The nurse faces me, places a hand on my arm, points at the door.

I think about taking her head between my hands and twisting her neck and spitting in her face as I kill her.

The old lady peeks from behind her magazine as I leave, shaking her head.

On the street I fire up a Lucky and look at the people walking around: on their way home after a late workday, on their way back out because it’s Friday night, whatever. Normal stuff. Stuff Evie can’t do these days.

I think about killing them all.

It wouldn’t change things, not for my girl up there on the HIV ward of Beth Israel. But it would make me feel better. A dead body for every blood-corrupting cell invader in her would just about even things out with the world as far as I’m concerned.

A sense of proportion not being something I have much of a grip on.

A Harley grumbles up to the curb and the leather-coated rider touches the brim of his top hat.

– Joe.

I watch a guy walk past with his girl on his arm, both of them giggling at some stupid shit they think is cute. I skip asking what’s so fucking funny and go talk to Christian instead.

– What’s up?

He pulls the aviator goggles from his eyes and lets them hang from his neck.

– Something needs looking at below Houston.

– Off my beat.

Christian takes one of the smokes I offer him. I pop open my Zippo and hold out the flame.

– Not for long, I hear.

– What’s that mean?

– Means everyone knows Terry is talking to faces from over the bridge. Those bridge-and-tunnel types start coming into the Society, Bird’s gonna have to find turf for them somewhere.

– Where you hear that?

He grins.

– Seriously, man, you think Bird could move his action that close to Pike Street, and me and the boys wouldn’t know what’s what?

– Even if it’s so, I only look after Society business.

He takes a drag.

– Joe, we go back?

It’s a stupid question.

We go back to the night I peeled him off the sidewalk after the Chinatown Wall had shredded his gang and left him broken. Some asshole cut his vein and bled him and then bled into him. Thought it’d be cute to leave him breathing. See if the Vyrus would take root and keep him alive. Alive or the next best thing, anyway. Lameass probably figured if Christian died it’d be no harm, no foul. If he lived he’d freak out, be torn up over what happened to his boys and do himself. Go out colorful. Didn’t figure I’d make the scene, do the right thing and clean up the mess before any cops or civilians got involved and found Christian still kicking.

I could have bled him out. Could have tumbled him into the East River, just another floater for the patrol boats to fish out. But there was a time someone could have made the same call on me, so I figured I was due to pay that one off. Figured I’d get him on his feet, give him the score on the Vyrus and let him make his own call.

Well I gave him the score. Filled him in on how the Vyrus was cultivating him. How it’d keep him sharp and strong and fast and pretty goddamn youthful for that matter, as long as he kept it fed.

He asked the obvious questions.

I gave the only answers.

Blood. Human. As much as possible.

Then I gave him some. And he liked it. Hell, we all like it. Just some can’t stand the thought that we like it. And what we have to do to get it.

Tap as many veins as you like. Draw off just enough and leave behind a confused mugging victim or a zonked-out junkie. Hustle the blood banks, buy some green scrubs and lurk around the hospitals. Find a sweet Lucy who’ll open a vein for you as often as she can just because she loves to be used that way. Try lapping at your own slit wrists or sucking on a decapitated rat and get sick as a man guzzling seawater. Try it all to put off the one thing you don’t want to do, but sooner or later you’ll do it.

And once you do, once you pop a blade through warm, healthy skin and feel the hot gush of living blood hit the back of your tongue, you’ll wonder why you waited so long.

And then you’ll curse at how long you’re gonna have to wait till the next time. As few of us as there are running around, it’s still too many. We all start picking off civilians whenever we feel hard up, this island’s gonna be an abattoir. That happens, the lid blows off.

We let them know we’re here, we let the real people know what’s lurking just underneath their lives, and we won’t last another night.

We’ll all be in the sun.

And what the Vyrus does to its host when it gets hit by the sun, it makes what my girl’s going through look easy.

And it ain’t. That shit ain’t easy at all.

I smoke and look at Christian and remember how he handled it when he was back on his feet. Way he handled it is, he found what was left of his gang, the Dusters. He managed to infect a couple. And they infected a couple more. After some months, when they had their shit together, they got on their hogs and hit the Wall. Massacre ain’t the word. I don’t know the word for what they did down in Chinatown. But the Dusters own Pike Street now.

They haven’t been acknowledged as a Clan, but they could give fuckall as long as no one messes in their shit. And no one does.

I flick a butt into traffic.

– Yeah, sure, we go back.

He fits his goggles over his eyes.

– Then believe me when I say, What I got to show you, this kind of thing is everybody’s business.

I get on the back of the bike.

– Where we going?

– Rivington off Essex.

I put my feet on the bitch pegs.

– Not the fucking Candy Man?

He taps his toe on the shifter.

– Yeah, the fucking Candy Man.

And he takes me for a ride below Houston.

The basement reeks of blood and ammonia and candy.

– What do you think, Joe?

– What do I think?

I take another look at the poor slob spread all over the floor: arms and legs and hands and feet and head and bisected torso and ripped-out heart all laid pretty much where they should be, but with about a foot or so between various parts that should be connected.

– I think we got a fucking Van Helsing on our hands.

Christian claps his hands to his cheeks and bugs his eyes.

– A Van Helsing? Ya think?

I look at the big white Maytag refrigerator in the corner of the basement. Blood is smeared around the handle and drips from the seal at the bottom of the door, pooling on the floor.

– Don’t be a smartass, Christian. Nobody likes a smartass.

– You would know.

I go to the fridge and tug on the silver handle. The blood around the seal makes a noise: two pieces of overused flypaper being peeled from each other.

Two dozen slashed blood bags drip the last of their contents over the stainless steel shelves. A small flood of it washes out onto the floor.

Christian walks over.

– Any of it still good?

I pick up one of the bags and hand it to him.

He smells the ammonia it was laced with, the same ammonia that’s been splashed around the basement.

He drops the bag.

– That’s fucked up. What’s he think, the ammonia’s gonna hurt us?

I dab my index finger in some of the blood.

– Make for one hell of a stomachache. If he hadn’t poisoned it, I’d be licking the fridge clean right now.

He pushes his top hat to the back of his head.

– Well, sure, me too, man.

He considers.

– And still, might be worth the sick to have a drink.

I smell the blood on my fingertip.

– Won’t do you any good, ammonia killed it. Vyrus won’t want it.

He kicks the fridge door closed.

– Fuck.

I wipe my finger on a piece of old newspaper I peel from a stack under the stairs.

– Can you get a scent?

He flares his nostrils, inhales, grimaces.