They never came. Once Jules’s heart settled down a bit, he crawled over onto the mattress and tore open one of the bags of dog food. His companion had her head inside the bag before the first dried protein pellets hit the mattress’s yellow-stained surface. She ate ferociously, as if she might never see food again.

Watching her, Jules felt happy for the first time in more than a week.Look at her go! he thought. His own stomach groaned piteously, adding its plaintive note to the alarms still echoing through the streets. He found himself wishing he could join his friend in her meal.She sure is wolfing that stuff down, he thought, half enviously; and his stray thought gave him the glimmer of an idea. A nasty, depressing idea, but an idea, nonetheless. Maybe hecould join her in her meal.

He found himself remembering a time in his life he usually avoided thinking about, the last time he’d been in straits as dire as these. He’d just been laid off from his job in the coroner’s office, cut off from the easy, simple existence he’d enjoyed for nearly thirty years. Suddenly on his own, he realized with horror that after three decades of living off the blood of the recently deceased, he’d totally lost his knack for hunting up a meal. Sitting alone in his house, he’d nearly starved, until one evening he noticed that his next-door neighbors had moved out, and in the pile of trash they’d left behind were several half-emptied sacks of dog food. Desperate, delirious with hunger, he shifted into his wolf-form and attacked the abandoned meal. It wasn’t brunch at Brennan’s, but that dog food kept him going for a couple of weeks, until he came up with the plan of driving a taxicab and having his meals pay to come to him.

That was years ago. It was an experience Jules had hoped he’d never have to repeat. The very notion was degrading. Resorting to eating as an animal was as low as a vampire could sink. Plus, he couldn’t be sure that his wolf-form’s digestive tract could still tolerate solid food; his human-form’s certainly couldn’t. But the longer his dog companion chomped away, the more Jules’s agonized, shriveled stomach pleaded-no,demanded — that he try something, anything at all. Sighing, he dragged himself to a corner of the mattress, leaned against the wall, closed his eyes tightly, and concentrated on a mental picture of the full moon.

The dog paused from her voracious eating long enough to produce a fearful whimper at the unnatural spectacle of flesh rearranging itself in a flurry of swirling mists. Jules pounced on one of the other bags of dog food and tore it open with his fangs. He was surprised at how good it tasted; maybe those paid flacks on dog food commercials who claimed that their brand was super delicious weren’t lying after all. He polished off the first bag before he even thought to wiggle free of his clothes. The second bag went down his gullet just as fast. The third bag was heavenly, and the fourth bag nearly as heavenly, even though by the time his long nose reached the bottom half of the sack, his wolf-gut was full to bursting. He had the unmitigated gall to stick his snout into his companion’s bag of food, but a few angry nips on his nose and tail were enough to convince him that discretion was the better part of valor.

Sated, exhausted from the exertion of eating so much so quickly, he felt his four paws splay out from under him as the heft of his grotesquely stretched potbelly dragged him down to the mattress. Damn, he feltgood! He hadn’t felt this good since… since… since he couldn’t remember when. Floating in a half-conscious fog of satisfied gluttony, no longer fixated on the need to consume, he began to notice the input of his heightened wolf-senses. Tiny insects buzzed in the storm gutters high above his head, the beating of their wings like distant applause. He sniffed the stains on the mattress and was able to differentiate the various urine stains, chicken grease stains, and semen stains by their unique scent signatures. And there was something else, another odor that overpowered all others, a potent muskiness that insinuated itself in his veins and sinews and bones and made him crazy, absolutelycrazy — He hadn’t realized it before, with his limited human nose, but his friend the bitch was in heat.

I’ve gotta turn human again,Jules told himself as he avidly sniffed his companion’s hindquarters, caught in the throes of a lust unlike any he had ever known.I’ve gotta turn human again, right now, immediately, before I do somethin‘ really stupid- But before he could even begin to muster the concentration necessary for a transformation, he had already mounted her.

The much smaller dog yelped with pain as Jules’s comparatively tremendous weight landed on her back. She tried to scoot away, but his strong paws clamped onto her sides and held her fast. As he pumped faster than he thought possible, his body trapped in the iron hold of canine pheromones that screamed “Make puppies! Make puppies!” his still-human mind was filled with remorse.I’m sorry, baby, I’m so sorry, I’ll make it up to you, you’ll never want for dog food again…

Nearly as quickly as when he was in human form, it was over. He slid off of her and collapsed in a furry heap on the mattress. He waited for her to reproach him, maybe bite him, and then run off. It was only what he deserved, after all.

But she surprised him. Rather than running away, she nuzzled him, then licked his face. Jules was astounded. Overcome with emotion, he licked her all over with his huge tongue until her fur was cleaner than it had ever been. They snuggled close together on the mattress, his bitch warming herself against Jules’s great potbelly. Jules fell into the deepest, most blissful sleep he’d had in years.

When he awoke a few hours later, startled out of sleep by a newspaper delivery truck, he was alone. Seized with panic, he crisscrossed the streets within a five-block radius, searching vainly for her scent. But she was nowhere to be found.

Jules howled. And every street dweller in downtown Baton Rouge knew that some creature had just lost its only friend.

Please deposit thirty-five cents,the mechanical voice said.

Jules fumbled through his coat pocket for a fistful of change, then pulled a frayed piece of paper from his wallet. He had to squint to see the faded writing in the yellow phosphorescent light of the parking garage. He punched in the number, almost forgetting to include the three-digit area code.

The number you have dialed requires a deposit of-two dollars and twenty cents-for an initial call of five minutes. Please deposit an additional-one dollar and eighty-five cents. Thank you for using Baton Rouge Telecom, your telecommunications specialists.

Jules shoved seven quarters and a dime through the slot. The coins fell into the bowels of the pay phone like desperate wishes tossed into a lucky fountain. The phone rang. She picked up on the fourth ring.

“Hello?”

“Mo, don’t say anything. Just let me talk, okay? I know you probably hate me. You probably think I’m scum, like everyone else on this goddamn planet. But I’ve got nobody else to turn to, baby.” His voice cracked. He quivered and leaned heavily against the booth, fighting to maintain some tiny shred of control and dignity. “I’m at the end of my rope. I’ve hit rock bottom. My life has been nothin‘ but hell these past two weeks. I lost everything I had, and then I kept losin’ more and more. I don’t know what to do. I just don’t know what to do.”

“Jules, hush yourself-”

“Don’t hush me, Maureen! Let me finish before you rip into me! You know how hard it is for me to call you like this? You think I wanted to? But I’m on my knees, baby. You made me what I am. You’re almost as much a mother to me as my own mother was. If you don’t help me-”

“Jules, hush yourself, sweetheart, and come on home.”