The blood-high raced through her like an espresso firehose. She leaned against a dumpster, holding the clothes to her breast like a security blanket. The alley tilted in her vision, then righted, then spun until she thought she would be sick.
When the alley stopped moving, she fumbled through the clothing until she found a wallet. She opened it and pulled out the contents. This bundle of rags had been a person; "Phillip Burns," the license said. He carried crinkled photos of friends, a library card, a dry-cleaning receipt, a bank card, and fifty-six dollars. Phillip Burns in a convenient, portable package. She pocketed the wallet, threw the clothes into the dumpster, then wiped her hands on her jeans and stumbled out of the alley.
I killed someone, she thought. My God, I killed someone. What should I feel?
She walked for blocks, not really looking where she was going, but listening to the rhythm of her own steps under the roar of the blood-high in her head. Philly had spilled into her shoes and she stopped and sat on the curb to dump him out.
What is this? she thought. This isn't anything. This isn't what I was before I was a vampire. What is this? This is impossible. This isn't a person. A person can't reduce to dust in seconds. What is this?
She took off her socks and shook them out.
This is fucking magic, she thought. This isn't some story out of one of Tommy's books. This isn't something you can experiment with in the bathroom. This is not natural, and whatever I am, it isn't natural. A vampire is magic, not science. And if this is what happens when a vampire kills, then how are the police finding bodies? Why is there a guy in my freezer?
She put on her shoes and socks and resumed walking. It was starting to get light and she quickened her pace, checked her watch, then broke into a run. She'd made a habit of checking the time of sunrise every morning in the almanac so she wouldn't be caught too far from home. Five years in the City had taught her the streets, but if she was going to run she had to learn the alleys and backstreets. She couldn't let anyone see her moving this fast.
As she ran, a voice sounded in her head. It was her voice, but not her voice. It was the voice that put no words to what her senses told her, yet understood. It was the voice that told her to hide from the light, to protect herself, to fight or flee. The vampire voice.
"Killing is what you do," the vampire voice said.
The human part of her was revolted. "No! I didn't want to kill him."
"Fuck him. It is as it should be. His life is ours. It feels good, doesn't it?"
Jody stopped fighting. It did feel good. She pushed the human part of her aside and let the predator take over to race the sun for her life.
Nick Cavuto paced around the chalk outline of the body as if he were preparing to perform a violent hopscotch on the corpse. "You know," Cavuto said, looking over at Rivera, who was trying to fend off a reporter from the Chronicle at the yellow crime-scene tape, "this guy is pissing me off."
Rivera excused himself from the reporter and joined Cavuto by the body. "Nick, keep it down," he whispered.
"This stiff is making my life difficult," Cavuto said. "I say we shoot him and take his wallet. Simple gunshot wound, robbery motive."
"He didn't have a wallet," said Rivera.
"There you have it, robbery. Massive blood loss from gunshot wound, broke his neck when he hit the ground."
The reporter perked up. "So it was a robbery?"
Cavuto glared at the reporter and put his hand on his thirty-eight. "Rivera, what do you say to a murder-suicide? Scoop over there killed this guy, then turned the gun on himself — case closed and we can go get some breakfast."
The reporter backed away from the line.
Two coroner's assistants moved to the body, pushing a gurney with a body bag on it. "You guys done here?" one of them asked Cavuto.
"Yeah," Cavuto said. "Take him away."
The coroners spread the body bag out and hoisted the body onto it. "Hey, Inspector, you want to bag this book?"
"What book?" Rivera turned. A paperback copy of Kerouac's On the Road was lying in the chalk line where the body had been. Rivera slipped on a pair of white cotton gloves and pulled an evidence bag from his jacket pocket. "Here you go, Nick. The guy was a speed reader. Snapped his neck on a meaningful passage."
Jody glanced at the lightening sky, ducked down an alley, and fell into a trot. She was only a block from home, she'd make it in long before sunrise. She leaped over a dumpster, just to do it, then high-stepped through a pile of crates like a halfback through fallen defenders. She was strong in the blood — high, quick and light on her feet, her body moved, dodged, and leaped on its own — no thought, just fluid motion and perfect balance.
She'd never been athletic in life: the last kid to be picked for kickball, straight C's in phys ed, no chance as a cheerleader; the self-conscious, one-step dancer with the rhythmic sense of an inbred Aryan. But now she reveled in the movement and the strength, even as her instincts screamed for her to hide from the light.
She heard the policemen's voices before she saw the blue and red lights from their cars playing across the walls at the end of the alley. Fear tightened her muscles and she nearly fell in mid-step.
She crept forward and saw the police cars and coroner's wagon parked in front of the loft. The street was full of milling cops and reporters. She checked her watch and backed down the alley. Five minutes to sunrise.
She looked for a place to hide. There was the dumpster, even a few large garbage cans, three steel doors with massive locks, and a basement window with steel bars. She ran to the window and tried the bars. They moved a bit. She checked her watch. Two minutes. She braced her feet against the brick wall and pulled on the bars with her legs. Rusty bolts tore out of the mortar and the bars moved another half inch. She tried to peer into the window, but the wire-reinforced glass was clouded with dirt and age. She yanked on the bars again and they screamed in protest and came loose. She dropped the grate and was drawing back to kick out the glass when she heard movement behind the window.
Oh my God, there's someone inside!
She looked around to the dumpster, some fifty feet away. She looked at her watch. If it was right, the sun was up. She was…
The glass shattered behind her. Two hands came through the window, grabbed her ankles, and pulled her inside as she went out.
"These here turtles are defective," Simon said.
"It's okay, Simon," said Tommy.
They were in a Chinatown fish market, where Tommy was trying to purchase two massive snapping turtles from an old Chinese man in a rubber apron and boots.
"You no know turtle!" the old man insisted. "These plime, glade-A turtle. You no know shit about turtle."
The turtles were in orange crates to immobilize them. The old man sprayed them down with a garden hose to keep them wet.
"And I'm telling you, these turtles are defective," Simon insisted. "Their eyes are all glazed over. These turtles are on drugs."
Tommy said, "Really, Simon, it's okay."
Simon turned to Tommy and whispered, "You have to bargain with these guys. They won't respect you if you don't."
"Turtle's not on dlugs," said the old man. "You want turtle, you pay forty bucks."
Simon pushed his black Stetson back on his head and sighed. "Look, Hop Sing, you can do time for selling drugged turtles in this city."
"No dlugs. Fuck you, cowboy. Forty bucks or go away."
"Twenty."
"Thirty."
"Twenty-five and you clean 'em."