Unfortunately, Jules had never studied veterinary science or even basic biology. He buried his stake in the animal’s liver. Instead of crumbling to dust, the panther erupted with an earsplitting bellow. It bucked like a snakebit bronco, hurling Jules 1 from its back and knocking Jules 3 violently to the ground. Jules 1 tumbled twenty feet through the air before striking his head on a planter and landing in a heap. He didn’t move or make a sound.

The panther tried dislodging the two stakes with its teeth. It managed to pull out the weapon hanging from its side, but it was unable to reach the one perforating its liver. It shrieked and spat with frustration. Its form wavered, then melted as it transformed back into Malice X.

The black vampire grasped the stubbornly lodged stake with both hands, took a deep breath, and yanked it from his body.“Fuck!” He sucked air through his clenched teeth. Tears ran freely from his red-veined eyes, and specks of blood flew from his mouth as he exhaled again. “Fuck-fuck-FUUUCK! That hurt like amuthah, you little cocksuckers!”

Jules 2, still gushing blood from fang wounds in his neck, tried desperately to rally his strength. He began weakly crawling away. He didn’t get far. Malice X kicked his retreating foe onto his back, then pinned him by planting his right foot deep in the dwarf’s soft stomach. He reached for his long stake, temporarily discarded when he’d transformed into the panther.

Jules 3 shook off the cobwebs just in time to see Malice X raise his weapon above the prone, helpless form of Jules 2. But instead of immediately plunging it into the trapped dwarf’s heart, the black vampire grinned sadistically and started to sing.

“Short people got / No reason-”

He brought the stake down hard, burying it in Jules 2’s plump left shoulder. The already wounded dwarf screamed with fresh agony. Jules 3 screamed with him, envying Jules 1 his unconsciousness. Malice X yanked the stake out and raised it above his head again.

“Short people got / No reason-”

This time he drove the weapon through Jules 2’s rib cage. The vampire’s inhumanly powerful thrust completely impaled the dwarf and embedded the sharp point deep in the ground. Jules 3 sensed his other self slipping into shock. Fighting a wave of encroaching darkness, he charged the black vampire on wobbly legs. But his feeble counterattack was stopped dead by a contemptuous backhanded blow, which both broke his nose and sent him flying into a shrubbery.

Dazed, bleeding, sprawled upside down in an azalea bush, Jules 3 could only watch as Malice X finished his deadly song.

“Short people got / No reason-to LI–IIIVE!”

This time was the deathblow. The thrust through the heart. Jules 3 had no idea what would happen-would all three of them crumple to dust simultaneously? No time for any whispered good-byes-no time for anything as he felt maple wood savage his heart, as he smelled blood and tasted salty iron and choked on his own effluvia as he felt his body coming apart…

But he didn’t come apart. He didn’t dissolve or crumple or blow away. Jules 3 pawed himself to make sure he was still all there. All his important parts seemed intact, still hanging upside down in the azalea bush. His other self wasn’t so fortunate, though. On the patch of grass where Jules 2 had struggled so valiantly just seconds before, there was now a faintly pulsating pool of gray proto-matter, the two-edged stake projecting from its center.

“What the hell isthis now?” Malice X grimaced disgustedly as he wiped proto-matter residue off his bare foot onto the grass.

Jules 3 didn’t have time to puzzle through the vampiric metaphysics behind what was happening. Their only chance now was to somehow force Malice X to transform again, to make him unwittingly send part of his mass to his coffin. He rolled out of the azalea bush and ran to Jules 1’s side. The other dwarf was still stone-cold unconscious.

Jules 3 grabbed his duplicate’s shoulders. “Wake up, kid! Wake up! It’s the bottom of the ninth and we’re five runs behind-”

Out of the corner of his eye, Jules 3 saw Malice X tentatively jiggle the long stake still protruding from the pool of proto-matter. “Guess maybe I best leave that in there for now,” the black vampire muttered. “No prob-Jell-O Puddin‘ Man here done droppedhis stake, and I seriously doubt he’ll be havin’ any need for it…”

Jules 3 whirled around to protect his prone twin. But all he saw was a flash of foot, then a shower of stars as a bomb exploded in his midsection. He was vaguely aware of being airborne again before he landed bone-jarringly at the edge of the onlooking crowd. Seconds later, he sensed the agonizing decomposition of another third of himself.

“And then there was one,” Malice X said, brushing his hands together briskly. “I really gottathank you, Jules. Who woulda thought I’d get the chance to kill you three times? Shit, I wish you coulda split intoten little dudes.”

Jules 3 picked himself painfully up from the turf. Near as he could tell, that last kick had broken two or three of his ribs; yet he refused to face death lying down. It was over. His plan was impossible now. But he’d done the best he could. He’d put his life on the line to protect Erato and Chop, to avenge Maureen and Doc Landrieu. He had nothing to be ashamed of.

Malice X picked up a discarded piece of stake from the ground. “Ready or not, loser, here I come…”

The last remaining bit of Jules tightened his feeble grip on his own chunk of wood. He struggled to avoid blacking out as his smiling nemesis approached. He felt his body sway as he fell into micro sleeps. He was hallucinating, dreaming. He had to be. Otherwise, the clouds of mist condensing above the glass panes of the greenhouse and seeping in beneath the garden’s doors made no sense at all One crash, then another, and suddenly it was raining glass. Jules saw, in the midst of the descending shards, a pair of large, wedge-shaped gray forms. The creatures landed on four powerful legs and immediately moved to cut Malice X off from Jules. The three clouds of mist that had drifted in beneath the doors were taking on a similar aspect, snarling menacingly as their low, muscular bodies congealed. Canines as big and nasty as the Hound of the Baskervilles-the same animals he’d encountered the night before outside the Trolley Stop! Jules blinked once, then twice, but the beasts didn’t fade away like some drunk’s pink elephants. They barked viciously at Malice X, lunging and snapping at his legs as they moved in a pack to surround him.

These weren’t just dogs, Jules realized. And despite their distinctive wolflike features, they weren’t wolves, either. They were something new, both familiar and unfamiliar-these five creatures were vampire wolf-dogs!

“You lousycheater!” Malice X screamed as he kicked at the wolf-dogs’ heads. “All bets are off! See how you like fightin‘ a dozen brothers at once, you fatfreak!”

Two of the wolf-dogs leapt for Malice X’s throat, their fangs flashing in the multicolored garden lights. But by the time their jaws slashed the space where his throat had been, Malice X was no longer himself. Jules heard the flapping of desperately beating wings as the black vampire beat a hasty tactical retreat. The wolf-dogs snapped furiously at empty air as they leapt after the fleeing bat, which flittered toward the broken glass dome high above.

Jules turned his attention to the crowd behind him. All eyes were locked on the bizarre spectacle in the center of the garden. Now was his chance He ran to Malice X’s coffin and snatched his safari jacket off the ground. He retrieved the tin of lighter fluid and the box of matches from the right-hip Velcro pocket. Jules opened the coffin. Inside, a three-inch- deep layer of gray proto-matter glistened and pulsated-nine-tenths of Malice X’s bodily mass. Limbless, voiceless, sightless. Helpless. As helpless as Maureen had been when Malice X plunged a stake through her heart.