“Guess this means I won’t be gettin‘ my coffee,” Jules said wistfully.

He jumped as there was a loud crash in the kitchen. Now hedid get up from the table. “Hey! You, uh, you okay in there?“

“I’m fine,” the woman’s voice answered, a little too strongly. “Just had a little accident. No problem.”

“You need a hand with somethin‘?”

“No!I’m justfine! Don’t you concern yourself none.”

Jules looked uncertainly at his companion. His resolve hardened. He went to the door and opened it.

“Die-ie, you fat fuckah!”

She charged him like an enraged lioness, slashing wildly with jagged wooden pieces from a broken bar stool. He dodged as best he could. But one of her improvised stakes connected with an ample love handle, shredding his new safari suit and taking a decent-sized chunk of him with it.

“Ahhh!You fuckin‘bitch!”

The other stake gouged his cheek, leaving a bloody trail. He tried grabbing her, but she was astoundingly fast and strong. She shrugged off his bear hug as if he were made of tinfoil, bouncing him into the dining room wall and spilling him heavily to the floor.

Then she whirled on Doodlebug. What happened next occurred almost too quickly for Jules’s pain-clouded eyes to follow. Doodlebug moved like a ninja from a Bruce Lee flick. First his foot crashed into her wrist, sending a stake flying. She thrust her other dagger at his chest. He ducked low and bent her weapon arm sharply over his shoulder. Jules heard a sharp break and an even sharper scream. Then Doodlebug became a blur of motion. His whirling kick exploded against the side of her head and sent her flying against the dining room wall.

She still wasn’t down for the count. Jules struggled to clear his vision. His side burned like hell. He looked down-his left side, from mid-rib cage down, was drenched with blood. Weirdly, the front of his safari suit was stained with brown smudges. He rubbed one of the smudges. Some of the brown came off on his finger; oily, like wet paint. Makeup. It was makeup.

“Jules! I need some help here! I can’t hold her much longer!”

“Youfucks!” she screamed. “You won’t get away withnothin‘! I’ll kill you! Fuck youboth up!”

Jules stared at Malice X’s sister. Most of the makeup on her arms had rubbed off during their brief struggle. Her exposed skin was deathly gray.

She was a vampire.

“Jules! Snap out of it! Or do you want to have to fight her all over again?”

She was a vampire, just like he was. He struggled to get up from the floor. She writhed and thrashed in

Doodlebug’s tight grasp, trapped in his arms like a live electrical wire. A vampire.

“Jules! Grab one of those stakes she dropped! Run her through before she breaks away!”

He felt like he was moving in slow motion. Like he was swimming through cream of mushroom soup. He leaned down and picked one of the stakes off the floor. She spat at him. He could see her fangs very clearly as she pulled her lips back to curse and hiss.

“Jules! Comeon! Get with the program!”

He stared at the stake in his hand. “I–I just can’t do it.”

His friend looked incredulous. “What?What’s the problem? You’ve killedhundreds of people before!”

“Yeah, but… but they wasfood.” An inner voice screamed at him that he was being ridiculous-he and his friend were in danger. Any squeamishness didn’t count for a bag of beans. But voice or no voice, he couldn’t make his hand move. “This here-this isdifferent — I mean, she, y’know, she’s one ofus.”

“This is onehell of a time to develop moral qualms!”

The struggling woman kicked viciously at Jules. She barely missed knocking the stake from his loosening fist. “Iknow — I’msorry — but I just can’t do it.”

Doodlebug’s sigh sounded like steam boiling from a braking locomotive. “Ohh-kay-anyother bright ideas about what to do with our charming hostess here would begreatly appreciated!”

Jules gulped hard. He felt horrible. He was useless. Worse than useless. “We could stuff her in her coffin. It’s gotta be around here someplace.”

“Well,find it, then! And hurry!”

He ran through her kitchen, stepping quickly over the broken remains of the bar stool, and peered into what looked to be a bedroom. “D.B.! It’s here! A big mahogany coffin!”

He ran back to the dining room to help his friend half drag, half carry the shrieking, thrashing woman to the room behind the kitchen. Jules was suddenly grateful she’d chosen to live in this crappy neighborhood; none of the neighbors would pay a bout of crazed screaming any mind. He shoved the coffin’s lid open with his foot, then he and Doodlebug forcibly stuffed her inside. As soon as Jules was able to slam the lid shut, he lay on top of it and hung on for dear life.

“Guess I’m the heaviest thing in the house. Look, I’m really sorry about before-”

“We’ll talk about it later,” Doodlebug said, breathing heavily. “Right now we’ve got to find some way of keeping that coffin shut tight. You can’t lie on top of it ad infinitum.”

Jules’s stomach bounced as the coffin rocked. Elisha actually managed to lift the lid and its massive passenger an inch or two, but the coffin’s tight confinement left her no real leverage. “See if you can find some rope or wire,” Jules said. “Maybe a hammer and nails. She’s got some kinda utility shed out back.”

Doodlebug smoothed stray strands of lustrous auburn hair away from his face. “You’ll be all right?”

Jules smiled ruefully. “Sure. First time my weight’s ever done me any good.”

He watched Doodlebug unlock the rear entrance and step into the backyard. After a minute or two, the coffin stopped rocking beneath him. Jules cautiously sat up straight, still keeping his full weight centered on the lid. Then he heard his captive begin to sob. Softly at first, then louder and with greater abandon. It was one of the saddest, most pathetic sounds he’d ever heard.

“Oh Malice,Malice — I donefailed you! I donefailed you, honey dearest…”

What kind of a brother would turn his own sister into a vampire? Jules’s already abysmal opinion of his enemy plunged even lower, if that were possible. He tried not to listen to Elisha’s agonized cries and moanings. The things she was saying… things no sister should ever say or eventhink about a brother. Did Maureen have even the slightest notion of the depraved creature she’d granted vampiric powers and immortality to? The kind of creature she’d shared her bed with?

Doodlebug returned with rope, hammer, and nails. Jules continued sitting on the coffin while his companion drove a score of three-inch nails through the lid and into the coffin’s walls. Then Jules lifted the coffin, one end at a time, while Doodlebug wrapped it tightly with thick nylon rope.

“There… we shouldn’t have to worry abouther for a while,” Doodlebug said, patting his forehead and neck with a handkerchief from his purse. He glanced at Jules’s blood-soaked side, his eyes brimming with concern. “Let’s take a look at that. Is the wound deep?”

Jules gingerly pulled the shreds of his safari jacket and shirt away from his wounded left side. He winced as the fabric, glued to his wound by drying blood, tore open newly formed scabs. Jules kept his eyes tightly shut, afraid to look at his own blood.

“It’s not too awful,” he heard Doodlebug say. “She didn’t tag you that badly. It’s already healing.”

Jules opened his eyes. Now that the scraps of clothing were out of the wound, it was free to close properly. He watched, fascinated and a little nauseated, as his violated skin almost magically reknit itself.

“I saw some interesting things out back,” his relieved friend said. “You need to come take a look yourself.”

He followed Doodlebug out to the storage shed, a large corrugated metal structure that took up most of the backyard. His friend had torn off the door lock. Jules had no idea what to expect when Doodlebug yanked the light string. What was revealed was way,way down the list of what he might’ve imagined.