under the horizon in the west Out in the living rooash he’d made in the bronze statue Toothpaste probably wouldn’t have fixed it
THE ANIMALS
In the last two ht stock crew at the Marina Safeway, had hunted an ancient vampire, blown up his yacht, stolen millions of dollars’ worth of art, sold it for pennies on the dollar, spent the reot turned into vampires, were torn apart by zoo animals, then burned up by sunlamps when they attacked Abby Noruys who stocked shelves at the Safeway and smoked a little too much weed And as it often is with adventurers, after the adventure, they were feeling a little bored, and a little worried that nothing exciting would ever happen to theain
After you’ve battled the darkness, then becoed the darkness, frozen turkey bowling and skiing behind the floor-scrubbing machine just doesn’t hold the same thrill After you’ve shared a blue prostitute with your buddies to the tune of a half a million dollars, only to have her kill and resurrect you before disappearing into the night, swapping stories of banging babes was a bit of an anticlihts and the oldest of them, Clint, was only twenty-three, so erations, wishful thinking, or outright lies anyway Even crucifying Clint with zip ties on the potato chip rack every other Friday didn’t see, thrashing in the Doritos, and went off to stock their aisles before he could even forgive the, free, and ly bored
So when the E lot and slalas front , rattling the Tic Tacs on every register, each of the on and headed to the front of the store, hoping in their hearts that so down
The seven, the Ani hile the E and barking at his side
"Maybe we should let hiain, ex-heroin addict orked cereal, coffee, and juices "He seems troubled"
"S��," said Gustavo, the porter, leaning on hisfreaked," said Drew, the Ichabod-Crane-gaunt master of the frozen food aisle and chieffreaked"
"What’s wrong?" asked Lash, the lean black guy who had becoely because he aluy and inherently cooler than everyone else
"Murder, destruction, ravenous creatures of the night, a storm of them," shouted the Emperor "Hurry, please"
"He always says that," said Barry, the balding fireplug of a scuba diver who also stocked soap and dog food
"Well, every time he says it, it’s kind of true," said Jeff, the tall blond ex-power forith the blown-out knee (baking supplies and international foods) "I say let hied up Poor guy," said Troy Lee, their resident lass aisle "Let them in"
"You just want to roll the little one up in a burrito," said Lash
"Yeah, that’s right, Lash Because I’m Chinese, I have a deep-seated need to nosh house pets Nohy don’t you let hi-fu your bitch ass"
Because he understood that he was the leader only so long as he told everyone to do what they wanted to do anyway, and because he had had his bitch ass kung-fued in the past and hadn’t cared for it, Lash unlocked the door and let the Emperor in
The old man fell into the store when Lash opened the door Bu and bolted by them, and on toward the back of the store
Jeff and Drew got the Eisters and Troy Lee handed him a bottle of water "Chill, Your Majesty, we’ve done this before"
"Not like this Not like this," said the Emperor "It’s a storm of evil Lock the door"
Lash rolled his eyes They really had done this before, and the door being locked or unlocked wasn’t going tothe old hness," Lash said
"Lock the door," the E bank waslot, with rather h, yowling screech see in a stream, as if it had been sampled, amplified, and duplicated a thousand tilass
"Lock the door, Lash," Clint said Clint never gave orders
The edge of the fog bank was boiling with shapes, claws, ears, eyes, teeth, tails-cats for in a wave over one another, so partially, only to evaporate and roll back into the cloud, their red eyes h the cloud like embers out of a firestorm
"Whoa," said Drew
"Whoa," repeated the others
"Okay, that is different," said Troy Lee
"My friends all over the City are one Just their clothes and gray dust," the E in their way"
"That is fucked up," said Jeff
"Deeply, deeply fucked up," said Barry, dragging one of the heavy wooden order dividers off the register and brandishing it like a club
"Lock the fucking door, Lash!" Clint screamed
"Jesus hates it when you use the f-word," said Gustavo, the Mexican porter, as Catholic and liked to re washed against theand claw las instantly to frost, as if it had all been sanded The noise was like, well, it was like a thousand valas-itweapons?" Troy Lee asked
"I brought so crept under the door and raked the toe of Lash’s sneaker He snapped the lock shut, pulled out the key, and backed away
"Okay, break ti in the walk-in"
JARED
Across town, in the bedroohborhood, aspiring rat-shagger, Jared Whitewolf, looked up fro his sore ankle to see a co to her waist in a great curling cape, fraure, which was perfect and as white as a er in her right hand
Jared backed up onto the bed in a reverse crab walk "I, I, I, it, it, it-Abby made me-"
"Chill, Scissorhands," Jody said "You’d better find sos of Steve’s fast, unless you’d like to finish high school as a pile of greasy dust Countess is thirsty"