As soon as he heard HuitzUopochtIi, Pete (or maybe Luke) said, "You gentlemen are under arrest. Anything you say may be used against you."

The off-duty constable who hadn't arrested the nostrums peddlers - whichever one he was - headed for the office.

"I'll call the station, get 'em to send a squad carpet over here."

As soon as he'd gone maybe twenty feet toward the door, Jose and Carlos tried to run for it. Being off duty, Pete carried only a club. He yanked it out and pounded after Jose.

That left me with Carlos. "Be careful, Dave!" Judy yelled at my back. It was good advice. It would have been even better had I been in a position to take it.

Carlos was a little wiry guy, and shifty as a jackrabbit. But every one of my strides ate up twice as much ground as his.

He looked over his shoulder, saw I was gaining, and didn't watch where his feet were going. He fell splat on his face. I jumped on him.

His hand darted for one of the pockets in his jeans. I didn't know what he had in there: maybe something as simple as a knife, maybe a talisman like the ones at Loki, except with a demon ordered to attack whoever was bothering him.

Whatever he had, I didn't care to find out the hard way, either. I grabbed his wrist and hung on for dear life.

"Don't be stupid," I panted. "You won't get away, and you will get yourself in more trouble."

"Chinga tu niadre," he said: no doubt sincere, but less than germane. Then he tried to knee me in a place which would have interfered with my carrying out his instructions.

I managed to twist away so I took it in the side of the hip.

It still hurt, but not the way it would have. As if from very far away, I heard people shouting back and forth, the way they do when they have no idea what's going on and just get more confused trying to find out Carlos took another shot at refaceting my family jewels.

Then, from right above us, somebody yelled, "Freeze, asshole!" Somewhere in his past, Carlos must have painfully found out what happened when you disobeyed that particular command. He went limp.

Very cautiously, I looked back over my shoulder. There was (I think) Luke with his club upraised to do some serious facial rearrangement on anybody who felt like arguing with him. "He's all yours," I croaked, and got to my feet.

I hadn't noticed till then that I'd torn my pants, ripped a chunk of hide off one knee, and scraped an elbow, too - not quite as bad. Things started to hurt, all at the same time. I felt shaky, the way you do in the first few seconds after a traffic accident Pete had hold of Jose. Luke was frisking Carlos: turned out he'd had a blade in his pocket, maybe two inches long.

Not exactly a terror weapon, but not something I'd have wanted sliding along - or maybe between - my ribs.

Judy ran up. "Are you all right Dave?"

"Yeah, I think so," I said, taking stock one piece at a time. I hadn't been in a fight since I was in high school; I'd forgotten the way you could taste fear and fury in your mouth, the way even your sweat suddenly smelled different.

I'd sort of hoped she'd throw her arms around me and exclaim, "Oh, you wonderful man!" Something like that, anyhow. As I've remarked, however, Judy is a very practical person. She said, "You're lucky you weren't badly hurt, you know that?" So much for large dumb masculine hopes.

A little man with a big mustache burst out of the office Luke had been heading for when the fun and games started.

By then Luke had Carlos handcuffed. He pointed to me and said, "Here, losef, fix this guy up, would you? Unless I miss my guess, he's been working harder than he's used to at the EPA." 

losef looked at my elbow, my knee, and my pants. "You're right," he told Luke. His accent - seems everybody has an accent in Angels City these days - was one I couldn't place.

He reached up, patted me on the shoulder. "You come with me, my friend. We fix you up."

I came with him. He fixed me up, all right. He sat me down in the office (an amazing collection of pictures of girls and succubi filled one wall; I was glad Judy hadn't come along, even if she wouldn't have done anything more than sniff), bustled out, and returned a couple of minutes later with a fellow who toted a black bag.

The doctor - his name was Mkhinvari - had the same odd accent as losef. He looked at my elbow, said, "Roll up your pants," looked at my knee. "Is not too bad," he said, which was about what I thought.

He cleaned the scrapes (though, being a doctor, he called them abrasions) with spirits, which hurt worse than getting them had. Then he touched each one with a bloodstone to make it stop oozing, slapped on a couple of bandages, and went his way. losef said, "Now we fix trousers. You wait here." I dutifully waited there. This time he came back with a gray-haired woman. "This is Carlotta. She's best in the business."

Carlotta nodded to me, but she was more interested in my pants. She touched the two edges of the hole together, murmured under her breath. Yes, I know you'll say any tailor's shop has somebody who specializes in repairing rips. It's easy to apply the law of similarity because the torn material is in essence like the untom doth around it, and to use the law of contagion to spread that cloth over the area with which it was formerly in contact But on most repairs you'll be able to see, if you look closely, the seam between the real cloth and the whole dodi from which the fix was made. Not with Carlotta's work, though. As far as I could tell, the pants might never have been torn. I even got the crease back.

That left a fair-sized bloodstain. Carlotta turned to losef and said, "Shut the door, please." After he did, she reached into her sewing bag and pulled out a little nightbox, of the sort that are made so carefully no light can get in. When she opened it, a small pallid fuzzy creature crawled out "Vampire hamster," he explained. They are drawn to doth and - well, you will see."

The vampster didn't like even the tiny bit of day sliding under the bottom of the door; it made a snuffly noise of complaint Before Carlotta could tell him to, losef went over and shoved a dirow rug into the crack. The vampster relaxed. Carefully - any undead, even a rodent, needs to be handled with respect - Carlotta picked it up by the scruff of the neck and set it on my pants leg.

I sat very still; I didn't want the creature going after blood I hadn't already spilled. But itwas well trained. It sniffed around till it found the stain on my trousers, then stuck out a pale, pale tongue and began to lap the blood right out of the dodi. When it was finished, not a trace of the stain was left… and the vampire hamster's tongue had turned noticeably pinker as my blood began to enter its circulation.

When Carlotta plucked it off me, it wiggled and hissed; it was feeling frisky now. She plopped it back into the nightbox, closed the lid, and touched a crucifix to the latch so the vampster couldn't get out by itself.

My pants didn't even feel damp. I guess vampire hamsters don't have spit And the stain was all gone. "Thanks very much," I said to Carlotta. That's beautiful work" "Tor a friend of losefs, it's a pleasure. Of course"-she waved at the wall of succubi and giris-"losef has lots of friends."

I'd have shriveled up and died (or at least looked for a nightbox to hide in) after a crack like that, but losef must have been shriven against embarrassment. "Oh, if only they were," he said, rumbling laughter. "I would the young, but I would the happy." He turned to me. "You are all right?"

"I am all right," I answered. Thanks for taking care of me."

I went back outside, blinking against the daylight as if I were undead myself. The black-and-white constabulary carpet had just flown in. One of the constables the looked just like Pete and Luke, except he was blond) took my statement.