Too fast-everything was happening toofast!
Jules rushed Malice X, trying to pin him against the wall with his superior bulk. But his antagonist avoided Jules’s clumsy lunge easily, leaping over him onto the roof of the Cadillac.
An inhuman scream made Jules turn back to the alley’s entrance. Doodlebug had fired two darts into the face of the shorter of Malice X’s two vampire lieutenants, catching him midway through his transformation from wolf to man. Almost simultaneously, Doodlebug hurled a vicious side kick through the taller vampire’s midsection. Jules recognized this vampire as Cowboy Hat, the leader of the toughs who’d attacked him near Maureen’s. The kick dislodged wet hunks of gray proto-matter, splattering them against the brick wall, disrupting Cowboy Hat’s change back to human.
“Jules! Catch!”
Doodlebug pitched the crossbow back toward Jules. It missed the net covering the top of the alleyway by inches. The big vampire reached up and-yes! Caughtit! The catch felt like the climax of a recurring dream. He was back on the St. Ignatius football field, running long for a decisive touchdown. Usually he dropped the ball, but tonight-well, tonight he caught the gun, all right, but his thick fingers got wedged in the magazine, spilling darts and garlic pellets onto the ground.
Shit!Tiny Idaho had only given him a single lesson on how to load the thing! He’d never collect the spilled ammo and reload it in time!
The vampire with two darts protruding from his face lunged wildly at Jules. His agonized curses were eloquent testimony that having his cheekbone and nose re-form around those two missiles must’ve hurt like hell. Not sure the gun would fire, Jules flung his free hand forward to hold off his attacker. His palm collided with the blunt end of the dart protruding from the attacking vampire’s nose. The unintended impact drove the missile deeper into his skull. Spasming violently, the black vampire plunged to the ground, letting loose a howl that must’ve shaken the stained-glass windows of Garden District mansions a mile away.
Jules stared, horrified, as his erstwhile opponent writhed in agony on the cobblestones at his feet. He’d never doneanything like that to a fellow vampire before.
The smack of leather against bone, coming from the alley’s entrance, distracted Jules from his ethical predicament. All flying feet and speed-blurred fists, Doodlebug was holding off a horde of mind-controlled neighborhood folk who surged, blank-faced and silent, toward the alleyway. He was trying desperately to slash an escape route through the seemingly endless bodies, tossing attackers aside like a garbage collector heaving trash sacks. But by sheer weight of numbers and insensitivity to pain, the zombies were slowly forcing him back into the alley.
Before Jules could take a step to help his friend, viselike talons dug into the flesh of his calves. “Muthahfuckah,” a pain-racked voice croaked. “Gonna make you pay for what you done to Sonny and me… gonna make you pay inspades, soon as I get myself togethah-”
Cowboy Hat hung on to Jules’s legs with unholy strength, even though his lower body was only tenuously connected with his torso. Jules watched, both fascinated and sickened, as Cowboy Hat’s body completed its transformation, rebuilding itself in the process. His bones fused and veins reknotted as the torn shreds of his skin surged together like a colony of mating slugs.
Dazed, nauseated, Jules pointed the gun at his assailant’s forehead. “Leggo, or I’ll… I’ll shoot. I swear I will-”
Cowboy Hat’s face was twisted by pain and hate. “Do yo‘worst, you fat fuck. Youstill be a dead man-”
Not knowing whether any ammunition remained in the magazine, Jules closed his eyes and pulled the gun’s trigger. He heard a click as a cartridge slid into firing position, aphffutt as it raced out the barrel, and a rotten-eggblatt as it struck home.
The odor of something unbearably pungent burned the hairs inside his nose and forced Jules’s eyes open-the stench of concentrated garlic.
Cowboy Hat immediately released his grip on Jules’s legs. He bellowed like a branded mule and rubbed frantically at his eyes. Jules was close enough to feel the garlic fumes bite at the patches of skin exposed by gaps in his costume. As he was backing away toward the car, powerful arms reached from behind him and yanked the weapon from his hands.
“That’s anasty — ass toy you got there, Jules,” Malice X said. “Lemme take that off yo‘ hands, boy-that’sdefinitely for children over the age of three.”
He squinched one eye shut and sighted along the barrel, aiming at Jules’s crotch. “Shee-oot!You could hurt somebody with this! There oughta be arecall on these!” He grinned and wadded up the crossbow gun’s metal and plastic armature like a soggy paper plate. Then he tossed it over his shoulder into a trash heap at the back of the alley.
Jules braced himself for an attack. But Malice X merely crossed his arms and smiled. He made no movement in Jules’s direction at all.
Why isn’t he comin‘ at me?
As if to answer Jules’s unspoken question, Malice X leaned languidly against the wall and said, “Man, this is more fun than front-row seats at cage-match wrassling.” But the sweat on his forehead betrayed the strain caused by mind-controlling his dozens of drug-addicted slaves.
Jules took the risk of turning his back on his nemesis-no matter how good Doodlebug was, his friend couldn’t hold out alone against an onrushing tide of zombies forever. He waded into the fray, a buffalo charging into a tightly bunched flock of sheep. Only these sheep had knives, tire irons, and busted planks with bent nails protruding from the ends. One woman in a pink dressing gown pounded his flabby side with a can of baby formula.
Jules found himself experiencing a savage, angry exhilaration. His assaults didn’t have anywhere near the fluidity and grace of Doodlebug’s twirling kicks, but he had mass in his favor. He used his elbows like a lesser man would use a two-by-four. His fists were the size of whole frozen chickens. All the frustration, hurt, and humiliation of the past month powered those fists like rocket fuel. He hadn’t cut loose like this since his glory days in the early 1940s. But for every wino or saggy-shorts teenager he flattened, three more surged forward.
The sidewalk outside the alley began to resemble a set from a Sam Peckinpah war movie-bleeding bodies stacked like sandbags. But each “sandbag” still writhed with baleful life, and, short of a broken neck, eventually surged back into the attacking horde. Individually, none of the assailants was much of a threat. But cumulatively, their clumsy blows, knife thrusts, and attempts to stake him were wearing Jules down.
“D.B.!” Jules shouted as he body-slammed the baby-formula-wielding woman against the brick wall for the third time. “Any bright ideas?”
“Maneuver Double-Eagle!” Doodlebug shouted back in the midst of breaking a man’s arm. “Cover me while I change, and then I’ll cover you!”
Maneuver Double-Eagle? What the fuck is that pantyhose-wearin‘ fruitcake talkin’ about?Jules watched, dumbfounded, as his friend launched into a gold-medal-winning backflip, landed on the roof of the limousine, and immediately stripped off his top and bra. Jules’s view of his friend’s augmented pulchritude was a brief one, for Doodlebug quickly transformed into the largest bat Jules had ever seen.
Double-Eagle, huh?Jules glanced at the narrow gap between the hanging net and the heads of his attackers.Oh, I get it-!
Taking advantage of Jules’s distraction, three zombies dashed into the alleyway, seeking to grab Doodlebug before he could take to the air. But Jules grabbed the biggest one by the legs and swung him like a club, bouncing one zombie off the Cadillac’s chrome grille and knocking the other into a woman who was trying to brain Jules with pieces of a baby stroller. Doodle-Bat vigorously flapped his six-foot wingspan, launching himself from the top of the limo.
Now it was Jules’s turn. There was no wayhe was going to do a backflip onto the Cadillac’s roof-instead, he picked up a rusted car bumper, slung it across his shoulders like a yoke, put his head down low, and charged. Four hundred and fifty pounds of vampire plus fifty pounds of steel made for a formidable battering ram. Jules knocked down six attackers and threw a dozen more off-balance. Then he retreated to the front of the Cadillac.
Jules didn’t bother stripping off his hood, cloak, or clothing; he wouldn’t be flying under his own power, and the bunched-up fabric would give Doodlebug something to grab hold of. Instead, he concentrated on transforming, double time, to the smallest bat he could. The painful melting/shrinking/stretching sensations were almost old hatLittle, littler, littlest-!
Seconds later he was swimming in a sea of clothing. Strong talons gripped his hood, and Jules felt himself leaving the cobblestones. His boots and pants remained behind as the two bats struggled into the air, levitated by a single set of wings.
Fingers grasped at his hanging cloak, pulling the two of them back down. Suddenly, Jules heard broken, staticky words in his head-shirt, grab hold of shirt-so he disentangled himself from his black cloak and sank his talons into his white shirt, just before Doodlebug let go of the cloak. Then he climbed up the shirt to Doodlebug’s tiny red-haired legs and grabbed hold of them with his own feet. His friend flapped toward the narrow window of open sky between the net’s edge and a sea of grasping hands.
The world was upside down. Zombies clung to a ceiling of cobblestones and jumped down at him, only to snap back as though held fast by bungee cords. Those words in his head-they wereDoodlebug’s? He could read Doodlebug’s mind because they were both bats-? No time for puzzles-open sky was coming up fast. There’d be plenty of time later to ask Doodlebug about his latest trick At the last possible second, figures skulking on the rooftops along the alley unfurled a second net. Its mesh web tauntingly closed the gap just as Doodlebug reached it. His wing tips caught momentarily in the thick nylon strands. Jules thought he’d be dropped for sure. But with powerful wing beats and amazing control, Doodlebug was able to extricate himself without dropping his passenger. Even so, the tiny door on their cage had just been flung shut in their faces. Jules’s heart sank. They were trapped. And Cowboy Hat had shaken off his garlic poisoning; he looked ready to eat stainless steel and shit Ginsu knives.
Jules heard the staticky voice in his head again.Malice X… key- This time, pictures accompanied the barely distinct words. He saw what Doodlebug wanted him to do. But it seemed impossible-no one could transform as fast as he was being asked to. Then another image invaded his brain. The image of a miniature train racing steadily around its track. It calmed him, centered him. As they approached Malice X, Jules knew he could do what he had to.
He concentrated on an empty bathtub. He pictured his hands turning on the spigots. Liquid Jules flowed out the faucet. He grabbed the spigots and twisted them to full blast.
Mass flowed back to him in an overwhelming rush. Once again, he was 450 pounds of fighting-mad vampire. A Jules-bomb, dropped from fifteen feet up. Plunging toward his nemesis, empowered by gravity and velocity to squash him with thousands of pounds of crushing force. Malice X stared upward, frozen by the apparition of a falling, naked Jules. They locked eyes. Jules, dead on target, smiled ruthlessly.
And then Malice X, lizard-quick, stepped out of the way.
(Cripes, is this gonna hurt-!)
Jules belly flopped onto the cobblestones. The impact was equivalent to a Chevy Suburban and a city bus, both cruising at twenty miles per hour, smacking head-on. Unfortunately for Jules, he was the Chevy Suburban. Every puff of air was expelled from his lungs. Three ribs cracked on impact.
He lay stunned for a few seconds. Then he sucked precious air into his chest, which felt full of broken glass, and struggled to get to his feet.Hurtin‘ in places I didn’t know existed-gotta get up or I’ll be dead for real… He made it to his hands and knees before incredibly powerful hands dug into his fat shoulders and, amazingly, lifted him into the air.
“Man, I owe you-uh! — a wholeworld of hurt for what you done to Sonny and me,” Cowboy Hat said, grunting with exertion. “I’m gonna-uh! — stash you somewheres you won’t weasel away from, while I gets mytools ready.”
His vision clouding with pain, Jules saw brown wings dive toward his assailant, but Malice X knocked Doodlebug’s bat-form aside before he could claw Cowboy Hat’s face. He heard the shadowy vampires on the roofs above him laughing. Warm drops of liquid struck his face; were they spitting at him? No-it had started raining again. Then his center of gravity shifted radically, grinding his broken ribs together. Cowboy Hat body-slammed him into the narrow gap between the limousine and the brick wall. The pain Jules experienced in transit was nothing compared to the pain of his landing.
Blackness…
When he opened his eyes again, he wasn’t sure whether he was awake or in the midst of a nightmare. His eardrums were stabbed with shrieks of approaching sirens. The hot-rodded V-8 in the limousine’s engine bay thrummed into life, vibrating the car’s flank roughly against his wounded side. The dozen zombies in the alleyway looked like they were emerging from comas. Some immediately fell to the ground and screamed as they experienced the extent of their injuries. Others ran or limped off into the night, scattered by the sirens like a pack of foraging rats startled by the sudden brightness of a flashlight.
Jules felt a pair of hands grasp his shoulders and massage them in a friendly, almost brotherly way. “Hey, Jules?” Malice X’s breath blew hot and damp against the side of Jules’s face. “It’s been real, and it’s been fun. Heck, I hate to take a powder when things’re just gettin‘, y’know,intense an’ all. But it just ain’tsmart for a vampire to get hisself thrown in Central Lockup. And you an‘ me, we’resmart bloodsuckahs, huh? Assuming you don’t get sun-fried in some jail cell, this’ll let us stretch out our fun ’til the next boogie-down. The big one. Me, I can hardly wait.”
The hands left his shoulders. A few seconds later Jules heard a door on the opposite side of the limousine open. “Oh, Jules? One last word to the wise. Or the not-so-wise. Get some pussy while you still can.”
The door slammed. Jules felt the limousine lurch into gear. Spinning tires shot broken cobblestones into his face. The Cadillac’s black flank dragged him a dozen feet along the broken brick wall before finally releasing him. His legs folded under him like wet paper. Jules felt himself plunging into jagged darkness again. The limousine rocketed onto the street, jumping a curb and showering the fleeing ex-zombies with a hail of undercarriage sparks.
But before he could retreat to comforting oblivion, Doodlebug was pulling him to his feet. “We need to get back to your car,” Doodlebug said, draping Jules’s arm over his shoulder. “How badly are you hurt?”
Jules winced as he took his first stumbling step. “Ribs-busted, I think-”
Doodlebug stared at him with wide, sorrowful eyes. “Jules, I amso sorry for dropping you and getting you hurt-”
“No-was a good idea-” The sirens grew louder. The falling rain caught strobed reflections of flashing red lights from a few blocks downtown. “Help me-grab my hood and cloak, would ya? And the car keys-”
Doodlebug scooped up the faded black garments and draped them around Jules. His own colorful ensemble had been scattered across two city blocks by the fleeing limousine. “The police are very close-can you walk any faster?”
“I’ll,uh, do my damnedest, pal.”
Melpomene Street looked like the end of the world. Or maybe the aftermath of the Zulu and Rex Carnival parades. The street was strewn with refuse of every kind, as half the neighborhood dropped their makeshift weapons and scattered for the refuge of apartments, bars, or the unlit depths of abandoned buildings. From the sound of the approaching sirens, at least half a dozen police cruisers were speeding up Oretha Castle Haley Boulevard from downtown. A police car had already screeched to a halt at the corner of Melpomene and Oretha Castle Haley, cutting off the escape route of a crowd of ex-zombies.
Doodlebug dragged Jules toward Baronne Street. They stepped around the sprawled bodies of combatants too badly hurt to run any farther. Mothers, still dazed, looked frantically for their children. Teenagers pushed the wounded into the gutters in their rush to escape.
“All this confusion should help us get away,” Doodlebug said hopefully.
Jules grimaced as his ribs pinched organs never meant to be pinched. “Yeah-two naked white guys- ahh jeez-we’ll blend into this crowd real good.”
They rounded the corner onto Baronne. Jules’s Lincoln was parked in the middle of the block. The battered gold car had never looked so beautiful to Jules before. “Guess you’re gonna hafta drive, buddy,” he groaned. “Lemme lie down on the backseat…”
His friend tried to be gentle as he assisted Jules onto the back bench, but the process of squeezing his bulk through the narrow aperture was nearly as wrenching as getting smeared by the limousine along the alley wall. At least the engine started on the first try.Thank Ford for small favors, Jules thought as he stared at the car’s sagging head liner, fighting off unconsciousness.
“How do I get out of here?” Doodlebug asked, his voice tight with tension. “Should I head for Claiborne Avenue?”
“Not-Claiborne,” Jules gasped. The sirens were now so loud, they sounded like they were inside his skull. “Cops’ll be all over Claiborne. Go down to-St. Charles Avenue. Drive slow, normal-like. Wrap my cloak around you. Cops won’t think to stop a-white woman-drivin‘ on St. Charles-”
“Left at the corner?”
“Yeah-left…”
Oblivion grabbed Jules tightly this time.
The next time he opened his eyes, the car wasn’t moving anymore. He wasn’t in the car. Every part of him throbbed with pain; it was even worse than when he’d been boiled in holy water. Jules tried to figure out where he was. The light was dim. He seemed to be inside a building with a very high ceiling, close to a huge, shiny wall. Doodlebug’s shadow looked immense and grotesque against the pearly surface.
“Where-where are we?” Jules croaked.
He saw his friend’s worried face hover above him. “You’re awake? Good. We’re in a theater. I parked in a delivery alley behind Canal Street. After that battle we were in, the streets were swarming with police patrols; I thought we’d better lie low awhile before going back to the bed-and-breakfast.”
“A theater… that’d be either the Joy or the Loews’ State Palace. Maybe the Saenger… cripes, I feel like hell…”
“I tried being gentle when I pulled you out of the car and carried you in here. I hope I didn’t make your injuries worse-”
“We’re right by Charity Hospital, aren’t we?”
“I think so. That’s the big filthy art-deco building behind the government complex, isn’t it?”
“Yeah. That’s the one.” Jules took a quick inventory of his probable injuries. Broken or cracked ribs-three or four of them, for sure. Maybe a dislocated left shoulder. And if any of the ribs were busted clear off and were hopping around, possibly a perforated lung or kidney or something. “Wish I could check myself in there. I’m all busted up inside. Way more than a day or two of lying in my coffin can cure.” Jules felt his limbs begin to quiver. Then he was shaking all over. He sensed sweat rolling down his neck and sides. Was this what going into shock felt like? “Take me to Doc Landrieu. He’s a friend. My ex-boss. He’s helped me before. He could probably tape up my ribs, keep ‘em from grindin’. And maybe he could dope me up, too.”
“Actually, I’ve got a better idea.” Doodlebug knelt down and stared directly into Jules’s eyes. “I’m going to hypnotize you. And then you’re going to heal yourself.”
“You’re off yer rocker. You know as well as me that one vampire can’t hypnotize another.”
“Normally, you’re right. But you’re on the edge of going into shock. Your natural, subconscious mental defenses against hypnotism have to be greatly weakened. You’ve already proven that whenever you’re able to achieve the proper level of concentration, you’re capable of higher-level vampiric metamorphoses and body control. What I’d like to try is to implant a posthypnotic trigger. One you can ‘pull’ whenever you need to achieve that heightened state of concentration.”
The waves of nausea, sweating, and chills were becoming worse. “Whatever! Give it your best shot, and do it fast. ‘Cause if it doesn’t work, you’re gonna hafta drag my ass over to Doc Landrieu’s lickety-split.”
“All right. Just hold still, and keep your gaze focused on mine.”
“You got a pocket watch you gonna twirl?”
“No. Just start counting backward from one hundred.”
Jules fought to make the shaking in his limbs stop. “Hokay. Here goes. One hundred, ninety-nine, ninety-eight, ninety-seven, ninety-six, eh, ninety-six… ninety-uhh… ninety…”
He was back in Maureen’s basement. He felt strong, as though he’d just swallowed an entire bottle of Doc Landrieu’s miracle pills. He sensed Doodlebug, invisible, floating above him, strengthening him even more. His mind was wonderfully, perfectly clear. The train set appeared around his feet, growing organically like a stop-motion fantasia from a kiddie movie. The twisting chalk line materialized, too, a luminous, beckoning pathway. He held his arms straight out from his shoulders, and two sets of coffee cups and saucers landed in his hands. The tiny locomotive puffed into life. Without his commanding them to, Jules’s feet set out along the path, moving with the speed and smoothness of ball bearings rolling along an oiled metal track. He hit all of his marks without altering his pace one iota, without even trying. It was easy. It was easier than anything he’d ever done.
Jules blinked. Once, then three times in quick succession. He was back on the theater’s floor, still lying down. Was he all healed up? He still felt sweaty and nauseated. Hesitantly, he raised his arm and set his hand down on his ribs. He applied a tiny bit of pressure. The resulting shock wave of pain nearly made him double over.
“Owww!You lousy rat-bastard liar! It didn’t work! I’m still as busted up as before!”
“Well, of course you are. You haven’tdone anything yet. All we’ve accomplished so far is to implant the posthypnotic trigger. That part of it worked fine. My theory concerning your mental state was right on the mark.”
Jules scowled. “Well, goody for you. I’ll be sure to have the monks mail you a gold star to stick on your forehead. What now, smarty?”
“Do you remember how I was able to change my breast size and alter my waist-hips ratio? You should have the same type of control over your body’s composition. A good visual metaphor is helpful. Umm, did your mother knit?”
“She didn’t make woolen booties, if that’s what you mean. But let’s see… when the war rationing was on, and you could hardly buy nothin‘, she used to hafta mend my socks pretty often.”
Doodlebug smiled. “Very good. Here’s what I want you to picture in your mind, after I have you say your trigger words. Imagine your mother mending your socks, threading the new thread through her needle and sewing the holes in the fabric up good and tight. Then imagine that your hands replace hers and continue with the sewing, only what you’re sewing together isbone, not cloth. Finally, imagine a skeleton like the one that used to hang in your high school science lab, but it’syour skeleton, and it’s whole and undamaged and perfect. Do you have all that?”
“Yeah.” Jules blinked again as sweat from his forehead stung his eyes. “So what’s my magic word, Merlin?”
“Train set.”
“Do I hafta picture it, or do I just say it?”
“Doing both wouldn’t hurt.”
Jules started to take a deep breath, but the expansion of his rib cage hurt so much that he quickly expelled it. He took a much smaller breath, then closed his eyes and said,“Train set!”
Pain and fear were instantly swept from his mind. His thoughts were distilled water, perfectly clear and sharp. He saw his mother sitting in her scallop-backed Victorian parlor chair, knitting basket on her lap, squinting hard as she threaded her needle through the frayed edges of the toe rip in his coarse black woolen sock. Then he saw himself in the same chair, with the same needle and thread in his hands, only his knitting basket was filled with broken pieces of his ribs. One at a time he was fitting his ribs together, then pushing the needle through the broken parts (it slid through as easily as it would through foam rubber) and suturing them together. As he imagined all this, he felt the burning in his sides begin to lessen. (It’s working! It’s really working!) He knit eagerly but methodically, making sure not to miss even a single tiny piece of rib in his basket, test-fitting various segments of bone together like jigsaw pieces to ensure he was creating the proper matches. With each stitch, he felt himself grow stronger.
When all the pieces of rib were gone from his knitting basket, Jules imagined the piиce de rйsistance-his own gleaming skeleton, perfect and unbroken, hanging from a harness at the center of a freshly scrubbed science lab, admired by dozens of nubile schoolgirls in short plaid skirts.
Jules opened his eyes. He took a deep, deep breath, expanding his chest to its fullest, most impressive dimensions. The pain was nothing more than an awful memory.
He grabbed his friend’s shoulders before Doodlebug could say a word. “Idid it! Iactually did it! Just like you said, I imagined the knitting and the mending and the whole time I was thinking it, it was actually happening! You’re agenius! A vampire Einstein!”
The usually imperturbable Doodlebug surprised Jules by blushing a deep red. “I’m just happy it worked so well. You, uh, you really had me worried there for a while.” He reached out, tentatively, and placed his hand on Jules’s cheek for the briefest of instants. The younger vampire’s eyes may have revealed more warmth than he wanted to show. Jules found himself suddenly feeling acutely uncomfortable.
“We should probably lay low for a while yet,” Doodlebug continued, a little too quickly. “Before we go very far, I’m going to need clothes. That cloak of yours will cover you up in a pinch. But if we get pulled over on the way back to the bed-and-breakfast, I’d rather not answer the officers’ questions while naked.”
“If this is a theater, maybe there’re some costumes lyin‘ around in a dressing room. Worse comes to worst, there might be an apron down behind the concession stand we could swipe.”
“Any port in a storm,” Doodlebug said. “I have your flashlight from the glove compartment. Shall we go exploring?”
Doodlebug helped him off the floor. The flashlight’s beam revealed that the tremendous shiny wall Jules had been staring at was the back of a movie screen. The two of them walked around the screen to the front of the stage, and Jules immediately recognized one of the landmarks of his youth. Staring out at the hundreds of seats, he felt like a teenager again.
The Loews’ State Palace, in its prime, had been one of the top two movie theaters in downtown New Orleans. In the nearly eighty years since it had been built, the world of moviegoing had changed radically. Going downtown was anathema to modern-day audiences; they watched their movies in multiplex theaters built on old cotton fields. The State Palace had somehow hung on, though. For the last few years, the grand old theater had played host to dance raves and revivals of classic movies.
Jules shone his light onto the tremendous balcony and side wings that, by themselves, could probably seat nearly eight hundred people. His beam reflected off the dusty but still-glittering crystal segments of three enormous chandeliers; the dazzling reflections momentarily turned the huge theater into a disco. Jules recalled coming here as a young vampire and sitting nervously beneath one of those chandeliers, while on-screen Lon Chaney’s Phantom of the Opera dropped a similar chandelier onto the heads of an audience of opera patrons.
“Hey, Jules! Shine the light down at the floor. I think we may’ve found something for me better than just an apron.”
Jules played the flashlight beam into the empty floor space in front of the first row of seats, the area once reserved for a live orchestra. Off to both sides were portable clothing racks, holding what looked like musical theater costumes. He noticed that a banner had been hung from the front of the stage. He descended the stairs to the floor so he could read it.
“Hey, get a load of this: CELEBRATING AMERICA’S FAVORITE MUSICAL-singin‘ in the rain
– 45TH ANNIVERSARY.Looks like they’ve got a live stage show to go along with the movie.“
Doodlebug was already rifling through the costumes hanging from the racks. “These costumes are gorgeous! I recognize a lot of them from the musical numbers. Let’s see… here are outfits from ‘Be a Clown,’ ‘Good Mornin’,‘ of course ’Singin‘ in the Rain’… oh, howwonderful! This has to be one of my favorite movies of all time. Debbie Reynolds was simplyprecious!”
Jules took in Doodlebug’s enthusiasm with a jaundiced eye. If he didn’t put the brakes on, his friend could be trying on outfits until after sunrise. “Hurry up and pick one out, okay?”
“Ohhh… justlook at this beautiful dress,” Doodlebug said, running his hands across smooth white chiffon, apparently not hearing a word Jules had said. “I think Cyd Charisse wore one like it in the ‘Broadway Ballet’ number-”
Jules sighed in resignation. “Aww, go ahead, then. Have your fun. You’ve earned it after tonight, I guess. Actually, though you probably won’t believe it,Singin‘ in the Rain is one of my all-time favorites, too.”
“Really? I thought your taste runs more toward Jimmy Cagney gangster pictures.”
“Well, itdoes. But whenSingin‘ in the Rain came out, me and Maureen were havin’ one of our periodic fallin‘-out times. I’d always liked Gene Kelly-back then the girls used to tell me I looked like a taller Gene Kelly, see, only I didn’t know how to dance none-and anyway, I figured maybe seein’ a lighthearted musical might cheer me up some. So I went to see it; right here in this theater, in fact. And I loved it. The whole time I was watchin‘ it, see, I was imagining that Gene Kelly was me, and that Debbie Reynolds was Maureen. Shit, I musta watched that picture fifteen times before it left town. Some nights I’d imagine that Cyd Charisse was Maureen, instead of Debbie Reynolds, if I wanted a, y’know, a more spicy viewing experience.”
Doodlebug finished buttoning up a replica of one of Debbie Reynolds’s yellow-and-green summer dresses and then smoothed the cotton over his thighs. “Ahh, now I feelhuman again.” He cocked his head and squinted hard at his friend. “Say… I wouldn’t be at all surprised if that posthypnotic trigger I gave you helps tremendously with your multiple transformations. Care to see whether I’m right?”
Jules looked around him. “What? Here?”
“Why not? There’s plenty of room. It’s only 2:45A.M.; we wanted to wait a bit before heading back to the B-and-B, in any case. And I’m dying of curiosity-healing your own injuries may have speeded up your mastery of multiple forms by weeks, maybe months.”
“Eh, I dunno,” Jules said, staring at his feet and shuffling them some. “This has been a real ball-buster of a night. I mean, I’m exhausted as hell. Besides, the floor in here, it’s that sticky floor like what they got in all the old movie theaters. I might get all that floor stickiness mixed in with my slug-thingie, and then I could end up with monster acne, or somethin‘-”
Doodlebug, looking about as unconvinced as a vampire could be, planted his fists on his hips and slowly shook his head. “Excuses, excuses… it’sso important that you make the attempt right now, while that posthypnotic suggestion is still strong.”
“Well…”
“Look. We might never get another chance to put you over the top. I can’t stick around forever, Jules. I have responsibilities back home. And even if Icould stick around and help you forever, it wouldn’t be good for you. You need to fly solo.”
“No rest for the wicked,” Jules mumbled to himself from the floor in front of the movie screen. Before he had time for second thoughts, he repeated his trigger. Immediately, his mind was washed sparkling clean. Biology, physics-it was all instinctive to him now. His transformation into bat-form was the easiest he’d ever experienced. Disappointingly, his bat-shape was still as rotund and flightless as it had been for the last twenty or so years. As soon as he felt fully settled in his batness, he mentally probed the ether for the remainder of his mass. He gently pulled at it. Creating his wolf-form was as easy as filling a bucket from a hose.
The theater echoed with the sound of applause. Even though it was just Doodlebug clapping, to Jules’s four extraordinarily sensitive ears, it sounded like the Rockettes doing a tap number just above his heads. “Oh, Jules! You’ve done it! I knew you could! Iknew you could!”
It had been so easy, so painless and effortless, that it took the two Juleses a few seconds to recognize what he’d accomplished. Bat-Jules and Wolf-Jules stared at one another, almost disbelievingly. He saw himself, and he saw himself seeing himself, and he saw himself seeing himself see himself. It was dizzying, like being in a fun house hall of mirrors.
His wolf-self had an overwhelming desire to sniff his bat-self up close and personal. This was so exciting! Wolf-Jules gazed deep into Bat-Jules’s black, beady little eyes and admired the lively, curious intelligence there.Sure, maybe the little winged guy’s a bit rounder than he should be, but just look at that terrific wingspan!
Bat-Jules was hardly less admiring of his fellow.He’s so noble looking! And lovable! No wonder that bitch in Baton Rouge found me irresistible!
Wolf-Jules nudged Bat-Jules with his nose as he was sniffing him. The resulting sensory feedback loop-his touching himself touch himself touching himself, ad infinitum-overloaded both of Jules’s brains. His concentration shattered. Both of Jules’s bodies devolved into pools of proto-matter before vanishing in clouds of fleshy mist.
“Ohhhh mannn…” he sputtered after he’d re-formed, sprawled facedown on the floor. To his disgust, his left cheek was stuck to the tacky surface. “What happened? I was doin‘ so great…”
“Don’t worry about it. You did fabulously well. The shock of direct physical contact between two bodies sharing a single, generalized consciousness is enough to overwhelm any vampire at first.”
On his second attempt, Jules was able to maintain separate wolf- and bat-forms for six minutes before losing his concentration. Next up, he was able to flop around the floor as three individual bats for nine and a half minutes-before exhaustion, more than lack of concentration, forced his collapse.
While Jules was toweling himself off, he decided to ask the question that had been bugging him virtually since the first night Doodlebug started training him. “Hey, D.B., even tonight, even with my usin‘ that posthypnotic trigger-thingie you gave me, how come all my other bodies are still sofat? I mean, I still can’t get even an inch off the floor when I’m a bat, ’cause my damn bat-belly’s like an anchor holding me down. What’s up with that? Multiple bodies is a kick and all, don’t get me wrong. But it’s about as useful in combat as bein‘ able to juggle eight heads of lettuce, if all my bodies end up as fat and slow as my regular body.”
Doodlebug pursed his lips thoughtfully. “I’ve done some thinking about that very subject. I don’t believe your other bodieshave to be fat and slow at all. I think you create them that way out of habit. I think that, somewhere along the road, you got used to the notion of Jules Duchon as obese and clumsy, and you got comfortable with that. I think your wolf-belly drags the ground because youbelieve it should, and that your bat can’t fly because youbelieve it shouldn’t.”
Jules was quiet for a long moment. “That can’t be right,” he said finally. “I’vewanted to be a skinny bat. I’vetried. Don’t you think all them times my life’s been in danger-that time by the lake with the Levee Board cops, or tonight in the alley-don’t you think I tried with all my might to become a bat that could fly? Why would I hold myself back like that, when mylife depended on it? It’s gotta be that I just… can’t… do it.”
Doodlebug walked over and sat in the chair next to him. He started to reach for Jules’s hand, then hesitated and pulled back. “Jules, I’m not a trained psychologist. But it’s pretty obvious to me that someone, a very long time ago, convinced you that you weren’t worth much. Whoever that was, they inserted a little facsimile of themselves into your head, just like I inserted your posthypnotic trigger earlier tonight. And that little mental facsimile whispers to you not to try, because if you try you might fail. And only someone who is worth something can afford to fail, so you’d better not take the risk.”
Halfway through Doodlebug’s soliloquy, Jules had clamped his hands over his ears. “I know what you’re doing,” he said. “I read about it inNewsweek. You’re psychobabbling me.Blah-blah toilet trainingblah-blah self-esteemblah-blah inner child… Well, it’s not gonna work, Dr. Ruth. I’m not gonna let you get away with blamin‘ all my problems on my mother.”
“Who said anything about your mother?”
“Youdid.”
“I did not. I never mentioned your mother.You mentioned your mother.”
Jules got red in the face. “I didnot!”
“Yes, you did,” Doodlebug responded coolly.
They sat in silence for three long minutes. Doodlebug was the first to break the uneasy quiet. “Tell you what. Let’s try something new. One last thing. We’ll do it together this time.”
Jules didn’t respond in any way. Not even a grunt.
“You said thatSingin‘ in the Rain is one of your all-time favorite movies, right?” Doodlebug continued. “That people used to tell you that you looked like Gene Kelly, and that when you watched this film, you imagined youwere Gene Kelly? Well, go ahead.Be Gene Kelly. I’ll be Cyd Charisse. We’ve got all the costumes we need right here. We can do one of the dances from the movie. I’ve shown you how you can turn your imaginings into solid reality. Don’t just imagine yourself as a slender, graceful Gene Kelly- behim.”
Jules tried not to respond as Doodlebug nudged him. But he realized that the younger vampire would just keep talking until Jules saidsomething. “That, hands-down, is the single mostidiotic idea you’ve come up with since you’ve been back in New Orleans.”
“What’s so idiotic about it?”
“I told you before. I don’t dance.”
“No problem. We’ll do the fantasy duet from the ‘Broadway Ballet’ sequence. Cyd Charisse does all the moving in that number. Gene Kelly just stands there and looks awestruck.”
Jules sighed. He felt like he was speaking with a retarded child. “Even you can’t dance without music, right?”
“No problem. I’ll run the film. We’ll wait until that part comes, and then we’ll dance along with it.”
Again Jules sighed. “No matter what I say, you’re gonna do it anyway, aren’t you?” he said flatly. “So go ahead. Get it over with. Put on your costume and play your games. Only the joke’s on you, pal, ‘cause there ain’t any outfit on either of them racks that comes anywhereclose to fittin’me.”
“We’ll just see about that,” Doodlebug said, and smiled.
After twenty minutes of trial and error, loading and unloading various reels of film, Doodlebug found the reel that contained the “Broadway Ballet” sequence. As the film stuttered into life, Jules found himself sucked into the images on-screen. Despite his resistance to the whole idea, hearing Gene Kelly sing “Gotta Dance!” and watching him stride around those Broadway sets in that athletic, manly, yet compellingly graceful way of his brought back memories both good and surprisingly bittersweet. Jules was shocked by how much Gene Kelly resembled what he remembered of the young, human Jules Duchon. Not so much the physique (even in his best shape ever, Jules had to admit, he’d been nowhere near as buff as Gene Kelly)-more the smile, warm and cocky and reassuring all at once, and the friendly cast of the eyes.
When Gene Kelly saw Cyd Charisse stride through the doors of the Broadway casino, and the scene melted into a fantasy tableau of the two of them dancing together in an ethereal paradise, Jules didn’t see Cyd Charisse; he saw Maureen. It was Maureen in the flowing white gown, her fifteen-foot train soaring behind her in the wind, her beautiful long hair spilling over her bare shoulders. It was Maureen who danced around him, wrapping his torso and arms with her gauzy cape, who dazzled him with her angelic footwork, exciting a brilliant smile from his lips. It was Maureen who danced away, her arms futilely beckoning, as the fantasy dissolved into the harshly lit reality of the casino, and she turned away from him to accept her gangster boyfriend’s cold embrace.
Jules sensed Doodlebug standing next to him. His friend was dressed in a duplicate of Cyd Charisse’s fantasy gown. “They were beautiful together, weren’t they?” Doodlebug said.
“Yeah. They were.”
The younger vampire sorted through the costumes on one of the racks, looking for one in particular. “I’m going back up to the projectionist’s booth to rewind the film and run it again. While I’m up there, put these on.”
He handed Jules a white three-button shirt and a pair of black dancer’s pants. Jules checked the waist size listed on a tag inside the pants.Heh. They were a size thirty. Jules hadn’t been able to button a pair of size thirty pants around his waist since Calvin Coolidge was president.
He looked back at the screen. Gene Kelly, devastated by Cyd Charisse’s rejection, exited the casino with sagging shoulders. But outside, he ran into a green, young dancer, an overeager kid who reminded him of how he himself had been when he’d first hit the Great White Way. The kid’s spirit proved contagious. Before he even knew what he was doing, Gene Kelly was dancing across the screen again, just for the sheer, crazy joy of it. The spirit was contagious to those off the screen, too.
“Train set,” Jules said.
His flesh was clay, and Jules was Michelangelo. In less than a second, he had his thirty-inch waist. His well-muscled chest descended in a sharp V to his trim midsection. His legs were slender and sinewy. He slipped the shirt over his head, then slid into the size thirty pants. When he buttoned them, he still had half an inch to spare-he actually needed the belt that was hanging on the rack.
The film had stopped while he was getting dressed. Now it started up again. Doodlebug descended the stairs from the balcony, a fifteen-foot gauze cape trailing behind him. He gestured toward the large barrel-fan sitting in the wings of the floor area. Jules walked over and turned it on. The powerful wind ruffled his hair just as the opening bars of “Broadway Ballet” sounded from the speakers on either side of the screen.
Doodlebug joined Jules on the floor. The wind from the fan made his feathery cape soar into the air, reaching almost to the height of the balcony. They waited for the on-screen ballet to reach the fantasy sequence between Gene Kelly and Cyd Charisse.
Then they danced.
Or, rather, Doodlebug did all the dancing, and Jules looked handsome and upright and a little awestruck.
As soon as the fantasy sequence was over, Jules attempted to extricate himself from the yards of white gauze his partner had wrapped around him. Doodlebug took advantage of Jules’s temporary captivity to rush over and hug him. The unexpected embrace completely shattered Jules’s concentration, and he burst out of his dancer’s clothing, swelling like a balloon attached to a fire hose. But it didn’t matter. He’d always remember that he’d been able to fit in a pair of size thirty pants. And he’d remember that his dreams, if given half a chance, could be stronger than his doubts.
When Doodlebug released him and stepped back, the younger vampire had tears in his eyes. “Oh, Jules, congratulations. You’vegraduated — you’ve achieved the rank of summa cum laude from Vampire U. My work here is finished.”
“What do you mean, ‘finished’?” Jules grabbed his cloak and wrapped it around his suddenly exposed flesh. “You still gotta teach me all that fancy kung-fu stuff you know. Finished? We’ve barely started. Besides, you’re my partner. We’ve gotta see this thing throughtogether.”
“Really, there’s nothing more you need to learn from me,” Doodlebug said, a hint of wistfulness in his voice. “Come on.” He gave Jules a comradely pat on the back, then unsnapped the beautiful but utterly impractical cape from the neck of his dress. “Let’s go back to the B-and-B and get some sleep.”
The next evening Jules awoke feeling completely refreshed. He checked his watch before opening the lid of his coffin. Eleven forty-twoP.M.? No wonder he felt refreshed-he’d overslept by a good three and a half hours. Why hadn’t his friend woken him up? No matter, though. He and Doodlebug could make this a strategy night. He’d perk up a big pot of coffee, and they could spend a relaxing evening brainstorming. It’d be fun.
He opened the lid of his coffin and sprang up like a robin eager for the first worm of the morning. The room was dark. In fact, the entire cottage was dark. “D.B.? You up yet?”
He climbed out of his coffin and flicked on the light switch. “Doodlebug?”
No answer. He stuck his head into the dark bedroom. “Hey, pal? Rise and shine, buddy!” He turned on the light. Doodlebug’s coffin wasn’t sitting on the four-poster bed. It wasn’t anywhere in the bedroom.
“What thehell-?”
He went into the kitchen. There was a handwritten note sitting on the table. He picked it up and read it.
Dear Jules,
By the time you read this, I’ll be on my way back to California. I know this is a strange way for us to part, but I felt it would be for the best. This is your time to shine, Jules. I feared that if I stayed any longer, I would get in the way of your full maturation. I have taught you everything that you need to know, and I trust completely in your ability to do what needs to be done. Even though I am not there with you, my thoughts and best wishes will be with you always. Just remember that you can have the things you’ve always wanted, but in order to acquire them, you might have to look at them in a new way.
I’ve left you an open line of credit so you can continue to stay in the cottage as long as you need to. Please don’t hesitate to call on me again if there is ever any other way I can be of some help, or if you just want some company. Consider coming out my way one of these Halloweens-my town’s Halloween parade is even wilder than the French Quarter’s. Great seeing you!
Love,
Rory
He read the note a second time, just to make sure he hadn’t misread. Nothing changed. It wasn’t a gag.
Jules turned a paler shade of white.
Like a dormant virus reactivated by a cold wind, the fear was back in the pit of his belly. All too suddenly, he was on his own again.