I'm alive, she thought. Then: And I'm going to be alive forever. Then: And I'm going to need some fucking money.

She ran to Lash's bedroom to where she'd left her makeup case. It was gone. Her money was gone!

She ran out of the apartment and down the steps like she might see a green trail of bills blowing in the wind in the direction her money had escaped, but once on the street, she headed for the only place she knew, toward the Marina Safeway. She got half a block before the Mercedes pulled up and the electric window rolled down.

"Hey, you need a ride? It's a little chilly out here for that outfit."

His name had been David, and he did something that had to do with moving money around. Whatever it was, it must have paid well. He was wearing a two-thousand-dollar suit and his penthouse apartment on Russian Hill looked out on Golden Gate Bridge and the massive dome at the Palace of Fine Arts.

He'd given her his coat to wear up in the elevator. It was in the elevator that the hunger had come upon her. Poor David. They hadn't even talked price before she'd had him bent over the green glass vanity in the bathroom, drinking his life away.

"Oops." The difference, she realized, between what had happened to her and what had happened to David had been the bloody kiss she'd taken from Tommy. But for a kiss, she, too, would be a pile of dust. There should be a song like that, she thought. At least she'd learned before she took her victims.

Now she swept the last of David into the corner, then scraped him up with a piece of cardboard from his shirt drawer and dumped him into the wastebasket. Then she slipped into the tub full of bubbles and began to scrub off her charred skin.

She wouldn't be able to stay long. David had been married or had a girlfriend. Blue had found a whole closet full of women's clothes—expensive clothes, and the woman would probably be back. Of course, this would make a great base of operations, maybe she could just wait for the wife to return and sweep her into the wastebasket with David.

Blue leaned back and closed her eyes, listened to the bubbles popping, the wires humming through the building, the traffic out on the streets, to fishing boats leaving the wharf—then a sudden intake of breath from the living room, then another, deeper gasp as the second one found life, then a long man-scream. The dead Animals she'd collected were coming back to life.

"Sit tight, boys," Blue said. "Mama's just going to get cleaned up and put on a new dress, then we'll go get you something to eat and pick up my money."

She ran a sponge over her arm and smiled. She really could be Snow White now. One dwarf at a time, she thought.

Elijah Ben Sapir had roamed the planet for eight hundred and seventeen years. In that time he had seen empires rise and fall, miracles and massacres, ages of ignorance and ages of enlightenment: the full spectrum of mankind's cruelty and kindness. He had seen all manner of freakishness, from the perversions of nature to the perversions of mind, twisted, beautiful, terrifying: he thought he had seen it all. But for all of his years, and all the acuity of perception enabled by his vampire senses, he had never seen a huge shaved cat in a red sweater, and sitting there in his newly washed yellow tracksuit, still warm from the dryer and smelling of soap and fabric softener, he smiled.

"Hey, kitty," the old vampire said.

The huge cat eyed him suspiciously from across the loft. The cat could sense that he was a predator, just as Elijah could sense that the cat had been prey to a vampire. Kitty treat.

"I'm not going to eat you, kitty. I've fed quite enough."

It was true. Elijah was feeling a little bloated from trying to keep the body count up. Perhaps he should just kill the next few, not feed. But no, the police wouldn't know it was a vampire then, and there'd be no joy in terrorizing the fledgling. He just wasn't ready to feed yet. There was someone in the stairwell right now, he could hear her breathing and smell patchouli and clove cigarette odor wafting under the door. Soon enough, he thought.

"Perhaps we'll find something for you to eat, hey, kitty?"

Elijah vaulted off the bar stool and began opening cupboards. In the third one he found pouches of Tender Vittles. He took a bowl from the cupboard that looked as if it had never been used, dumped in the meatish nuggets, and shook them around.

"Come, kitty."

Chet padded a few steps toward the kitchenette, then stopped. Elijah put the bowl down and stepped away. "I understand, kitty. I don't like to eat in front of witnesses either. But sometimes—"

The vampire heard a car pull up outside, a car that hadn't been tuned in a while. He cocked his head and listened as the doors opened and slammed. Four got out. He heard their steps on the concrete, a female voice, hissing at the other three. In an instant he was at the window looking down, and in spite of himself, he smiled again. There was no vivid life aura around the four down on the sidewalk. No healthy pink glow, no black shadow of death. The visitors below were not human.

Vampires. On one hand, an indication of an enormous problem—one that just might attract attention that he could ill afford—but on the other, exciting in a way that he hadn't felt in a hundred years.

"Four against one. Oh my, kitty, how ever will I prevail?"

The old vampire ran his tongue over his fangs. For all the rage, frustration, and discomfort he'd endured since choosing the redhead as his fledgling, he was, for the first time in decades, not bored. He was having the time of his very long life.

"Killing time, kitty," he said, slipping into a pair of Tommy's Nikes.

Jody awoke to the smell of clove cigarettes and the crunching of Cheese Newts. There was music screeching, too—a whiny guy singing about some girl named Ligeia, who apparently he missed a great deal because he was talking about dragging her worm-worn corpse from the earth and caressing her cheek on a cliff above the sea before throwing himself off, with her in his arms. The singer sounded a little down, and like he could have used a throat lozenge.

She opened her eyes and was initially blinded until she adjusted to the black light, then she yelped. Jared White Wolf was sitting on the bed about two feet away from her, shoving handfuls of crunchy Cheese Newts into his mouth. There was a brown rat on his shoulder.

"Hi." Newt crumbs sprayed and fluoresced on the black sheets and clothing.

"Hi," Jody said, turning her head to avoid the crumbs.

"This is my room. Do you like it?"

Jody looked around, for once not really that thrilled with her vampire night-vision abilities. There were disturbing stains glowing on the sheets, and almost everything else in the room was black with a patina of vibrant blacklight-enhanced dust or lint—there was even lint on the rat.

"It's swell," she said. Interesting, she thought. She was no longer afraid of gang members and street criminals, and would even throw down with an eight-hundred-year-old vampire if need be, but rodents still sort of gave her the willies. The rat's eyes were glowing silver in the black light.

"This is Lucifer Two." Jared scooped the animal off his shoulder and held him out.

Despite an attempt at self-control, Jody climbed backwards halfway up the wall, shredding a Marilyn Manson poster with her nails in the process.

"Lucifer One went on to his dark reward when I tried to dye him black."

"Sad," Jody said.

"Yeah." Jared turned the rat and rubbed noses with him. "I was hoping we could turn him to nosferatu when you bring Abby and me into the fold."

"Yeah, sure, that'll happen. Why am I in your room, Jared?"

"It was the only place we could think to bring you. It wasn't safe under the bridge. Abby had to go, so I'm in charge."