"Stop, you're making me horny."

"I've got to use that tanning lotion we bought. Where is it?"

Jody moved with catlike speed out to the kitchen, snatched the lotion off the counter, and was back sitting on the edge of the bed in only a couple of seconds. If she could just keep Tommy from asking any questions until sunup, she was sure she'd figure out a way to tell him about the old man. "Come over here, worm legs, let me put some lotion on you." To emphasize her commitment to lotionization, she stood, pulled the straps of her dress off her shoulders, and let it fall to the floor at her feet. She stepped out of her dress and stood there, in just her pumps and a silver necklace with a tiny heart that he had given her.

Tommy hopped out of the bathroom—his pants still around his ankles—one long hop, and he stood in front of her. Jody smiled. Give a geek supernatural agility and speed, and what you get is a superagile, speedy geek.

"You went out commando, in that dress?"

"Never again," Jody said, grabbing the waistband of his boxers and pulling him toward her. "These are mine, now. I want to be dangerous."

"That's so, so slutty," he said, lisping a little, his fangs coming out now.

"Yep. Where do you want to start with the lotion?"

He pulled her close and kissed her neck. "We have to be careful not to break the furniture this time."

"Fuck it, less to move," she said, her own fangs coming out now. She raked them down his chest. "If we figure out a way to get a place before someone kills us."

"Oh, yeah, I found us a minion," he said as she bit into his side and tore his boxers off in a single swift pull.

"What?"

But Tommy was finished talking for a while.

Blue watched as the Butterball rocketed by her and slammed into a triangle of two-liter soft-drink bottles—the front bottle burst, sending a cola-brown eruption of foam across the floor by the meat case.

"Strike!" Barry shouted. He danced in a tight circle among the Animals, pointing and chanting, "I own you, and you, and you," to each as he passed.

Blue looked to Lash, and raised a cobalt eyebrow.

Lash shrugged. "It happens. That's why we use diet soda. It's not as sticky." He had decided that they all needed to sober up some more before they started stocking the shelves; thus the turkey bowling.

"Can someone bring a mop?" Clint said. Because he would not gamble, he was the designated pin setter. He was scrambling around trying to retrieve soda bottles even as Jeff Murray was warming up at the other end of the aisle, swinging a Foster's Fresh Frozen Homestyle in each hand. He believed that he got better pin action off the Foster's because of the savory gravy packet stuffed in its center. He claimed that Foster's had mastered superior poultry technology, and was, in fact, working on an oversized titanium turkey. The other Animals were forced to point out to him that he was completely full of shit as they sprayed root beer on him.

"So you guys hunted vampires?" Blue asked Lash. She had come back to the front with coffee for everyone just in time to hear Lash lay out the scenario for the Animals. She'd held off asking any questions until now. A Fresh Frozen meat missile zipped down the aisle between them. Lash didn't even blink.

"Yep. We didn't kill him. We just blew up his yacht and took his art. That's where we got the money."

"Yeah, right," said Blue. "I got that part. It's the vampire part I'm not clear on. Like a real vampire. A real, blood-drinking, can't-go-out-in-the-day, live-forever vampire."

"We figured he had to be at least six hundred years old," Troy Lee added, joining in the conversation. "Blue, you wanna skid the buzzard?" He nodded to the end of the aisle, where Jeff was offering his spare Fresh Frozen turkey like a sacrifice.

"So you guys, who work in a grocery store, have seen a vampire?"

"Two of them," Lash said. "Our night-crew leader, Tommy, was living with one of them."

"She was hot," Troy Lee added.

"Vampire hunters?" Blue couldn't believe it.

"Well, not anymore," Lash said.

"Yeah," Troy Lee said. "Clint says that Tommy's a vampire now. We're not going to mess with him."

"Spawn of Satan!" Clint shouted from the end of the aisle.

Drew, who Blue had decided to think of as Doc, because he always carried the pot, ran down the aisle and shot-putted a twelve-pound self-basting at Clint's head. "Shut the fuck up!" Clint ducked and covered. The turkey went over the meat counter and stuck in the drywall by the window at the back of the meat department. To Blue, Drew said, "Sorry, couldn't be helped."

"Well, that's gonna take all night to patch," said Clint.

Lash looked at Troy Lee. "Could you kill him?"

"On it," Troy Lee said, falling into a fighting stance, before taking off and chasing Clint around the corner. "Prepare to die, White Devil!"

"So," said Blue. "You were saying?"

"Well, Clint says Tommy is a vampire now, and we should go stake him out or something, but he's one of us, so we've decided to pursue a policy of Buddhist tolerance."

Just then Troy Lee dragged Clint back around the corner in a headlock. Despite being six inches shorter and forty pounds lighter than Clint, he'd studied martial arts since he was six and that took size out of the equation.

"Should I hypnotize the chicken?" Troy asked.

"Make it so," said Lash.

Troy Lee adjusted his chokehold on Clint. The larger man's eyes bugged out, his mouth moved like a gasping fish out of water, and he went limp in Troy's arms, who then dropped him in the puddle of diet soda on the floor.

"He'll come around in a second or two." Lash leaned into Blue to explain. "We used to call it choke the chicken, but that sounded kind of gayish."

"Of course," said Blue. That trick would come in handy in her work. She'd have to ask Troy Lee to teach it to her.

"And you think that your friend and this girl are really vampires."

"I suppose. Clint said he heard it from the Emperor, and he was the one that turned us on to the old vampire guy in the first place. Either way, they're not our problem."

"What if I said they were?" Blue said. Her mind was putting it together like a sewing machine on crack. It was insane, but for once she could see a future stretching out before her, welcoming her. "What if I said I wanted you to go after them?"

Lash blinked at her like she was speaking Klingon. "Huh?" He looked at the other Animals, who had stopped bowling and moved into range of the conversation. They stood there with frosty gobblers steaming in their hands like they were on wet-nurse duty for a group of headless infant snowmen.

"Flood is our friend," Lash said.

"I don't want you to kill him," Blue said. "Just catch him."

Lash looked to the others, who looked away—at the floor, at the cabbage and lettuce counter, at the turnips, at their frozen charges.

"I'll make it worth your while," Blue said.

Jody lay on the bed watching Tommy turn slowly, back and forth in the air like a pale white-boy mobile. The loft had twenty-foot ceilings with open, industrial-style beams, and sometime during their lovemaking, they had both ended up hanging from them. Jody dropped to the bed after she came, but Tommy still hung by one hand. The bright side was that with the exception of the set of shredded sheets upon which she lay, they had kept the destruction to a minimum. The downside—well, she really could have gone a couple of lifetimes without seeing him from this angle.

"We did good," Jody said. "Hardly anything broken."

"You think that monkeys really do it that way?" Tommy replied.

"I always thought you were just using that as an expression." She'd thought she could remain detached enough about their lovemaking to stay in control—to enjoy it, but to use it, as it were—but since Tommy had changed, it wasn't like that anymore. She lost herself in it, she didn't just make love with him, she fucked him like a crazed monkey girl. It was good, but disconcerting. She had liked being in control.