The cowboy tested the plank’s uneven point with his fingertip. “Heh. Guess it’ll hafta do.”

He stood in front of Jules, blocking what little light spilled into the alleyway. “Don’t know if ya still say yo‘ prayers, chump. If ya do, now’s a good time.”

Jules’s coffee-stretched bladder felt as though it would burst. For the second time in as many weeks, the faces of his friends and loved ones flashed on the big movie screen of his mind. Staring extinction in its ugly mug was getting to be a bad habit.

“Hold him tight now, boys. I miss, it get messy. And you don’t want no stains on them pretty outfits.”

Lord, if only they’d let him piss before they killed him… his damn pants were so tight, they were squeezing the life out of him even without a stake through his heart. If he could loosen them just alittle With a wicked flourish, the cowboy twisted the stake over his head and behind his back like a pair of nunchakus. Then he advanced toward Jules.

Bowel-shriveling panic gave Jules a desperate idea. Clenching his eyes shut, he forced himself to think of the moon, the fat white full moon rising over a muddy levee…

“Boss, somethin’s happenin‘!”

“He’s changin‘! The muthah’s changin’!”

Jules’s bones melted and reformed like hot wax. Sinews twisted themselves into new shapes. His skin sprouted thick gray fur, as though he’d been dipped in Ultra-Rogaine.

“Hold him, you idjits! He still gots a heart! I can still git him!”

His massive belly lost some of its heft as it shifted to a more oblong shape. His previously constricting pants and underwear fell down around his suddenly thin hind legs. Released from its imprisonment, his coffee-engorged organ obeyed the laws of hydrodynamics and burst forth like a fire hose. Right in the cowboy’s leering face.

“Ugglbbuh! Fugghh!”

Stunned, the two henchmen loosened their grip on Jules’s forepaws. Jules fell heavily onto his back, still spouting like a broken hydrant.

“Look out!”

“Thesuit — fuckin‘ suit cost five hunurd-!”

“Awwshit-!”

Jules rolled onto all four paws and ran. Dragging his safari jacket and trench coat, he bounded across the cowboy’s prone body, stepping heavily on the fallen vampire’s chest and treating him to a final squirt or two. Then he was out of the alleyway and into the street. His still-pendulous belly bounced along the ground, smacking asphalt and ancient cobblestones. Greased lightning he wasn’t. But he was moving a hell of a lot faster on four legs than he would’ve on two.

Sure, he was moving faster-but where to run to? He couldn’t head directly back to Maureen’s house. Not only would that give away his hiding place, it would endanger her. He had to lead his pursuers in the wrong direction, then lose them somehow.

Behind him, multiple sets of running footsteps echoed off warehouse walls. Jules shook loose of his safari jacket and trench coat. Brand new. Maureen would kill him. He scampered around the corner, slipping and sliding in a puddle of spilled pineapple daiquiri, and fled toward Canal Street.

Even at this late hour, there were still people out-bums, doomsday preachers, taxi drivers, and the occasional lost or foolhardy tourist. The scents were overwhelming, almost maddening. A toxic mйlange of sour sweat, bus exhaust, spilled beer, and beer piss assaulted his nostrils. Jules weaved in and out of the forest of legs, poles, and trash cans, trying to put as much distance between him and those pursuing footsteps as possible.

He didn’t go unnoticed.

“A rabid dog!”

“Filthy beast!”

“A sure sign of the End Days-”

“It’sobese!”

Closer. His hunters were drawing closer. No matter how fast he ran, their muttered curses grew nearer and louder, the pungent scent of his own urine on their clothing closer and stronger.

He bounded into Rampart Street without a glance at the stoplight. A late-model Oldsmobile Aurora swerved wildly to avoid him. Its neon running boards left glowing slashes in the night air as the heavy car plunged through the boarded-up display windows of the closed Woolworth’s five-and-dime on the corner.

Did that stop them-?

No. They were too fast. Too agile. Their footsteps still beat the asphalt behind him, closer than ever.

Gulping down yelps of terror, Jules caught the scent of what might be salvation. Could it be-?Yes! The Goodfeller’s Fried Catfish next to the Saenger Theater was still open! Three boys stood near the bus stop, their hands full of heaping platters of fish, the cardboard trays already soaked through with grease.

The black vampires were so close now. Jules leapt at the boys, knocking their platters from their hands. The trays of Goodfeller’s Fried Catfish, the greasiest substance known to man, scattered across the sidewalk behind Jules, coating the walkway with a thick scrim of deep-fry oil and slippery flesh.

“Hey, my food-”

“Watch it! Watch it!”

“Shee-yit-!”

Jules listened with tremendous satisfaction as his pursuers lost their footing, smashed into garbage cans (all emblazoned with the mayor’s smiling face), and tumbled into the gutter. He rounded the corner of the Saenger Theater, headed north on Basin Street for a block, then cut back toward the Quarter and Maureen’s.

Panting heavily, he reached her home on Bienville Street. Home base! He was safe! He’d duck behind that thick door, crawl up into the attic, and they wouldn’t find him in a thousand lifetimes.

Then he realized he had one small problem. His key was in the pocket of his trench coat. And Maureen wouldn’t be home for at least another three hours.

Shivering from exertion, he squirmed through broken masonry and bent chicken wire into the wet, muddy crawl space beneath her house. He had no choice but to hide in the damp darkness until Maureen came home from her shift at Jezebel’s Joy Room.

He crawled behind an ancient, rotting Jax Beer shipping crate and dug a shallow hole in the dirt for his belly so he could rest more comfortably. Those bastards! They’d cost him the last copy ofBig Cheeks Pictorial! Maybe tomorrow night it’d still be lying in the alleyway where he’d dropped it?… Naw, that was too much to hope for; some bum would stumble on it and praise the Lord for his good fortune.

Voices-maybe two blocks away. His pursuers? Jules perked up his amazingly sensitive ears and listened.

“-think he came back this way.”

“You sure?”

“Man, this place got more nooks an‘ crannies than my ol’ lady’s ass. He could be hidin‘ anywheres.”

“I tell you what then. It take a wolf to catch a wolf. Take yo‘ clothes off an’ change.”

“Whyme? I hate doin‘ that shit.”

“Why you? ‘Cause I’stellin’ you, that’s why. Now strip, suckah.”

“Can’t Leroy do it?”

“Did I tellLeroy to do it? Whatchu complainin‘ ’bout, anyhows? Yo‘ suit’s drippin’ with wolf piss. You oughtta behappy to get outta them rags, man.”

“Aww, fuck, all right then…”

Uh-oh.This meant big trouble. A fellow wolf would sniff him out in no time. What now? He was too tired to give them much of a chase again. And where could he run to, anyhow? To the Trolley Stop? No. They’d catch him before he got even three blocks uptown.

The only solution was to become something without a scent. Jules knew whatthat meant. And the thought gave him cold shivers. The last time he’d transformed into mist, he’d almost died. In mist form, he had virtually no control over his body at all. The wind could take him anywhere. In the very worst scenario, he could become so dispersed that he’d be unable to transmute back to human form before deadly sunrise.

Not far away, a human moan of pain slowly transmogrified into a wolf’s guttural snarl. It was now or never. Possible death by dispersal versus certain death by a stake through his heart. No choice at all, really.

Jules concentrated on memories from ninety years ago, from before he’d become a vampire, when he could still go outside early on a Sunday morning and greet the sun. Memories of climbing the levee outside his house and watching the thick blanket of river mist swirl and coalesce over the Mississippi like a jealous and loving thing.