“Hey, Leroy, I think yo‘ bud’s caught a scent already!”

“Yeah, lookit him go!”

Gray hairs melted into tiny floating water droplets. Bone and flesh liquefied, then recoalesced as cloud. Of all his possible transformations, this was the one most amazing to Jules, the most alien and the most terrifying. Was he even still alive in this form? He didn’t breathe. He didn’t have a pulse-nowhere in his expanding form was there a heart to pump, blood to be pumped, or veins to pump it through. But he could still think, even if his thoughts were scattered, diffused, difficult to focus. And even without ears, he could still “hear.” Sound vibrations traveled across the water droplets of his “body” in an unceasing flow, an incredibly rich matrix that became easier for Jules to decipher with each passing second.

The first sounds Jules was able to recognize were canine whines of frustration.

“Damn! What happened?”

“He was headin‘ straight for that house-”

“Now he’s lookin‘ around like some ghost slapped him upside the head-?”

“He lost the scent! Damn! We fucked, man! Fuck!”

A warm glow of satisfaction spread through Jules’s vapory form. Age and guile would trump youthful strength and energy every time… so long as the punks gave the old guy even half a chance.

He “listened” to the three of them stomp away in angry frustration.Heh. If he had a mouth, he’d laugh. Maybe those punks would think twice before screwing with Jules Duchon again. There was more to being a good vampire than flashy clothes, a bad attitude, and an army of flunkies to back you up. Hell, he was more vampire than any of these wet-behind-the-ears pissants wouldever be Huh?He was moving. He hadn’t willed himself to move. He wanted to stay right where he was, under the house, until Maureen showed.

It was the wind. A strong wind was pushing him out from beneath the house. He struggled to stay in place, trying desperately to “grab” the Jax Beer crate and the house’s pilings, but his misty form flowed right around these potential anchors.

Before he could begin thinking of a Plan B, he was spread across Bienville Street, portions of him drifting under derelict cars or condensing on rusty fire hydrants. It was all he could do to keep himself together. His scattered thoughts ricocheted back to terrible memories, memories of him slowly dispersing across a tremendous field, being pulled into the obscene embrace of the tall grass, helpless, so terrifyingly helpless -

The wind shifted. He found himself blowing back the way he’d come. He collected himself off the various metal surfaces where he’d condensed, relying on the almost magical attraction of water molecules to other water molecules. He wasn’t heading back to Maureen’s house, however. He was being pushed into the cavernous old building next to her home, a coffee warehouse that had been converted to a parking garage.

He mentally breathed a sigh of relief. This was one of the safest places the wind could’ve deposited him. There was no vegetation to absorb him, and the walls of the garage would keep him compact enough that he could condense on the relatively cool concrete floor and gradually pull himself back together.

What a night! After this, he’d definitely take Maureen’s advice and cool his heels in the safety of her house for a while. Give Doc Landrieu’s pills a chance to work their magic to the fullest before he’d confront the cruel world again A wall of sound shattered the garage’s early-morning quiet. The high-pitched mechanical whine reverberated off the brick walls, quaking Jules’s entire form with brutal vibrations. What could it possibly be this time? Why couldn’t he have even five minutes of peace? And then he was moving again.

Only now he wasn’t being pushed. He was being pulled. Suctioned. He realized with a jolt of horror what was vibrating him so violently.

It was a vacuum cleaner. And not just your run-of-the-mill Hoovermatic. The mechanical beast sucking him toward its maw was a sidewalk sweeper, part of the fleet that cleaned the walkways of the Quarter in the hours just before dawn.

The whine was the whine of stainless-steel death. Obliteration dealt by an array of sharp fans rotating hundreds of times a second.

There was no escaping those blades. Jules desperately tried to change, but the ceaseless vibrations shattered his concentration and made any transformation hopeless. He was caught. Like a rat in a trap. No,worse than a rat in a trap.

Slowly, inexorably, the cruel steel blades sucked him in.

If Jules’d had a mouth, this is what he would’ve screamed:

“Whoawhoa WHOAWHOA-HAAAAA!”

Thankfully, he didn’t have a mouth, or any other organs or limbs, because the whirling vacuum blades scrambled him up worse than a ride on the old Pontchartrain Beach Zephyr roller coaster. The suction pulled his gaseous form apart. The blades minced the separate clouds into stray atoms. Tiny fragments of Jules shot the rapids through the suction tube. Sudden compression knocked him into blissful unconsciousness; blissful because he didn’t have to experience the forced mingling of his substance with the street filth already in the sweeper’s canvas waste bag, a mingling that would later play havoc with his delicate complexion.

Half an hour later Jules regained a semblance of consciousness. The machine was silent. His atoms had coalesced in the bottom of the waste bag. He groggily wondered whether it was safe to attempt a transformation back to his habitual shape; after the scrambling he’d undergone, the change could leave him with fingers sticking out of his head and his nose where his asshole normally was.

He had no idea where the sweeper had stopped. He didn’t even know whether the sun was up or down. But a quick reflection upon whatelse might come hurtling down the sweeper’s tube to mingle with his atoms convinced him to make the effort. Any fate was better than intermixing with the disgusting slurry that collected in the gutters of Bourbon Street.

The horror of that thought popped him quickly back to human form. His head and one leg protruded through the sweeper’s canvas bag. He quickly realized that the sweeper was still inside the parking garage; Jules figured the operator had left for a coffee break. A minor application of his strength allowed him to push his other leg and both arms through the bag, which-when torn away from the sweeping apparatus-became a rustic, but serviceable, coverall.

Jules crawled to the front entrance of the parking garage, doing his best to stay out of sight. The sun hadn’t come up yet, thank goodness. The absence of light across the street at Maureen’s house meant she hadn’t come home from her shift yet. So it couldn’t be any later than fourA.M.

He cautiously peered up and down the street, looking for any sign of his pursuers. The street seemed deserted. He considered his options. The parking garage was too open to serve as an effective hiding place while he waited for Maureen to come home. The best thing for him to do, he decided, was to squeeze himself into the crawl space beneath Maureen’s house and hide behind her front stoop.

He’d managed to shove about two-thirds of his body beneath her front steps when he heard a very familiar, very agitated voice behind him.

“Well, Jules, I hate to say I told you so.But I told you so! ”

His already cool blood ran even colder. Facing Maureen’s scornful fury was more ball-shriveling than being hunted by dozens of Malice X’s thugs.

“You justhad to go out, didn’t you?” she continued. “You couldn’t even stay inside for, what-six lousy hours? Why do I even bother trying with you?”

He tried turning around to face her, but the space beneath her steps was a tight fit. “Mo, honey, I can explain everything-”

“Oh, I’msure you can! How about we start with the reason you’re wearing a ripped-up sack instead of your clothes? Let’s see… you donated your ensemble to some sweet old five-hundred-pound homeless man, right? Or you just landed a role as an extra in a caveman picture, and the producers were too cheap to provide you with a bearskin-”