– Yeah. Maybe a half hour at the most. You gonna be OK?

– Don’t start.

– Right. Sorry ’bout this.

– ’S OK. Nobody can say you don’t know how to show a girl a good time, Joe.

The Spaz tries to come to in the cab. I pinch his esophagus and he goes back under before he can cause me any more trouble. I have the cabbie take me down to the Baruch housing project just below Houston. It’s a couple blocks outside what I’d usually call safe turf, but no one really has a claim on it, so it seems like a good place for an impromptu dump. I manhandle The Spaz up the steps to the pedestrian bridge that spans the FDR to the East River Park. It’s nearly two in the morning on a Tuesday. Cars whiz by below, but the lights on the park playing fields were shut off hours ago. My eyes penetrate that darkness just fine. Too cold for any homeless people to be camping out. I do see what looks like a couple junkies sitting on a bench at the far end of the park, but they’re facing the river. I pause at the top of the concrete stairs that lead down to the park.

The Spaz is still alive, alive and reeking of blood. I think about that blood; how I’d like to tap a couple pints of it and stick them in my fridge at home to replenish my rapidly shrinking supply. But his blood won’t do me any good, won’t do anything but make me hellishly sick and kill me. I know that because of what I smelled back at Doc Holiday’s; the smell of the Vyrus, the same smell I carry with me. Nonetheless, I’m just hard up enough to give him another good sniff. Hell, maybe I was wrong, maybe it was some other Vampyre’s scent I picked up in there, maybe this guy really is just whacked on PCP. I inhale. No, no such luck. He’s another sad fuck like me. But there is something about him, something about his scent that’s a little off. Must be whatever he was taking in the bathroom. No surprise I guess. Whatever he’s on would have to be some mean shit not to be neutralized by the Vyrus the moment it entered his bloodstream. Sure would like to know what it was. Be nice to try something like that sometime, something for a distraction. Christ, I drank over a fifth of bourbon tonight and it barely gave me a buzz. The Spaz stirs in my arms. Time to deal with the problem at hand.