Oh! What a gala night! Oh, what an event! Everyone, simply Everyone, was there. What a pity it had to be in the summer, in this dreadful hot weather. But those workers had, just taken their time and those awful unions - everyone knew how they could be.
Yet it was done now. Finished and complete and shining and wasn't it simply marvelous! All those slopes and weird shapes? What was that architect's name? Doesn't matter, doesn't matter. The important thing is it's all done now and what an event we are having tonight. Everyone was there.
Even the streets were dressed for the event. With banners and streamers and a band playing both before and after the show, as all those people would be strolling out. And, oh, the cameras and the street all blocked off and the chairperson of the Opera Committee arriving in that two-horse carriage with the mayor and his wife and...
Oh, the street entertainers! Look at them! Aren't they cute? All those mimes and those jesters dressed in those cute, tight stripes with those hats with the bells on them. And even more fun were the period people, with those costumes like the opera itself, selling - what was that? Mead? Or some such thing? And meat pies. And turkey on a stick. And those two artisans, wearing that cute chain mail and selling those old weapons that were positively guaranteed to be authentic but shouldn't they have at least painted over the plastic parts, ha ha?
Pity about the opera part of it all. It was pretty, of course - beautiful, some of those costumes. But it was rather dreadfully long, wasn't it? Of course, operas are supposed to be long and one knows it's Great Art and all the rest, but still one wonders - perhaps if it was just a teensy bit shorter? And if we could understand what they were singing? Perhaps they should just speak some of it? But then it wouldn't be opera, would it?
Of course, it wouldn't have to be subsidized then, either, but not to think of that now, because it was over and everyone, Everyone, had woken up from their little naps and... Oh! The afterparties! All those delicious afterparties! Because this was such an Important Occasion, such a Cultural Milestone! Like New Year's Eve, wasn't it? With all the limousines and there goes the mayor in his little buggy and wasn't it so much nicer now that it was cooler and that hot sun had gone down? People didn't look quite so... wilted, somehow. One should never look wilted in a formal gown - how tacky! And the men, how handsome in their tuxedos. Oh, they always complain and gripe, but secretly, everyone knows, they love to dress up. And they really are so handsome. Nothing like black tie to make a man look distinguished, even those men who have - how shall we say it? - aged both in years and size? Both up and out? Ha ha!
Like that handsome silver-haired fellow just now coming down the steps, the one alone going between the new brass pillars that hold up the awning, going toward that limousine with that tall chauffeur holding the door.
What was his name?
"Kennedy!" barked Gunman Felix, coming around from behind his "authentic crossbow" stand.
The vampire turned and smiled and the crossbow bolt as big as a baseball bat shot right through the gleaming expanse of his starched white tuxedo shirt and splattered clear drops out the back and the umbrella barbs popped open and held it fast
And for just a moment, only Felix, binding the cable to the thick brass pillar, was moving. Everyone else was frozen, too startled to gasp. Unbelieving. This wasn't possible was it? Or part of the show? A trick? An assassination? Too surreal...
Even the monster stood as he had, staggered back a step, his arms flung wide by the impact, his redding eyes focused on the wooden stake piercing his blackened soul.
For just an instant...
Then the eyes went up and the mouth spread wide the fangs and, the howl began...
And Cat stepped in from the left and fired and his bolt plunged deep, crisscrossing the first, and as he scrambled to tie his cable to the other brass pillar, the monster... detonated...
The howling, the ungodly, unreal howling shot through the crowd and echoed off the street and the maniacal frenzy was impossibly violent and crazed. Oh, God! The howling, screeching, tearing sound...
And the people watching who had first thought: murder. Murder! Murder!!... now thought, What is this? What is that! It cannot be a man! It cannot be! Not that sound! An animal? What kind of an animal could...
Thrash and rip and screech and the hissing burst forth upon them and the first desperate evil wrenching-away shook the thick brass pillar and the second made it rock and creak and the awning above it sway and then the second cable was tied fast and the monster frenzied even wilder with the terror of being trapped and... and the anger.
...the blazing fury...
...at this young man who presumed to attack a god!...
And instead of pulling away, the monster burst forward toward Felix.
And into his balloons.
They weren't water balloons that broke and splashed on his face and chest, that awful smell in its gleaming mouth.
They were gasoline. And they broke, one-two-three, across his front and soaked him and Cat already had the flare lit and he tossed it and it hit the rushing chest and bounced off, but not before...
The flames rushed up and out and around him, his clothes and hair and skin bursting with it, a flame that could not be that color, could not be that bright and cracklingloud and when the black glob finally spat forth, it was burning.
And nothing could have that evil, hell-wretched smell.
No thought of anger. No thought of vengeance. Not anymore. No more. The pain... the pain! And it howled and warped into madness and wrenched back and the pillars swayed and gave some and it wrenched some more, the screaming, the screaming, and the pillars started to buckle where they were bolted against the sidewalk.
NO! No! It can't get free!
The Gunman squatted and aimed and fired at the 'right knee and missed and fired again and hit it. And then the left knee and the howling! The howling as it crumpled, crippled and imploding with the agony, still wrenching itself back and forth, back and forth, faster and faster, screaming and screaming and the pillars...
The pillars broke free and it fell backward, rolling, and lay there for a second as two more silver bullets rammed into its chest. But then it was up, a ball of scrambling flame backing away, thudding into the side of the limousine and then crawling like a crab across the top into the street and -
And Gunman Felix fired again and again and again and, yes, there was an effect. It jerked and swayed with each impact...
But there was no stopping it. It was into the middle of the street now, scrambling, scrabbling away, the ends of the crossbow bolts sparking on the asphalt and...
We can't stop it! It'll get away and the flames will go out and it'll pull those stakes out.
Now! We've got to stop it now! Just for a few seconds! It couldn't take much longer.
The Blazer, the one Davette had sworn to stay hidden in two blocks away, was doing twenty-five when it vaulted across the sidewalk, thirty when it bounced across the curb into the street, and an even thirty-six when its front bumper slammed dead-center into the warping flames.
The noise! The streak of fire as the vampire flew past them, the awful crash as it splintered against the front bumper of its own black limousine, the terrible keening wail as it lay, a frenzied flaming blur, against the curb.
Gunman Felix was standing over it when the burning hands tried to raise up, was staring down when the blazing tortured eyes focused on him, was smiling when they collapsed backward into the fire.
The swell of flame was twelve feet wide and hot and bright and impossibly loud.
Then the loud hissing, as though gas were escaping. Then sparks. So many sparks.
Then that loud pop thunderous and deep.
Then nothing. A tiny circle of blue-and-white flame flickering out around a small pile of ashes.