“What the hell-?” Jules muttered. His sense of comfort at being back home evaporated like spit from an August sidewalk.
The inner door to his house was partially open, swaying slightly with the river breeze. Its knob was crushed.
No ordinary burglar had done this. Run-of-the-mill thieves would’ve pried the bars off one of his back windows.
Jules knelt down to examine the twisted wreckage of his security door. The dried mud and dead leaves that had caked his porch for months were undisturbed, except for footprints. No signs heavy equipment had been used. But no one, not even a champion weight lifter, was strong enough to mangle that security door with his bare hands. Maybe back in his vampiric prime, Jules could’ve given those bars the kind of pretzel-job they’d suffered tonight. Maybe. Or maybe not.
Jules placed the twisted metal back on his porch and shook his head. Another vampire? It was unthinkable. Vampires didn’t screw with each other. Ever since Europe’s vampire population had nearly annihilated itself through internecine warfare during the years of the Black Plague, the notion of sovereign and separate territories had remained a sacred creed among vampires. One vampire might invite another to share his or her territory. But unwelcome incursions simply didn’t happen.
Whatever.He pushed what remained of his front door open and strode into his living room. Whoever or whatever the burglar was, and however he’d managed to bend inch-thick iron, he’d picked the wrong homeowner to fuck with.
Jules headed straight for his music listening room, steeling himself for the worst. Outside Tulane University’s music archives, he owned what was probably the most extensive collection of early New Orleans jazz on original pressings in the entire city. If sold to a knowledgeable dealer or collector, his vintage sounds could fetch close to ten thousand dollars. Yet not a single album was out of place.
His battered old Philips television set sat undisturbed on its stand, the half-watched Alan Ladd video from last week still loaded in the VCR. His Depression-era pulp collection? Untouched. His mother’s antique flatware? In the drawer where she’d left it. Even the computer his buddy Erato had talked him into buying was still on Jules’s kitchen table, half buried in dusty floppy diskettes.
So what had the thief stolen? Upstairs was nothing but a set of bedroom furniture and Jules’s clothes, which he couldn’t imagine anybody wanting. His mother’s things were so moth-eaten that even the lowliest of Magazine Street antiques hustlers wouldn’t touch them. The basement held nothing but Jules’s coffin and seven decades’ worth of accumulated junk. Surely, someone hadn’t torn open his most securely locked door just to tour his home.
A clatter of falling cans made Jules jump. The sound had come from downstairs. Could the thief still be here? What would he want down in the basement? Jules’s spirits perked up again. If the burglarwas down in the basement, that meant he was trapped; the only exit was the narrow stairway Jules began to descend. And if the burglar was trapped, that meant an easy meal. Home-delivered and piping hot, more convenient than Domino’s!
Jules pulled a cord that switched on a dim twenty-five-watt bulb. “Anybody down there?” He couldn’t see anyone, and no one answered. From the top of the stairs, it looked like nothing had been touched at all.
Wait. That wasn’t true. Somethingwas different. His coffin.
He descended the stairs as quickly as his knees would allow. Someone had spray-painted his coffin in big red letters.
NO POACHING WHITE BOY
The words made no sense. Jules read them three times, figuring either he must be reading them wrong, or else the vandal was a product of New Orleans’s dreadful public schools. He read them aloud, hoping maybe the sound of them would help him solve this puzzle.
“No. Poaching. White. Boy.”Maybe white boy’s a kind of fish, like redfish?
The shadows that draped the spare lumber in the corner of the basement sprang to life. A man stepped from the darkness to the center of the room. He was tall and broad-shouldered, dressed in a sharply tailored black suit, starched white shirt, and crimson bow tie. He couldn’t be older than twenty-four or twenty-five. His skin was ash gray, a color Jules remembered from nights in the morgue. When he stepped into the light, a slight reddish brown tone underlay the gray of his face. He stared unflinchingly into Jules’s eyes. The intruder looked confident enough to lead the Saints to a Super Bowl win.
“So you’re Jules Duchon. Big-time New Orleans vampire. Huh. Pretty much what I expected. ‘Specially after I seen this dump you live in.”
“Who the fuck are you?”
The intruder smiled. His voice was velvety smooth, but higher and reedier than Jules would’ve expected. “Me? I’m your new landlord, Jules. I’m the man. I come to set down thelaw. You an‘ me hafta have a serious talk. You been steppin’ outside the linesway too long.”
Questions buzzed through Jules’s mind like angry gnats. How did this interloper know he was a vampire? Why the strange skin?
“Buddy, I am gonna make youseriously sorry that you busted in here and messed with my property.”
This infuriating young punk was undoubtedly faster than Jules was. He’d have to immobilize him somehow. Jules hadn’t tried out his vampiric hypnotism in years. He had a nagging fear that he couldn’t get it working again. But he was so pissed off, he figured his righteous fury was hot enough to boil away any rust.
Jules concentrated hard. He arched his eyebrows and opened his eye sockets as wide as they would go. Boy, would this prowler be sorry! He’d freeze him with terror. He’d turn his blood to freon. He’d make him shit icicles.
Nothing happened.
The intruder smiled expectantly. Then he laughed. It was one of the most unpleasant sounds Jules had ever heard.
“What was that supposed to do, huh? Scare the crap outta me? Make me think I was a worm or somethin‘?” He laughed again, so hard this time that he leaned on Jules’s coffin for balance. “Man, that vampire shit don’t work on anothervampire!”
Jules couldn’t believe what he was hearing. His worst, most inconceivable fears were coming true. But he still struggled desperately to push them away. “You’re bullshittin‘ me.”
“Oh Iam, huh? Take a look at these.” He smiled an exaggerated smile. His canine teeth were sharp and elongated.
“Big deal. Half the young punks in the Quarter got their teeth filed and sharpened. That don’t prove a thing.”
“Man, you are one stubborn sonofabitch, ain’tchu? You seen what I did to your security door? Now who could do that ‘cept somebody with the strength of ten men, huh?”
Jules was silent. The intruder shrugged his broad shoulders. “Oh well,” he said. “They say seein‘ is believin’.” He reached into the lumber pile and pulled out three of the thickest planks. Then he put his left foot on top of Jules’s coffin and effortlessly snapped the three planks all at once over his knee.
He tossed the broken lumber onto the coffin. “Believe me now? Or do I have to reach up and pull your plumbing outta the ceilin‘?”
“Skip it. I believe you,” Jules admitted glumly. “So where are you down from? Chicago? Cleveland?
Detroit? Couldn’t take the cold anymore, huh? Well, there’re rules against musclin‘ in on another vampire’s territory. You can’t just waltz into New Orleans and start puttin’ the bite on people. I’ve got a good mind to report you to the National Council.“
The intruder scowled. “Fuckthe National Council. Them old-men vampires ain’t got no jurisdiction over this. Ain’t you been listenin‘ to the way I been talkin’ to you? I ain’t from outta town. I’m ahomeboy vampire, Jules. I’m a Grade-A, crawfish-head-suckin‘, second-linin’, Mardi-Gras-bead-catchin‘,New Orleans bloodsuckah!”
Could it be true? Jules certainly hadn’t made him. He’d never seen this guy before. And Maureen wouldn’t have made him, either. Jules had had to sit through lecture after lecture from her about the absolute necessity of keeping strict limits on the vampire population of a given territory. More to the point, Maureen had always been adamant about never,ever creating a colored vampire. The only vampire Jules had ever made was Doodlebug, his onetime kid sidekick, and Doodlebug had been living out in California for nearly twenty-five years. There were other, older vampires in New Orleans who kept to themselves in a walled compound near the parish line. But those old-timers were supposed to be even more prejudiced against blacks, Jews, and Italians than Maureen was.
“I don’t believe you,” Jules said. “You ain’t from around here.”
The other vampire straightened his bright red bow tie. “You don’t hafta believe me if you don’t want. All you gotta do islisten.” He lifted the lid of the coffin so that Jules could read the spray-painted message again. “NO POACHINGmeans your nights as Great White Hunter isfinished. As of tonight, Jules, you isout ofAfrica. No more big fat black mamas for you. Capeesh?”
“What the hell are you talkin‘ about?”
“Thick as a brick, huh? Okay. Lemme say this in words you’ll understand. Ready? If niggas gonna get fanged, thenniggas is gonna do thefangin‘. You stick to your kind-that’s white folks, now, not black folks-and me an’ my brothers stick to our kind.That, my friend, is the way it’s gonnabe.”
Jules was stunned. Who was this Johnny-come-lately to tellhim whom he could and couldn’t victimize? “Pal, I been a vampire since before your daddy was knee-high to a nutria. I know tricks you ain’t heard of or even thought of. Nobody butnobody tells me whose blood I can suck on my own home turf.”
The other vampire nonchalantly scratched his pointed chin. “I guess you can call me ‘Nobody’ then. ‘Cause I be the one tellin’ you.”
Jules waddled forward, trying his best to look menacing. “You and what goddamn army, punk?”
The intruder grinned. “Heh. You don’t wanna knownothin‘ ’bout my army, Jules. I got eyes all over this town. Eyes inevery neighborhood. I know ev’rythin‘ there is to know about Jules Duchon. Like that little hot chocolate snack you picked up from New Orleans Mission earlier tonight. Hope she was good and tasty for you, ’cause that there tamale stand is off-limits as of, oh, ‘bout ten minutes ago.”
Jules felt a small bayou of sweat begin to trickle down his back. This was awful. Never in his worst nightmares had he ever imagined anything like this. All he could muster was a feeble stab at humor. “I thought that affirmative action jazz was out of style.”
Again the smile. Jules was coming to hate that smile. “Me, I’m a self-made man. Only kinda affirmative action I believe in is this-I tell you what to do, you reply in the affirmative, or I take action. Do we have an understanding here?”
Jules tried to figure an out, but his brain seemed stuck in neutral. “But-but more than three-quarters of the people who live here are blacks. Almost every poor person, every down-and-outer in town is, y’know, black. White people don’t leave their homes after dark. They’re afraid of crime. And the tourist trade is too hard to live on steady. You’re cuttin‘ me out of my livelihood.”
The black vampire clapped him on the shoulder. It hurt. “Well now, that’syour problem, Mr. Jules. Not mine. You white folks are supposed to be smart. You’ll figure somethin‘ out, I’m sure.”
Quicksand pulled at Jules’s ankles. He felt dizzy. His stomach called off its tenuous truce with the rest of him. If he wanted to avoid sinking above his nose, he had to grasp at any branch in reach. He needed time to think. He needed information. “I’ll ask you one more time. Who the hell are you?”
“Still got a little fight left in you, huh? Good. I like that. You wanna know who I am? I’ll tell you, ‘cause I think we done come to an understanding. I had a lotta names in my years.Jules Duchon — that’s the name you was born with, huh? How long you been around, Jules? A hundred years? No imagination-you white folks ain’t got no imagination at all. Seventy years a big badass vampire, and you ain’t got no more sense than to live in the shithole you was born in and keep the name your mama hung on you?”
He walked over to the coffin, dusted a spot with a handkerchief from his jacket pocket, and sat down. “Sit a spell, Jules. This might be a while. I usta run with a kid gang, see, back when I was alive. Picked the name Eldo Rado to be my tag. Eldo Rado. Something a kid would come up with, huh? Named myself after a car made by some white French guy come to America, who called his car some weird-ass Spanish word. When I became a vampire, that shit didn’t cut it no more. So one night I went to the video joint. Checked out every tape on vampires they had. Figured I’d pick a new name after I watched all the tapes.
“You white vampires are lucky, you know that? You got tons ofbad, I meanbad mothafuckin‘ bloodsuckahs to watch on the tube. You know? Christopher Lee. That dude isbad, man! And what doI have to watch? Fuckin’Blacula, man. You ever want topiss me thehell off, just try pinnin‘ that Blacula shit on me. So the tapes wasn’t no help at all. Then I got to thinkin’. Maybe I didn’t need a totally new name. Back in grade school, the teachers used to call me Malice, ‘cause it sounded close to my real name and I was a bad little dude. Malice. I liked the sound of that. And I didn’t need no Christian name anymore, ’cause as a vampire I sure wasn’t no Christian. So nowadays you can call me Malice X. Any more questions?”
Jules had remained standing, uncomfortably, throughout Malice X’s monologue. His knees were aching again. “Yeah. One more. Why the warning? If you got so many goons to watch where I go, how come you haven’t just rubbed me out?”
The black vampire stood and straightened the crease in his pants. “I owed somebody a favor. I just paid it by givin‘ you a heads-up. Actually, I didn’t lose nothin’. See, I figure you’re too stupid to listen. A week, maybe a month from now, you’ll gimme some excuse to come down on you. Hard. You know them big, fat white toadstools that grow on neutral grounds after a heavy rain? I always loved kickin‘ the shit outta them things. Stompin’ ‘em to pieces. Just like I’m gonna love stompin’ you.”
Jules’s repertoire of wiseass comebacks was dry as a drought-stricken riverbed. The bayou of sweat dripping down his back had swelled to a Mississippi.
“Hey, Jules? You said before you can do some neat tricks, right?” Malice X removed his jacket, folded it, and placed it over the back of a rusty chair. Then he removed his shoes, unbuttoned his shirt, and loosened his alligator-skin belt and the clasp on his pants. “Well, here’s a trick I just learned.”
The black vampire’s form shimmered and wavered like a reflection in a twisting fun house mirror. His limbs contracted, his face elongated, and his gray skin sprouted a dense, smooth coat of coal-black fur. Seconds later, a sleek, heavily fanged panther gracefully shook off Malice X’s clothes. The bloodred bow tie remained tied around its neck. The great cat loped lazily to Jules’s side of the room, moving like ball bearings on smooth ice. It rubbed its face, its neck, and its side against Jules’s thick legs, purring hypnotically. Jules didn’t dare breathe.
Then it trotted to the coffin and, before climbing the stairs, showered it with a steaming spray of pungent urine.