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.”“Yeah, there’s got to be company policy against that.”Jody screamed in frustration.“Jeez, kidding,” Tommy said, cringing.She sighed, realizing that he’d been goofing on her.“Get dressed, cat breath, we don’t want to run out of dark.We’re going to need some help.”Out in the great room, the vampire Elijah Ben Sapir was trying to figure out exactly what was going on around him.He knew he had been constrained—bound inside a vessel, and whatever held him was immovable.He’d even turned to mist, which relieved his anxiety somewhat—there was an ethereal mind-set that accompanied the form, it took concentration to not let yourself just float off in a daze—but the bronze shell was airtight.He could hear them talking, but their comments told him little except that his fledgling had betrayed him.He smiled to himself.What a foolishly human mistake to let hope triumph over reason.He should have known better.It would be days before the hunger was on him again, and even then, without any movement, he could last indefinitely without blood.He could live a very, very long time constrained like this, he realized—it was his sanity that would suffer.He decided to stay in mist form—drift as in a dream at night, sleep like the dead during the day.This way, he would wait, and when the time came, and it would come (if nothing else, living for eight hundred years had taught him patience), he would make his move.5The Emperor of San FranciscoTwo in the morning.Normally, the Emperor of San Francisco would have been tucked in behind a Dumpster with the royal guard snuggled around him for warmth, snoring like a congested bulldozer, but tonight he had been undone by the generosity of a Starbucks froth slave in Union Square who had donated a bucket-sized Holiday Spice Mochaccino to the cause of royal comfort, thus leaving the Emperor and his two companions jangled, wandering the wee hours on a nearly deserted Market Street, waiting for breakfast time to roll around.“Like crack with cinnamon,” said the Emperor.He was a great, boiler tank of a man, an ambling meat locomotive in a wool overcoat, his face a firebox of intensity, framed with a gray tempest of hair and beard such as are found only on gods and lunatics.Bummer, the smaller of the troops, a Boston terrier, snorted and tossed his head.He’d lapped up some of the rich coffee broth himself, and felt ready to tear ass out of any rodent or pastrami sandwich that might cross his path.Lazarus, normally the calmer of the two, a golden retriever, pranced and leapt at the Emperor’s side as if it might start raining ducks any minute—a recurring nightmare among retrievers.“Steady, gents,” the Emperor chided.“Lets us use this inopportune alertness to inspect a less frantic city than we find in the day, and determine where we might be of service.” The Emperor believed that the first duty of any leader was to serve the weakest of his people, and he made an effort to pay attention to the city around him, lest someone fall through the cracks and be lost.Clearly he was a loon.“Calm, good fellows,” he said.But calm was not coming.The smell of cat was tall in the air and the men were jacked on java.Lazarus barked once and bolted down the sidewalk, followed closely by his bug-eyed brother-in-arms, the two descending on a dark figure that lay curled up around a cardboard sign on the traffic island at Battery Street, beneath a massive bronze statue that depicted four muscular men working a metal press.It had always looked to the Emperor like four guys molesting a stapler.Bummer and Lazarus sniffed the man beneath the statue, sure that he had to have a cat concealed among his rags somewhere.When a cold nose hit a hand, the Emperor saw the man move, and breathed a sigh of relief.With a closer look, the Emperor recognized him as William with the Huge Cat.They knew each other to nod hello, but because of racial tensions between their respective canine and feline companions, the two had never become friends.The Emperor knelt on the man’s cardboard sign and jostled him.“William, wake up.” William groaned and an empty Johnny Walker Black bottle slid out of his overcoat.“Dead drunk, perhaps,” said the Emperor, “but fortunately, not dead [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
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.”“Yeah, there’s got to be company policy against that.”Jody screamed in frustration.“Jeez, kidding,” Tommy said, cringing.She sighed, realizing that he’d been goofing on her.“Get dressed, cat breath, we don’t want to run out of dark.We’re going to need some help.”Out in the great room, the vampire Elijah Ben Sapir was trying to figure out exactly what was going on around him.He knew he had been constrained—bound inside a vessel, and whatever held him was immovable.He’d even turned to mist, which relieved his anxiety somewhat—there was an ethereal mind-set that accompanied the form, it took concentration to not let yourself just float off in a daze—but the bronze shell was airtight.He could hear them talking, but their comments told him little except that his fledgling had betrayed him.He smiled to himself.What a foolishly human mistake to let hope triumph over reason.He should have known better.It would be days before the hunger was on him again, and even then, without any movement, he could last indefinitely without blood.He could live a very, very long time constrained like this, he realized—it was his sanity that would suffer.He decided to stay in mist form—drift as in a dream at night, sleep like the dead during the day.This way, he would wait, and when the time came, and it would come (if nothing else, living for eight hundred years had taught him patience), he would make his move.5The Emperor of San FranciscoTwo in the morning.Normally, the Emperor of San Francisco would have been tucked in behind a Dumpster with the royal guard snuggled around him for warmth, snoring like a congested bulldozer, but tonight he had been undone by the generosity of a Starbucks froth slave in Union Square who had donated a bucket-sized Holiday Spice Mochaccino to the cause of royal comfort, thus leaving the Emperor and his two companions jangled, wandering the wee hours on a nearly deserted Market Street, waiting for breakfast time to roll around.“Like crack with cinnamon,” said the Emperor.He was a great, boiler tank of a man, an ambling meat locomotive in a wool overcoat, his face a firebox of intensity, framed with a gray tempest of hair and beard such as are found only on gods and lunatics.Bummer, the smaller of the troops, a Boston terrier, snorted and tossed his head.He’d lapped up some of the rich coffee broth himself, and felt ready to tear ass out of any rodent or pastrami sandwich that might cross his path.Lazarus, normally the calmer of the two, a golden retriever, pranced and leapt at the Emperor’s side as if it might start raining ducks any minute—a recurring nightmare among retrievers.“Steady, gents,” the Emperor chided.“Lets us use this inopportune alertness to inspect a less frantic city than we find in the day, and determine where we might be of service.” The Emperor believed that the first duty of any leader was to serve the weakest of his people, and he made an effort to pay attention to the city around him, lest someone fall through the cracks and be lost.Clearly he was a loon.“Calm, good fellows,” he said.But calm was not coming.The smell of cat was tall in the air and the men were jacked on java.Lazarus barked once and bolted down the sidewalk, followed closely by his bug-eyed brother-in-arms, the two descending on a dark figure that lay curled up around a cardboard sign on the traffic island at Battery Street, beneath a massive bronze statue that depicted four muscular men working a metal press.It had always looked to the Emperor like four guys molesting a stapler.Bummer and Lazarus sniffed the man beneath the statue, sure that he had to have a cat concealed among his rags somewhere.When a cold nose hit a hand, the Emperor saw the man move, and breathed a sigh of relief.With a closer look, the Emperor recognized him as William with the Huge Cat.They knew each other to nod hello, but because of racial tensions between their respective canine and feline companions, the two had never become friends.The Emperor knelt on the man’s cardboard sign and jostled him.“William, wake up.” William groaned and an empty Johnny Walker Black bottle slid out of his overcoat.“Dead drunk, perhaps,” said the Emperor, “but fortunately, not dead [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]