So this is how it feels to be inside a pinball machine,Jules thought as he walked inside the casino. He strode past row after row of slot machines, all busily flashing, pinging, and jingling for row after row of empty chairs. On the outside the gambling hall at the foot of Canal Street resembled a gigantic suburban bank building, festooned with tons of neon in a vain attempt to disguise its pedestrian origins. On the inside Jules thought it looked more like Vegas… in the aftermath of an army germ-warfare experiment gone wrong. Apart from costumed employees, the place was practically deserted. Many of his fellow cabbies had been enthusiastic when the casino had first been approved by the legislature. They’d all figured it would attract more big-spending tourists. But rather than pulling in tourists, the casino had mostly attracted locals. And when they exited for home, empty-pocketed, they left in city buses, not cabs.
He walked to the side of the main room closest to Convention Center Boulevard. Just as he’d been told, there was the private elevator, flanked by two tuxedoed guards. Guards, not doormen; doormen didn’t sport holsters and squared-off bulges beneath their suit jackets.
Jules approached the guard on the left. Both of the men were white; Jules wondered whether Malice X got a little charge out of lording it over white employees. “I’m Jules Duchon. I got business with your boss downstairs.”
“Ah, yes. The fat man. We were told to expect you.” The guard pressed the elevator’s call button. A few seconds later, the door swished open. “Don’t forget to press theDOWN button once you’re inside. It’s the one with the little red arrow that points to the floor.”
“Thanks, wise guy.” Jules flipped him a nickel before entering the elevator. “Here’s a tip for your trouble.”
The elevator was trimmed in tufted red velvet. “Looks like the coffin I could never afford,” Jules muttered to himself. The doors opened onto a shockingly large space, a high-ceilinged cavern where no cavern had any right to be. Jules felt like Arthur Conan Doyle’s Professor Challenger, who’d descended to the South Pole and discovered dinosaurs instead of glaciers.
“So this is where they dug it,” Jules said softly, wonderingly. “The tunnel to nowhere.” He thought back to the time, decades ago, when Canal Street had been snarled with earthmoving machines. More than thirty years had passed since the demise of the ill-conceived Riverfront Expressway project, a spur of highway that would’ve cut the French Quarter off from the Mississippi and permanently shadowed Cafй Du Monde with six lanes of elevated traffic. While a group of dedicated preservationists had fought the project in court and in Congress, the road builders had pressed forward, digging a massive tunnel beneath the International Trade Mart, a twenty-story riverfront monolith that stood in the path of the planned highway.
Then, against all expectations, the preservationists won their fight. The highway was canceled. But the tunnel endured. Its entrances were closed off; it didn’t make sense to fill in the hole that remained, but no one could come up with a use for it. Over the years, everyone forgot it was there.
Almost everyone. The man who became Malice X hadn’t even been born when the tunnel was first dug, but someone older than he had remembered the big hole by the river. Someone who realized that, with enough money invested, the hole would make an ideal sunproof lair for vampires.
The black vampire had certainly invested his wages of sin impressively. In the center of the tunnel was a Greek Revival mansion that wouldn’t have appeared out of place on St. Charles Avenue. A glassed-in garden and courtyard, a third as big as a football field, filled the space between the mansion’s two rear wings. A small fleet of tricked-out luxury cars and sport-utility vehicles was parked next to a gated access tunnel at the cavern’s far end. Most unusual of all, however, was what covered the cavern’s ceiling-a canopy of glittering stars and bright planets. Jules hadn’t seen such a glorious night sky within the city limits since before the widespread adoption of electric lights.
Jules stared upward, slack-jawed, as a meteor shower highlighted the faux sky. “Impressed?” Malice X’s wry, scornful voice boomed from hidden loudspeakers. “It’s a shame you won’t be around to see our beautiful sunrise,” the electronic voice continued while Jules searched futilely for its owner. “But it’s the sunsets, man-that’s when my light dude really earns his keep.”
“I didn’t come for no IMAX show,” Jules grumbled in the direction of the house. “You gonna show your face, mother-killer, or do I have to tear your place apart lookin‘ for you?”
“ ‘Muthah-killer’? For a sec there, I thought you might shock me and cuss me somethin‘ more colorful. You sound like a man in a hurry. Relax. I’ll make things as simple as possible. To find me, just follow yo’ heart’s desire.”
A series of pencil-thin beams of light illuminated dozens of beignets lying on the cobblestones. The sugar-laden squares of fried dough formed a winding pathway that led around the side of the mansion. He’d better enjoy his little jokes about my weight, Jules thought.Bastard won’t be making them much longer. As he followed the path of beignets, the spotlights stayed a few yards ahead of him. The path ended at the doorway to the glassed-in courtyard.
Jules opened the door, made of crimson stained glass, and stepped into the spacious garden. They were all there, standing behind the flowers and neatly trimmed hedges that enclosed a central square of immaculate lawn. He recognized about half the dark gray faces that stared him down. The toughs who’d surrounded him and Doodlebug in the alley outside Club Hit ‘N’ Run, who’d nearly killed him outside Maureen’s house. Cowboy Hat was there, still sporting his distinctive western wear and the chip on his shoulder. Even Malice X’s sister was there, glaring at Jules evilly. She spat sharply into a hedge as he closed the door behind him.
Jules didn’t look at her for long. He quickly locked eyes with the man he’d come to close accounts with. Malice X sat in an ornate wicker porch swing, squeezed comfortably between a pair of adoring, buxom women vampires. In contrast to the rest of Malice’s entourage, they paid Jules no attention at all, contenting themselves with running their long-nailed fingers across their master’s broad biceps and nearly bare chest.
“Welcome to my ‘humble abode,’ Jules,” Malice X said, smiling a Cheshire cat grin. “Welcome to Palace X.” He kept his arms snugly around his companions, leaving himself insouciantly vulnerable to any sort of projectile weapon Jules might’ve sneaked in under his coat. “All those priests at Jesuit High, man, they kept tellin‘ me I hadda go to college to make somethin’ of myself, tobe somebody. What thefuck did they know, huh? You know where all this comes from? Smarts, man. I came up with a good product, I marketed it right, and then I stashed my profits away in tech stocks. The joint upstairs? It wouldn’texist without me. Those yo-yos who wanted to build the world’s biggest casino, they couldn’t get their ducks in a row. Couldn’t line up the financing, didn’t have the pull with the local politicos. I could, and I did. I was their-what’d they call it? Oh, yeah. Their ‘white knight.’Heh.
“And you know what? I accomplished all this in less than a decade as a vampire. Less thanten years. How long’ve you been a bloodsuckah, Jules? Eighty years? A hundred? And what’s been the peak of your success? Tempting fat-ass old bag ladies into a cab even more broken down than they were?”
“You done bragging?” Jules asked flatly.
“No.” Malice X smiled again. “I’m not. Had yourself a good time with that chippie from the Strategic Helium Reserve?”
Jules was careful not to let any emotion play across his face. “So you were behind that, too. You ain’t tellin‘ me anything I haven’t already figured.”
“But yougotta admit it was slick-one vampire siccin‘ the vampire hunters on another. You know why I did it? Not because I thought I couldn’t do the job on you myself. I pulled the feds’ strings because I could. Because it waseasy. I had all these bigwigs at City Hall eatin’ outta my hand, beggin‘ me for their next dose of Horse-X. They had connections, and their connections had connections. I wanted to see what the feds had. What kinda antivampire doohickies they could come up with. And if I could find that out and make your life miserable at the same time-hey, Inever pass up a two-fer.”
“Yeah? Well here’s a two-fer for you. I left your fed dame lookin‘ like a sap, and I’ll do the same to you.”
Malice X laughed. “Hey, I got nodoubt you left her lookin‘ like a sap. You walk around lookin’ like a sapall the time.” He laughed again, and then his smile faded. “But you ain’t gonna be walkin‘ outtahere, sappy lookin’ or not.”
Jules had no more patience for banter. It was time to call his rival out. “You gonna back those words up? Or are you just gonna sit there and threaten me to death?”
Malice X pushed his lady companions aside and rose from the swing. His silver Lycra athletic pants glistened like polished chrome, and his ribbed undershirt did little to conceal his chiseled abdomen and oiled, bulging pectorals.
“Preston, fetch us the stakes,” he said.
Cowboy Hat picked up what looked like an antique rifle case and laid it at Malice X’s feet. The lieutenant unlatched the case and opened it. Inside were two identical shafts of maple wood, about four feet long, each with both ends sharpened to a deadly point.
“This is an idea I copped from a bossTomb of Dracula comic,” Malice X said proudly. “In this one issue, see, ol‘ Drac was challenged by this other bloodsuckah as to who should be king of all the vampires. So Drac proposed a ’Duel by Stake‘-two vampires, two stakes, and only one vampire walks away. Wicked, huh?”
Jules eyed the twin stakes warily. The introduction of such weapons didn’t come as a complete surprise to him. Before the days of gentlemen’s agreements and arbitration in the vampire world, duels like this had been distressingly common. Anyway, if he played his cards right, he could twist the introduction of stakes to his own advantage. “Okay. I’ll accept your terms. On one condition,” he added.
Malice X raised an eyebrow. “Who said anything ‘bout any ’conditions‘?”
“Idid,” Jules said. “I’m on your turf, ain’t I? Surrounded by your friends and flunkies? If you’re so cocksure you’re better than me, and you’ve got home-field advantage on top of that, what’s the harm in throwin‘ me one little bone?”
“That tub-a-lard ain’t got no right to demandnothin‘!” Malice X’s sister shrieked, her face contorted with contempt. But many other onlookers murmured that they wanted to hear Jules’s demand. The murmurs were subdued and nearly anonymous, but they were insistent.
Jules watched Malice X’s face carefully. Clearly, the black vampire agreed wholeheartedly with his sister’s admonition; but just as clearly, he couldn’t risk losing even a fraction of the respect granted him by his underlings. Jules enjoyed seeing flickers of indecision play across his rival’s mouth. “All right… name it, fat man. One condition.”
“I win this duel, I get your coffin. You burned up mine when you torched my house. I need a new one.”
“That’sit?” Malice X’s momentary indecision morphed into incredulity. “That’syour one condition? I thought maybe you’d want me to fight with both hands tied behind my back or somethin‘-”
“That’s my condition. And I want it down herenow. Where I can see it. Before we start our duel.”
“Why the hell d’you want that for?”
“So you can’t welsh on me after I win.”
Malice X started to protest, but his objections melted into rich laughter. “Fuck yeah, man. Sure! I gave you a chance to make this dustup halfway fair, and if that’s what you want, that’s what you get, man. It’s your fuckin‘ funeral, and you got a right to screw it up any way you wanna.” He turned to his chief lieutenant. “Preston, take a coupla dudes and fetch my coffin from the master bedroom. Make it snappy, huh? I wanna get in a coupla rounds of blackjack upstairs before the sun rises.”
Cowboy Hat grunted his assent, then nodded to a pair of toughs, and the three of them disappeared into the mansion. Malice X turned back toward Jules. “So what doI get whenI win? And don’t be tryin‘ to pawn off that lame-ass car of yours on me.”
Jules thought about this for a minute. “If you win, you get to scatter my ashes in the parking lot of the Esplanade Mall, so my sufferin‘ soul is stuck in the goddamn suburbs forever.”
Malice X laughed sharply. “Shit, man, fuck the parkin‘ lot. You goin’ in the mall’surinals.”
“Whatever,” Jules muttered. And he managed a tight little grin of his own as he watched Cowboy Hat and the others maneuver Malice X’s polished teak coffin through the double doors into the courtyard.
“Okay, it’s here,” Malice X said. “Satisfied?”
“Yeah,” Jules said. He took off his safari jacket, then knelt down to untie his boots and pull them and his socks off. Next to come off were his shirt and undershirt. He had unbuckled his belt and was unzipping his trousers when Malice X interrupted.
“What th‘ hell you tryin’ to do now-nullify my knockout by nauseatin‘ me with your nudity?”
“I’m strippin‘ down for action,” Jules said, sitting on a stone bench while he peeled off his trousers and began the arduous task of extricating his underpants from between his massive thighs. “You got a problem with that?”
“No problem. Just a silly li’l question: How the hell do you plan on holdin‘ a four-foot stake when you got wolf’s paws or bat’s claws?”
“You letme worry about that,” Jules said, smiling inwardly. He scooped up his pile of clothing and walked boldly across the open square to where Malice X stood. He made no attempt at all to cover his privates (mostly hidden by his stomach, anyway) or to hide his tremendous, quivering white ass from the onlooking crowd. For the first time he could remember, he wasn’t ashamed, either of his naked body or having strangers see it. His overwhelming mass was an asset, not a handicap-his secret ace in the hole, secret even though it was in plain sight of everyone. He’d show them all, before the night was done. He’d show them what a fat vampire could do.
He dumped his clothes next to the coffin. “So they’ll be handy when it’s time to cart this thing away,” he said. He glanced at the two long stakes in the leather case near Malice X’s feet. “How about lettin‘ me have one of them pig stickers now?”
“Give him one, Preston,” Malice X said. Cowboy Hat grunted wearily, selected one of the stakes, and held it out to Jules.
“Gimme the other one,” Jules said.
The lieutenant looked quickly to Malice X, who shrugged irritably and said, “Let ‘im have it.” Cowboy Hat handed his boss the first stake, then gave Jules the second one.
Jules backed away to the far edge of the open square of grass. He broke the stake twice over his knee, snapping it into three stubby weapons. Before his rival could do more than grunt with surprise, Jules whispered two words to himself.
“Train set,”he said.
It was the most difficult transformation he’d ever attempted. He concentrated on thoughts of all the little tough guys he’d admired in the movies-Alan Ladd, Jimmy Cagney, Edward G. Robinson. Little tough guys who didn’t put up with shit from anybody; fighters worth twice their weight in a scrap. He was going to do something even Doodlebug couldn’t do-he was going to carve three middleweight vampires from one heavyweight.
He felt his bones melting. He sensed the familiar pull of his far-off coffin on a portion of his great mass, but he resisted, concentrating on keeping it all present, splitting himself like an amoeba. His nerve endings were afire, but he refused to settle for the familiar, the easy. Images flashed through his splintering mind-Jake La Motta; Sugar Ray Robinson; the mayor of Munchkinland in his little purple suit…
The fleshy mist began to clear and coalesce. For a moment Jules felt like he was on the wildest caffeine jag of his life. But then the static in his brain(brains?) died down to a tolerable buzz. He’d done it. Again he experienced the vertigo of looking at himself watching himself stare at himself. Where there had been one 450-pound Jules, there now stood three 150-pound Juleses.
Unfortunately, he’d concentrated too much on the Munchkins and not enough on Jake La Motta.
Three identically obese nude dwarfs stared at each other and murmured in unison: “Oh, shit.”
Malice X’s jaw nearly bounced off the turf. “This-thisis your big parlor trick?Midgets? ”
There was no time to try again. Even if there had been, the triplicate vampire couldn’t muster a fraction of the necessary energy. He(they) were stuck. The three Juleses had no choice but to make the best of it. They bent their barrel-like bodies and snatched up the pieces of stake with their stubby little hands.
Malice X clapped his hands together and raised his face to the artificial heavens above. “Ladies and gentlemen, this proves what our preachers been sayin‘ for years-God is a black man. Wait, lemme rephrase that. Since the Good Lord don’t answer vampires’ prayers, I guess the Devil be a black man, too!”
Jules sensed his three consciousnesses splitting away from each other, like pieces of stuck-together saltwater taffy being pulled apart. He was becoming three separate people-Jules 1, Jules 2, and Jules 3-none of whom exerted direct control over the other two.
Three consciousnesses: Jules 1 prayed that they’d all remember the plan. Jules 2 tried contacting the other two telepathically but only got a shooting pain in his sinuses. Jules 3 didn’t place his trust in either prayer or telepathy. “Snap out of it, guys!” he shouted. “Let’s surround him!”
Malice X grinned and hummed a few bars of Randy Newman’s “Short People.” Then, without bothering to slip out of his clothing, he transformed smoothly and slickly into a panther. The big, muscular cat immediately lunged at Jules 2, knocking the rotund dwarf flat on his back. The panther’s three-inch-long incisors tore at its prey’s fat throat.
“Aaaahhhhhhh!”all three Juleses screamed.
The pain traveled from one to the other like a power surge through a live wire. Jules 1 nearly dropped his stake to clutch his own throat, but he stifled the reflex and ran toward the enemy with all the speed his stumpy legs could muster.I might be a dwarf, he told himself,but I’m a vampiredwarf!He pictured his legs as stubby but powerful springs, and he leapt onto the crouching panther’s back. Before the creature could shake him off, Jules 1 plunged his stake into the cat’s side.
The panther shrieked with pain and rage, immediately releasing its choke grip from around Jules 2’s throat. Jules 3, unengaged in the struggle, found himself caught between equally powerful and desperate urges.The plan-he’s distracted-now’s the time to hit his coffin- But one of his other selves lay bleeding on the grass, while the other was menaced by a snapping set of jaws reaching back to bite him in half.Fuck the plan! Improvise! Jules 3 grasped his stake tightly in both fists and ran toward the melee, howling a wordless battle cry and aiming the point at the panther’s heart.
Unfortunately, Jules had never studied veterinary science or even basic biology. He buried his stake in the animal’s liver. Instead of crumbling to dust, the panther erupted with an earsplitting bellow. It bucked like a snakebit bronco, hurling Jules 1 from its back and knocking Jules 3 violently to the ground. Jules 1 tumbled twenty feet through the air before striking his head on a planter and landing in a heap. He didn’t move or make a sound.
The panther tried dislodging the two stakes with its teeth. It managed to pull out the weapon hanging from its side, but it was unable to reach the one perforating its liver. It shrieked and spat with frustration. Its form wavered, then melted as it transformed back into Malice X.
The black vampire grasped the stubbornly lodged stake with both hands, took a deep breath, and yanked it from his body.“Fuck!” He sucked air through his clenched teeth. Tears ran freely from his red-veined eyes, and specks of blood flew from his mouth as he exhaled again. “Fuck-fuck-FUUUCK! That hurt like amuthah, you little cocksuckers!”
Jules 2, still gushing blood from fang wounds in his neck, tried desperately to rally his strength. He began weakly crawling away. He didn’t get far. Malice X kicked his retreating foe onto his back, then pinned him by planting his right foot deep in the dwarf’s soft stomach. He reached for his long stake, temporarily discarded when he’d transformed into the panther.
Jules 3 shook off the cobwebs just in time to see Malice X raise his weapon above the prone, helpless form of Jules 2. But instead of immediately plunging it into the trapped dwarf’s heart, the black vampire grinned sadistically and started to sing.
“Short people got / No reason-”
He brought the stake down hard, burying it in Jules 2’s plump left shoulder. The already wounded dwarf screamed with fresh agony. Jules 3 screamed with him, envying Jules 1 his unconsciousness. Malice X yanked the stake out and raised it above his head again.
“Short people got / No reason-”
This time he drove the weapon through Jules 2’s rib cage. The vampire’s inhumanly powerful thrust completely impaled the dwarf and embedded the sharp point deep in the ground. Jules 3 sensed his other self slipping into shock. Fighting a wave of encroaching darkness, he charged the black vampire on wobbly legs. But his feeble counterattack was stopped dead by a contemptuous backhanded blow, which both broke his nose and sent him flying into a shrubbery.
Dazed, bleeding, sprawled upside down in an azalea bush, Jules 3 could only watch as Malice X finished his deadly song.
“Short people got / No reason-to LI–IIIVE!”
This time was the deathblow. The thrust through the heart. Jules 3 had no idea what would happen-would all three of them crumple to dust simultaneously? No time for any whispered good-byes-no time for anything as he felt maple wood savage his heart, as he smelled blood and tasted salty iron and choked on his own effluvia as he felt his body coming apart…
But he didn’t come apart. He didn’t dissolve or crumple or blow away. Jules 3 pawed himself to make sure he was still all there. All his important parts seemed intact, still hanging upside down in the azalea bush. His other self wasn’t so fortunate, though. On the patch of grass where Jules 2 had struggled so valiantly just seconds before, there was now a faintly pulsating pool of gray proto-matter, the two-edged stake projecting from its center.
“What the hell isthis now?” Malice X grimaced disgustedly as he wiped proto-matter residue off his bare foot onto the grass.
Jules 3 didn’t have time to puzzle through the vampiric metaphysics behind what was happening. Their only chance now was to somehow force Malice X to transform again, to make him unwittingly send part of his mass to his coffin. He rolled out of the azalea bush and ran to Jules 1’s side. The other dwarf was still stone-cold unconscious.
Jules 3 grabbed his duplicate’s shoulders. “Wake up, kid! Wake up! It’s the bottom of the ninth and we’re five runs behind-”
Out of the corner of his eye, Jules 3 saw Malice X tentatively jiggle the long stake still protruding from the pool of proto-matter. “Guess maybe I best leave that in there for now,” the black vampire muttered. “No prob-Jell-O Puddin‘ Man here done droppedhis stake, and I seriously doubt he’ll be havin’ any need for it…”
Jules 3 whirled around to protect his prone twin. But all he saw was a flash of foot, then a shower of stars as a bomb exploded in his midsection. He was vaguely aware of being airborne again before he landed bone-jarringly at the edge of the onlooking crowd. Seconds later, he sensed the agonizing decomposition of another third of himself.
“And then there was one,” Malice X said, brushing his hands together briskly. “I really gottathank you, Jules. Who woulda thought I’d get the chance to kill you three times? Shit, I wish you coulda split intoten little dudes.”
Jules 3 picked himself painfully up from the turf. Near as he could tell, that last kick had broken two or three of his ribs; yet he refused to face death lying down. It was over. His plan was impossible now. But he’d done the best he could. He’d put his life on the line to protect Erato and Chop, to avenge Maureen and Doc Landrieu. He had nothing to be ashamed of.
Malice X picked up a discarded piece of stake from the ground. “Ready or not, loser, here I come…”
The last remaining bit of Jules tightened his feeble grip on his own chunk of wood. He struggled to avoid blacking out as his smiling nemesis approached. He felt his body sway as he fell into micro sleeps. He was hallucinating, dreaming. He had to be. Otherwise, the clouds of mist condensing above the glass panes of the greenhouse and seeping in beneath the garden’s doors made no sense at all One crash, then another, and suddenly it was raining glass. Jules saw, in the midst of the descending shards, a pair of large, wedge-shaped gray forms. The creatures landed on four powerful legs and immediately moved to cut Malice X off from Jules. The three clouds of mist that had drifted in beneath the doors were taking on a similar aspect, snarling menacingly as their low, muscular bodies congealed. Canines as big and nasty as the Hound of the Baskervilles-the same animals he’d encountered the night before outside the Trolley Stop! Jules blinked once, then twice, but the beasts didn’t fade away like some drunk’s pink elephants. They barked viciously at Malice X, lunging and snapping at his legs as they moved in a pack to surround him.
These weren’t just dogs, Jules realized. And despite their distinctive wolflike features, they weren’t wolves, either. They were something new, both familiar and unfamiliar-these five creatures were vampire wolf-dogs!
“You lousycheater!” Malice X screamed as he kicked at the wolf-dogs’ heads. “All bets are off! See how you like fightin‘ a dozen brothers at once, you fatfreak!”
Two of the wolf-dogs leapt for Malice X’s throat, their fangs flashing in the multicolored garden lights. But by the time their jaws slashed the space where his throat had been, Malice X was no longer himself. Jules heard the flapping of desperately beating wings as the black vampire beat a hasty tactical retreat. The wolf-dogs snapped furiously at empty air as they leapt after the fleeing bat, which flittered toward the broken glass dome high above.
Jules turned his attention to the crowd behind him. All eyes were locked on the bizarre spectacle in the center of the garden. Now was his chance He ran to Malice X’s coffin and snatched his safari jacket off the ground. He retrieved the tin of lighter fluid and the box of matches from the right-hip Velcro pocket. Jules opened the coffin. Inside, a three-inch- deep layer of gray proto-matter glistened and pulsated-nine-tenths of Malice X’s bodily mass. Limbless, voiceless, sightless. Helpless. As helpless as Maureen had been when Malice X plunged a stake through her heart.
Jules bit the cap off the tin of lighter fluid. He squirted the combustible liquid all over the proto-matter and the coffin’s velvet lining.
“Look! Over there!” Malice’s sister shouted. “What’s he doin‘ to Malik’s coffin?”
Jules struck his match against the side of the coffin. It lit on the first try. Remembering the inferno that consumed his home, he tossed it inside. The proto-matter ignited like a whiskey-soaked slab of Brennan’s Restaurant’s bread pudding.
The effect on the bat high overhead was immediate. It shrieked, and the unnaturally piercing cry shattered several more of the glass panels overhead. Its wings crumpled, crushed by an invisible fist. Then it plummeted toward the ground. Into the nails and jaws of five vengeful creatures eager for a taste of blood.
“Malik! Brother!”
Jules almost felt bad for her. Almost. Malice’s sister would’ve thrown herself into the feral pack, would’ve tried to pry the pieces of her brother’s blood-spattered body from the wolf-dogs’ teeth, had Cowboy Hat not wrapped her in a powerful restraining embrace.
“Malik!They’rekilling him! Preston, let mego! Damn you, they’rekilling him!”
The smoke from the burning coffin made Jules’s eyes water. It smelled greasy and evil, like rancid andouille sausage that had been left on the grill too long. Malice’s sister stopped twisting in Cowboy Hat’s grasp, and her curses collapsed into sobs. The wolf-dogs finished their bloody work and trotted over to Jules’s side. Several wagged their tails as they sniffed him. One licked his hand, leaving behind flecks of reddish foam.
Malice’s sister stopped sobbing as abruptly as she had started. She stared at Jules with a hatred that made his balls seek the safety of his belly overhang. “Hecheated. You heard my brother. Hebroke the rules. Kill him, Preston… kill him for me…” Her voice shifted from a whiny, almost childlike tone to shrill invective as she whirled to face the others. “All of you!What are you standing there for? Kill him! Kill him for me! ”
The wolf-dogs moved into a protective phalanx around their master. They growled at the dozen vampires standing at the edge of the garden. Jules stared into Cowboy Hat’s shadowed face. “You an animal lover, Preston?I am.”
The former chief lieutenant didn’t make a move in Jules’s direction. Neither did any of the others.
Still surrounded by his wary, protective pack, Jules pulled the stakes from the centers of the two pools of proto-matter pulsating weakly on the grass. Strength and mass flowed into him almost instantly, tributaries rejoining a river that had nearly run dry. In seconds he was his old self again, all 450 very welcome pounds.
Malice’s sister sank slowly to the ground. Looking in the blankness of her eyes, Jules could see that her spirit was broken. At least for now. But the face of the tall man in the buckskin jacket and ten-gallon hat was still hidden by shadow.
“So what’s it gonna be, Preston? I got no real beef with you. You gonna let me walk outta here, take over the Horse-X trade yourself, become the new big man? Or are you gonna play ‘avenging flunky’ and maybe end up like your ex-boss there?” He pointed to the lumpy red smear at the center of the garden.
All eyes turned to the man in the cowboy hat. He pushed its wide brim up with a flick of his forefinger and scratched his forehead. For the first time, Jules could see his eyes. They were tired. “You walk, fat man. Pick up your shit and get the hell outta here.” He pressed a large red button on a console next to the mansion’s back doors. Jules heard a distant rumbling echo from the far end of the vehicle tunnel, a rumbling that must’ve been the door to the outside opening. “But this ain’t over. Don’t expect things to just go back the way they was for you. This town ain’t friendly territory, and it’ll never be again. You’re goin‘ down. Maybe not tonight. But some night, when you least expect it…”
Jules gathered his soot-covered safari jacket, pants, and shoes from next to the smoldering coffin. “Just remember to bring some doggie treats when you come visitin‘,” he said, patting a wet nose. “They prefer bat wings to Milk-Bones.”
Surrounded by his canine saviors, he walked to the door of the garden and opened it. Then he left the underground lair he hadn’t expected to walk out of, his head held high, and no vampire dared block his way.
But despite experiencing a triumph bigger than he’d ever hoped for, Jules’s victory was made hollow by three little words:
This ain’t over.