I locked my hands onto his wrist and squeezed as hard as I could and it was his turn to scream. I felt the muscles moving like putty under my fingers and the bones beneath those muscles creaking and then he was kneeing me in the side of my face, his knee bashing my eyebrow and my eye. I didn’t mean to let go of his hands, but I did it anyway. It’s hard to keep your grip when you can’t think straight and I couldn’t do much of anything after that kick. Stronger, faster, tougher and getting my ass kicked.

I have to go ahead and say it. I should be dead right now. He had me. I can lie and tell you how I fought back from the edge of disaster, but I didn’t. He whupped my ass. When he was done kneeing me in the face, he punched me in the throat. While I was trying to figure out how to breathe, he ripped the knife out of my guts and danced back out of my range, probably content to watch me die. And I would have died right then and there. I believe that.

But, again, vampire. Instinct took over. I lashed out, I felt the hunger flare like a miniature sun in my chest and it demanded satisfaction. I was aiming for Tattoo but he wasn’t where he had been a second before. Instead some poor bastard who’d been cheering him on took the brunt of my body’s demands. I feed on life force. I said that already, I know, but I try to feed on different sources, because after what I did to that dog? I never want to hear that sort of scream again and I never want to feel that kind of guilt again.

Whatever it was that made him a living, breathing man left his body in one gigantic wave that slammed into me and knocked me down. I felt like I was strapped to a generator, and it was going overtime. I felt like I’d been dying of thirst and was suddenly filled with sweet, cool water. I could use a million more examples, but I’ll leave you with just one more. In that instant I understood why people can get hooked on drugs. I was satisfied, I was sated. I was full to overflowing with energy and with every part of me felt perfect. The wound in my stomach? Gone. Healed. My jaw? It was fine. My eye and the socket around it that I think was probably shattered? All just fine. The man that I ripped that life force from?

He died screaming, his body shivering and shaking and the hair on his head smoldered. His eyes were gone, burst from his head by whatever it was that I did to him. He was dead.

And I felt better than I ever had before.

That feeling? It was better than sex.

And the green ogre stepped forward and clapped its hairy paws together.

I looked toward the thing and felt myself coming down from that incredible high. I still felt nearly invincible. I was looking at the Hsi-Hsue-Kuei and wondering why I’d ever been afraid. In that moment I was pretty sure I could break the damned thing over my knee without even trying.

And that thing looked at me and smiled.

Tattoo came at me again, his face determined, and the green ogre held up a hand and stopped him. That was good. I was feeling like I could eat again, and I was betting my little buddy with the knife would taste about as sweet as anything ever could. The worst part? I was horrified by that feeling and at the same time I didn’t much care. I wanted this. I wanted to feel him die and to steal that vitality for myself.

“Are you getting it now, Johnny?” I looked at the ogre as it spoke. I was looking while the shape changed, growing smaller before my eyes. Anna called the way I looked right then wearing my monster-face. I never guessed that she had one of her own. My sister looked at me, her body naked before a dozen men, and she did so without any shyness.

I knew she was my sister. There isn’t an expression she can make that I haven’t seen at least a few times. There isn’t a mark on her face or a scar on her arms, no matter how small, that I am not familiar with. I was there when she got those scrapes. I was there to bandage them and make her feel better. I knew she was my sister.

And at that moment? I didn’t know her at all.

— 14 —

“Say something, Johnny.”

“What the hell?” I stared at her and she came closer, her face as familiar and alien as could be. She was my sister, yes, but my sister could never, ever have done the things that the green ogre had done. She couldn’t possibly be a killer. She couldn’t mutilate living people and feast on their bodies. She was my sister! Impossible.

“I had to make you see. I had to make you understand what it feels like.” She put her hand on my shoulder and I twitched. Part of me wanted to run from her. Part of me still wanted to protect her. There had to be some sort of insane mistake.

“Make me see what?” I was yelling, I admit it.

“You starve yourself. You don’t let your body get what it needs. This is what we’re supposed to be.” She was so calm. I couldn’t really understand that. How could she be so calm when the world was falling apart? What would our parents say? What would anyone say?

“You killed a lot of people, Anna. We can get help though. We can find a good lawyer.” I was trying to explain it all to her, to make her understand. This didn’t have to be the end of everything. If she would just come home with me, we could make it all work out.

“Don’t be stupid. I know what I did. I did it on purpose.” My ears were ringing. I could hear her, but I didn’t want to. Her words didn’t make any sense. “This is what we need. This is why we were chosen, We’re going to rule here, Johnny. You can rule with me. We can run everything.” She looked into my eyes and stared hard, reading me as easily as I thought I could read her, and then she looked away, shaking her head. “You don’t get it. You don’t want to get it.”

“Don’t get what? That you’re a killer?”

“So are you!” Anna pointed to the man I’d killed. His body looked wrong. I couldn’t have said exactly why, except that he was dead. But there was more to it. I’d done something to him, something so intense that it screwed up his corpse, too. “You killed him and you liked it!”

“No!” I was lying. I had liked it. I’d never felt better. I was still feeling it. But the difference is, I never wanted to feel that way again. I was already sickened by what had happened.

Anna turned away from me, her face showing her contempt. Then she turned back and took a swing. By the time her fist connected with my jaw, she’d changed again. The blow felt like a wrecking ball slapping me senseless. Tattoo might have skills, but Anna had raw power and speed. She was tougher than me. My little sister, the one I’d always protected, was tougher than me. Stronger than I ever imagined. Before I could recover she hit me again and then a third time. Each blow staggered me. I tried to defend myself, I did. I mean that. But she was too fast. Too strong. Too damned tough. When the last blow dropped me to the ground she stepped back and waved her men away from me.

She had me dead to rights. I couldn’t make myself attack her.

Anna looked down at me. ‘This is done. Stay away from me. Go home to San Francisco. Stay away from Chicago, or I’ll kill your little girlfriend and her baby. You understand me? You stay away and they are safe. You come back and I kill them.” The problem was simple: Anna knew me too well. She knew I cared about Lisa. She’d known all along. When she went to Chicago, she knew that I’d contact Lisa sooner or later. Just like she knew I’d follow her if she left San Francisco.

“Anna, why are you doing this?” It was all I had. I couldn’t beg. She wouldn’t listen. I could tell that already. Whatever changes had taken place in her when the vampire virus got to her, they’d warped my sister’s brain somewhere along the way.

She moved closer to me, leaned down until her bestial face was inches from mine. Her eyes met mine and she stared. Both forms were completely different. Her eyes were not the same, and yet I found myself wondering how it was I didn’t realize before then that she was the Hsi-Hsue-Kuei. “Because I’m tired of being Johnny Lei’s little sister. Because I’m tired of being our father’s daughter. Because I’m me. And now everyone will know that I’m somebody, too.”

And then she left and I let her go.

I had to, because I knew exactly what she meant. She’d said it before and I’d always ignored it. The world is changing. It’s getting smaller all the time. There are countries in the Middle East where women are finally getting rights. There are places in China and Hong Kong where women are allowed certain rights, too. But in San Francisco? In Chinatown? It never occurred to me to see if my sister wanted my protection. It never crossed my mind that she might want to be more than the smart sister who got the good grades. I don’t know if it’s because I was working for the Triad or simply because she wanted to prove herself in a place where girls were never really allowed a chance. But there was no denying that she was stronger than the guys she was surrounding herself with. Hell, aside from her and a few of those guys, there was no one who didn’t believe that I was responsible for killing Chow Liu. I maybe dodged the bullet on Blevins — time would tell — but there was no way anyone was going to doubt that I had something to do with wiping out the head of the Chinese mob in Chicago. That might be great for street creds, but not so much for increasing my life-expectancy.

Anna was grown up. Anna wanted to show the world that she could do it her way. Maybe that would have been a cute coming-of-age story in a lot of cases, but Anna, my little sister, was no longer the girl she’d been.

I left Chicago that night. I didn’t stop in to tell Lisa everything was cool between us, because it wasn’t. I didn’t try to talk my sister out of the path she’d chosen, because I knew I couldn’t. Instead I headed for home. Back to San Francisco and my school classes, my parents and my job. I don’t think I’ll be able to quit that any time soon, whether or not I want to. I need to keep tabs on my sister, you see, and that’s about the best way to do it. No one in the Triads so much as sneezes without someone else hearing about it.

I’ll be keeping her secret for now. I haven’t even figured out what to tell them when I get home yet, but I’ll think of something.

And in the meantime, I’m going to convince myself that the rush I got feeding on that poor bastard was just my imagination. See, it felt too good. I knew a guy once that refused to get high because he said it felt too good. I didn’t understand that until now. I feed on plants and take a sampling here and there and I can live just fine. I start feeding on people, and there’s going to be a big problem. Anything that feels that good has got to be bad for you and even if it isn’t bad for me, it’s murder on the people around me.