“That’sit?” Malice X’s momentary indecision morphed into incredulity. “That’syour one condition? I thought maybe you’d want me to fight with both hands tied behind my back or somethin‘-”

“That’s my condition. And I want it down herenow. Where I can see it. Before we start our duel.”

“Why the hell d’you want that for?”

“So you can’t welsh on me after I win.”

Malice X started to protest, but his objections melted into rich laughter. “Fuck yeah, man. Sure! I gave you a chance to make this dustup halfway fair, and if that’s what you want, that’s what you get, man. It’s your fuckin‘ funeral, and you got a right to screw it up any way you wanna.” He turned to his chief lieutenant. “Preston, take a coupla dudes and fetch my coffin from the master bedroom. Make it snappy, huh? I wanna get in a coupla rounds of blackjack upstairs before the sun rises.”

Cowboy Hat grunted his assent, then nodded to a pair of toughs, and the three of them disappeared into the mansion. Malice X turned back toward Jules. “So what doI get whenI win? And don’t be tryin‘ to pawn off that lame-ass car of yours on me.”

Jules thought about this for a minute. “If you win, you get to scatter my ashes in the parking lot of the Esplanade Mall, so my sufferin‘ soul is stuck in the goddamn suburbs forever.”

Malice X laughed sharply. “Shit, man, fuck the parkin‘ lot. You goin’ in the mall’surinals.”

“Whatever,” Jules muttered. And he managed a tight little grin of his own as he watched Cowboy Hat and the others maneuver Malice X’s polished teak coffin through the double doors into the courtyard.

“Okay, it’s here,” Malice X said. “Satisfied?”

“Yeah,” Jules said. He took off his safari jacket, then knelt down to untie his boots and pull them and his socks off. Next to come off were his shirt and undershirt. He had unbuckled his belt and was unzipping his trousers when Malice X interrupted.

“What th‘ hell you tryin’ to do now-nullify my knockout by nauseatin‘ me with your nudity?”

“I’m strippin‘ down for action,” Jules said, sitting on a stone bench while he peeled off his trousers and began the arduous task of extricating his underpants from between his massive thighs. “You got a problem with that?”

“No problem. Just a silly li’l question: How the hell do you plan on holdin‘ a four-foot stake when you got wolf’s paws or bat’s claws?”

“You letme worry about that,” Jules said, smiling inwardly. He scooped up his pile of clothing and walked boldly across the open square to where Malice X stood. He made no attempt at all to cover his privates (mostly hidden by his stomach, anyway) or to hide his tremendous, quivering white ass from the onlooking crowd. For the first time he could remember, he wasn’t ashamed, either of his naked body or having strangers see it. His overwhelming mass was an asset, not a handicap-his secret ace in the hole, secret even though it was in plain sight of everyone. He’d show them all, before the night was done. He’d show them what a fat vampire could do.

He dumped his clothes next to the coffin. “So they’ll be handy when it’s time to cart this thing away,” he said. He glanced at the two long stakes in the leather case near Malice X’s feet. “How about lettin‘ me have one of them pig stickers now?”

“Give him one, Preston,” Malice X said. Cowboy Hat grunted wearily, selected one of the stakes, and held it out to Jules.

“Gimme the other one,” Jules said.

The lieutenant looked quickly to Malice X, who shrugged irritably and said, “Let ‘im have it.” Cowboy Hat handed his boss the first stake, then gave Jules the second one.

Jules backed away to the far edge of the open square of grass. He broke the stake twice over his knee, snapping it into three stubby weapons. Before his rival could do more than grunt with surprise, Jules whispered two words to himself.

“Train set,”he said.

It was the most difficult transformation he’d ever attempted. He concentrated on thoughts of all the little tough guys he’d admired in the movies-Alan Ladd, Jimmy Cagney, Edward G. Robinson. Little tough guys who didn’t put up with shit from anybody; fighters worth twice their weight in a scrap. He was going to do something even Doodlebug couldn’t do-he was going to carve three middleweight vampires from one heavyweight.

He felt his bones melting. He sensed the familiar pull of his far-off coffin on a portion of his great mass, but he resisted, concentrating on keeping it all present, splitting himself like an amoeba. His nerve endings were afire, but he refused to settle for the familiar, the easy. Images flashed through his splintering mind-Jake La Motta; Sugar Ray Robinson; the mayor of Munchkinland in his little purple suit…

The fleshy mist began to clear and coalesce. For a moment Jules felt like he was on the wildest caffeine jag of his life. But then the static in his brain(brains?) died down to a tolerable buzz. He’d done it. Again he experienced the vertigo of looking at himself watching himself stare at himself. Where there had been one 450-pound Jules, there now stood three 150-pound Juleses.

Unfortunately, he’d concentrated too much on the Munchkins and not enough on Jake La Motta.

Three identically obese nude dwarfs stared at each other and murmured in unison: “Oh, shit.”

Malice X’s jaw nearly bounced off the turf. “This-thisis your big parlor trick?Midgets? ”

There was no time to try again. Even if there had been, the triplicate vampire couldn’t muster a fraction of the necessary energy. He(they) were stuck. The three Juleses had no choice but to make the best of it. They bent their barrel-like bodies and snatched up the pieces of stake with their stubby little hands.

Malice X clapped his hands together and raised his face to the artificial heavens above. “Ladies and gentlemen, this proves what our preachers been sayin‘ for years-God is a black man. Wait, lemme rephrase that. Since the Good Lord don’t answer vampires’ prayers, I guess the Devil be a black man, too!”

Jules sensed his three consciousnesses splitting away from each other, like pieces of stuck-together saltwater taffy being pulled apart. He was becoming three separate people-Jules 1, Jules 2, and Jules 3-none of whom exerted direct control over the other two.

Three consciousnesses: Jules 1 prayed that they’d all remember the plan. Jules 2 tried contacting the other two telepathically but only got a shooting pain in his sinuses. Jules 3 didn’t place his trust in either prayer or telepathy. “Snap out of it, guys!” he shouted. “Let’s surround him!”

Malice X grinned and hummed a few bars of Randy Newman’s “Short People.” Then, without bothering to slip out of his clothing, he transformed smoothly and slickly into a panther. The big, muscular cat immediately lunged at Jules 2, knocking the rotund dwarf flat on his back. The panther’s three-inch-long incisors tore at its prey’s fat throat.

“Aaaahhhhhhh!”all three Juleses screamed.

The pain traveled from one to the other like a power surge through a live wire. Jules 1 nearly dropped his stake to clutch his own throat, but he stifled the reflex and ran toward the enemy with all the speed his stumpy legs could muster.I might be a dwarf, he told himself,but I’m a vampiredwarf!He pictured his legs as stubby but powerful springs, and he leapt onto the crouching panther’s back. Before the creature could shake him off, Jules 1 plunged his stake into the cat’s side.

The panther shrieked with pain and rage, immediately releasing its choke grip from around Jules 2’s throat. Jules 3, unengaged in the struggle, found himself caught between equally powerful and desperate urges.The plan-he’s distracted-now’s the time to hit his coffin- But one of his other selves lay bleeding on the grass, while the other was menaced by a snapping set of jaws reaching back to bite him in half.Fuck the plan! Improvise! Jules 3 grasped his stake tightly in both fists and ran toward the melee, howling a wordless battle cry and aiming the point at the panther’s heart.