Bloodsucking Fiends
A Love Story
by Christopher Moore
This is a work of fiction.
Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products
of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any
resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living
or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Acknowledgements
The author gratefully acknowledges those people who helped in the research and writing of Bloodsucking Fiends:
Mark Joseph and Mark Anderson for help with research in the Bay Area. Rachelle Stambal, Jean Brody, Liz Ziemska, and Dee Dee Leichtfuss for their careful reads and thoughtful suggestions. My editors, Michael Korda and Chuck Adams, for their clean hands and composure. And my agent, Nick Ellison, for his patience, guidance, friendship, and hard work.
In memory of my father:
Jack Davis Moore
Part I
Fledgling
Chapter 1
Death
Sundown painted purple across the great Pyramid while the Emperor enjoyed a steaming whiz against a dumpster in the alley below. A low fog worked its way up from the bay, snaked around columns and over concrete lions to wash against the towers where the West's money was moved. The financial district: an hour ago it ran with rivers of men in gray wool and women in heels; now the streets, built on sunken ships and gold-rush garbage, were deserted — quiet except for a foghorn that lowed across the bay like a lonesome cow.