Bite Me: A Love Story Chapter 12

12.AlchemyThe Chinese herb shop smelled homogeneous licorice and dried mess around butt. The Animals were skunkd into the narrow aisle between takingss, trying to hide behind troy weight lee(prenominal)s grandmother and failing spectacularly. Behind a glass case, the shopkeeper looked old(a) and more spooky than Grandma Lee, which none of them legal opinion possible until now. It was handle hed been carved from an apple, whence left on the windowsill to dry for a 100 years.The w on the wholes of the shop were lined, cornerstone to ceiling, with little drawers of dark wood, each with a small bronze frame and a white card with Chinese characters written on it. The old patch stood behind glass cases that held all manner of desic ditched plant and animal bits, from whole sea horses and exact birds, to shark parts and scorpion tails, to odd spiky bits that looked equal theyd been fl give in from other planet.Whats that? Drew asked Troy Lee from under a veil of sinewy blon d hair. He pointed to a wrinkled black thing.Troy Lee state something in Cantonese to Grandma, who utter something to the shopkeeper, who barked something top.Bear penis, verbalize Troy Lee.Should we score some? asked Drew.For what? asked Troy.An emergency, verbalize Drew.Sure, okay, said Troy Lee, because he said something to Grandma in Cantonese. in that location was an exchange with the shopkeeper, after which Troy said, How oft do you want? Its fifty bucks a gram.Whoa, said Barry. Thats expensive.He says its the trounce dried bear penis you can buy, said Troy Lee.Okay, said Drew. A gram.Troy passed the order by means of Grandma to the shopkeeper. He snipped a tip off a bear penis, weighed it, and placed it on the pile of herbs in the sheet of paper he had laid on the counter for Drew. Grandmas paper was much larger, and the shopkeeper had been tottering around the shop for half an hour gathering the ingredients. At one point when the old man was up on the top of the l adder at the far back corner of the shop, the Animals had leapt the counter and laced their arms to transmither as a human rescue net, which served only to scare the bejeezus out of the shopkeeper and narrow trim back Grandma off in a tirade of Cantonese scolding, to which they all responded comparable dogs, paying her rapt attention and tilting their heads as if they actually had some musical theme of what the fuck she was talking about.Lately the Animals had been all about saving lives. well-nigh of the time, guys their age would be fairly convinced of their immortality, or at to the lowest degree oblivious of their mortality, but since cosmos murdered by a hot hooker turned vampire, and then resurrected as vampires, then restored to living by Foo Dogs genetic alchemy, they had been feeling what they could only describe as Jesusy.Im feeling spare Jesusy, said Jeff, the tall jock.I al ports feel extra Jesusy, said Clint, who always did.Yeah, extra Jesusy, bitches Lets go save some mother-fuckers Lash had shouted, which had var. of embarrassed everyone a little, since they had been school term around a table in Starbucks at the time, discussing the attack of the cat cloud and the information theyd exchanged with the ii homicide cops. Its up to us, Lash added softly, sort of slinking into his hoody and putting on his shades.Now they watched as the old shopkeeper folded up Grandma Lees bundle of ingredients and inclose in the paper so it was as tight as a toothpick spliff, then flipped the package over and wrote some Chinese characters on the back with a carpenters pencil.Whats it say? Barry asked Troy Lee.It says, vampire cat remedy.No shit?Yeah. accordingly in that respects a bunch of warnings about side effects.An hour later they were sitting around the Lee kitchen table, waiting for the big twenty-quart soup pot on the stove to come to a boil.Grandma Lee rose from her pass and tottered over to the stove with her package of herbs. Troy Lee jo ined her, helped her denounce the package, and held the paper away from the burner as she scooped handfuls of herbs and animal parts into the boiling water. terrible and magical fumes bubbled out of the kettle, like the flatulence of dragons on a demon-only diet.This really going to work, Grandma? Troy Lee asked in Cantonese.Oh yeah. We employ it when I was a girl in China and some vampire cats invaded the city.And they still have the recipe in a shop down on Stockton Street?Its a good recipe. She scooped the last of the package into the water.How do you use this stuff, anyway?With firecrackers.Its wet, how are you going to use firecrackers?I dont issue how, I just like firecrackers.The Animals covered their noses and started filing out of the kitchen. That smells like fermented skunk ass, said Jeff.Grandma said something in Cantonese, followed by My bitches, pronounce in frighteningly accentless English.What? Whatd she say? asked Jeff.She says, Thats how you know its a good re cipe, gents, said Troy Lee.THE EMPEROR A dark basement. A thousand sleeping vampire cats. One formerly human vampire. One huge, shaved vampire-cat hybrid. quint controles left. No way out. A half hour, maybe less, until sundown.The Emperor was not a man to use profanity, but after he assessed his piazza and burned his fingers with his fourth to last be, he said, Well, this blows. there was no circumstances it, sometimes a man, even a brave and noble man, mustiness speak the harsh truth, and his situation, did, indeed, blow.Hed tried everything he could think of to escape the basement, from make a stairway to the window with empty fifty-five-gallon drums, to screaming for help like a man on fire, but even on a platform of oil drums he couldnt find the leverage or the specialty to move the Dumpster away from the window.He could hear Bummer and Lazarus whimpering outside in the alley. any the other windows had been bricked up, all the steel fire doors were bolted, and, of cour se, the raises and cables were long kaput(p) from the shafts (which hed observed after an hour prying the doors open with a admixture take hold bar hed taken off one of the shelves where Tommy Flood lay change surface up with the Chet-thing). A dusty spray of twi crystalize filtered down the elevator shaft from somewhere above, and it was by this that the Emperor ascertained that on that point was no way to climb the shaft, and that now it was dangerously close to sundown, as the light had turned a dim orange color.He would fight, oh yes, he would not go down without a battle, but even the magnificently active little swordsman had gone down to the attacking pounce of cats. What take on did he stand in the dark with only a metal bar? Hed already checked the empty oil drums for accelerants, hoping he strength burn his enemies before they awakened, but hed had no luck. The barrels had had dry goods or something solid in them, and even so, he wasnt sure how hed avoid being suf focated by burning cat fumes.Then, in thinking about how he might escape the flames, it occurred to him how he might escape. He made his way back to the storeroom where Chet and Tommy lay, and lit one of his precious matches to get his bearings. Yes, there was still a bolt on the door, and in addition there were enough barrels and shelves to construct a barricade beyond that. The match went out and he felt his way across the room until he touched Tommys back-cold flesh. He took his ex-friend under the armpits and dragged him off the shelf and across the room, bumping through the door-way as he went. He shoved the body to the side and cringed with the crunch it made, falling onto the immobile bodies of dead cats.Back through dark, feeling around until he found Chets fur. He felt for what he thought were the front paws, then backed across the room again, the huge shaved vampire cat in tow. Chet was lighter than Tommy had been, but not by much, and the Emperor was winded. He couldnt a fford to sit. The ray of light in the elevator shaft had gone deep red.He heard Bummer let out a garrotter beyond the window.Run, men, away Go away from this place. Ill find you in the morning. GoHe never raised his voice to the men, even when they were in peril, and he heard Lazarus whimper at his command, but then the sound of Bummer rumble while being dragged away by the scruff of his neck. He would get the message after a block or so. The men were safe.He pulled the metal door shut, then yanked on it until he heard a click. Then spent the second to the last of his matches looking at the unsophisticated bolt, and taking a last look around the room, trying to ascertain the layout of the barrels and shelves that he would have to move in the dark.As the match burned out, he heard stirring in the room outside. There was a rack of metal shelves to the right of the door. He grabbed them and overturned them in the doorway. Yes, the door opened out, but what could it hurt. The more h e put between himself and the vampire cats, the better. He scooped up armloads of the clothing at his feet and tossed them over the shelves, then backed across the room, throwing everything he touched in front of him, as if he were tunneling out the other side. Finally, he crawled up in the saturnine shelf where Tommy and Chet had been and crouched, facing the door. He felt for the handle of the kitchen knife that hed tucked in his belt at the small of his back, drew it, and held it before him.There were distinct cat noises-yowls, hisses, and meows, coming from the room outside. They were awake, up, and moving. There was a dubitable scratch at the door, then a whirr of scratching, like somebody had turned a power sander on outside, then it halt as quickly as it had started and all he could hear was his own breathing.No. There was movement. The slight rustle of cloth, then a low, enounce purr. And it was coming from inside the door, he was sure of it. The Emperor clamped the knif e in his teeth and lit his last match. The room was as he thought it would be, a pile of debris and barrels, but swirling out from under shelving in front of the door was a layer of mist, moving across the floor toward him, undulating in tiny waves that approximated the sound of a purr.