BAD COMPANY

They pulled into a multi-level  garage and jumped out. Papa was already adept at the valet parking thing. Soon they were down on the street and marching along. Annie liked the attention. She felt at home. He was The Shaky Hand Man made manifest, only he wasn't shaky and she liked his looks. How many six year olds get to go slaughtering with their daddy? Oh, look at the beautiful hotel! Let's go in, Papa. I bet there're loads of sweaty bitches and bastards that we could eat in there. So they did. He bought her a  stuffed animal in the gift shop, a cute, cuddly, fat, little bear. She named him Buddy. And thirty minutes later, they way-laid the seventyeight year old granny woman who sold it to them as she was leaving the premises. They shared her for dinner. Old people's blood (the life actually) is all right, but she craved something jazzier. He took her into a shuttered department store. It wsasn't necessary to sublimate. He had this thing with doors and locks. They just seemed to cooperate with him.  And after about three quarters of an hour she had a shopping bag filled with the latest in obnoxious kids' wear. The guard agreed that all the choices were first rate. But then again, what else could he say, being the reluctant guide to these demons and all? She did the rest by herself. She jumped up to 'kiss' him just before exiting, but ripped out his throat instead. His blood was a little better, somewhat thick with salami and cheap cold cuts, but satisfying just the same. Papa didn't want any. She offered, but he politely demured.  Sure, she felt a bit bad about the greasy mess on the floor and all. But Papa said that's what the cleaning staff is for. So they laughed and ran out onto the street. They spent the rest of the night frightening whores on Arch Street. Maybe they drained a little off one or two. I can't remember. A little later they threw blood balloons at taxi cabs parked along The Avenue of the Arts. They must have drained one or two. Yeah, the blood must have come from the whores. I hope it was clean. One cabbie jumped out to confront them. He started waving his finger and yelling in Urdu or Punjabi or something like that. Papa just went into his act. He stared deep into the cabbie's eyes and levitated eight inches up off the ground.  The man shit himself right then and there. He threw up a little bit too. This made Papa sad, for he recalled fine times spent with a certain nobleman at his palace on the Gangeatic Plain approximately two or three thousand years ago, so he gave the man eight or nine Benjamin Franklin portraits and flew away. Annie clapped her hands and skipped off to join him.  I don't know what the grandchild of the seventeight year old woman thought when their grandmother failed to meet them at the car for her ride home. I don't know what the poor, little wife of the guard thought. But these two were a new breed of vampire, at least for Philadelphia. And to my mind, things were bound to change....