Bite Me

blood.
    “What happened to you? Where were you?”
    “One of the old vampires? She ambushed me on a roof across from the black ship. That weapon they have did this. It’s horrible. We can’t let them get near us with that thing.”
    “How did you get away?”
    “I was hiding at the bottom of a pool, trying to figure out what to do, when Chet jumped her. I got out of there while Chet was dry-humping her.”
    “Yeah. Go Chet!” said Abby.
    “Abby!” Jody ran to Abby and hugged her, kissed her on the forehead. “I was so worried about you. You’re alive. Really alive.”
    “Yeah. Foo changed me back. I want to be nosferatu again.”
    They all turned to face Foo, who was still in the kitchen. “Can’t do it, Abs. You won’t survive a second time. I tried it on the rats. You’re only human.”
    “Doomed,” Abby said.
    “Jody,” Tommy said, “what about the vampire who attacked you?”
    “Gone. Destroyed. Someone rescued me just before she killed me. So there’s only one left, right?”
    “They’re all gone,” Tommy said. “Rivera called. The Animals got the other one. There’s only Elijah on the black ship.”
    Jody put her hand to his face. “Tommy, we have to talk.”
    “I know,” he said.
    Foo Dog said, “Jody, I have no way of knowing when Tommy might, uh, expire. He could go faster than Abby was going.”
    “Come with me.” Jody took Tommy’s hand and led him into the bedroom. “I’ve got to show you something. You two, do not come into this room, do you hear me?”
    TOMMY AND JODY
    “We can’t make crazy monkey love now, Jody. They’ll hear us, and we usually end up breaking all the furniture.”
    “You learned how to go to mist, when you were with Chet. You said you learned?”
    “Yeah, that’s how I got these clothes. They’re stupid, aren’t they?”
    “Tommy, the vampire, the old one, her name was Bella, she told me something. Kiss me. Kiss me and go to mist. Don’t think about it, don’t stop, just melt into the kiss.”
    She kissed him and felt him as he faded from solid, and followed him exactly, until they were a single entity,sharing every secret, every fear, every victory, everything, the very essence of who they were, wrapping around each other, winding through each other as each lived the other’s history, as every experience they had, they had together, with comfort and joy, with abandon and passion, without words or boundaries, and as often happens to two in love, time lost all meaning, and they might have stayed there, like that, forever.
    When they finally fell out of it they were naked, on the bed, giggling like insane children.
    “Wow,” Tommy said first.
    “Yeah,” she said.
    “So, Okata saved you?”
    “Yeah, he needed to save someone. He had always needed to save someone.”
    “I know. I’m okay with it, you know?”
    “Yeah, I know,” she said.
    “I can’t do it, Jody. It’s amazing, and I adore you, but I can’t do it.”
    “I know,” she said, because she did. “This is me now, Tommy. I like this, I like the night, I like the power. I like not being afraid. I was never anything until I was this. I love being this.”
    “I know,” he said. He knew that she had always been cute, but not beautiful. Always a little dissatisfied with who she was, worried about what men, or her mother, or anyone thought of her. But she was beautiful now. Strong. She was exactly what she wanted to be.
    He said, “I need the words, Jody. It’s who I am.”
    “I know.”
    “I’m not a vampire. I’m a writer. I came here to be a writer. I want to use gelatinous in a sentence. And not just once, but over and over. On the roof, under the moon, in an elevator, on the washing machine, and when I’m exhausted, I want to lay in my own gelatinous sweat and use gelatinous in a sentence until I pass out.”
    Jody said, “I don’t think gelatinous means what you think it means.”
    “It doesn’t matter. It’s what I need to do. I need to write something. I need to write my little Holocaust girl story.”
    “I thought it was a little girl growing up in the segregated South.”
    “Yeah, whatever. It’s important.”
    “You know I know this already, right?”
    “I know, but that’s what I’m saying, I need the words. I love you, but I need the words.”
    “I know,” she said. “Let’s go let Foo change you back into a word guy.”
    “And you’re going to go away?”
    “I have to.”
    “I know,” he said. “You know, I think that