Jules bit the cap off the tin of lighter fluid. He squirted the combustible liquid all over the proto-matter and the coffin’s velvet lining.

“Look! Over there!” Malice’s sister shouted. “What’s he doin‘ to Malik’s coffin?”

Jules struck his match against the side of the coffin. It lit on the first try. Remembering the inferno that consumed his home, he tossed it inside. The proto-matter ignited like a whiskey-soaked slab of Brennan’s Restaurant’s bread pudding.

The effect on the bat high overhead was immediate. It shrieked, and the unnaturally piercing cry shattered several more of the glass panels overhead. Its wings crumpled, crushed by an invisible fist. Then it plummeted toward the ground. Into the nails and jaws of five vengeful creatures eager for a taste of blood.

“Malik! Brother!”

Jules almost felt bad for her. Almost. Malice’s sister would’ve thrown herself into the feral pack, would’ve tried to pry the pieces of her brother’s blood-spattered body from the wolf-dogs’ teeth, had Cowboy Hat not wrapped her in a powerful restraining embrace.

“Malik!They’rekilling him! Preston, let mego! Damn you, they’rekilling him!”

The smoke from the burning coffin made Jules’s eyes water. It smelled greasy and evil, like rancid andouille sausage that had been left on the grill too long. Malice’s sister stopped twisting in Cowboy Hat’s grasp, and her curses collapsed into sobs. The wolf-dogs finished their bloody work and trotted over to Jules’s side. Several wagged their tails as they sniffed him. One licked his hand, leaving behind flecks of reddish foam.

Malice’s sister stopped sobbing as abruptly as she had started. She stared at Jules with a hatred that made his balls seek the safety of his belly overhang. “Hecheated. You heard my brother. Hebroke the rules. Kill him, Preston… kill him for me…” Her voice shifted from a whiny, almost childlike tone to shrill invective as she whirled to face the others. “All of you!What are you standing there for? Kill him! Kill him for me! ”

The wolf-dogs moved into a protective phalanx around their master. They growled at the dozen vampires standing at the edge of the garden. Jules stared into Cowboy Hat’s shadowed face. “You an animal lover, Preston?I am.”

The former chief lieutenant didn’t make a move in Jules’s direction. Neither did any of the others.

Still surrounded by his wary, protective pack, Jules pulled the stakes from the centers of the two pools of proto-matter pulsating weakly on the grass. Strength and mass flowed into him almost instantly, tributaries rejoining a river that had nearly run dry. In seconds he was his old self again, all 450 very welcome pounds.

Malice’s sister sank slowly to the ground. Looking in the blankness of her eyes, Jules could see that her spirit was broken. At least for now. But the face of the tall man in the buckskin jacket and ten-gallon hat was still hidden by shadow.

“So what’s it gonna be, Preston? I got no real beef with you. You gonna let me walk outta here, take over the Horse-X trade yourself, become the new big man? Or are you gonna play ‘avenging flunky’ and maybe end up like your ex-boss there?” He pointed to the lumpy red smear at the center of the garden.

All eyes turned to the man in the cowboy hat. He pushed its wide brim up with a flick of his forefinger and scratched his forehead. For the first time, Jules could see his eyes. They were tired. “You walk, fat man. Pick up your shit and get the hell outta here.” He pressed a large red button on a console next to the mansion’s back doors. Jules heard a distant rumbling echo from the far end of the vehicle tunnel, a rumbling that must’ve been the door to the outside opening. “But this ain’t over. Don’t expect things to just go back the way they was for you. This town ain’t friendly territory, and it’ll never be again. You’re goin‘ down. Maybe not tonight. But some night, when you least expect it…”

Jules gathered his soot-covered safari jacket, pants, and shoes from next to the smoldering coffin. “Just remember to bring some doggie treats when you come visitin‘,” he said, patting a wet nose. “They prefer bat wings to Milk-Bones.”

Surrounded by his canine saviors, he walked to the door of the garden and opened it. Then he left the underground lair he hadn’t expected to walk out of, his head held high, and no vampire dared block his way.

But despite experiencing a triumph bigger than he’d ever hoped for, Jules’s victory was made hollow by three little words:

This ain’t over.

TWENTY

“Top a the world, Ma! Top a the world!”

Jules’s shouts echoed off the brick walls of the Warehouse District behind the casino. Even as echoes, his shouts sounded forced and phony.

He should be ecstatic. Or glad. Or at least relieved.

But Jules was none of those things. Malice X was gone. Yet that fact hadn’t brought back Maureen. It hadn’t even brought back a single King Oliver platter from his melted record collection.

One of the wolf-dogs-the leader-seemed to sense his melancholy. It nuzzled his hand gently; its cold nose on his fingers felt good in the humid night air. Another of the pack tried to cheer him by example, prancing around Jules and leaping boisterously, bouncing its paws off his stomach and chest.

Now Jules was able to take a closer look at his rescuers. Were these really his… pups? Wasthat why they’d seemed so familiar to him outside the Trolley Stop? All of the wolf-dogs had light brown spots on their chests and upper forelegs. His canine companion in Baton Rouge had similar markings, hadn’t she? It was hard for Jules to remember; he hadn’t been in his most lucid frame of mind during that night of amour. But the wolf-dogs’ scent was so viscerally familiar, and he was sure he’d gotten more than a noseful of the friendly bitch’s scent in that alleyway. His human-self might not remember that particular odor, but his buried wolf-self certainly would.

If theywere his pups, how did they get born and grow up so fast? It was barely a month since Jules’s trip to Baton Rouge. Dogs didn’t gestatethat fast, did they? On the other hand, it wouldn’t exactly have been any normal pregnancy. He’d never knocked up anybody before, human, vampire, or otherwise. Who knewwhat the rules were when a vampire was involved?

Jules sat on the front steps of a shoe repair store and let the wolf-dogs lick his face while he patted their noses and scratched behind their ears. There was another possibility, he realized suddenly; the wolf-dogs didn’thave to be his pups, not necessarily. Maybe Doodlebug hadn’t left town when he said he had. Maybe his old friend had stuck around, watching him from the shadows, waiting for a time when Jules would really need him.

But Doodlebug wouldn’t want to help him as Doodlebug. No-doing so would toss all that self-esteem/self-reliance psychobabble he’d regaled Jules with out the window. Doodlebug would figure out a way to be sneaky. He’d try to help in a way that would make it seem salvation had been the universe’s reward for Jules’s own actions. Hadn’t Jules taken pity on a poor, stray animal, gotten her food, and kept her warm for a night? His karma had come full circle, Doodlebug might say; the universe had saved his big, fat behind a month later.

Maybe. Or maybe not. Jules gave each of the wolf-dogs a final scratch behind the ears, then stood up. They sureseemed like real wolf-dogs. But then again, Doodlebug was a very talented vampire.

It didn’t really matter, he supposed. Either way, Doodlebug or pups, beings he’d had a hand in creating had stood by him in his time of need. After all, in a world where some men could turn into bats and preferred the taste of blood to andouille gumbo, what was one more mystery? Maybe he’d discover the truth someday. Or maybe he wouldn’t. He’d lived this long not knowing where the first vampire had come from, or why the Saints had never made it to the Super Bowl.