Pippi drank a lot of coffee. (Because, like me, she was wise.)
Pippi had unnaturally red hair (as I, myself have had, upon occasion).
Pippi often wore long, stripy socks (as yours truly has been known to do).
Pippi had superhuman strength. (It could happen.)
Pippi kicked ass. (Not unlike your humble narrator.)
Pippi was a kid who lived without parents in her own house. (Go, girl!)
With a monkey. (Haven’t you always wanted a monkey?)
What Longstockings did not have, was the coolest cyber-ninja-sex-magic boyfriend to ever save the world and whatnot. (Props to Pip, but girlfriend needed some yang to rock her yin.)
Steve. My darling, my love,
My heart is aflame
But OMFG, Steve,
I grieve,
That you’re name
Is so fucking lame.
I call him Foo Dog, because he guards the gate of my temple, if you know what I mean. I’m wearing the jacket he made me right now. I had it on when they came for me, but that’s not the thing. The thing is, I didn’t save myself, I saved love.
So, that night, after I told the Countess how my sweet Foo Dog saved me from the vampyre, the Countess said she was going to go back to the loft to get some money and feed Chet and get the last of William’s blood for Lord Flood, for their love is truly eternal. And Jared and I were like, “We’ll go, too,” but the Countess sent us back to liberate the vampyre Flood from Jared’s basement and his hideous family. So we were all, “Well, okay.”
But when we got to Jared’s house, Flood was totally gone. And then Steve—I mean Foo Dog—called me and he was all, “I’m getting off work early, I don’t want to leave you out there unprotected.”
So I told him where we were. Then Lord Flood comes walking out of the dark and he’s all, “What? What? What?”
And I’m all, “The Countess went back to the loft.”
And he’s all, “She is in danger. We must away.”
And I was like, “Chill thee thus, for my sweet love-ninja is on the way in his fly ride.”
So Flood was like, “’Kay.”
I see now that my attraction to the vampyre Flood was nothing more than childish infatuation, never to be requited, because he had eyes only for the Countess.
So it was a little awkward when Steve showed up and I had to chill the Lord Flood and make him sit in the backseat to show that my real affections were with Foo Dog, who was formerly known as Steve.
And when we got to the loft, the windows were open, but there were no lights on. And Flood had us drive a block past, then we got out and he walked back. Then he runs up and he’s like, “Elijah’s up there. He’s got her.”
And I’m all, “Then go get her.”
And Steve is like, “No, I’ll go get her.” And he pulls this long coat out of the trunk.
It’s all covered with warts or something, and I’m like, “Nice coat, but you know, vampyre…”
And Steve is like, “They’re UV LEDs. Like the lights we burned the vampires with before.”
And I’m like, “Sweet!”
So Steve starts to put the coat on and Flood stops him and goes, “He’ll hear you coming up the stairs. I’ll go.”
And Steve is all, “You can’t. It will burn you, too.”
And Flood is all, “No it won’t.”
So they are like five minutes behind the car putting together this über-cool ensem of like an old gas mask, and a hoodie, and full-on gloves and everything, until Flood is totally covered, wearing the long coat with the glass warts all over it, looking like one of the cenobites from Hellraiser.
And Steve is like, “Don’t hit the switch until you know she’s covered.” And he hands Flood like a black rubber tarp and a baseball bat, which totally sucked the cool right out of the ensem, but I guess was necessary.
Then, just when I’m about to ask how he’s going to get in without being heard, we hear the Countess scream, and Flood runs across the street and about halfway up the side of the building, then turns and runs down it, then across the street, up the side of his building, and goes through the window feet fucking first.
And I’m like, “Whoa.”
And Steve and Jared are like, “Whoa.”
And a second later we hear a thumping, and purple light comes on in the loft windows and the old vampyre comes crashing through the windows on fucking fire, falling like a comet! And he lands on his feet in the middle of the street, hisses once and looks at us, and that’s when Steve holds up one of his UV floodlights, and the vampyre fucking scrams down the alley across the street so fast that he was just a blur.
Next thing, Flood is coming out of the building carrying the Countess, who is wrapped in the black rubber tarp and is totally roofied like a limp rag. And Steve’s all, “Get her in the car.”
And I’m like, “Did you feed Chet?”
And Jared is like, “Hello, Abby, the other vampyres.”
So I’m like, “Shut up. I know.” So we all piled into Steve’s car and we took Flood and the Countess to a hotel off up on Van Ness, which Steve paid for with his Visa, which was generous and mature of him.
It was one of those motels where you have your own entrance to the parking lot so they don’t see you in the hallway, so Flood carried the Countess up to the room, and we carried some stuff that Steve had packed up in the trunk of his car.
It was so sad. Flood just stroked the Countess’s cheek and tried to get her to wake up, but she wouldn’t. And he was all, “Abby, she needs to feed. I wouldn’t ask, but he’s done something to her, she’s hurt.”
And I would have totally done it, but Steve pulled me back, and he picks up this playmate cooler that he had us bring up, and he pulls out these pouches of blood.
And he hands them to Flood and says, “I took them from the university hospital. They could kick me out of school for this.”
And Flood is all, “Thanks.” And he bites a hole in one of the pouches and squeezes it on the Countess’s lips and that’s when I started to cry.
There were like four pouches, and when he was going for the last one, Steve was like, “You need to drink that one.”
And Flood was like, “No way, it’s for her.”
And Steve was like, “You know you do.”
So Flood like nodded and drank the last one himself, and then he just sat there by her, stroking her hair.
Then Steve was like, “Tommy, you know I can reverse your vampirism. I’m pretty sure the process works.”
And Flood just looked at him and nodded. It was so sad. And then the Countess started to moan, and she opened her eyes and she saw the vampyre Flood and she was all, “Hey, baby.” Just like that. And I started crying again like a big wuss and Steve took Jared and me out to the car to give them some space.
And Steve was like, “I made this for you from my jacket.” And he put this leather motorcycle jacket on me that was covered with those glass LED thingies. It was kinda heavy, because there were batteries built into the padding, but cool. And he was all, “This will keep you safe. The switch is in the snap on the left cuff. Just squeeze it and the lights will come on. They won’t hurt you, but you should wear sunglasses to protect your retinas.” Then he put a pair of totally cyber wraparound sunglasses on me and kissed me. And I kissed him back, hard, with major tongue, and finally he pulled away, as gentle as a butterfly. So then I slapped him, so he wouldn’t think I was a slut. But so he wouldn’t think I was being frigid, I sort of jumped on him and wrapped my legs around him and sort of accidentally rode him to the ground and was accidentally kind of dry-humping him on the pavement when the lights on my jacket came on and people looked out their hotel windows and whatnot, so Jared ended our special romantic moment by hitting my light switch and dragging me off.
And I was all, “You are THE MAN, Foo!”
And he was all, “Huh?” Because I hadn’t told him yet that his new name was Foo Dog.
But then he said he a
ctually had to get home and check in or his parents would freak out. And said to watch the masters until I got back, if I got a chance try to talk them into being converted. So we made out on the hood of the Honda for a while and he drove off into night’s cold loneliness like the superhero that he is. (The effect was ruined, kind of, in that Jared caught a ride with him.)
So I went back upstairs and sat at the foot of the masters’ bed, keeping guard and listening to them.
They were talking softly, but I could hear them.
The vampyre Flood was all, “Maybe we should give it a try.”
And the Countess was all, “What, the cure? Tommy, it can’t work. You’ve seen what I can do, you know what you can do. This isn’t biology, this is magic.”
“Maybe it’s not. Maybe it’s science we don’t know yet.”
“It doesn’t matter. We don’t even know if it works.”
“We should try.”
“Why would we try, Tommy? You’ve only been immortal for a couple of weeks. Do you want to give up the power, the—I don’t know—the command over your world?”
“Well—yes.”
“You do?”
“Yeah. I don’t like it, Jody. I don’t like being afraid all the time. I don’t like being alone. I don’t like being a killer.”
“That woman was torturing you, Tommy. That’s never going to happen again.”
“That’s wasn’t the problem. I’d get over her. The problem was that I liked it. I liked it.”
Then the Countess was quiet for a while, and I thought it might be dawn or something, but I peeked over the edge of the bed and she was just staring into his eyes. She looked over at me.
“Hey, girlie girl,” the Countess said, and she smiled at me and it felt like a gift or something. It was like, real. Then she took her watch off and threw it to me at the end of the bed. “That has an automatic almanac in it—how about you set the alarm to go off about twenty minutes before sunset, so you don’t get caught out again, okay?” And I was going to tell her about the jacket that Foo made for me, but I kind of couldn’t talk, so I just nodded and put the watch on and slid back down to the floor.
Then I heard the Countess go, “You aren’t alone. I’m here. We can go where no one knows us, no one is chasing us, and I’ll always be here for you.”
And he goes, “I know. I mean alone from everyone else. Separate. I want to be human, not some foul dead thing.”
“I thought you wanted to be special.”
“I do, but I want to be human special—because of something I did.”
Then it was quiet for a while, and finally the Countess goes, “I love it, Tommy. I’m not afraid all the time like you; just the opposite. I didn’t realize how afraid I used to be until I became like this. I like walking the street knowing that I’m the Alpha animal, hearing and seeing and smelling everything, being part of everything. I like it. I wanted to share that with you”
“It’s okay. You couldn’t have known.”
“I don’t want to be alone either. That’s why I turned you. I love you.”
Then the alarm went off on Lord Flood’s watch, and he shut it off.
Then he’s all, “We can’t go back to the way it was, before, I mean? Where I look after you?”
“It’s not the same world, Tommy. You know that now. We were in the same room in different worlds.”
“Okay then. I love you, Jody.”
“I love you, too,” goes the Countess.
Then they didn’t say anything for a long time, and when my new watch showed that the sun was up, I looked, and they were lying there, holding each other, and I could see the red stains on the pillow from their tears.
And I was like, “Oh, hell no!”
31
Being the Chronicles of Abby Normal: Not Unlike the Toaster, I Control the Darkness
So I slept a little that day, and talked to my sweet love-ninja, Foo, a couple of times on the phone, then he came over and we left Jared with some blood for Lord Flood and the Countess when they awoke, and motored to the loft. It took like an hour to clean up all the broken glass and ash and stuff from the night before. We had just finished cleaning and counting the money and making out and whatnot when the alarm went off on the Countess’s watch.
And I was like, “Dude, I’m not ready.”
And he was all, “Dude, you are more ready than anyone I’ve ever known.”
And I was all, “OMG, I am so going to sex you to death if we live through this.”
And then he was all bashful and pretended to be doing something technical so we were ready.
Then, like an hour after sundown, I heard them coming. I was at the kitchen counter when the security door downstairs opened, and when I turned around they were just, like there. Lord Flood called them the Animals, but now they were kind of the roadkill. And I like touched the snap on my UV jacket, just to make sure it was there.
So I was all, “Hey, vampyre scum.”
And the formerly black and now gray one, who was like their leader, was all up in my grille, like, “We need the money, where is the money?”
And I was like, “Step off, undead-tard. There’s no money.”
And he was like, “Don’t fuck with us. Flood and the redhead took like six hundred grand from my apartment.”
And I was all, “Actually, its like five hundred and eighty-three thousand eight hundred and fifty-eight.”
And he was all, “Give it!”
And all seven of them were like gathering around me—even the born-again one the Countess had thrashed—like they were going to do the massive gang-suck on me, so I had my finger on my light button all the time, in case I needed to flash-fry the motherfuckers. But I stayed chilly and I was like, “Are you high?”
And he was all, “No, I’m not high. No one is high.”
And they all started whining and whatnot, all, “We can’t even take a bong hit. We can’t drink a beer. Our systems won’t take it. Being sober sucks. We are useless undead stoners.”
So I was all, “Step back and behold, bi-atches.”
And I’m all taking a bottle of Stoli out of the freezer, and mixing in a glass with some of the blood from the pouches, just like the ones we left for the Countess and Lord Flood, and they’re all drooling when they see the blood, so I was thinking, Don’t make me fry you.
But then I give the glass to the gray vamp, and he’s all, “Sweet.”
And the others are like, “Me, me, me.”
So I’m like mixing Bloody Marys all around, and the greasy hippyish one is like, “Can we dunk pot cookies in this?”
And I’m like, “Of course, stoner vamp.”
And they’re all, “You are a goddess. And we are not worthy. And oh please, may we have some more?” Until they started to drop.
So like two minutes later there’s like this big pile of passed-out vampyres in the kitchen, and I’m all, “Yo, Foo, I got your shit ready.”
And Foo comes out of the bedroom, all cute, holding his UV floodlight like he’s going to save me, then sees that they are all out cold and gives me a big kiss and is like, “You rock.”
And I’m like, “You have no idea, my Manga-haired love toy.”
And he was like, “The sedative in the blood, blah, blah, four hours, blah, blah, nerdspeak, geektalk—”
And I’m like, “Whateva, studmuffin. Handle it.”
So it took like two hours for Foo to do all his medical stuff with the Animals, taking some blood and doing various medical nerdism stuff to it, then putting it back in, but finally he was done and I called Jared to tell him that we were on our way to get Lord Flood and the Countess.
So I like made the other call to make sure everything was all in order and whatnot, and Foo was all, “Are you sure this is what you want to do?”
And I was all, “Foo, theirs is the greatest love of all time. It’s the only thing to do.”
And he was all, “Okay, as long as you’re sure. Because we can do them the same as we
did the others.”
And I was all, “No, that won’t work. They have to be together. And you don’t have to live at home anymore. We’ll have a completely sweet love lair.”
So we did it.
Blue watched from the alley across the street as the Animals came out the security door, empty-handed, and stumbled into the street. She knew she should have gone herself, but that whole getting-burned-up thing had taught her that perhaps it was better to delegate. That they didn’t have her money was bad enough, but that they didn’t have her money and heat was coming off of them was disastrous. “Those dumbfucks can’t get anything right,” she said to herself. “I’m going to have to kill them all over again.”
“I don’t think so,” said a voice from behind her. She whipped around, leading with her long fingernails in a swipe that would have taken off half a man’s face.
Elijah caught her hand. He’d found another tracksuit, this one powder blue. “It’s time to let it go. The genie must go back in the bottle, I’m afraid.”
“Let me go, I need to go get my money.”
“No, my dear, you don’t want to do that. The residents of that loft have recently developed a very unpleasant fashion sense.”
“You’re fucking with my income, paleface.”
“You don’t need to worry about that anymore.”
“Meaning what?”
“It ends here. Come with me, my dear.”
“You want me to come with you? I don’t even know you.”
“Yes, but we share a special relationship.”
“Special? You beat my face into the hood of a Mercedes.”
“Well, yes. Sorry. To the innocent my behavior can sometimes be distasteful.”
“Yeah? Innocent. I’ve fucked thousands of guys.”
“Yes, well, I’ve killed enough to fill a city.”
Blue shrugged. “Okay, you win.”
“Revenge is a dish best served cold anyway, don’t you think?”
“Or not at all,” said a male voice behind Elijah.
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