By Blood We Live

"What makes you think three will do it-even if they're all heart shots?"

"You only need one."

The bad feeling jumps a notch.

"Why?"

He looks at me and blinks. Then nods. "Well, each has a point made from a piece of the Cross, Mr. Pagano. We were lucky to get even that much. It's hidden under three floors and four tons of tile in Jerusalem, you know."

"What is?"

"The Cross. You know which one."

I blink. "Right. That's the last thing he needs in the heart."

"Right."

"So all I've got to do is hit the right spot."

"Yes."

"Which means I need practice. How much time do I have?"

"A week."

I take a breath. "I'm assuming you-and He-know a few good crossbow schools, ones with weekly rates."

"We've got special tutors for that."

I'm afraid to ask. "And what do these tutors usually do?"

"Kill vampires."

"And you need

me when you've got a team of them?"

"He'd spot them a mile away. They're his kids, you might say. He's been around 2000 years and he's had kids and his kids have had kids-in the way that they have them-you know, the biting and sucking thing-and they can sense each other a mile away. These kids-the ones working for us-are ones who've come over. Know what I mean?"

"And they weren't enough to throw off the-the 'balance.'"

Now he laughs. "No, they're little fish. Know what I mean?"

I don't really, but I nod. He's beginning to sound like my other uncle-Gian Felice-the one from Teaneck, the one with adenoids.

Know what I mean?

I go home to my overpriced stucco shack in Sherman Oaks and to my girlfriend, who's got cheekbones like a runway model and lips that make men beg, but wears enough lipstick to stop a truck, and in any case is sick and tired of what I do for a living and probably has a right to be. I should know something besides killing people, even if they're people the police don't mind having dead and I'm as good at it as my father wanted me to be. It's too easy making excuses. Like a pool hustler who never leaves the back room. You start to think it's the whole world.

She can tell from my face that I've had one of those meetings. She shakes her head and says, "How much?"

"I'm doing it for free."

'No, Anthony, you're not."

"I am."

"Are you trying to get me to go to bed with your brother? He'd like that. Or Aaron, that guy at the gym? Or do you just want me to go live with my sister?"

She can be a real harpy.

"No," I tell her, and mean it.

"You must really hate me."

"I don't hate you, Mandy. I wouldn't put up with your temper tantrums if I hated you." The words are starting to hurt-the ones she's using and the ones I'm using. I

do love her, I'm telling myself. I wouldn't live with her if I didn't love her, would I?

"And I live on what while you're away, Anthony?"

"I'll sell the XKE?"

"To who?"

"My cousin. He wants it. He's wanted it for years."

She looks at me for a moment and I see a flicker of-kindness. "You in trouble?"

"No."

"Then you're lying or you're crazy but anyway it comes down to the same thing: You don't love me. If you did, you'd take care of me. I'm moving out tomorrow, Anthony Pagano, and I'm taking the Jag."

"Please.…"

"If you'll charge for the work."

"I can't."

"You

are in trouble."

"No."

How do you tell her you've got to kill a man who isn't really a man but wants to be one, and that if you do God will forgive you all the other killings?

She heads to the bedroom to start packing.

I get the case out, open it, touch the marbleized surface of the thing, and hope to hell that God wants a horny assassin because I'm certainly not seeing any action this night or any other before I leave for Rome, and action does help steady my finger. Which Mandy knows. Which every woman I've ever been with knows.

When I get up the next morning, she's gone. The note on the bathroom mirror, in slashes of that lipstick of hers, says, "I hope you miss my body so bad you can't walk or shoot straight, Anthony."

We do the instruction at a dead-grass firing range in Topanga Canyon. My tutor is a no-nonsense kid-maybe twenty-with Chinese characters tattooed around his neck like a dog collar, naked eyebrows, pierced tongue, nose, lower lip. He's serious and strict, but seems happy enough for a vampire killer. He picks me up in his Tundra and on the way to the canyon, three manikins (that holy number) bouncing in the truck bed, he says, "Yeah, I like it-even if it's not what you'd think from a

Buffy re-run or a John Carpenter flick-you know, like that one shot in Mexico. More like CSI-not the Bruckheimer, but the Discovery Channel. Same way that being an investigative journalist isn't as much fun as you think it'll be-at least that's what I hear. All those hours Googling the public record. In my line of work, it's the tracking and casing and light-weapons prep. But you know more about that than I do, Mr. Pagano. Wasn't your dad-"

"Sounds like you've been to college, Kurt," I say.

"A year at a community college-that's it. But I'm a reader. Always have been."