Drew announced, "Everyone drink a quart of Gatorade, a slug of Pepto, three aspirin, some B vitamins, and two Vivarin."

Barry, the balding scuba diver, said, "I don't trust that over-the-counter stuff."

"I'm not finished," Drew said. From his shirt pocket he pulled an aluminum cigar tube, unscrewed the cap, and tipped it into his hand. A long, yellow paper cone slid out. He held it out to Tommy. It smelled like a cross between a skunk and a eucalyptus cough drop. Tommy raised an eyebrow to Drew. "What is it?"

"Don't worry about it. It's recommended by the Jamaican Medical a.s.sociation. Anybody got a light?"

Simon pitched his Zippo to Drew, who handed it to Tommy.

Tommy hesitated before lighting the joint and looked at Drew. "This is just pot, right? This isn't some weird designer kill-the-family-with-a-chain-saw-and-choke-to-death-on-your-own-vomit drug, right?"

"Not if used as directed," Drew said.

"Oh. Okay." Tommy sparked the Zippo, lit the joint, and took a deep hit. Holding in the smoke his eyes watering, his face scrunched in gargoyle determination, his limbs contorted as if he had contracted a case of the instant creeping geeks he offered the joint to Lash, the black business major.

There was a thump on the front door, followed by an urgent pounding that rattled the windows. Tommy dropped the joint and coughed, expelling a blast of smoke and spittle in Lash's face. The Animals shouted and turned, not so much startled by the noise, but tortured by the a.s.sault on their collective hangover.

Outside the double automatic doors the Emperor pounded on the frame with his wooden sword. The dogs jumped around his feet barking and leaping as if they had treed a racc.o.o.n on the roof of the store.

Tommy, still gasping for breath, dug into his pocket for the store keys and made his way to the door. "It's okay. I know him."

"Everybody knows him," Simon said. "Crazy old f.u.c.k."

Tommy turned the key and pulled the doors open. The Emperor fell into the store. b.u.mmer and Lazarus leaped over their master and disappeared down an aisle.

The Emperor thrashed around on the floor and Tommy had to step back to keep from having his shins whacked by the wooden sword.

"Calm down," Tommy said. "You're okay."

The Emperor climbed to his feet and grabbed Tommy by the shoulders. "We have to marshal our forces. The monster is at hand. Quickly now!"

Tommy looked back at the Animals and grinned. "He's okay, really." Then, to the Emperor, "Just slow down, okay. Can I get you something to eat?"

"There's no time for that. We must take the battle to him."

Simon called, "Maybe Drew has something to mellow him out." Drew had recovered the joint and was in the process of relighting it.

Tommy closed and locked the door, then took the Emperor by the arm and led him toward the office. "See, Your Majesty, you're inside now. You're safe. Now let's go sit down and see if we can sort this out."

"Locked doors won't stop him. He can take the form of mist and pa.s.s through the smallest crack." The Emperor addressed the Animals. "Arm yourself, while there is still time."

"Who?" Asked Lash. "Who's he talking about?"

Tommy cleared his throat. "The Emperor thinks that there's a vampire stalking the City."

"You're s.h.i.ttin' me," Barry said.

"I've just seen him," the Emperor said, "at the marina. He changed from a cloud of vapor to human form as I watched. He's not far behind me, either."

Tommy patted the old man's arm. "Don't be silly, Your Highness. Even if there were vampires, they can't turn into vapor."

"But I saw it."

"Look!" Tommy said. "You saw something else. I know for a fact that vampires can't change into vapor."

"You know that for a fact?" Simon drawled.

Tommy looked at Simon, expecting to see the usual grin, but Simon was waiting for an answer.

Tommy shook his head. "I'm trying to get things under control here, Simon. You want to give me a break?"

"How do you know?" Simon insisted.

"It was in a book I was reading. You remember, Simon, you read that one too."

Simon looked as if he had just been threatened, which he had. "Yeah, right," he said, pushing his Stetson back down over his eyes and leaning back on the register. "Well, you ought to just call the loony-bin boys for your friend there."

"I'll take care of him," Tommy said. "You guys get started on the truck." He opened the office door and nudged the Emperor toward it.

"What about the men?" asked the Emperor.

"They're safe. Come on in and tell me about it."

"But the monster?"

"If he wanted to kill me, I'd be dead already." Tommy shut the office door behind them.

Big hair, Jody thought. Big hair is the way to go with this outfit. After all these years of trying to tame my hair, all I had to do was dress like an upscale hooker and I would have been fine.

She was walking up Geary Street, her fake Gucci bag of free cosmetics still in hand. There was a new club down here somewhere and she needed to dance, or at least show off a little.

A panhandler wearing a cardboard sign that read, "I am Unemployed and Illiterate (a friend wrote this for me)," stopped her and tried to sell her a free weekly newspaper.

Jody said, "I can pick that up anywhere. It's free."

"It is?"

"Yes. They give it away in every store and cafe in town."

"I wondered why they were laying out there for the taking."

Jody was angry with herself for being pulled into this exchange. "It says 'free' right there on the cover."

The b.u.m pointed to the sign hanging around his neck and tried to look tragic. "Maybe you could give me quarter for it anyway."

Jody started to walk away. The b.u.m followed along beside her. "There's a great article on recovery groups on page ten."

She looked at him.

"Someone told me," he said.

Jody stopped. "I'll give you this if you'll leave me alone." She held out the cosmetics bag.

The b.u.m acted as if he had to think about it. He looked her up and down, pausing at her cleavage before looking her in the eye. "Maybe we could work something out. You must be cold in that dress. I could warm you up."

"Normally," Jody said, "if I met a guy who was unemployed and illiterate who hadn't bathed in a couple of weeks, I'd be standing in a puddle with excitement, but I'm sort of in a bad mood tonight, so take this bag and give me the f.u.c.king paper before I pop your little head like a zit." She pushed the bag into his chest, knocking him back against the window of a closed camera store.

The b.u.m offered her the paper tentatively and she s.n.a.t.c.hed it from his hand.

He said, "You're a lesbian, aren't you?"

Jody screamed at him: a high, explosive, unintelligible expulsion of pure inhuman frustration a Hendrix high note sampled and sung by a billion suffering souls in h.e.l.l's own choir. The window of the camera shop shattered and fell in shards to the sidewalk. The store alarm wailed, paltry in comparison to Jody's scream. The b.u.m covered his ears and ran away.

"Cool," Jody said, more than a bit satisfied with herself. She opened the paper and read as she walked up the street to the club.

Outside the club Jody got in line with a crowd of well-dressed wannabees and resumed reading her paper, enjoying the stares of the men on line in her peripheral vision.

The club was called 753. It seemed to Jody that all of the new, trendy clubs had eschewed names for numbers. Kurt and his broker buddies had been big fans of the number-named clubs, which made for Monday-morning recount conversations that sounded more like equations: "We went to Fourteen Ninety-Two and Ten Sixty-Six, then Jimmy drank ten Seven-Sevens at Nineteen Seventeen, went fifty-one fifty and got eighty-sixed." Normally, that many numbers in succession would have had Kurt diving for his PC to establish trend lines and resistance levels. Jody glazed over at the mention of numbers, which would have made living with the broker a bit of an ordeal even if he hadn't been an a.s.shole.

She thought, I wonder if Kurt will be here. I hope so. I hope he's here with the little well-bred, breastless wonder. Oh, she won't care, but he'll die a thousand jealous deaths.

Then she heard the alarm sounding down the street and thought, Maybe I should learn to channel some of this hostility.

"You, in the LED!" said the doorman.

Jody looked up from her paper.

"Go on in," the doorman said.

As she walked past the other people on line she was careful to avoid eye contact. One single guy reached out and grabbed her arm.

"Say I'm your date," he begged. "I've been waiting for two hours."

"Hi, Kurt," Jody said. "I didn't see you."

Kurt stepped back. "Oh. Oh my G.o.d. Jody?"

She smiled. "How's your head?"

He was trying to catch his breath. "Fine. It's fine. You look..."

"Thanks, Kurt. Good to see you again. I'd better get inside."

He clawed the air after her. "Could you say I'm your date?"

She turned and looked at him as if she had found him in the back of the refrigerator with green growing on him.

"I have been chosen, Kurt. You, on the other hand, are an untouchable. I don't think you'd be appropriate for the image I'm trying to project."

As she walked into the club she heard Kurt say to the next guy in line, "She's a lesbian, you know."

Jody thought, Yep, I've got to work on controlling my hostility.

The theme of 753 was Old San Francisco; actually, Old San Francis...o...b..rning down, which is largely what Old San Francisco used to do. There was an antique hand-pump fire engine in the middle of the dance floor. Cellophane flames leaped from pseudowindows driven by turbine fans. Nozzles in the ceiling drizzled dry-ice smoke over a crowd of young professionals ar-rhythmically sweating in layers of casual cotton and wool. A flannel-clad grunge rocker here; a tie-dyed and dreadlocked Rastafarian there; some neo-hippies; a sprinkling of black-eyed, white-faced New Wave holdovers looking alienated contemplating the next body part to have pierced; a few harmless suburban homeboys here to bust a move, def and phat, in three-hundred-dollar giant gel-filled, glow-in-the-dark, pneumatic, NBA-endorsed sneakers. The doorman had tried to make a mix, but with fashionable micro-brewery beer going for seven bucks a bottle, the crowd was bound to overbalance to the side of privilege and form a thick yuppie sc.u.m. c.o.c.ktail waitresses in fireman helmets served reservoirs of imported water and thanked people for not smoking.

Jody slinked onto a barstool and opened her paper to avoid eye contact with a droopy-eyed drunk on the next stool. It didn't work.

" 'Scuse me, I couldn't help noticing that you were sitting down. I'm sitting down too. Small world, huh?"

Jody looked up briefly and smiled. Mistake.

"Can I buy you a drink?" the drunk asked.

"Thanks, I don't drink," she said, thinking, Why did I come here? What did I hope to accomplish?

"It's my hair, isn't it?"

Jody looked at the guy. He was about her age and balding, not quite finished with what looked like a bad hair-transplant job. His scalp looked as if it had been strafed with a machine gun full of plugs. She felt bad for him.

"No, I really don't drink."

"How about a mineral water?"

"Thanks. I don't drink anything."

From the stool behind her a man's voice. "She'll drink this."

She turned to see a gla.s.s filled with a thick, red-black liquid being pushed in front of her by a bone-white hand. The index and middle finger seemed a little too short.

"They're still growing back," the vampire said.

Jody recoiled from him so hard she nearly went over backward on her barstool. The vampire caught her arm and steadied her.

"Hey, buddy," said Hair Plugs, "hands off."

The vampire let go of Jody's arm, reached across to put his hand on Hair Plugs's shoulder, and held him fast to his seat. The drunk's eyes went wide. The vampire smiled.

"She'll rip out your throat and drink your blood as you die. Is that what you want?"

Hair Plugs shook his head violently. "No, I already have an ex-wife."

The vampire released him. "Go away."

Hair Plugs slid off the stool and ran off into the crowd on the dance floor. Jody leaped to her feet and started to follow him. The vampire caught her arm and wheeled her around.

"Don't," he said.

Jody caught his wrist and began to squeeze. A human arm would have been reduced to mush. The vampire grinned. Jody locked eyes with him. "Let go."