Jules stared, horrified, as his erstwhile opponent writhed in agony on the cobblestones at his feet. He’d never doneanything like that to a fellow vampire before.

The smack of leather against bone, coming from the alley’s entrance, distracted Jules from his ethical predicament. All flying feet and speed-blurred fists, Doodlebug was holding off a horde of mind-controlled neighborhood folk who surged, blank-faced and silent, toward the alleyway. He was trying desperately to slash an escape route through the seemingly endless bodies, tossing attackers aside like a garbage collector heaving trash sacks. But by sheer weight of numbers and insensitivity to pain, the zombies were slowly forcing him back into the alley.

Before Jules could take a step to help his friend, viselike talons dug into the flesh of his calves. “Muthahfuckah,” a pain-racked voice croaked. “Gonna make you pay for what you done to Sonny and me… gonna make you pay inspades, soon as I get myself togethah-”

Cowboy Hat hung on to Jules’s legs with unholy strength, even though his lower body was only tenuously connected with his torso. Jules watched, both fascinated and sickened, as Cowboy Hat’s body completed its transformation, rebuilding itself in the process. His bones fused and veins reknotted as the torn shreds of his skin surged together like a colony of mating slugs.

Dazed, nauseated, Jules pointed the gun at his assailant’s forehead. “Leggo, or I’ll… I’ll shoot. I swear I will-”

Cowboy Hat’s face was twisted by pain and hate. “Do yo‘worst, you fat fuck. Youstill be a dead man-”

Not knowing whether any ammunition remained in the magazine, Jules closed his eyes and pulled the gun’s trigger. He heard a click as a cartridge slid into firing position, aphffutt as it raced out the barrel, and a rotten-eggblatt as it struck home.

The odor of something unbearably pungent burned the hairs inside his nose and forced Jules’s eyes open-the stench of concentrated garlic.

Cowboy Hat immediately released his grip on Jules’s legs. He bellowed like a branded mule and rubbed frantically at his eyes. Jules was close enough to feel the garlic fumes bite at the patches of skin exposed by gaps in his costume. As he was backing away toward the car, powerful arms reached from behind him and yanked the weapon from his hands.

“That’s anasty — ass toy you got there, Jules,” Malice X said. “Lemme take that off yo‘ hands, boy-that’sdefinitely for children over the age of three.”

He squinched one eye shut and sighted along the barrel, aiming at Jules’s crotch. “Shee-oot!You could hurt somebody with this! There oughta be arecall on these!” He grinned and wadded up the crossbow gun’s metal and plastic armature like a soggy paper plate. Then he tossed it over his shoulder into a trash heap at the back of the alley.

Jules braced himself for an attack. But Malice X merely crossed his arms and smiled. He made no movement in Jules’s direction at all.

Why isn’t he comin‘ at me?

As if to answer Jules’s unspoken question, Malice X leaned languidly against the wall and said, “Man, this is more fun than front-row seats at cage-match wrassling.” But the sweat on his forehead betrayed the strain caused by mind-controlling his dozens of drug-addicted slaves.

Jules took the risk of turning his back on his nemesis-no matter how good Doodlebug was, his friend couldn’t hold out alone against an onrushing tide of zombies forever. He waded into the fray, a buffalo charging into a tightly bunched flock of sheep. Only these sheep had knives, tire irons, and busted planks with bent nails protruding from the ends. One woman in a pink dressing gown pounded his flabby side with a can of baby formula.

Jules found himself experiencing a savage, angry exhilaration. His assaults didn’t have anywhere near the fluidity and grace of Doodlebug’s twirling kicks, but he had mass in his favor. He used his elbows like a lesser man would use a two-by-four. His fists were the size of whole frozen chickens. All the frustration, hurt, and humiliation of the past month powered those fists like rocket fuel. He hadn’t cut loose like this since his glory days in the early 1940s. But for every wino or saggy-shorts teenager he flattened, three more surged forward.

The sidewalk outside the alley began to resemble a set from a Sam Peckinpah war movie-bleeding bodies stacked like sandbags. But each “sandbag” still writhed with baleful life, and, short of a broken neck, eventually surged back into the attacking horde. Individually, none of the assailants was much of a threat. But cumulatively, their clumsy blows, knife thrusts, and attempts to stake him were wearing Jules down.

“D.B.!” Jules shouted as he body-slammed the baby-formula-wielding woman against the brick wall for the third time. “Any bright ideas?”

“Maneuver Double-Eagle!” Doodlebug shouted back in the midst of breaking a man’s arm. “Cover me while I change, and then I’ll cover you!”

Maneuver Double-Eagle? What the fuck is that pantyhose-wearin‘ fruitcake talkin’ about?Jules watched, dumbfounded, as his friend launched into a gold-medal-winning backflip, landed on the roof of the limousine, and immediately stripped off his top and bra. Jules’s view of his friend’s augmented pulchritude was a brief one, for Doodlebug quickly transformed into the largest bat Jules had ever seen.

Double-Eagle, huh?Jules glanced at the narrow gap between the hanging net and the heads of his attackers.Oh, I get it-!

Taking advantage of Jules’s distraction, three zombies dashed into the alleyway, seeking to grab Doodlebug before he could take to the air. But Jules grabbed the biggest one by the legs and swung him like a club, bouncing one zombie off the Cadillac’s chrome grille and knocking the other into a woman who was trying to brain Jules with pieces of a baby stroller. Doodle-Bat vigorously flapped his six-foot wingspan, launching himself from the top of the limo.

Now it was Jules’s turn. There was no wayhe was going to do a backflip onto the Cadillac’s roof-instead, he picked up a rusted car bumper, slung it across his shoulders like a yoke, put his head down low, and charged. Four hundred and fifty pounds of vampire plus fifty pounds of steel made for a formidable battering ram. Jules knocked down six attackers and threw a dozen more off-balance. Then he retreated to the front of the Cadillac.

Jules didn’t bother stripping off his hood, cloak, or clothing; he wouldn’t be flying under his own power, and the bunched-up fabric would give Doodlebug something to grab hold of. Instead, he concentrated on transforming, double time, to the smallest bat he could. The painful melting/shrinking/stretching sensations were almost old hatLittle, littler, littlest-!

Seconds later he was swimming in a sea of clothing. Strong talons gripped his hood, and Jules felt himself leaving the cobblestones. His boots and pants remained behind as the two bats struggled into the air, levitated by a single set of wings.

Fingers grasped at his hanging cloak, pulling the two of them back down. Suddenly, Jules heard broken, staticky words in his head-shirt, grab hold of shirt-so he disentangled himself from his black cloak and sank his talons into his white shirt, just before Doodlebug let go of the cloak. Then he climbed up the shirt to Doodlebug’s tiny red-haired legs and grabbed hold of them with his own feet. His friend flapped toward the narrow window of open sky between the net’s edge and a sea of grasping hands.

The world was upside down. Zombies clung to a ceiling of cobblestones and jumped down at him, only to snap back as though held fast by bungee cords. Those words in his head-they wereDoodlebug’s? He could read Doodlebug’s mind because they were both bats-? No time for puzzles-open sky was coming up fast. There’d be plenty of time later to ask Doodlebug about his latest trick At the last possible second, figures skulking on the rooftops along the alley unfurled a second net. Its mesh web tauntingly closed the gap just as Doodlebug reached it. His wing tips caught momentarily in the thick nylon strands. Jules thought he’d be dropped for sure. But with powerful wing beats and amazing control, Doodlebug was able to extricate himself without dropping his passenger. Even so, the tiny door on their cage had just been flung shut in their faces. Jules’s heart sank. They were trapped. And Cowboy Hat had shaken off his garlic poisoning; he looked ready to eat stainless steel and shit Ginsu knives.