Troy Lee’s grandma fired off a barrage of Cantonese to her grandson, who replied with the same. The old woman shrugged and looked up at Cavuto and Rivera and spoke for about thirty seconds, then went and took the ball from Jeff, then shot a complete air ball, at which everyone cheered.

“What? What?” said Cavuto.

“She wanted to know what Barry was woo-hooing about, so I told her.”

“What did she say?”

“She said no big deal. They had vampire cats in Beijing when she was a girl. She said their shit is weak.”

“She said that?”

“The idiom is different, but basically, yeah.”

“Oh good,” said Cavuto, “I feel better.”

“We need to find the Emperor,” Rivera said.

Cavuto pulled the car keys out of his jacket. “And pick up our Apocalypse jackets.”

“What about us?” asked Lash.

Rivera didn’t even look back when he said, “You guys have more experience fighting vampires than anyone on the planet…”

“We do, don’t we?” said Troy Lee.

“Oh, we are so fucked,” said Lash.

“That’s sad,” said Drew, repacking the bowl of the bong. “Really sad.”

Darkness. He waited a moment, listening to his pulse beat in his ears before striking another match. “Courage,” he whispered to himself, a mantra, an affirmation, a sound to keep him from jumping out of his own skin at every creak or rustle in the dark. He lit the match, held it aloft.

He pulled at the big steel door, throwing his weight, and it moved a few inches. Perhaps this was the other way out. It was clear that all these cats hadn’t come in through the window, not with the plywood blocking it. He elbowed the door aside, feeling the resistance of a drift of dormant vampire cats piled up against it. When the opening was wide enough to squeeze through, he put his shoulder inside, then paused as the match went out from the movement.

He was inside, and the floor seemed clear at his feet, although it felt as if he was standing on powder. As he lit the next match he hoped to see a stairway, a hallway, perhaps another boarded-up window, but in fact what he saw was that he was in a small storeroom fitted with wide metal shelves. The floor was indeed covered with a thick layer of dust, and among it, rumpled clothing. Ragged overcoats, jeans, and work boots, but also brightly colored satin garments, hot pants, and halter tops, tall platform shoes in fluorescent colors, dingy under the dust and darkness.

These had been people. Homeless people and hookers. The fiends had actually dragged people down here and fed on them-sucked them to dust, as the little Goth girl had termed it. But how? No matter how strong or ravenous, the cats were still just housecats before they had turned. And they hadn’t seemed cooperative. He couldn’t imagine a pack of twenty vampire cats dragging a fully grown person down here. It didn’t make sense.

The match burned his finger and he tossed it aside, then pulled the knife from his belt before lighting the next. When the next match flared, he saw something on one of the high shelves at the far side of the room. Something quite a bit larger than a housecat. Perhaps it was one of their victims who had survived.

He adjusted his grip on the knife and moved forward, trying not to cringe as the dusty clothing clung to his feet and ankles.

No, not a cat. At least not a housecat. But it had fur. And a tail. But it was the size of an eight-year-old child, and it was snuggled up against something even larger. The Emperor raised the knife and stepped forward, then stopped.

“Well, you don’t see that every day,” he said.

The cat thing was spooning the naked form of Tommy Flood.

I have failed as a minion, a girlfriend, and a human being in general, and that doesn’t even count Biology 102, which I am still totally failing despite actually going to class twice.

The Countess has been gone for like a week, and no one has seen her or the vampyre Flood. I’ve gone looking for them, mainly when I’m supposed to be at school. I don’t even know where to look. I kind of walk around asking people if they’ve seen a totally hawt redhead and they either hurry away really fast or, in the case of one guy, who I suspect was a pimp, offered me a thousand dollars to bring her to him if I found her. Then he offered me a job, because he said, “Johns go for that skinny Lolita shit.”

And I was all, “Oh, that’s very flattering, sir. Thank you. Once I find my friend I will bring her back and we’ll both be happy to service the disgusting choads of creepy strangers and hand you all of our money along with any self-worth we might have left.”

And he was all, “You do that, little momma. You do that.”

Which is just another reason that I need to find the Countess and beg her forgiveness, because my new phone has video and I can’t wait to post a clip on my blog of Jody scattering bloody pimp parts all over the Tenderloin. (The Countess has lectured me about respecting myself and how a woman must never sacrifice her dignity to a man unless he gives her jewelry or is a smoking hottie and has a job, so I think there will at least be broken bones and a beating of many colors.)

Evidently there’s a shortage of hookers and homeless people in the City, it was on the Chronicle’s Web site. They reported it like it was a good thing, VICE ARRESTS DOWN or something, and another article about homeless shelters having plenty of room for the first time, ever. OMFG! They’re kitty treats, you douche nozzles! That’s why I refused to be on the school paper. Journalists are oblivious to the obvious and they won’t even let you say fuck.

’Kayso, when I finally got back to the love lair, the windows were all boarded up with plywood and Foo and Jared had like alphabetized all of the rats and had them stacked up and labeled and whatnot. So, I, like, ran into Foo’s arms and kissed him a good long time, then I looked around and I was all:

“They’re dead. Our loft is full of dead rats.”

And Jared is all, “Not dead. Undead.”

So to Foo I’m all, “’Splain, s’il vous plaît.”

And Foo’s like, “It’s amazing, Abby. You just have to inject them with a little vampyre blood and it turns them, but not until you kill them. It took us a while to figure that out.”

“So you killed all these rats?”

“I did,” goes Jared. “It made me sad, but I’m okay with it now. Science.”

“How?”

And Foo says, “Potassium chloride.”

At the exact same time Jared says, “With a hammer.”

And Jared gets all big scared anime eyes and is like, “Yeah, potassium chloride. That’s what I meant.”

And I’m all, “You have been killing and vamping rats while the Countess and Tommy are lost and the whole city is papered with missing cat flyers, and like Chet and his minions are eating all the homeless and probably the hookers?”

And they were like, “Well-yeah.”

“And I had to work and go to class,” says Foo. “And polish my car.”

And Jared’s all, “And we’ve been making sunlight jackets for those two cops, which takes like a million little wires.” And he, like, points to our coffee table, which is the only surface that doesn’t have cages full of dead rats, and there’s not even jackets there, just, like, jacket-shaped nets of wire with little glass beads all over them.

And I’m all, “Cops can’t wear those. They look like robot lingerie.”

And Jared is all, “Très cool, non?”

“No!” I go. “And do not further endorken the French language by wrapping your disgusting penis port around it. You’ll ruin the whole language before I even learn enough to express my deep despair and dark desires en français, you rat smasher.”

’Kay, I know that was a little harsh, but I was angry, and in my defense, I was grinding Foo’s leg a little when I said “dark desires,” so I said it with love.