You Suck: A Love Story

looking like sculptures, looking eternal, like they could wait forever.
    “Can just anyone sneak up on me now?” said Blue.
    “Time to go, Elijah,” said the African woman.
    “None of you would be here if it weren’t for me,” Elijah said.
    “Yes, and we would have been hunted down and killed a long time ago if we hadn’t adhered to your rules.”
    “Ah, my rules,” Elijah said, looking down now.
    “How many left to clean?”
    Elijah looked across the street to the loft windows, then at Blue. She raised an eyebrow, smiled a little.
    “She’s the only one left.” He lied.
    “Then finish it.”
    “I’d rather not,” Elijah said.
    T he Emperor of San Francisco wept for his city. He had done what he could, called the police, alerted the newspapers, even tried to take to battle himself, but by the time he’d gathered the courage to return to the Marina Safeway, it had been finished, and he could do nothing more than speculate to the uniformed police officers how the window had been broken and why the store was empty. They’d tried to track down the night crew, but none of them seemed to be home. And his city was plagued by
    vampires.
    Now the Emperor wept and consoled the troops, rubbing Bummer behind the ears and gently patting Lazarus on the ribs as he lay sleeping on the dock. The fog was coming slow off the Bay to night, not windblown like it was so often here.
    He heard footsteps before he saw them, then there were five of them. The fiend, the three in the long coats he had seen come in the night before, and a blond woman in a blue party dress. They walked past, and only the fiend turned and paused. The Emperor held Bummer tight, afraid that he would burst into one of his barking fits and all would be lost.
    “Old man,” said Elijah. “The City is yours again.” Then he joined the others at the end of the dock.
    The Emperor could see their motor yacht waiting outside the breakwater-it had to be two hundred feet long, far too big to enter the marina.
    “Very well, then, shall we go?” said Elijah.
    “Can I get a coat like that?” asked Blue, nodding toward the tall blond man.
    The blond man said, “You’ll get one when you learn the secret handshake and get your decoder ring.”
    Blue looked at Elijah. “Is he fuckin’ with me?”
    “Yes,” said Elijah. He offered her his arm. She took it, and stepped down into the longboat.
    The Emperor watched the vampires disappear into the fog.
    R ivera had six uniforms in SWAT gear with a battering ram ready to take down the door, so he and Cavuto were more than somewhat surprised when it opened almost as soon as they knocked. A shirtless, sleepy-looking Chinese guy with spiky hair stood in the doorway.
    “Yes, can I help you?”
    Rivera held up the warrant. “I have a warrant to search this apartment.”
    “’Kay,” said the Chinese guy. “Abby, cops are here.”
    The skinny broken clown girl appeared at the top of the stairs in a kimono.
    “Hey, cops,” said Abby Normal.
    “What are you doing here?” Rivera said.
    “I live here, cop.” She popped the p. Rivera hated that.
    “Actually, it’s my apartment,” said the Chinese guy. “Do you need to see ID?”
    “Yeah, that would be nice, kid,” said Cavuto. He whipped the kid around and marched him up the stairs as the kid read the warrant.
    “Do not bruise the Foo, cop,” said the broken clown girl.
    Rivera turned to the uniforms and shrugged apologetically. “Sorry, guys, I guess we got this one.” They
    shuffled away.
    “What are you guys looking for?” asked the Chinese kid. “Maybe we could speed this up.”
    “We’re looking for Thomas Flood and Jody Stroud. He’s the one on the lease for this apartment and the one down the street.”
    “Oh, yeah. I’m subletting,” said the Chinese kid.
    “Steven Wong,” Cavuto read off the kid’s license.
    Rivera was feeling very, very bad about this. They had found one more body in theMission with the blood-loss-and-broken-neck MO-the guy had been naked, supposedly someone had stolen his powder-blue tracksuit, so they logged it as robbery, but then, a week ago, the killings stopped. That didn’t mean it was over. He’d made the mistake of thinking it was over with these two before. Rivera had finally gotten the Christian kid at the Safeway to file charges on the redhead for assault. After a long talk with the other stoners, they’d gotten the Flood kid on the arrest warrant for conspiracy. They’d also implied that