Chapter 1 / DEATH

Sundown painted purple across the great pyramid while the Emperor enjoyed a steaming whiz against a dumpster in the alley below. A low fog worked its way up from the bay, snaked around columns and over concrete lions to wash against the towers where the West's money was moved. The Financial District: An hour ago it ran with rivers of men in gray wool and women in heels, now the streets, built on sunken ships and gold rush garbage, were deserted -- quiet except for a fog horn that lowed across the bay like a lonesome cow.

The Emperor shook his scepter to clear the last few drops, shivered, then zipped up and turned to the royal hounds who waited at his heels. "The fog horn sounds especially sad this evening, don't you think? "

The smaller of the dogs, a Boston terrier, dipped his head and licked his chops.

"Bummer, you are so simple. My city is decaying before your eyes. The air is thick with poison, the children are shooting each other in the street, and now this plague, this horrible plague is killing my people by the thousands, and all you think about is food."

The Emperor nodded to the larger dog, a golden retriever. "Lazarus knows the weight of our responsibility. Does one have to die to find dignity I wonder."

Lazarus lowered his ears and growled.

"Have I offended you, my friend?"

Bummer began growling and backing away from the dumpster. The Emperor turned to see the lid of the dumpster being slowly lifted by a pale hand. Bummer barked a warning. A figure stood up in the dumpster, his hair dark and wild and speckled with trash, skin white as bone. He vaulted out of the dumpster and hissed at the little dog, showing long white fangs. Bummer yelped and cowered behind the Emperor's leg.

"That will be quite enough of that!" The Emperor commanded, puffing himself up and tucking his thumbs under the lapels of his worn overcoat.

The vampire brushed a bit of rotted lettuce from his black shirt and grinned. "I'll let you live," he said, his voice like a file on ancient rusted metal. "That's your punishment."

The Emperor's eyes went wide with terror, but he held his ground. The vampire laughed, then turned and walked away.

The Emperor felt a chill run up his neck as the vampire disappeared into the fog. He hung his head and thought: "Not this. My city is dying of poison and plague and now this -- this creature stalks the streets. The responsibility is suffocating. Emperor or no, I am only a man. I am weak as water: an entire empire to save and right now I would sell my soul for a bucket of the Colonel's crispy-fried chicken. Ah, but I must be strong for the troops. It could be worse, I suppose. I could be the Emperor of Oakland."

"Chins up, boys," the Emperor said to his hounds. "If we are to battle this monster we will need our strength. There is a bakery in North Beach that will presently be dumping the day old. Let's be off." He shuffled away thinking, Nero fiddled while his empire went to ashes; I shall eat leathery pastries.

* * *

As the Emperor trudged up California Street trying to balance the impotence of power with the promise of a powdered-sugar doughnut, Jody was leaving the pyramid. She was twenty-six and pretty in a way that made men want to tuck her into flannel sheets and kiss her on the forehead before leaving the room: cute but not beautiful.

As she passed under the pyramid's massive concrete buttresses she caught herself limping from a pantyhose injury. It didn't hurt exactly, the run that striped the back of her leg from heel to knee, the result of a surly metal file drawer (Claims, X-Y-Z) that had leapt out and snagged her ankle, but she was limping nonetheless from the psychological damage. She thought, "My closet is starting to look like an ostrich hatchery. I've either got to start throwing out Leggs eggs or get a tan on my legs and quit wearing nylons."

She'd never had a tan, couldn't get one, really. She was a milk-white, green-eyed redhead who burned and freckled with sun.

When she was half a block from her bus stop the wind driven fog won and Jody experienced total hair spray failure. Neat waist-length waves frizzed to a wild red cape of curl and tangle. Great, she thought, once again I'll get home looking like Death eating a cracker. Kurt will be so pleased.

She pulled her jacket closer around her shoulders against the chill, tucked her briefcase under her breasts like a schoolgirl carrying books, and limped on. Ahead of her on the sidewalk she saw someone standing by the glass door of a brokerage office. Green light from the CRTs inside silhouetted him in the fog. She thought about crossing the street to avoid him, but she'd have to cross back again in a few feet to catch her bus.

She thought, "I'm done working late. It's not worth it. No eye contact, that's the plan."

As she passed the man she looked down at her running shoes (her heels were in her briefcase). That's it. Just a couple of more steps...

A hand caught in her hair and jerked her off her feet, her briefcase went skittering across the sidewalk and she started to scream. Another hand clamped over her mouth and she was dragged off the street into an alley. She kicked and flailed, but he was too strong, immovable. The smell of rotten meat filled her nostrils and she gagged even while trying to scream. Her attacker spun her around and yanked on her hair, pulling her head back until she thought her neck would snap. Then she felt a sharp pain on the side of her throat and the strength to fight seemed to evaporate.

Across the alley she could see a soda can and an old Wall Street Journal, a wad of bubble gum stuck to the bricks, a no parking sign: details, strangely slowed down and significant. Her vision began to tunnel dark, like an iris closing and she thought, "These will be the last things I see." The voice in her head was calm, resolved.

As everything went dark her attacker slapped her across the face and she opened her eyes and saw the thin white face before her. He was speaking to her. "Drink," he said.

Something warm and wet was shoved into her mouth. She tasted warm iron and salt and gagged again. "It's his arm. He's shoved his arm in my mouth and my teeth have broken. I'm tasting blood."

"Drink!"

A hand clamped over her nose. She struggled, tried to breathe, tried to pull his arm out of her mouth to get air, sucked for air and nearly choked on blood. Suddenly she found herself sucking, drinking hungrily. When he tried to pull his arm away she clutched at it. He tore it from her mouth, twisted her around and bit her throat again. After a moment, she felt herself fall. The attacker was tearing at her clothes, but she had nothing left to fight with. She felt a roughness against the skin of her breasts and belly, then he was off her.

"You'll need that," he said, and his voice echoed in her head as if he had shouted down a canyon. "Now you can die."

Jody felt a remote sense of gratitude. With his permission she gave up. Her heart slowed, lugged, and stopped.

Chapter 2 / DEATH WARMED OVER

She heard insects scurrying above her in the darkness, smelled burnt flesh, and felt a heavy weight pressing down on her back. Oh my God, he's buried me alive.

Her face was pressed against something hard and cold -- stone she thought until she smelled the oil in the asphalt. Panic seized her and struggled to get her hands under her. Her left hand lit up with pain as she pushed. There was a rattle and a deafening clang and she was standing. The dumpster that had been on her back lay overturned spilling trash across the alley. She looked at it in disbelief. It must have weighed a ton.

Fear and adrenaline, she thought.

Then she looked at her left hand and screamed. It was horribly burned, the top layer of skin black and cracked. She ran out of the alley looking for help, but the street was empty. I've got to get to a hospital, call the police.

She spotted a pay phone, a red chimney of heat rose from the lamp above it. She looked up and down the empty street. Above each street light she could see heat rising red in waves. She could hear the buzzing of the electric bus wires above her, the steady stream of the sewers running under the street. She could smell dead fish and diesel fuel in the fog, the decay of the Oakland mud flats across the bay, old French fries, cigarette butts, bread crusts and fetid pastrami from a nearby trash can, and the residual odor of Aramis wafting under the doors of the brokerage houses and banks. She could hear wisps of fog brushing against the buildings like wet velvet. It was as if her senses, like her strength, had been turned up by adrenaline.

She shook off the spectrum of sounds and smells and ran to the phone, holding her damaged hand by the wrist. As she moved she felt the roughness inside her blouse against her skin. With her right hand she pulled at the silk, yanking it out of her skirt. Stacks of money fell out of her blouse to the sidewalk. She stopped and stared at the bound blocks of hundred dollar bills lying at her feet.

She thought: There must be a hundred thousand dollars here. A man attacked me, choked me, bit my neck, burned my hand, then stuffed my shirt full of money and put a dumpster on me and now I can see heat and hear fog. I've won Satan's lottery.

She ran back to the alley leaving the money on the sidewalk. With her good hand she riffled through the trash spilled from the dumpster until she found a paper bag. Then she returned to the sidewalk and loaded the money into the bag.

At the pay phone she had to do some juggling to get the phone off the hook and dialed without putting down the money and without using her injured hand. She pressed 911 and while she waited for it to ring she looked at the burn. Really, it looked worse than it felt. She tried to flex the hand and black skin cracked. Boy, that should hurt. It should gross me out too, but it doesn't. In fact, I don't really feel that bad, considering. I've been more sore after a game of racquetball with Kurt. Strange.

The receiver clicked and a woman's voice came on the line. "Hello, you've reached the number for San Francisco emergency services. If are currently in danger press one, if the danger has passed and you still need help press two."

Jody pressed two.

"If you have been robbed, press one. If you've been in an accident press two. If you've been assaulted, press three. If you are calling to report a fire, press four. If you've --"

Jody ran the choices through her head and pressed three.

"If you've been shot, press one. Stabbed, press two. Raped, press three. All other assaults press four. If you'd like to hear these choices again, press five."

Jody meant to press four, but hit five instead. There was a series of clicks and the recorded voice came back on.

"Hello, you've reach the number for San Francisco emergency services. If you are currently in danger--"

Jody slammed the receiver down and it shattered in her hand, nearly knocking the phone off the pole. She jumped back and looked at the damage. Adrenaline, she thought.

I'll call Kurt. He can come get me and take me to the hospital. She looked around for another pay phone. There was one by her bus stop. When she reached it she realized that she didn't have any change. Her purse had been in her briefcase and her briefcase was gone. She tried to remember her calling card number, but she and Kurt had only moved in together a month ago and she hadn't memorized it yet. She picked up and dialed the operator. "I'd like to make a collect call from Jody." She gave the operator the number and waited while it rang. The machine picked up.

"It looks like no one is home," the operator said.

"He's screening his calls," Jody insisted. "Just tell him--"

"I'm sorry, we aren't allowed to leave messages."

Hanging up, Jody destroyed the phone; this time, on purpose. She thought: Pounds of hundred dollar bills and I can't make a damn phone call. And Kurt's screening his calls -- I must be very late, you'd think he could pick up. If I wasn't so pissed off I'd cry.

Her hand had stopped aching completely now, and when she looked at it again it seemed to have healed a bit. I'm getting loopy, she thought. Post traumatic loopiness. And I'm hungry. I need medical attention, I need a good meal, I need a sympathetic cop, a glass of wine, a hot bath, a hug, my auto-teller card so I can deposit this cash. I need...

The number forty-two bus rounded the corner and Jody instinctively felt in her jacket pocket for her bus pass. It was still there. The bus stopped and the door opened. She flashed her pass to the driver as she boarded. He grunted. She sat in the first seat, facing three other passengers.

Jody had been riding the buses for five years, and occasionally, because of work or a late movie, she had to ride them at night. But tonight, with her hair frizzing wild and full of dirt, her nylons ripped, her suit wrinkled and stained -- disheveled, disoriented, and desperate -- she felt like she fit in for the first time. The psychos lit up at the sight of her.

"Parking space!" A woman in the back blurted out. Jody looked up.

"Parking space!" The woman wore a flowered housecoat and Mickey Mouse ears. She pointed out the window and shouted. "Parking space!"

Jody looked away, embarrassed. She understood, though. She owned a car, a fast little Honda hatchback, and since she had found a parking space outside her apartment a month ago she had only moved it on Tuesday nights when the street sweeper went by -- and moved it back as soon as the sweeper passed. Claim jumping was a tradition in The City; you had to guard a space with your life. Jody had heard that there were parking spaces in Chinatown that had been in families for generations, watched over like the graves of honored ancestors, and protected by no little bit of palm greasing to the Tongs, the secret Chinese Mafia.

"Parking space!" The woman shouted.

Jody glanced across the aisle and committed eye contact with a scruffy bearded man in an overcoat. He grinned shyly, then slowly pulled aside the flap of his overcoat to reveal an impressive erection peeking out the port of his khakis.

Jody returned the grin and pulled her burnt, blackened hand out of her jacket and held it up for him. Bested, he closed his overcoat, slouched in his seat and sulked. Jody was amazed that she'd done it.

Next to the bearded man sat a young woman who was furiously un-knitting a sweater into a yarn bag, as if she would go until she got to the end of the yarn, then reknit the sweater. An old man in a tweed suit and a wool deer stalker hat sat next to the knitting woman, holding a walking stick between his knees. Every few seconds he let loose with a rattling coughing fit, then fought to get his breath back while he wiped his eyes with a silk handkerchief. He saw Jody looking at him and smiled apologetically.

"Just a cold," he said.

No, it's much worse than a cold, Jody thought. You're dying. How do I know that? I don't know how I know, but I know. She smiled at the old man then turned to look out the window.

The bus was passing through North Beach now and the streets were full of sailors, punks, and tourists. Around each she could see a faint red aura and heat trails in the air as they move. She shook her head to clear her vision, then looked at the people inside the bus. Yes, each of them had the aura, some brighter than others. Around the old man in tweeds there was a dark ring as well as the red heat aura. Jody rubbed her eyes and thought: I must have hit my head. I'm going to need a CAT scan and an EEG. It's going to cost a fortune. The company will hate it. Maybe I can process my own claim and push it through. Well, I'm definitely calling in sick for the rest of the week. And there's serious shopping to be done once I get finished at the hospital and the police station. Serious shopping. Besides, I won't be able to type for a while anyway.

She looked at her burnt hand and thought again that it might have healed a bit. I'm still taking the week off.

The bus stopped at Fisherman's Wharf and Gheridelli Square and groups of tourists in Day-Glo nylon shorts and Alcatraz sweatshirts boarded, chattering in French and German while tracing lines on street maps of The City. Jody could smell sweat and soap, the sea, boiled crab, chocolate and liquor, fried fish, onions, sourdough bread, hamburgers and car exhaust coming off the tourists. As hungry as she was, the odor of food nauseated her.

Feel free to shower during your visit to San Francisco, she thought.

The bus headed up Van Ness and Jody got up and pushed through the tourists to the exit door. A few blocks later the bus stopped at Chestnut Street and she looked over her shoulder before getting off. The woman in the Mickey Mouse ears was staring peacefully out the window. "Wow," Jody said. "Look at all those parking spaces."

As she stepped off the bus Jody could hear the woman shouting, "Parking space! Parking space!"

Jody smiled. Now why did I do that?

Chapter 3 / OH LIQUID LOVE

Snapshots at midnight: an obese woman with a stun gun curbing a poodle, an older gay couple power walking in designer sweats, a college girl peddling a mountain bike -- trailing tresses of perm-fried hair and a blur of red heat; Televisions buzzing inside hotels and homes, sounds of water heaters and washing machines, wind rattling sycamore leaves and whistling through fir trees, a rat leaving his nest in a palm tree -- claws skittering down the trunk. Smells: fear sweat from the poodle woman, rose water, ocean, tree sap, ozone, oil, exhaust and blood: hot and sweet like sugared iron.

It was only a three block walk from the bus stop to the four story building where she shared an apartment with Kurt, but to Jody it seemed like miles. It wasn't fatigue but fear that lengthened the distance. She thought she had lost her fear of The City long ago, but here it was again: over-the-shoulder glances between spun determination to look ahead and keep walking and not break into a run.

She crossed the street onto her block and saw Kurt's Jeep parked in front of the building. She looked for her Honda but it was gone. Maybe Kurt had taken it, but why? She'd left him the key as a courtesy. He wasn't really supposed to use it. She didn't know him that well.

She looked at the building. The lights were on in her apartment. She concentrated on the bay window and she could hear the sound of Louis Ruykeyser punning his way through a week on Wall Street. Kurt liked to watch tapes of Wall Street Week before he went to bed at night. He said they relaxed him, but Jody suspected that he got some latent sexual thrill out of listening to balding money managers talking about moving millions. Oh well, if a rise in the Dow put a pup-tent in his jammies it was okay with her. The last guy she lived with had wanted her to pee on him.

As she started up the steps she caught some movement out of the corner of her eye. Someone had ducked behind a tree. She could see and elbow and the tip of a shoe behind the tree, even in the darkness, but something else frightened her. There was no heat aura. Not seeing it now was as disturbing as seeing it had been a few minutes ago: she'd come to expect it. Whoever was behind the tree was as cold as the tree itself.

She ran up the steps, pushed the buzzer, and waited forever for Kurt to answer.

"Yes," the intercom crackled.

"Kurt, it's me. I don't have my key. Buzz me in."

The lock buzzed and she was in. She looked back through the glass. The street was empty. The figure behind the tree was gone.

She ran up the four flights of steps to where Kurt was waiting at their apartment door. He was in jeans and an Oxford cloth shirt -- an athletic, blond, thirty-year-old could-be model, who wanted, more than anything, to be a player on Wall Street. He took orders at a discount brokerage for salary and spent his days at a keyboard wearing a headset and suits he couldn't afford, watching other people's money pass him by. He was holding his hands behind his back to hide the velcro wrist wraps he wore at night to minimize the pain from carpal tunnel syndrome. He wouldn't wear the wraps at work; carpal tunnel was just too blue collar. At night he hid his hands like a kid with braces who is afraid to smile.

"Where have you been?" He asked, more angry than concerned.

Jody wanted smiles and sympathy, not recrimination. Tears welled in her eyes. "I was attacked tonight. Someone beat me up and stuffed me under a dumpster." She held her arms out for a hug. "They burned my hand," she wailed.

Kurt turned his back on her and walked back into the apartment. "And where were you last night? Where were you today? Your office called a dozen times today."

Jody followed him in. "Last night? What are you talking about?"

"They towed your car, you know. I couldn't find the key when the street sweeper came. You're going to have to pay to get it out of impound."

"Kurt, I don't know what you're talking about. I'm hungry and I'm scared and I need to go to the hospital. Someone attacked me dammit!"

Kurt pretended to be organizing his video tapes. "If you didn't want a commitment you shouldn't have agreed to move in with me. It's not like I don't get opportunities with women every day."

Her mother had told her: Never get involved with a man that's prettier than you are. "Kurt, look at this." Jody held up her burnt hand. "Look!"

Kurt turned slowly and looked at her, the acid in his expression fizzled into horror. "How did you do that?"

"I don't know, I was knocked out. I think I have a head injury. My vision is... Everything looks weird. Now will you please help me."

Kurt started walking in a tight circle around the coffee table, shaking his head. "I don't know what to do. I don't know what to do." He sat on the couch and began rocking.

Jody thought: This is the man who called the fire department when the toilet backed up and I'm asking him for help. What was I thinking? Why am I attracted to weak men? What's wrong with me? Why doesn't my hand hurt? Should I eat something or go to the emergency room?

Kurt said, "This is horrible, I've got to get up early. I have a meeting at five." Now that he was in the familiar territory of self-interest, he stopped rocking and looked up. "You still haven't told me where you were last night!"

Near the door where Jody stood there was an antique oak hall tree. On the hall tree there was a black Raku pot where lived a struggling philodendren, home for a colony of spider mites. As Jody snatched up the pot she could hear the spider mites shifting in their tiny webs. As she drew back to throw she saw Kurt blink, his eyelids moving slowly like an electric garage door. She saw the pulse in his neck start to rise with a heart beat as she let fly. The pot described a beeline across the room, trailing the plant behind it like a comet tail. Confused spider mites found themselves airborne. The bottom of the pot connected with Kurt's forehead, and Jody could see it bulge then collapse in on itself. Pottery and potting soil showered the room, the plant folded against Kurt's head and Jody could hear each of the stems snapping. Kurt didn't have time to change expressions. He fell back on the couch, unconscious. The whole thing took a tenth of a second.

Jody moved to the couch and brushed potting soil out of Kurt's hair. There was a half-moon shaped dent in his forehead that was filling with blood as she watched. Her stomach lurched and cramped so violently that she fell to her knees with the pain. She thought: My insides are caving in on themselves.

She heard Kurt's heart beating and the slow rasp of his breathing. At least I haven't killed him.

The smell of blood was thick in her nostrils, suffocatingly sweet. Another cramp doubled her over. She touched the wound on his forehead, then pulled back, her fingers dripping with blood. I'm not going to do this. I can't.

She licked her fingers and every muscle in her body sang with the rush. There was and intense pressure on the roof of her mouth, then a crackling noise inside her head, as if someone was ripping out the roots of her eye teeth. She ran her tongue over the roof of her mouth and felt needle-like points pushing through the skin behind her canines: new teeth, growing.

I'm not doing this, she thought, as she climbed on top of Kurt and licked the blood from his forehead. The new teeth lengthened. A wave of electric pleasure rocketed through her and her mind went white with exhilaration.

In the back of her mind a small voice shouted "No!" over and over again as she bit into Kurt's throat and drank. She heard herself moaning with each beat of Kurt's heart. It was a machine gun orgasm, dark chocolate, spring water in the desert, a hallelujah chorus and the cavalry coming to the rescue all at once. And all the while the little voice screamed NO!

Finally she pulled herself away and rolled off onto the floor. She sat with her back to the couch, arms around her legs, buried against her knees, ticking and twitching with tiny convulsion of pleasure. A dark warmth moved through her body, tingling as if she had just climbed out of a snowbank into a hot bath.

Slowly the warmth ran away, replaced by a heart-wrenching sadness -- a feeling of loss so permanent and profound that she felt numbed by the weight of it.

You know this feeling, she thought. You've felt this before.

She turned and looked at Kurt and felt little relief to see that he was still breathing. There were no marks on his neck where she had bitten him. The wound on his forehead was clotting and scabbing over. The smell of blood was still strong but now it repulsed her, like the odor of empty wine bottles on a hangover morning.

She stood and walked to the bathroom, stripping her clothes off as she went. She turned on the shower, and while it ran worked down the remnants of her pantyhose, noticing, without much surprise, that her burned hand had healed completely. She thought: I've changed. I will never be the same. The world has shifted. And with that thought the sadness returned. You've felt this before.

She stepped into the shower and let the scalding water run over her, not noting it's feel, or sound, or the color of the heat and steam swirling in the dark bathroom. The first sob wrenched its way up from her chest, shaking her, opening the grief trail. She slid down the shower wall, sat on the water-warmed tile and cried until the water ran cold. And she remembered: another shower in the dark when the world had changed.

She was fifteen and not in love, but in love with the excitement of touching tongues and the rough feel of the boy's hand on her breast; in love with the idea of passion and too full of too-sweet wine, shoplifted by the boy from a Seven-Eleven. His name was Steve Rizzoli (which didn't matter, except that she would always remember it) and he was two years older -- a bit of a bad boy with his hash pipe and surfer smoothness. On a blanket in the Carmel dunes he coaxed her out of her jeans and did it to her. To her, not with her: she could have been dead for her involvement. It was fast and awkward and empty except for the pain, which lingered and grew even after she walked home, cried in the shower, and lay in her room, wet hair spread over the pillow as she stared at the ceiling and grieved until dawn.

As she stepped out of the shower and began mechanically toweling off she thought: I felt this before when I grieved for my virginity. What do I grieve for tonight? My humanity? That's it: I'm not human anymore, and I never will be again.

With that realization, events fell into place. She'd been gone two nights, not one. Her attacker had shoved her under the dumpster to protect her from the sun, but somehow her hand had been exposed and burned. She had slept through the day and when she awoke the next evening she was no longer human.

Vampire.

She didn't believe in them.

She looked at her feet on the bath mat. Her toes were straight as a baby's, as if they had never been bent and bunched by wearing shoes. The scars on her knees and elbows from childhood accidents were gone. She looked in the mirror and saw that the tiny lines beside her eyes were gone, as were her freckles. But her eyes were black, not a millimeter of iris showing. She shuddered, then realized that she was seeing all of this in total darkness and flipped on the bathroom light. Her pupils contracted and her eyes were the same striking green that they had always been. She grabbed a handful of her hair and inspected the ends. None were split, none broken. She was -- as far as she could allow herself to believe -- perfect. A newborn at twenty-six.

I am a vampire. She allowed the thought to repeat and settle in her mind as she went to the bedroom and dressed in jeans and a sweatshirt.

A vampire. A monster. But I don't feel like a monster.

As she walked back from the bedroom to the bathroom to dry her hair, she spotted Kurt lying on the couch. He was breathing rhythmically and a healthy aura of heat rose off his body. Jody felt a twinge of guilt, then pushed it aside.

Fuck him, I never really liked him anyway. Maybe I am a monster.

She turned on the curling iron that she used every morning to straighten her hair, then turned it off and threw it back on the vanity. Fuck that, too. Fuck curling irons and blow dryers and high heels and mascara and control top pantyhose. Fuck those human things.

She shook out her hair, grabbed her toothbrush and went back to the bedroom where she packed a shoulder bag full of jeans and sweatshirts. She dug through Kurt's jewelry box until she found the spare keys to her Honda.

The clock radio by the bed read five o'clock in the morning. I don't have much time. I've got to find a place to stay, fast.

On her way out she paused by the couch and kissed Kurt on the forehead. "You're going to be late for your meeting," she said to him. He didn't move.

She grabbed the bag of money from the floor and stuffed it into her shoulder bag, then walked out. Outside, she looked up and down the street, then cursed. The Honda had been towed. She'd have to get it out of impound. But you could only do that during the day. Shit. It would be light soon. She thought of what the sun had done to her hand. I've got to find darkness.

She jogged down the street, feeling lighter on her feet than she ever had. At Van Ness she ran into a motel office and pounded on the bell until a sleepy-eyed clerk appeared behind the bulletproof window. She paid cash for two nights, then gave the clerk a hundred dollar bill to insure that she would not, under any circumstances, be disturbed.

Once in the room she locked the door, then braced a chair against it and got into bed.

Weariness came on her suddenly as first light broke pink over the city. She thought: I've got to get my car back. I've got to find a safe place to stay. Then I need to find out who did this to me. I have to know why. Why me? Why the money? Why? And I'm going to need help. I'm going to need someone who can move around in the day.

When the sun peaked over the horizon in the east she fell into the sleep of the dead.

Chapter 4 / BLOOMS AND THE CITY OF BURNT CLUTCHES

C. Thomas Flood (Tommy to his friends) was just reaching red-line in a wet dream, when he was awakened by the scurry and chatter of the five Wongs. Geishas in garters scampered off to dreamland, unsatisfied, leaving him staring at the slats of the bunk above.

The room was little bigger than a walk-in closet. Bunks were stacked three high on either side of a narrow aisle where the five Wongs were competing for enough space to pull on their pants. Wong Two bent over Tommy's bunk, grinned apologetically, and said something in Cantonese.

"No problem," Tommy said. He rolled over on his side, careful not to scuff his morning erection on the wall, and pulled the blankets over his head.

He thought: Privacy is a wonderful thing. Like love, privacy is most manifest in its absence. I should write a story about that -- and work in lots of geisha girls in garters and red pumps. The Crowded Tea House of Almond-Eyed Tramps, by C. Thomas Flood. I'll write that today, after I rent a post office box and look for a job. Or maybe I should just stay here today and see who's leaving the flowers...

Tommy had found fresh flowers on his bed for four days running and they were beginning to bother him. It wasn't the flowers themselves that bothered him: gladiolas, red roses, and two mixed bouquets with big pink ribbons. He sort of liked flowers, in a masculine and totally non-sissy way, of course. And it didn't bother him that he didn't own a vase, or a table to set it on. He'd just trotted down the hall to the communal bathroom, removed the lid of the toilet tank, and plopped the flowers in. The added color provided a pleasant counterpoint to the bathroom's filth -- until rats ate the blossoms. But that didn't bother him either. What bothered him was that he had been in The City for less than a week and didn't know anyone. So who had sent the flowers?

The five Wongs let loose with a barrage of "bye-byes" as they left the room. Wong Five pulled the door shut behind him.

Tommy thought: I've got to speak to Wong One about the accommodations.

Wong One wasn't one of the five Wongs with whom Tommy shared the room. Wong One was the landlord: older, wiser, and more sophisticated than Wongs Two through Six. Wong One spoke English, wore a threadbare suit thirty years out of style and carried a cane with a brass dragon head. Tommy had met him on Columbus Avenue just after midnight, over the burning corpse of Rosenante, Tommy's seventy-four Volvo sedan.

"I killed her," Tommy said, watching black smoke roll out of from under the hood.

"Too bad," Wong One said sympathetically, before continuing on his way.

"Excuse me," Tommy called after Wong. Tommy was just in from Indiana and had never been to a large city, so he did not recognize that Wong One had already stepped over the accepted metropolitan limit of involvement with a stranger.

Wong turned and leaned on his dragon headed cane.

"Excuse me," Tommy repeated, "but I'm new in town -- would you know where I can find a place to stay around here?"

Wong raised an eyebrow. "You have money?"

"A little."

Wong looked at Tommy, standing there next to his burning car with a suitcase and a typewriter case. He looked at Tommy's open, hopeful smile, his thin face and mop of dark hair, and the English word "victim" rose in his mind in twenty point type -- part of an item on page three of The Chronicle: Victim Found in Tenderloin, Beaten to Death with Typewriter. Wong sighed heavily. He liked reading The Chronicle each day, and he didn't want to skip page three until the tragedy had passed.

"You come with me," he said.

Wong walked up Columbus into Chinatown. Tommy stumbled along behind, looking over his shoulder from time to time at the burning Volvo. "I really liked that car. I got five speeding tickets in that car. They're still in it. "

"Too bad," Wong stopped at a battered metal door between a grocery store and a fish market. "You have fifty bucks?"

Tommy nodded and dug into the pocket of his jeans.

"Fifty bucks, one week," Wong said. "Two-hundred-fifty, one month."

"One week will be fine," Tommy said, peeling two twenties and a ten off a thinning roll of bills.

Wong opened the door and started up a narrow unlit staircase. Tommy bumped up the stairs behind him, nearly falling a couple of times. "My name is C. Thomas Flood. Well, actually that's the name I write under. People call me Tommy."

"Good," Wong said.

"And you are?" Tommy stopped at the top of the stairs and offered his hand to shake.

Wong looked at Tommy's hand. "Wong," he said.

Tommy bowed. Wong watched him, wondering what in the hell he was doing. Fifty bucks is fifty bucks, he thought.

"Bathroom down hall," Wong said, throwing open a door and throwing a light switch. Five sleepy Chinese men looked up from their bunks. "Tommy," Wong said, pointing to Tommy.

"Tommy," the Chinese men repeated in unison.

"This Wong," Wong said pointing to the man on the bottom left bunk.

Tommy nodded. "Wong."

"This Wong. That Wong. Wong. Wong. Wong." Wong said, ticking off each man as if he were flipping beads on an abacus, which mentally, he was: fifty bucks, fifty bucks, fifty bucks. He pointed to the empty bunk on the bottom right. "You sleep there. Bye -bye."

"Bye-bye," said the five Wongs.

Tommy said, "Excuse me, Mr. Wong --

Wong turned.

"When is rent due. I'm going job hunting tomorrow, but I don't have a lot of cash."

"Tuesday and Sunday," Wong said. "Fifty bucks."

"But you said it was fifty dollars a week."

"Two-fifty a month or fifty a week, due Tuesday and Sunday."

Wong walked away. Tommy stashed his duffel bag and typewriter under the bunk and crawled in. Before he could work up a good worry about his burning car he was asleep. He had pushed the Volvo straight through from Incontinence,Indiana to San Francisco, stopping only for fuel and bathroom breaks. He had watched the sun rise and set three times from behind the wheel -- exhaustion finally caught him at the coast.

Tommy was descended from two generations of line workers at the Incontinence Forklift Company. When he announced at fourteen that he was going to be a writer, his father, Thomas Flood Sr., accepted the news with the tolerant incredulity a parent usually reserves for monsters under the bed and imaginary friends. When Tommy took a job in a grocery store instead of the factory his father breathed a small sigh of relief -- at least it was a union shop, the boy would have benefits and retirement. It was only when Tommy bought the old Volvo, and rumors that he was a budding Communist began circulating through town, that Tom senior began to worry. Father Flood's paternal angst continued to grow with each night that he spent listening to his only son tapping the nights away on the Olivetti portable, until one Wednesday night he tied one on at the Starlight Lanes and spilled his guts to his bowling buddies.

"I found a copy of The New Yorker under the boy's mattress," he slurred through a five pitcher Budweiser haze. "I've got to face it, my son's a pansy."

The rest of the Bill's Radiator Bowling Team members bowed their heads in sympathy, all secretly thanking God that the bullet had hit the next soldier in line and that their sons were all safely obsessed with small block Chevys and big tits. Harley Businsky, who had recently been promoted to minor godhood by bowling a three-hundred, threw a bearlike arm around Tom's shoulders. "Maybe he's just a little mixed up," Harley offered. "Let's go talk to the boy."

When two, triple-extra-large, electric-blue, embroidered bowling shirts burst into his room full of two, triple-extra-large, beer-oiled bowlers, Tommy went over backwards in his chair.

"Hi Dad," Tommy said from the floor.

"Son, we need to talk."

Over the next half hour the two men ran Tommy through the fatherly version of good cop bad cop, or perhaps Joe McCarthy and Santa Claus. Their interrogation determined that: Yes, Tommy did like girls and cars. No, he was not nor had he ever been a member of the Communist party. And yes, he was going to pursue a career as a writer, regardless of the lack of AFL-CIO affiliation.

Tommy tried to plead the case for a life in letters, but found his arguments ineffective (due in no small part to the fact that both his inquisitors thought that Hamlet was a small pork portion served with eggs.) He was breaking a sweat and beginning to accept defeat when he fired a desperation shot.

"You know, somebody wrote Rambo?"

Thomas Flood Sr. and Harley Businsky exchanged a look of horrified realization. They were rocked, shaken, crumbling.

Tommy pushed on. "And Patton -- someone wrote Patton."

Tommy waited. The two men sat next to each other on his single bed, coughing and fidgeting and trying not to make eye-contact with the boy. Everywhere they looked there were quotes carefully written in magic marker and tacked on the walls, there were books, pens and typing paper, there were poster-sized photos of authors; Ernest Hemingway stared down at them with a gleaming gaze that seem to say: "You fuckers should have gone fishing."

Finally Harley said, "Well if you're going to be a writer you can't stay here."

"Pardon?" Tommy said.

"You got to go to a city and starve. I don't know a Kafka from a Nuance, but I know that if you're going to be a writer you got to starve. You won't be any damn good if you don't starve."

"I don't know, Harley," Tom Sr, said, not sure that he liked the idea of his skinny son starving.

"Who bowled a three-hundred last Wednesday, Tom?"

"You did."

"And I say the boy's got to go to the city and starve."

Tom Flood looked at Tommy as if the boy were standing on the trapdoor of the gallows. "You sure about this writer thing, son?"

Tommy nodded.

"Can I make you a sandwich."

If not for a particularly seedy television docu-drama about the bombing of the World Trade Center, Tommy may, indeed, have starved in New York, but Tom Sr. was not going to allow his son to be "blowed up by a bunch of towel-headed terrorists." And Tommy might have starved in Paris, if a cursory inspection of the Volvo had not revealed that it would not survive the dampness of the drive. So he ended up in San Francisco, and although he could use some breakfast, he was more worried about flowers than with food.

He thought: I should just stick around and see who's leaving the flowers. Catch them in the act.

But he had been unemployed for more than a week, and his Midwestern work ethic forced him out of his bunk.

He wore his sneakers in the shower so his feet wouldn't have to come in contact with the floor, then dressed in his best shirt and job-hunting jeans, grabbed a notebook, and sloshed down the steps into Chinatown.

The sidewalk was awash with Asians: men and women moving doggedly past open markets selling live fish, barbecued meat, and thousands of vegetables that Tommy could put no name to. He passed one market where live snapping turtles, two feet across, were struggling to get out of plastic milk crates. In the next window trays of duck feet and bills were arranged around smoked pig heads, while whole naked pheasants hung ripening above.

The air was heavy with the smells of pressed humanity, soy sauce, sesame oil, licorice, and car exhaust -- always car exhaust. Tommy walked up Grant and crossed Broadway into North Beach, where the crush of people thinned out and the smells changed to a miasma of baking bread, garlic, oregano and more exhaust. No matter where he went in the city there was an odiferous mix of food and vehicle, like alchemic concoctions of some mad gourmet mechanic: Kung Pao Saab Turbo, Buick Skylark Carbonara, Sweet and Sour Metro Bus, Honda Bolonaise with Burning Clutch Sauce.

Tommy was startled out of his olfactory reverie by a screeching war whoop. He looked up to see a roller-blader in fluorescent pads and helmet closing on him at break-neck speed. An old man, who was sitting on the sidewalk ahead feeding croissants to his two dogs, looked up momentarily and threw a croissant across the sidewalk. The dogs shot after the treat, pulling their cotton rope leashes tight. Tommy cringed. The roller-blader hit the rope and went airborne, describing a ten-foot arc in the air before crashing in a violent tangle of padded limbs and wheels at Tommy's feet.

"Are you okay?"

Tommy offered a hand to the skater, who waved it away. "I'm fine." Blood was dripping from a scrape on his chin, his Day Glo wrap-around sunglasses were twisted on his face.

"Perhaps you should slow down on the sidewalks," the old man called.

The skater sat up and turned to the old man. "Oh, your majesty, I didn't know. I'm sorry."

"Safety first, son." the old man said with a smile.

"Yes sir," the skater said. "I'll be more careful." He climbed to his feet and nodded to Tommy. "Sorry." He straightened his shades and skated slowly away.

Tommy stood staring at the old man, who had resumed feeding his dogs. "Your Majesty?"

"Or your Imperial Highness," the Emperor said. "You're new to The City,"

"Yes, but.."

A young woman in fishnet stockings and red satin hot pants who was swinging by, paused by the Emperor and bowed slightly. "Morning Highness," she said.

"Safety first, my child," the Emperor said.

She smiled and walked on. Tommy watched her until she turned the corner, then turned back to the old man.

"Welcome to my city," the Emperor said. "How are you doing so far?"

"I'm... I'm..." Tommy was confused. "Who are you?"

"Emperor of San Francisco, Protector of Mexico, at your service. Croissant?" The Emperor held open a white paper bag to Tommy, who took a shook his head.

"This impetuous fellow," the Emperor said pointing to his Boston terrier, "is Bummer. A bit of a rascal, he, but the best bug-eyed rat dog in The City."

The little dog growled.

"And this," the Emperor continued, "is Lazarus, found dead on Geary Street after an unfortunate encounter with a French tour bus and snatched back from the brink by the mystical curative scent of a slightly used beef jerky."

The golden retriever offered his paw. Feeling stupid, Tommy took it and shook. "Pleased to meet you."

"And you are?" The Emperor asked.

"C. Thomas Flood."

"And the C stands for?"

"Well, it doesn't really stand for anything. I'm a writer. I just added the C to my pen name."

"And a fine affectation it is?" The Emperor paused to gnaw the end off of a croissant. "So, C, how is The City treating you so far?"

Tommy thought that he might have just been insulted, but he found he was enjoying talking to the old man. He hadn't had a conversation of more than a few words since he arrived in the city. "I like the city, but I'm having some problems."

He told the Emperor about the destruction of his car, about his subsequent meeting of Wong One, of his cramped, filthy quarters, and ended his story with the mystery of the flowers on his bed.

The Emperor sighed sympathetically and scratched his scruffy graying beard. "I'm afraid that I am unable to assist you with your accommodation problem, the men and I are fortunate enough to

count the entire city as our home. But I may have a lead on a job for you, and perhaps a clue to the conundrum of the flowers."

The Emperor paused and motioned for Tommy to move closer. Tommy crouched down and cocked and ear to the Emperor. "Yes?"

"I've seen him," the Emperor whispered. "It's a vampire."

Tommy recoiled as if he'd been spit on. "A vampire florist?"

"Well once you accept the vampire part the florist part is a pretty easy leap, don't you think?"

Chapter 5/ UNDEAD AND SOMEWHAT SLIGHTLY DAZED

French people were fucking in the room next door; Jody could hear every groan, giggle and bed spring squeak. In the room above, a television spewed game show prattle: "I'll take Bestiality for five-hundred, Alex."

Jody pulled a pillow over her head.

It wasn't exactly like waking up. There was no slow skate from dreamland to reality, no pleasant dawning of consciousness in the cozy twilight of sleepiness. No, it was as if someone had just switched on the world, full volume, like a clock radio playing reality's top forty irritating hits.

"Criminal Presidents for a hundred, Alex."

Jody flipped onto her back and stared at the ceiling. I always thought that sex and game shows ended at death, she thought. They always say rest in peace, don't they?

"Vas-y plus fort, mon petite cochon d'amour!" *

She wanted to complain to someone, anyone. She hated waking up alone -- and going to sleep alone, for that matter. She had lived with ten different men in five years. Serial Monogamy. It was a problem she was getting around to working on before she died.

She crawled out of bed and opened the rubber-lined motel draperies. Light from street lights and neon signs filled the room.

Now what?

Normally she would go to the bathroom. But she didn't feel the need to.

I haven't peed in two days. I may never pee again.

She went into the bathroom and sat on the stool to test her theory. Nothing. She unwrapped one of the plastic glasses, filled it with water and gulped it down. Her stomach lurched and she vomited the water in a stream against the mirror.

Okay, no water. A shower? Change clothes and go out on the town? To do what? Hunt?

She recoiled at the thought.

Am I going to have to kill people? Oh my God, Kurt. What if he changes? What if he already has?

She dressed quickly in her clothes from the night before, grabbed her flight bag and the room key and left the room. She waved to the night clerk as she passed the motel office and he winked and waved back. A hundred bucks had made them friends.

She walked around the corner and up Chestnut, resisting the urge to break into a run. Outside her building she paused and focused on the apartment window. The lights were on, and with concentration she could hear Kurt talking on the phone.

"Yeah, the crazy bitch knocked me out with a potted plant. No, threw it at me. I was two hours late for work. I don't know, she said something about being attacked. She hasn't been to work for a couple of days. No she doesn't have a key, I had to buzz her in..."

So I didn't kill him. He didn't change or he wouldn't have been able to go to work at all in the daylight. He sounds fine. Pissed, but fine. I wonder if I just apologize and explain what happened if ...

"No," Kurt said into the phone. "I took her name off the mailbox. I don't really care, she didn't fit the image I'm trying to build anyway. I was thinking about asking out Susan Badistone: Stanford, family money, Republican. I know, but that's why God made implants..."

Jody turned and walked back to the motel. She stopped in the office and paid the clerk for two more days, then went to her room, sat down the bed and tried to cry. No tears would come.

In another time she would have called a girlfriend and spent the evening on the phone being comforted. She would have eaten a half-gallon of ice cream and stayed up all night thinking about what she was going to do with her life. In the morning she would have called in sick to work, then called her mother in Carmel to borrow enough money for a deposit on a new apartment. But that was another time, when she had still been a person.

The little confidence that she had felt the night before was gone. Now she was just confused and afraid. She tried to remember everything she had ever seen or heard about Vampires. It wasn't much. She didn't like scary books or movies. Much of what she could remember didn't seem true. She didn't have to sleep in a coffin, that was obvious. But it was also obvious that she couldn't go out in the daylight. She didn't have to kill every night, and if she did bite someone, they didn't necessarily have to turn into a vampire -- an asshole maybe, but not a vampire. But then again, Kurt was an asshole before, so how could you tell? Why had she turned? She was going to have to get to a library.

She thought: I've got to get my car back. And I need a new apartment. It's just a matter of time before a maid comes in during the day and burns me to a crisp. I need someone who can move around during the day. I need a friend.

She had lost her address book with her purse, but it didn't really matter. All of her friends were currently in relationships, and although any of them would offer sympathy about her break-up with Kurt, they were too self-involved to be of any real help. She and her friends were only close when they were single.

I need a man.

The thought depressed her.

Why does it always come to that? I'm a modern woman. I can open jars and kill spiders on my own. I can balance a checkbook and check the oil in my car. I can support myself. Then again, maybe not. How am I going to support myself?

She threw her flight bag on the bed and pulled out the white bakery bag full of money and emptied it on the bed. She counted the bills in one stack, then counted the stacks. There were thirty-five stacks of twenty, one-hundred dollar bills. Minus the five hundred she had spent on the hotel: Almost seventy-thousand dollars. She felt a sudden and deep-seated urge to go shopping.

Whoever had attacked her had known she would need money. It hadn't been an accident that she had turned. And it probably hadn't been an accident that he had left her hand in the sunlight to burn. How else would she have known to go to ground before sun up? But if he wanted to help her, wanted her to survive, why didn't he just tell her what she was supposed to do?

She gathered up the money and was stuffing it back in the flight bag when the phone rang. She looked at it, watched the orange light strobing in rhythm to the bell. No one knew where she was. It must be the front desk. After four rings she picked up.

Before she could say hello a gravelly and calm male voice said, "By the way, you're not immortal. You can still be killed."

There was a click and Jody hung up the phone.

He said, be killed, not you can still die. Be killed.

She grabbed her bag and ran out into the night.

* "Do it harder, my little love pig!"