Bloodsucking Fiends

Set in contemporary San Francisco, this comic horror-romance novel follows a young woman's transformation into a vampire and her unlikely romance with a small-town aspiring writer.

The story opens at sundown, where the Emperor, a benevolent homeless man who considers himself the ruler of San Francisco, patrols the streets with his two dogs, Bummer and Lazarus. He encounters a vampire climbing from a dumpster and resolves to protect his city.

That same evening, Jody, a 26-year-old redheaded insurance claims clerk, is dragged into an alley, bitten, and forced to drink her attacker's blood. She wakes the next night beneath a dumpster with superhuman strength, heightened senses, and nearly $70,000 in cash stuffed inside her clothing. When she reaches the apartment she shares with her boyfriend Kurt, a vain discount-brokerage worker, he berates her for a two-night absence. Jody snaps, knocks him unconscious, and, overwhelmed by the smell of his blood, bites his neck as new fangs push through the roof of her mouth. Horrified, she accepts that she is a vampire, takes the money, and checks into a motel, where a calm male voice calls to warn that she is not immortal and can still be killed.

C. Thomas Flood, a 19-year-old aspiring writer from Incontinence, Indiana, arrives in San Francisco after his car catches fire. Tommy was raised in a factory town and sent west by his family to pursue his art. He rents a bunk in a tiny Chinatown room for $50 a week. The Emperor tips him off about a job at the Marina Safeway and warns that a vampire may be haunting the city.

Tommy is hired as night-crew leader at the Safeway, where he meets the Animals, a rowdy crew of stockers. After one shift, Jody approaches the parking lot, where Simon McQueen, a cocky Texan cowboy on the crew, aggressively hits on her. Tommy intervenes, and Jody, attracted to him and recognizing that his night schedule complements her needs, asks him to dinner.

Over dinner, Jody proposes they move in together: She has money but needs someone who can function during the day. Tommy agrees. As they walk afterward, Jody spots a thin man in black trailing them, evidence that the old vampire is stalking her. Tommy finds a furnished loft in the SOMA (South of Market) neighborhood with a windowless bedroom. When they reunite, Jody's hunger overwhelms her; during sex, her fangs extend and she bites Tommy's neck. She confesses she is a vampire, demonstrating by reading in total darkness and hanging from a ceiling beam. Tommy is thrilled.

They settle into domestic life. Tommy tests vampire folklore against Jody's abilities, determining she cannot transform into a bat or wolf and that crucifixes and garlic have no effect. The old vampire escalates his provocations, leaving a dead homeless man with a broken neck across the street from the loft. When the vampire ambushes Jody, she bites off two of his fingers and gains strength from his ancient blood. She stores the body in a chest freezer Tommy buys at her request.

One night, Jody drains a young man dying of AIDS. His body crumbles to dust, revealing that a vampire's kill does not leave a corpse. She realizes the old vampire has been breaking his victims' necks before draining them, deliberately leaving evidence to frame her and Tommy. Racing home near dawn, she is pulled through a basement window by unseen hands just before sunlight reaches the street.

Tommy is frantic: Another body has appeared outside the loft with his copy of Jack Kerouac's On the Road planted beneath it. When Jody returns, she explains the vampire's strategy. Tommy's carelessness worsens matters when the Animals come to the loft for a party, raiding the freezer and potentially entering the bedroom where Jody sleeps during the day. Furious, she storms out.

The old vampire confronts Jody at a nightclub, telling her it is almost over and she must abandon Tommy because he knows vampires exist. She chases him but he escapes. Later, a medical student named Steve identifies Jody as a real vampire using infrared technology and tells her gene therapy might reverse her condition.

Inspectors Rivera and Cavuto of the SFPD homicide division are also closing in. All victims share the same profile: broken necks, massive blood loss, no visible wounds, and each was terminally ill. The detectives link Tommy to the crime scenes through his fingerprints on the planted copy of On the Road.

Tommy makes a fateful decision. Wanting to keep a date with Mara, a new Safeway cashier, he places the sleeping Jody in the chest freezer. Police arrest Tommy at the loft, and their search reveals two bodies in the freezer. In interrogation, Tommy tells the whole truth about the vampire, which sounds like an insanity defense. Meanwhile, Jody wakes in the morgue and calls Simon at the Safeway. Simon picks her up armed with a gun, reveals he has AIDS, and demands she turn him into a vampire. When he threatens to shoot, Jody strikes him, accidentally snapping his neck. Simon's death while Tommy is in custody forces the detectives to release him.

Tommy and Jody reconcile at the loft. She tells him the old vampire, Elijah Ben Sapir, an 800-year-old former alchemist, intends to kill Tommy. Tommy rallies the Animals for a counterattack. The Emperor, who has spotted the vampire's yacht, the Sanguine II, moored in the harbor, leads the assault. They board the automated vessel, discover a prison cell used to store captives, and locate the vampire's sealed stainless-steel vault beneath the engine room. Drew, one of the Animals, constructs a bomb from household materials. The group loads stolen artwork into a raft, lights the fuse, and evacuates. The yacht explodes.

The vampire survives by escaping through a pinhole in the vault as mist and swimming to shore. Burned and naked, he attacks the group on the dock. Cavuto shoots him twice without stopping him. The Animals pin him with spearguns, and Tommy raises a sword for the killing blow. Jody arrives, having commandeered Rivera's car, and throws herself over the vampire's body. She explains that all his victims were terminally ill, including Simon. She feeds the vampire her blood to stabilize him, orders the cops to walk away, and tells Tommy she loves him but needs someone like her.

At the loft, Jody and the old vampire spend the remaining hours before dawn together. The next day, Tommy takes both sleeping vampires to a foundry below the loft and has them sealed in bronze through electroplating. He drills small ear holes near Jody's head and talks to her statue, telling her the Animals fenced the stolen art for over $100,000, the cops closed the cases, and he loves her.

Steve calls to say he can reverse the vampire condition. As Tommy holds the phone, vapor streams from the ear holes in Jody's bronze shell and coalesces into her solid form. She reveals she never intended to leave: She pretended to side with the old vampire to learn his secrets, including how to transform into mist. She tells Tommy they will be together for a very long time, implying she plans to turn him. Tommy mentions Steve's cure. Jody tells him to hang up the phone and kisses him. The novel ends with Jody choosing the vampire life with Tommy over a return to humanity.

In closing scenes, the Emperor resumes his patrols with Bummer and Lazarus, while Cavuto and Rivera contemplate a stolen Degas bronze, discussing how its value might fund their retirements.