That Which Bites

chapter 1–STUTTER AND SCRATCH

AT THE PRE-ARRANGED TIME, Sister Ann and Goss scratched the secret knock on her new metal-enforced door carted away from the Japanese American Museum down the street. The original had succumbed to rust. Even knowing in her gut that the people standing outside were her friends, Poe had to fight the bile that rose from her throat.

“Breathe from the umbilical and exhale like you have all the time in the world,” the robust nun had told her time and again. She was breathing from the umbilical alright, but she was still gulping air like she’d just climbed Mt. Fuji directly after trekking the Inca Trail.

“No Nosferatu. No Nosferatu, please,” Poe prayed fervently to her parents. The creature from the silent classic film was the face she gave to the terror above ground. Seizing the nearest semi-automatic pistol, Poe unlatched the bolt and thought, The hell with Goss, that snail! I’ll put in the peephole myself.

She yanked open the door.

Sure enough, her most trusted friends, a nun and a giant, stood outside with patient grins on their weary faces. As usual they were literally armed to the end of days.

“Holy Jesus, girl, it took you six minutes to answer the door. That’s a record low,” drawled Goss, 10

Rono/That Which Bites

practically crawling inside because of his super-size-me height.

“Well, if you h-had put in a peep h-hole like you said, I would’ve let you in sooner,” Poe countered, disgusted by her stutter. She had been getting better for a while there. Now the h’s, w’s, and occasional p’s tripped her tongue ignominiously.

“Yes,” Sister Ann agreed with Poe, her sweat-stained wimple bobbing. “You’ve been promising to drill a peephole in this child’s door for nearly a month now. Que pasó? And Goss, even though Armageddon’s dropped its ugly face upon us, don’t use the Lord’s name in vain. At least not around me. You know how much it aggravates me.”

Goss bowed his head in exaggerated penitence.

“Sorry, Sister. Must’ve slipped my notice that you’re the last practicing Catholic in town. Next time I come, I promise to bring my best drill.”

Something was off. Poe could feel it. The three usually hugged like it was the last time given the cosmic odds against them. Goss insisted on open affection because he could not stand repressed feelings.

“Only a handful of us left,” he lectured often, directing his words to the fifty-five-year-old nun who preferred to fondle rosary beads to embracing. “On no account should we hold back sentiment because any day now one of us could get killed or worse, become blood cattle.”

The plump yet powerfully dense nun brought Poe a new waterproof pack with lots of pockets to store ammo. With a leather bandolier filled with shotgun shells crisscrossed around her shoulders and a heavy wooden cross dangling upon her chest, the Carmelite looked like a silver-haired bandit from Emiliano Zapata’s time. Her saintly countenance screamed purity and love, clashing most wretchedly with her 11

Rono/That Which Bites

soiled and blood-crusted uniform of eradication and death. Poe loved the nun with the dirty habit and a Tennessee twang but had always suspected that she wasn’t quite all there.

“Shoot it in the heart, girl!” the nun instructed fiercely on Poe’s first raid. “Shoot the dang thing in its Godforsaken heart! Do it now for heaven sakes!” The memory left a bad taste in her mouth.

Sometimes Sister Ann confused vampire killing with her beloved but dead religion. Instead of Holy Communion, the creepy crawlies left behind by the gray days received blessed bullets through the head and heart.

Goss, a six-foot-seven black man with a pro wrestler’s body, handed Poe Black Belt Jones, Rally Round the Flag Boys, and a bootleg Pixies concert

DVD – all rare gems . He knew how much she loved Gloria Hendry, Paul Newman, and especially the Pixies, which was one of her mother’s favorite bands along with the Clash and Sonic Youth.

“Thanks, Goss,” she said as she patted his bulky jacket. “This is a h-hard-to-find Paul Newman! Four more and my Newman collection w-will be complete.”

Goss taped a perfectly cut Boondocks strip from old Sunday funnies on Poe’s busy wall. The comic strip was growing on her. It served up history through the point of view of children with attitude. She didn’t particularly understand the dated political angle, but the jokes were hilarious anyway.

“Hmpf! I told you what I think of that nonsense,”

the nun said, gritting her teeth and fingering the cross hanging upon her chest.

“Yeah, Sister, I heard you.” He carefully smoothed the taped ends to get the bubbles out. Goss was a tad fastidious. “I heard you say that it was nothing more than a racist piece of propaganda. But 12

Rono/That Which Bites

Poe needs to be infused with something other than the still prevalent white pop culture in these dark times –

even if she is the last one of her kind. She’s got to feel some pride.”

“Like Black Mama, White Mama or the other gems you’re so fond of bringing her? In case you haven’t noticed, she’s not black. She’s all kinds of other complicated things, God help us! Her mother was Japanese and Filipino and let’s see…her father was Scot-Irish and Mexican or something difficult like that.” She squinted at Poe whose long and deep diagonal facial scar turned white from the attention.

“Exactly! That constitutes multiracial, and therefore she qualifies as an honorary sista!” he reasoned, looking at Poe who stood mutely as her friends tried to outdo each other. It wasn’t the first time the two clashed. The girl held up her hands and silently conveyed, “Don’t look at me!”

“And really, if she gets captured up there, they might declare she’s not white enough to be cattle. Her black hair, dark eyes, and curious features, not exactly Caucasian and not altogether ethnic, might just get her in trouble. She might end up changing bedpans and wiping ass for dying vamp snacks and incinerating corpses like I did.”

“At the risk of sounding like a cold-hearted bitch,” Sister Ann stated with much strain as she tried her hardest never to swear. “I’d rather Poe shove bodies in furnace chutes than be laid narcotized on a cot getting bled and molested by leeches.”

“A nun, envoy of the most high, sound bitchy and cold-hearted? Never!” said Goss with a rancorous undertone. “I suppose you’re right. It would be better for Poe to be a custodian, but seeing that she’s light-skinned and pretty, barring the scars – sorry Poe –

chances are they’ve already busted out a cot with her 13

Rono/That Which Bites

name Sharpied on the pillow. And if she’s ever unlucky enough to meet Trench, he’ll surely poke a hole through her head. He’ll spit blood into it to turn her into a vamp and add to his retinue of pretty people.”

There were two ways of turning humans into vampires. The speedier method involved pouring vamp blood through a hole in the skull. The second was through repeated biting over several days.

Sister waited for the flesh of her face to stop jiggling. So upset was the nun that her entire body shook. “Everyone’s up for grabs, as we all know,”

Sister Ann said levelly when her composure returned.

“According to my contacts, many farms have started milking their minority custodians as their white cattle die off. Even you, Goss, with your inky blackness aren’t safe.”

“I’ve always thought I looked blue-black myself, Sister.” His smile didn’t reach his eyes. Poe hated these moments when the subtleties of race and language divided her friends.

“Maybe these master vampires realize it’s not wise to have so many educated slaves running around.

They might revolt,” continued Goss. “This is California after all. Home of the black bear, Mexicans, movie stars, plastic surgeons, the tired, the weary, the huddled masses. I’ll be the last to go then since my skin’s so inky. The Last Chance Ration. Isn’t that right, Sister?”

Before Sister Ann could retort, the nun’s eyes bulged at the movie playing on Poe’s dented television.

Poe, who didn’t notice the nun’s discomfort until Goss nudged her to attention, bolted toward the coffee table and madly searched for the remote.

14

Rono/That Which Bites

“Hijo de puta!” the girl cried when she bumped her head on a hanging punching bag, bringing on a prickly headache.

The pile of DVDs, magazines, books, empty cans, and paper plates didn’t make the search any easier. Try as she might, the television wouldn’t turn off. The power button always got stuck. Her slim back shielding the screen couldn’t cover all of Tad Wanky’s endowments. The giant poster of a grinning open-shirt Jim Kelly directly behind the television seemed to be laughing at her mortification. She really shouldn’t have pinched the poster from the movie rental store next door, but she loved Kelly’s cotton candy hair so. Out of desperation, she resorted to yanking out the cord from the small generator.

“And how do you defend that one, Goss?” Sister asked sarcastically. “I suppose that’s more pop culture she needs to be exposed to?”

“Don’t look at me, Sis,” he said, waving the responsibility away. “She’s been watching that crap since she was eight – years before we ever found her.”

He cleared his throat, “The girl says she enjoys the background music.”

The two of them trained their accusing eyes on Poe, still guiltily clutching the remote control in her hand. At last they found something they could agree on.

“The m-music,” Poe said lamely, avoiding their disapproving look and cringing at her own speech impediment that sometimes came and went whenever it suited itself. Boku no shiri ni kisu siro, she thought, conjuring up her knapsack of Japanese curse words and coming up with a lame ‘kiss my ass.’

The nun was right about certain things, though.

The dialogue and storylines were pretty weak, and the men looked nasty. But those were the best things about 15

Rono/That Which Bites

dirty flicks because they made Poe laugh by grossing her out. For a minute or two, she could forget that everyone she knew or loved was dead. And no, she would not give up her movies as easily as the confiscated video games Sister claimed would damage her eyes and wrists.

Truth was Poe simply loved the Superflyish background music of certain films from the 1970s.

Later, she got into repetitive techno beats from really bad 1980s and 1990s San Fernando Valley-produced videos. She popped them in while she trained and read, to occupy all the years of dead silence living underground. It wasn’t because she was sex addicted.

On the contrary, the tapes never acted as a stimulant but were more like a boring commercial people watched because there wasn’t anything else on TV. In this case, she’d burned through all the movies worth watching.

“Anyway, here’s some Tommy Dorsey and Count Basie for you as promised,” Sister Ann said as she handed Poe the CDs. They were from the nun’s private collection. “Consider them an early birthday present.”

She would have listened to the emo and indie-rock bands her older brother Joseph used to like, but her friends would never take the time to sort through the mess in a cobwebbed record store to find her any. Even her mother’s late-1970s and early-1980s punk band favorites would have sufficed. Instead, Sister Ann and Goss tried to indoctrinate their own tastes upon her.

She smiled and accepted them for she found that Louis, Billie, and Ella weren’t so bad. In fact, they had a knack for improving her mood when life was in the toilet.

Not to be outdone, Goss excavated some Thelonius Monk and Coltrane from his jacket.

“A pre-present before your birthday bash.”

16

Rono/That Which Bites

They had differing views on how to civilize the girl and an unspoken rivalry that kept Poe wary of choosing between the unbranded survivors left she personally knew of. The only parenting skill they had in common was to outfit Poe with guns and ammo.

“Thanks for the goodies, Sister and Goss,” she said, perusing the CD covers capriciously.

Sister Ann once told her that love was the most powerful amulet against life’s travails. In a sense, she was right. Poe got another chance at life because two people loved her enough to teach her guerilla tactics.

Goss energized her with his zest to bring down the fanged powers-that-be. Sister Ann shared the dead aim secrets her family had passed down since the Civil War.

Fending for herself in an eerily silent city since she was eight years old gave her a skewed view of the world. Poe knew that love meant squat next to fear, hunger, and hate. Her bunker contained thousands of pilfered videos and DVDs, many of which were about love. Love soothed and so did friends. But they weren’t enough.

“How can I take Sister Ann’s advice when the woman of God stuffs three sawed-off double-barreled shotguns under her habit for a living? Preaching to me about love while staking hearts and decapitating vampire heads with a crazy smile on her face is too much,” she’d complain to the television when alone.

Besides, love could not kill Kaleb Sainvire and Quillon Trench, leaders of the two most powerful vampire factions in the city. Fear and hate, however, would do the trick. Poe was banking on those emotions for the courage to shoot their dead hearts, if she could only force herself to swallow her phobia of leaving her bunker and infiltrate their well-fortified domain.

17

Rono/That Which Bites

Unlike Sister Ann and Goss, she had never caught even a glimpse of these two master vampires. No matter.

“Trench has set up another blood bank on Sweatshop Alley,” Goss announced, taking off his jacket. “There’re about a dozen cattle, a handful of leeches, and two janitors – one of them’s my contact.

Time to clean up the filth.”

“What happened to your arm?” Poe asked, noticing for the first time his bandaged arm stained with blood. She’d never seen him injured in any way.

“It’s nothing,” he shrugged. “Just some canvasser trying to mark my building. I blew his head off before he could decide that he liked the place. Getting back to Trench, his blood farm will be destroyed today so get your gear ready.”

“Heard anything about Sainvire?” Poe asked quietly, a finger tracing her five-inch scar from forehead to mid-cheek. They only spoke of the master vampire living in the Central Library when they thought Poe was out of earshot.

“Nothing at all,” Sister Ann answered.

“We have to focus our energy on shutting down Trench’s newly sprouted farms. Right now,” Goss insisted.

“But Sainvire’s more dangerous, w-we ought to–”

“Not now,” Goss cut in. “Trench is priority one.

He’s the one with LAPD cops working for him.”

Trench had a thing about turning police officers and magazine-cover stick people into his personal blood brigade. The master vampire, an advocate of creating more vampires through old-fashioned hunt, bleed, and feed, was famous for thinking with his many appetites. Brawn and beauty were known to be his worst vices. At least he didn’t discriminate on that score. Anyone eye-catching, no matter the skin color, 18

Rono/That Which Bites

he would gladly add to his entourage. More than once he defied the Council’s decree of zero vampire creation.

“Sorry, Goss. You said to question everything, and that’s what I’m doing.” Poe stood her ground, her stubborn streak igniting. Even her stutter seemed to have taken a hike. “We’ve been on Trench’s trail for almost nine months now. Only makes sense to take another angle to throw some slack off our operation.

Trench is getting nervous. I mean, he’s planting random new farms around downtown to throw us off.

Doesn’t it make sense that one of them could be a trap?

Maybe it’s better to let things cool off and hound Sainvire for once.”

“Always good to voice your opinion, Poe,” Sister Ann said, patting her back lightly, patronizingly.

Briefly the nun met Goss’ eyes and an unspoken agreement was made between them. “But I agree with Goss. Quillon Trench is certainly more dangerous at this juncture than Sainvire.”

“How can that be when Sainvire was the one who came up with cattle milking?” Poe insisted, the back of her throat starting to hurt.

Kaleb Sainvire was the vampire who convinced the Council to ban the addition of new minions a few months after the confounding gray matter carried by the Pacific winds wreaked death and devastation, razing almost the entire human population on the spot.

As they were now the majority, the vampire underground came out of hiding, rejoiced, and feasted indiscriminately on the human populace that survived the Gray Armageddon. Sainvire, however, reported to the Council that the few humans that survived weren’t enough to quench the hunger of the new vampire realm. So he developed the self-sustaining process of systematically “milking the cattle”.

19

Rono/That Which Bites

“You’ll have to settle for getting Sainvire next time,” Sister said rather politely.

“Now’s not the time, Poe,” added Goss who sat cross-legged on the floor to be more level with the women.

Poe nodded, swallowing hard. She hated it when they didn’t include her in the decision- making.

“Don’t just hook your pepper spray on the side like that,” Sister loudly pointed out, shaking her head.

“Really irresponsible,” the nun muttered. “How’re you going to detach it if a leech attacks you?”

“I won’t be using pepper spray,” Poe muttered under her breath, shoving the spray in her pocket.

Shooting would be too easy for leeches. In many ways they were worse than vampires. Humans who did the bidding of vampires, including bleeding cattle and storing blood during the day, deserved to be pistol whipped and castrated at the very least.

“What was that you said?” Sister asked, cocking her head toward Poe.

“Just saying you’re right as usual, Sister.” Poe forced a mirthless grin and concentrated on packing incendiary materials more carefully into her new pack.

She could see nothing godly about the nun at that moment. A ruler-wielding school principal, yes, but Sister Ann was no sweet, old bride of Christ.

Goss gave her a “be patient” squeeze on the shoulder, which lightened Poe’s mood ever so slightly, but she was still sore at them. Her extremely tall friend could always be counted on to douse water onto heated moments.

“Now, Sister,” he began in a very eloquent TV

commercial voice. “Remember that it will be Poe’s 22nd birthday a few hours from now.”

20

Rono/That Which Bites

“Hmph,” was Sister Ann’s only reply. The smile that transformed her heavily lined face belied her grumpy pretense.

It had been nearly eight years since she had met Sister Ann and Goss who slowly coaxed her out of her safe underground world of cinematic fiction. Poe had already known how to read, write with both hands, view movies “borrowed” from the Black Yella Bruthas video store two buildings down, play video games, and forage for food during the day. Of course, she also knew a handful of Japanese, Spanish, and Tagalog words she had learned long ago from her irascible cousins who were probably all dead. And yes, she was good at hiding. Burrowing like an animal was how she survived without her parents all those years Goss and the Catholic nun introduced her to the life of vampire killing and cattle running. These activities gave her a smidgen of self-worth and fired up a palpable desire to seek revenge for all the years alone underground – with nothing but the replay of her parents’ and siblings’ deaths for company. The nun had to teach her to handle guns, distinguish between flashbang and fragmentation grenades, make bullets and bombs, and understand the evils of nudie films.

Rounding off her education, Goss had brought some proper jujitsu, tae kwon do, jeet kune do and a dollop of other no-holds-barred martial arts DVDs to learn from. The training was hard going since her bunker had limited space from wall-to-wall stacks of movies, books, toys, dead chia pets, and magazines.

Having had no sparring partners to practice difficult maneuvers with didn’t help either.

Goss, who was a tree compared to Poe and most everyone for that matter, was of no use as a partner as he could just sit there like Kareem and kick out his long legs at her stunted ass. Fortunately she had a sharp 21

Rono/That Which Bites

mind, keen imagination, and was a quick learner. Her senses were quick and shooting skills honed, all from years of playing video games. If Sister Ann and Goss hadn’t come along when they did, Poe believed that she would have lost the ability to speak as well as the will to live.

(((

Her mind often revisited what happened the first hours when the world became a cesspool of vampires.

Shortly after watching her brother and sister’s insides turn to mush outside the Museum of Neon Art atrium, puss oozing out of every orifice as they suffered morbid deaths, Poe had to endure her parents’ screams as they tried, futilely, to fend off a gang of starved, newly turned vampires. What a time to find out she was immune to the poison in the air.

“Run, Julia, run!” her mother shouted while overzealous bloodsuckers tapped every artery.

Hiding behind a deformed, glowing metal slab that had once been referred to as an acclaimed plug-it-in sculpture, Poe was far too small and unappetizing to be of interest to the sated undead as they tore her parents apart. Perhaps a lingering paroxysm of guilt kept them from making her into an after-dinner mint.

She ran and kept on running while the unfortunate folks around her convulsed their last breaths.

Theories abounded about what the Gray Armageddon could have been: The last world war.

Germ warfare gone awry. Alien crafts unloading their septic tanks. Who knew? The point was, nobody cared anymore. The survivors of the poison were too busy trying to fight off anemia from their narrow cots while blood was sucked from their veins intravenously every three days.

22

Rono/That Which Bites

Eight was a bad age to be left alone, especially since the bogeyman from Grimm’s tales actually walked the streets at night. She was living where the wild things were. Rabid, terrified dogs creeping out of their hiding places during the daylight hours to forage for food kept her on pins and needles. She was old enough to know that rabies could kill.

Downtown was mostly foreign to her, as she and her family had lived in the Sawtelle neighborhood of West Los Angeles, half an hour from downtown without traffic and ten minutes from the Santa Monica and Venice beaches that she could still vividly picture.

The Central Library was the only downtown site she knew with GPS preciseness as her parents had made a point to take the family there every other Saturday.

The whole family came downtown to attend a reception thrown for her mother, Beatrice, at the museum where her paintings were interspersed with neon lights depicting the seedy side of the city in a contemporary, loopy sort of way.

“It’s the type of exhibit that is so ludicrous that it is bound to be a hit,” her grandpa George had said.

Instead of having a fun night out, the gray clouds appeared and infected her brother Joe, her sister Sirena, and almost the entire population.

The holdovers couldn’t have left downtown even if they wanted as a permanent traffic jam created by survivors trying to escape by foot and automobile made the roads impossible. All the drivers could do was honk their horns and await an excruciating death.

It took her months to find a long-term refuge and feel a modicum of safety. In an obscure city preservation book she serendipitously read about a forgotten Cold War bunker under a nondescript three-story brick hotel in Little Tokyo. The isolation also 23

Rono/That Which Bites

brought on a not-so-unreasonable phobia of the outside world.

“You look green,” she’d say to her reflection on a chipped mirror. “Time to sunbathe on the roof and get some groceries.”

The Gray Armageddon killed off her family and friends, but vampires completed her imprisonment.

Caged and isolated, she learned to hate Sainvire and Trench.

Any information gleaned about the two came from the semi-lucid cattle they were able to rescue and from bitter custodians forced into post-apocalyptic slavery due to the hue of their skin, the size of their nose, and the shape of their eyes. A rift had opened between the two opposing heads of the city.

“Trench fancies himself a connoisseur of flesh. He has a weakness for perfect-ten women, and you know he has a thing for pigs because of their penchant for hitting first and asking questions later. An ideal force for a fickle vampire,” a tall, curly-haired smuggler named Morales who smiled too much told Poe when she was sixteen.

Goss and Sister had asked him and a fellow smuggler to bring Poe up to speed. He and Megan had both suffered as cattle. They were the lucky few who had escaped.

“To find Trench, all you have to do is follow a trail of be-mustached vampires and emaciated looking waifs that looked like they A-Ha’d their way out of a fashion magazine,” added Megan, a startlingly luminescent smuggler with guarded eyes and red hair.

She nearly gagged at the warm, fizzless root beer she’d been sipping.

“Sainvire’s another matter,” said Morales, massaging his temple. It was a tough thing trying to 24

Rono/That Which Bites

explain the powerful vampire in simple words, but he did it anyway.

“He’s cautious, logical, efficient. Our biggest danger. For the past ten years, the human holdouts were hunted and eventually herded into Union Station

– you know the cool passenger train depot near Chinatown. The Vampire Council and titled undead divided the cattle and took them to buildings around the downtown area that were snatched up by master vampires. They’re fed, watered, encouraged to squeeze out babies, and of course, used intravenously to satisfy the hungry vampos.”

With her face blanched of color, Megan added,

“The more important undead were able to hook up their own straw attachments. They feed directly on human sushi to savor the warm blood without the chance of contamination.”

“Sainvire was even nice enough to set up a vitamin regimen for human cattle with a large dose of iron tabs to stave off anemia. Other masters followed.

If the rumors are spot on, he came up with liver and onion Thursdays, too. He’s a true saint,” Morales fumed.

(((

Always fascinated by the deft fluidity of her friend, she watched Goss check and re-check his Uzi, armalite, and cadre of “small” guns. Poe’s mother and father had many friends who used to frequent their house, but none ever looked like Goss. It wasn’t just his height and muscular body that set him apart. It was his sense of deep loss.

“How many people could actually claim they found their soul mate?” Sister asked one day. Poe couldn’t even begin to explain what the term meant.

25

Rono/That Which Bites

The closest thing she could come up with was Westley’s relationship with Buttercup in The Princess Bride.

Goss used to be an attorney and the director of the regional Gay and Lesbian Alliance before the world teetered to an end. He watched his partner of many years bleed to death to feed Trench’s brood. Under a stupor similar to being gagged and drugged, Daryl lived the rest of his short life like a zombie. Two tiny punctures in the neck were potent enough to turn victims into drooling cattle for a year.

“Daryl died because some substance-addicted leech forgot to unplug the IV from his vein. He was literally sucked dry,” Sister had told Poe years ago.

“Perhaps the trauma of seeing his life mate die drip-by-drip shook Goss out of complacency. He escaped by hiding out in a wheelbarrow for the dead with Daryl’s corpse piled up with others until they were all thrown into the body pit on the outskirts of town. Crawling out of a pile of vermin and rotting remains, Goss rose from the pit vowing to avenge the death of his only love.”

Out on a rare daytime hunt, Poe was thrown to the street by Goss on their first meeting. She had no idea a human lived in the great emerald Eastern Columbia building in the old Broadway Theater District, let alone an ugly coarse-hair terrier that bit her ankle and a pathetic three-legged hound named Legs. Goss refused to leave home, an impressive art deco tower crowned by an enormous stopped clock, for a more secure hiding place.

“Do you have an extra bottle of holy water, Poe?”

Goss asked to lighten the awkwardness brought on by Tad Wanky and the subject of Sainvire.

“It’s in the fridge.”

Sister Ann insisted that they call the garlic and water concoction “holy water.” The term stuck. The 26

Rono/That Which Bites

nun never stopped trying to link God’s divine plan with the struggle against the new blood-letting order. It was no wonder that she sometimes suffered from mental episodes. Most garlic-related wounds proved to be fatal. The allicin in garlic reacted like plague to vampire flesh and prevented wound healing, causing eventual decay.

Poe stuffed her new pack with bullets filled with garlic oil supplements, two sturdy stakes that she hardly ever used for their dangerous inefficiency, a jagged Rambo knife, holy water in Windex spray bottles, and freeze-dried food. She wore around her neck a slender cigarette-shaped silver whistle, keys, a beaded rosary Sister Ann had given her, talismans, and all sorts of mostly useless gadgets.

Everyone knew crosses, Stars of David, fat Buddhas, and other emblems did nothing to vampires.

Such protection was simply movie lore thought up by the superstitious. She wore them anyway just to please her friend. And it was the same with the stakes.

Shooting vampire hearts with garlic marinated bullets was the short, uncomplicated version of staking the heart without getting too close. How could she go against the wishes of the good nun?

Contrary to old beliefs, a truly dead vampire didn’t implode into dusty nothingness. Their bodies remained intact but decomposed at a faster rate than a human cadaver.

“It takes about two days for the vamp to liquefy into sludge,” was one of the first things Goss had taught her. “Don’t get too freaked out if they are still looking at you after a kill. If the stares bother you, go ahead and chop off their heads.” Hence the meaty bone slicer in her pack.

27

Rono/That Which Bites

Poe stuffed extra bullets, clips, and dated candy bars in the side pockets of her dark green army cargo pants and kneeled to double-knot her Adidas sneakers.

“You really ought to wean yourself out of that compulsion,” said Sister Ann, who watched Poe with a frown. “It could cost you your life.”

“Yes, Sister,” the girl answered weakly. She swore under her breath, “Kuso baba.” Poe had always been paranoid about her shoelaces coming undone while in flight. It didn’t matter if the laces were double-knotted; she had to give them a tug to be sure.

“Don’t think I don’t know you’re cursing me in one of your people’s languages, Poe,” the nun said with bite. As if talking to the air, Sister Ann added,

“See that, God? The only thing she remembers about the language of her ancestors is filth.”

Once her Walther PPK, aptly named James, and her 9mm Beretta, the only two guns she could handle easily, were safely tucked in her black shoulder holster, Poe’s escalating heartbeat slowed. Back in the days when humans ruled, Poe would have looked like a typical kid: black t-shirt, olive army pants, and long hair in a disordered ponytail. Instead of going to a Radiohead or Death Cab concert, however, Poe and her friends were about to embark on their weekly raids.

While her companions re-checked their gear, Poe opened her battered Bad Batz Maru Velcro wallet and touched the picture of her parents and siblings to her lips. It was a nice shot of the family at the dinner table.

Her two older siblings, Joe and Sirena, were making throw-up faces, Poe was grinning and missing two front teeth, and her mother and father were pretending to gobble down food like hogs. Poe inherited her mother’s semi-wavy black hair, dark brown eyes, arched eyebrows, and slim but sturdy frame. Her father’s nose, full lips, dimples, and light skin that 28

Rono/That Which Bites

browned easily completed her looks. Poe remembered them very well. With reluctance, she placed the wallet in two protective zip-lock bags and slipped it in her back pocket. She murmured her usual prayer for courage, “Please don’t let them get me.”

(((

Poe was lucky to be young enough not to remember downtown Los Angeles in all its glory. The silence and emptiness of the streets didn’t depress her as it did her two companions.

Downtown was one big, looted disaster area, not at all like Sister Ann and Goss remembered it. The museums were the first to be ransacked by discerning undead, leaving nothing but the most puerile contemporary pieces for the slowpokes. The Jewelry District came a distant second. Free diamonds were nothing to scoff at, even in death. The staking of buildings came third. Many a vamp died a second death fighting over the Walt Disney Concert Hall, an undulating metallic symphony hall shaped like artichoke leaves.

“Yuppies started buying loft housing along these streets.” Goss shook his head, keeping his voice down.

“These rich clowns had buses re-routed to other streets, just so they could have extra street parking. And the poor bums. Baton-happy cops harassed them to fringes.”

“It’s the lack of familiar smells that gets me,”

Sister Ann changed the subject, her eyes glazed from remembrance. “I remember buying sliced mangos with lemon, salt, and chili along street corners. The old aroma of tamales, roasted buttered corn, and Italian sausage at the Grand Central Market destroyed my 29

Rono/That Which Bites

diet. Believe me, Poe, I was much heftier fourteen years ago.”

“Daryl and I would shop the flower and fashion districts racking our brains over where to have lunch –

Mexican food at Olvera Street, okonomiyaki in Little Tokyo, dim sum in Chinatown, or plain old smorgasbord at Clifton’s Cafeteria,” Goss said quietly.

“Now it’s just a matter of w-which expired can of rusty tasting SpaghettiOs to open,” Poe said, feeling like she ought to contribute but could remember nothing much about downtown.

The busy downtown of the past slowed to a stop, covering many of its buildings with tar to keep the sun out for their new tenants.

“Here we are.” Goss looked up indicating the early-20th century three-story brick building that later housed a sweatshop for clothing sold at Wal-Mart.

“Poe, you climb up the fire escape. Sister, you take the elevator, and I’ll take the stairs.” The two nodded.

They knew the drill. Sometimes it was just too easy.

“Watch out for leeches.”

Poe hated leeches almost as much as bloodsuckers. In exchange for keeping their blood intact, these human traitors agreed to be watchdogs over cattle during daylight hours. They supervised the intravenous bloodletting for delivery, making sure the bottles were dated and refrigerated properly.

As an extra perk, they could harass, rape, and torture any humans they wanted so long as they didn’t abuse the livestock too much and weaken their blood flow. They were also allowed to keep whatever loot they could find out on the street. These thugs were usually heavily armed, as they spent their days shooting at cans and vermin to keep from dying of boredom. As heavy drug users, leeches tended to be slow to react and easy to subdue. They glittered with 30

Rono/That Which Bites

the gold they’d pilfered off of skeletons and nearby loft units.

According to Goss, who had scoped the brownstone building for a week, six leeches patrolled the blood farm. After climbing the last rung, Poe hid as best she could on the ledge and waited for the signal.

Daytime raids were seldom in the favor of the one sneaking around, but it was either leeches during the daytime hours or vampires at night. She preferred to deal with her own kind.

She peeked inside a broken window and adjusted her eyes to the dim room within. Rows of mostly empty cots lined the walls. About half-dozen gaunt souls with unhealthy greenish hue slumped vacuously on thread-worn chairs. They were indifferent to others laying on stained beds connected to dextrose hoses, transferring their blood into plastic containers. One corpulent leech was busy crumbling dried marijuana leaves onto a torn page from the Book of Mormon, letting his partner do all the work. Every single finger was chocked with obnoxious diamond-encrusted horseshoe rings.

A particularly emaciated old man with a whoosh of thinning white hair sat pathetically on a bloodstained cot. He was having trouble inserting a needle in his vein, especially since a rock star-thin leech, high on glue, was screaming, “Old man, stick it in, or I will!”

The outburst only made the poor man shake even more, puncturing bruised flesh and bone rather than mangled veins. From the looks of him, they hadn’t given him his yearly stupor bite. Maybe he was too old.

Gritting her teeth hard, Poe protested under her breath, “The man should be sunning himself in Florida 31

Rono/That Which Bites

instead of giving his last blood reserve to seedy vampires.”

She had a fondness for older people, after all. She had seen Cocoon when she was twelve and couldn’t look back. The blood cattle reminded her of her own sweet grandparents. To see the elderly in such dismal conditions made her furious.

“Touch him and I’ll blow your head off,” Poe threatened in a whisper, screwing the silencer into the nozzle of her Walther PPK. She hadn’t salivated over killing a human quite like this before.

A flick of the wrist brought out a four-inch Faka knife from her sleeve. She deftly placed the spine of the knife between her right thumb and index finger in a pinch grip and kept her wrist stiff.

Poe thought of herself as disgustingly useless with lots of hang-ups and phobias but hardly any skills to boast of. However, there was one odd expertise she didn’t mind having. Whatever weapon she wielded seemed to find its mark.

“Dang, child,” said Sister Ann, who had been greatly confounded during a weapon rundown eight years ago. “You’ve got yourself a dead aim, and my Tennessean tutelage had piddly to do with it. I’ve questioned God daily since we found you why he left such an innocent lamb in a den of fiends. Now I know he didn’t leave you entirely without a skill.”

A scream reverberated from the floor below, momentarily obstructing the ranting of both the skinny leech with sparkling studs in his ears and the pathetic apologies of the old man. Chubby Toker paused, mid-lick of sealing his spliff. His white tongue and swampy teeth indicated that the man had given up brushing long ago.

With a deep breath, Poe snapped her left wrist and simultaneously fired the gun with her right. The blade 32

Rono/That Which Bites

trekked on with force, burying itself in the fat leech’s neck while the bullet caught the emaciated leech in the temple. Before he even clutched his neck, the thin man toppled onto the whimpering cattle while his partner fell, face down, onto his crumbled loco weed.

“Sometimes it’s hella great to be ambidextrous,”

she said under her breath.

Poe unsheathed a second gun and climbed in. She put the slim end of her gun to her lips, silencing the stunned human cattle as she ambled toward the door.

“F*ck,” she muttered with annoyance. She hadn’t seen the third leech sleeping on one of the cots and clutching an open canister of rubber cement until the old cattle pointed at him with a shaky finger.

Poe placed one of her guns on the floor and drew a six-inch jagged knife from her belt – the one she referred to as Rambo’s Own that was given to her by Sister Ann as a birthday present. Without flinching, she yanked the unconscious glue sniffer by his oily hair and sliced his neck from ear to ear until his gold chains slid one by one into the gaping crevice.

In a hurry, Poe approached the portly toker clutching at his throat. She quickly pulled out her throwing knife from his neck. The thin wound oozed like lava flow, yet the man still lived. With a grunt, Poe wiped the small blade on his filthy shirt, placed an Adidas foot on the pothead’s throat, and put all her weight on it. The cracking sound disturbed her, but she waved the feeling away.

“F*cking leech,” she muttered, picking up her gun and turning to the old man. “C-collect your things and get everyone downstairs.” She had a terrible compunction to kick herself for stuttering.

Mayhem continued on the floor below. The sounds of scraping furniture and large objects thrown 33

Rono/That Which Bites

against the wall compelled Poe to hightail down the stairs to investigate.

“Mom, please let Sister Ann and Goss be alright,”

she prayed, gripping her weapons mercilessly.

Sister Ann was down, her stained habit hiked up to the knees, exposing lightning feelers of blue and purple varicose veins. An enraged bruise quickly spread its red-blackness over her forehead. Her sawed-off shotguns lay ineffectual beside her on the floor.

The sight of the indomitable and seemingly indestructible nun on the floor was a stab at Poe’s lungs which seemed to plunge to her stomach. Her organs took further nosedives when a halfdead massaging his knuckles spotted her from the other side of the room.

Sister put up a hell of a fight.

Before she could even raise her guns to the daywalker, something long and eel-like snaked up to snatch the guns from her hands. Fishy slime passed over her flesh. When Poe realized what the pink tentacle was, she nearly fainted, a first in her eight years of cattle rustling.

The tongue tossed her weapon recklessly to the floor. She’d heard of certain vampires with peculiar abilities such as flying, crawling on walls, and superspeed, but never one who possessed a tongue like pulled taffy. Poe shuddered at the anomaly and wondered what other grotesqueness was in store for her.

“Ah, a girl,” the creature said with a smile once he retracted his tongue. “I thought this nun was my boon for the day. Everyone’s itching to get their hands on pain-in-the-ass rustlers who’ve been stealing our cattle.

Come here, lovely, so I can inspect that whopper scar of yours.”

34

Rono/That Which Bites

The redhead vampire had been turned in his forties. His earlobes proved to be more interesting than his bland face. Tattooed on each lobe in black ink was an iron cross. The oversized jersey he wore sported a Public Enemy logo in the center.

Great, thought Poe. A neo-Nazi that listens to rap.

Poe’s eyes flickered from the vampire’s eyes to his ear. The man nodded in understanding. “Oh, don’t worry about my tats. They’re just for effect. Fads borne out of boredom among day managers. And this city is so damn boring with everyone interesting drugged out of their f*cking minds. Even rape has gone stale like the rotten breath of these cattle,” he said, indicating the two slumbering women in crusty PJs.

Do not stutter. Not now. Please.

“How do you do that thing with your tongue?”

“Dunno. But my tongue’s become superdooper long after I turned. Cool, huh? Would’ve been cooler if my little man got the extender power, too. Shoulda seen this guy I met last year. His eyeball balloons and can actually lift him up to places. Almost as good as flying.”

Poe repressed a shiver. “Nice sweatshirt you have there,” she said, carefully enunciating each syllable in her husky voice. She swallowed nervously when the man began to walk toward her. “My cousins liked old school hip-hop,” she lied.

“So do I. There’s nothing better than Slick Rick, NWA, and Too Short.” He cracked a sweet smile once again and traced the scar on her face. Sheer will alone kept Poe from turning tail. “Too bad about this. You’re such a beauty, too.”

“Yeah, it’s just too f*cking cruel,” she concurred.

In a blink, Poe snapped a knife from her left wrist and buried it into the vampire’s ear. His scream died in his throat when Poe took a step back and let him have two 35

Rono/That Which Bites

thunderous kicks in the groin. Before she could embed her other wrist knife into his heart, the poser-Nazi snaked his tongue to coil around Poe’s arm.

The wet, sandpapery feel of raw muscle holding her arm hostage more than disgusted her, but she ignored it.

“Ou soopid mutt itch,” he croaked, unable to speak ably with his tongue far removed from his mouth.

“Uh hmm,” Poe nodded. “All that and worse.”

Poe yanked the grip of flesh around her arm until the day vamp’s head wrenched forward. Angrily he pulled back and uncoiled his tongue for some slack.

Reaching behind with her free hand, she extracted Rambo’s Own from her back sheath and sliced off his tongue in one stroke.

She shrugged off a five-pound lump of tongue and threw it in his face. Black ooze poured from his mouth.

His animated eyes flashed with a mix of fear and undiluted loathing as he backed away and tripped on Sister Ann’s shotguns. Desperate to end the ghastly moment, Poe picked up her weapons and shot the vampire in the head and heart. The garlic-oiled bullets destroyed his vampiric immune system. Nazi man died a very painful second death, which suited Poe just fine.

“Sorry, Sister. I gotta find Goss,” she told the unconscious nun. Left with little choice, Poe sped downstairs in search of her friend.

The blood farm was too quiet.

“If they have another day vamp then we’re really screwed,” Poe muttered quietly.

She found him taped flat upon the cot with his extensive legs dangling to the floor. The noise the bed made while he struggled against some very steadfast duct tape was loud enough to wake the sleeping vampires in the basement. Two leeches lay dead by the 36

Rono/That Which Bites

door, no doubt stabbed to death by her friend. Goss’

janitor informants blinked at her from the ground not far from where the murdered bodies lay. They were likewise duct taped around the wrist and ankles and gagged.

“Quiet, Goss,” she said, peeling the tape from his mouth. “I’m here now.” With a few strokes of her blade, Goss sat up and unpeeled his bonds, wincing as his body hairs stuck to the tape. He gave Poe a powerful whack on the back and collected his weapons. He quickly freed the janitors who emptied bedpans, fed cattle, and cleaned up after tweaker leeches.

“I’ll make it to your birthday yet,” he said, shaken at being caught and bound. “Where’s Sis?”

“Upstairs. She’s unconscious but alive.”

“What about the daywalker with the tongue?”

“I killed him.”

“Good on you, kid,” he grinned. “I’m very proud.

Now we gotta take out the vamps downstairs then get Sister. Javier and Reuben, look in on Sister, will ya?

And get all the kids up and ready to skedaddle from this hell hole.”

Pull yourself together! Poe berated silently. She followed the yoga breathing exercises Sister Ann had taught her, breathing as deeply as she could, holding her breath, exhaling slowly through her teeth while they made their way to the basement.

“You first, Poe,” Goss instructed after she put on her headlamp.

Poe hated wearing it because in all of the vampire movies she had seen, no Dracula killers ever wore nerdy mining torches on their foreheads. Remember, they’re hard to wake up.

As soon as Goss stretched his on, the two moved inside with weapons ready to fire. Three vampires were 37

Rono/That Which Bites

reposing on queen-size beds. Poe quickly claimed sleeping beauty, the closest to the door, by pointing the nozzle of her silencer to the woman’s chest and pulling the trigger. The undead’s longlashed eyes fluttered open in mute annoyance until true death descended.

Goss passed by a corpse that was so hairy, he looked more like the Wolf Man. From his pack, he took out an axe that quickly descended on the hairball’s neck.

“Hurry up so we can get out of here.” He took out the big flashlight slung in his belt and double-checked closets and niches. “Head’s up,” he said, tossing a six-inch stake at Poe.

Poe spiked the heart of what would have been Sister Ann’s kill with a weapon the nun would have used.

“I don’t have to recite the Lord’s Prayer, do I?”

she asked, confounded. “Cause I’m stumped after

‘…who art in heaven...’”

“Nope.” He hewed the head of Poe’s kill just in case. He smirked at the sound of head hitting the floor.

“Just make sure to hack off my head if one of these bastards ever bites me.”

The two doused the basement with holy water until the place stunk like garlic marinade.

The execution took less than five minutes. Typical vampires needed considerable effort to waken during the day. It made killing them a cinch in the daytime.

The partners made their way to the first floor and were greeted by a ragtag group of cattle in hospital gowns ready to follow a groggy Sister Ann who had taped up the mouths and hands of two very nervous leeches found hiding in the attic. Two custodians, one Latino and the other Thai, wearing matching blue overalls shook hands with Goss.

38

Rono/That Which Bites

“My hand’s still shaking, my friend,” said the man named Javier, who was only a few inches taller than Poe. “Ten years of this shit because I got Montezuma’s nose and dusky skin. I don’t know how to thank you all.”

“There’s a halfdead missing,” Sister blurted out.

“Javier here tells me you were all tied up by a female halfdead. Any ideas where she could be?”

“No, Sister,” Reuben, a tall gaunt Thai American fellow with sad droopy eyes answered. “She must’ve snuck out, maybe to get reinforcements.”

“Let’s get out of here pronto,” Sister said, breathing heavily and shooing the dazed cattle to the door. She was nauseous herself from the blow to her head.

(((

The nun had the urge to slap the unfortunate heaps of humanity until they gave a good enough imitation of a live person. Instead, Sister Ann took out a bag of protein bars and handed them to the nearest lucid cattle to distribute as she prodded them outside the building.

“Jesus, save us,” Sister muttered when she spied a hugely pregnant cattle wearing a stained hospital gown. Her backside dotted with bedsores was exposed for all the world to see. The nun wiggled a voluminous slip from under her habit and stepped out of it. The slip used to be pristine white; now it was dirty-water gray.

Quickly she put the slip over the pregnant woman’s head and secured it on top of her belly.

“The rate these goons are going, future children will all be fathered by contaminated, hophead leeches,”

commented Reuben. “And the kicker is every single Ritalin tab’s expired.”

39

Rono/That Which Bites

“That’s all we need, more trash slavers with ADHD,” said Goss.

The trek to the edge of Main and 2nd Street by foot took longer than expected because some of the cattle could barely walk. Two semi-tranquilized leeches connected by rope to Goss’ muscular shoulders were sometimes tugged by force to keep them moving. The designated intersection was at the clearest street where a driver could actually maneuver through the zigzag of abandoned cars. They halted before a battered blue pickup truck, blocked by a heavily dented Harley and a shiny, completely out-of-place guacamole-green moped.

“C’mon, get up there,” Goss said firmly but quietly. The buildings had eyes and the missing day vamp could have been following them. He assisted those who couldn’t lift themselves onto the truck bed.

True to their name, the cattle filed in the back of the truck without resistance. Pitiful though they appeared, Poe couldn’t find it in her heart to ridicule them. They were snake-bit Gumbys for vampires to mold and bend at their choosing. Very few defied the venom by shaking off its effects within days to a few months instead of the usual year.

The leeches that had once abused the cattle now had to suffer being sat on like benches by derrieres not completely shielded by hospital gowns. Deflated though the tires looked, they were able to chug along to the team’s satisfaction. Sister Ann hopped on her Harley that had been muted and took the lead, shotgun resting on the crook of her arm. Goss drove the truck and Poe followed in her Vespa, automatically switching on a movie in her head.

“I don’t want a jackhammer between my legs,”

Poe had complained to Sister, who was insistent she choose a proper Honda or Harley motorcycle.

40

Rono/That Which Bites

A Vespa, on the other hand, had footrests perfect for easy cruising. The green model she chose had a basket and plenty of storage space for snacks and weapons. Besides, the Vespa dampened her irrational fear of her shoelaces getting caught in the motorcycle spokes.

With everlasting traffic blocking every which turn, the caravan took a while to reach 4th Street at the Los Angeles River. Poe insinuated herself into Cool Hand Luke, where Paul Newman was having an egg-eating contest. Poe pictured herself among the prisoners, banging on the table and screaming, “Go, Luke, go!!! Swallow them eggs!”

Daydreaming was a dangerous habit to have in the cattle smuggling business, as Poe was well aware but often indulged in. “Grow eyes on the back of your head for the buildings have many spies,” warned Sister Ann.

A voice in her head warned, Be vigilant. There are others. But as usual, she ignored the voice that often saved her hide.

She failed to notice two black blurs that kept about 50 meters behind the slow procession. Poe could have easily spotted them had she not been lollygagging. After about an hour, midway across a Los Angeles River bridge linking downtown to East L.A., the caravan stopped. A beige carpool van backed up a few feet from the truck, and a heavily armed man and woman emerged.

Sister Ann blessed both newcomers with the sign of the cross and kissed them, her left hand still holding the shotgun upright.

“You cattle, get down now!” Goss ordered, effortlessly lifting the cattle nearest the rear. Poe turned off her Vespa and helped the disoriented, stiff-limbed humans down.

41

Rono/That Which Bites

“We could only bring one van today, but I see that won’t be a problem,” the built, bowlegged man by the name of Sam Morales laughed, amused at the amount of people crammed in the truck. As usual, his dark, perfectly barbered hair was gelled for a Saturday night excursion. He air-punched Goss, who was about seven inches taller than him, and he nodded at Poe, throwing her a smile that made her feel awkward. It was as if he knew she watched those kinds of movies. For ex-cattle, he was sure bursting with exuberance.

Poe had never really had a conversation with Morales, not because he was a terrible guy; it was just that he looked way too nice to be a breather, and he knew it. Dressed like a realtor replete with polished Italian shoes, Morales looked like he was off to a business lunch and not a cattle pick-up. His suggestive smile and confusing flirtatiousness intimidated her.

And truthfully, she didn’t want to appear the geek by stuttering a reply to his many questions. So she left the relationship with the dark charismatic man at a minimum, merely nodding and saying yes or no. Also, she had been warned by Goss and Sister Ann not to ask too many questions about cattle smuggling.

“H-hiya, Meg,” Poe greeted with a smile. Her friend was quite plucky in a quiet, steady way. She loved the serious redhead with bulging triceps to death.

She could always be relied upon to transfer refugees to safe havens all over the state.

“Hey, Poe,” Megan said with a grin as she hugged Poe. She looked tall and lean in her jean overalls. “Did you get a chance to watch Freaks and Geeks yet?”

“Yeah, funny stuff, but I forgot your DVDs.”

“Don’t worry about it. I have three sets at home,”

she winked, scratching her freckly nose. The woman tanned in freckles.

42

Rono/That Which Bites

Pico Rivera, a city southeast of downtown Los Angeles, was where Megan lived with five other smugglers. They turned the ramshackle and almost non-existent Pio Pico Mansion, the historic home of the first Mexican Governor of California, into a halfway house where rescued cattle stayed to recuperate for a few days. Afterwards they exported the breakouts to real country farms where they could shake off the vampires’ yearly bite and begin a new life in a closer-to-normal environment.

Even Poe, Goss, and Sister Ann weren’t told where those communities were located. As cattle rustlers and sometime vampire hunters, their jobs weren’t exactly the safest. They risked capture, torture, and mauling by vampires, leeches, or wild dogs alike.

And similarly, Sam and Megan remained blissfully ignorant of the three’s whereabouts downtown.

When the human cattle were safely squeezed inside the van and the leeches flat on the floor as footstools, Megan took out a tiny box from her pocket and handed it to Poe.

“Happy 22nd birthday tomorrow, Poe.”

“You remembered,” Poe muttered, reddening. She opened the little box containing tiny peridot earrings.

She thanked her friend with a hug, even though she wanted to throw the useless present on the ground and stomp on it.

“Figured it’ll match your moped there,” she said, indicating the avocado Vespa with her bright eyes, barely refraining from laughing.

Poe frowned, flinging her friend an affected smirk. “Now I’m dead certain that you’ll never get to p-pierce my ears in this lifetime.” The redhead had been on her case about poking holes in her virgin earlobes. That was one thing Poe was sure would never happen. She didn’t like unnecessary pain.

43

Rono/That Which Bites

“No one told me it was your birthday,” Morales complained, giving Megan a sharp look only intimate friends or lovers would engage in. “I suppose this sack of garlic will have to do until we meet again, Poe.”

Poe’s light-hearted demeanor changed to serious again. She mustered a ‘thanks’ and stuffed the sack of stinking bulbs in her basket. She had always wondered if Megan and Sam had a relationship that was more than a professional one.

“What, no hug?” Morales flung his arms wide, offended. For a grown man, he sure pouted quite often.

Poe dropped her pack with a sigh and gave the pushy man a tepid pat-pat hug. Morales, having none of that, gave her a tight bear squeeze that lingered a little too long.

“Our little smuggler is a woman now,” Morales declared, rubbing her back and adding, “And quite a woman she is, too.” The look he gave Poe made her ears burn and her nostrils flare as his eyes lingered on the scar that began on the left side of her forehead and crossed over to her right cheek. Brashly, his gaze dipped lower to her chest. All she could think of were those cheesy swinger flicks from the 1970s starring chest hair and gold chain guys like Bam Boozle and Ram Martini.

Megan pried her friend from Morales’ grip, saying, “Do I have to douse you with ice water, Sam?”

Poe so wanted to chew out the presumptuous Morales if only she could utter a stutter-free sentence, but Sister Ann interrupted.

“A halfdead is missing from the farm.”

Everyone quieted down.

“I hope these sun-proof vamps aren’t growing in numbers,” Megan said, fingering the silver cross of the rosary the nun had given her, and she unconsciously rubbed it against the fang bite scar on her neck. “Last 44

Rono/That Which Bites

week, I was followed by one. If Morales hadn’t been there to shoot the bastard, the HQ would’ve been compromised.”

“We have to discuss a different pickup route. We can never be sure who’s watching and who’s following.”

At Goss’ words, everyone looked at each other.

All operations would have to be suspended at least a month for precautions. A new route would need to be planned and debris cleared strategically. They would have to stealthily execute the plans with precision and without alerting enemy eyes. Poe couldn’t help but look over her shoulders and feel malevolent eyes staring back. She should’ve listened to that pesky voice in her head for just then a peroxide-haired day vamp and her reed thin companion emerged from behind an overturned truck.

Poe reached for her Beretta, alerting the others.

Sister Ann cocked her shotguns. Goss, Megan, and Morales unslung their semi-automatics.

“I wouldn’t shoot us, if I were you,” said the blonde vamp with overkill makeup and earth mother hips. “None of your guns have silencers on them. One bango and poof, a whole buncha sun deads are gonna rain down your rickety van over there.”

“I don’t think that’ll happen,” Goss said. Can’t you hear gunfire all over the city? Your leeches are bored, and they’re shooting up old skeletons.”

“You have a point there, brother,” said the femvamp. “You’re too smart to go back to being a janitor. We’re just gonna have to drain you. I’m sure Trench and Sainvire won’t mind since you’re a threat to our way of life. Big guy like you ought to be enough for the two of us. We’ll even overlook your skin color since we haven’t had a human kill in years.”

45

Rono/That Which Bites

“Just you try, Elvira,” said Goss, gripping his semi tighter.

“But getting back to the point, how do you know we didn’t bring reinforcements?

“Because you two don’t exactly strike me as being very bright,” said Sister Ann.

“I heard about you, nun. You’re a pest. And if you think Romeo and I are alone, then why don’t you take a shot at us right now?”

Sister’s eyebrows furred. She couldn’t take the chance.

“So this is how it’s done,” said the toothpick of a vampire before Sister Ann could reply. “These rustlers take ’em outta the city from this bridge.”

“A black, a bean, a nun, a redhead, and a girl mutt. These are the people that’ve been stealing our livestock, Romeo,” commented the undead with wide hips. “How pathetic is that?”

Romeo inched toward the van, opened the door, and looked over the cattle inside until he chose the pregnant one. He helped her down the van like an anorexic gentleman. “Very pathetic, Charlene.”

“Leave her be,” said Sister Ann in her harshest Mother Superior voice.

“You talkin’ to me, nun?” he said, shaking his head. “I could strangle you with your rosary, you know.”

“Not before I scatter your skinny ass with my bullet,” said Goss.

Romeo smiled before punching the pregnant woman in the stomach and jumping back as bullets flew around him. He and Charlene skipped from one stranded car to another like hopped up ballerinas, dodging bullets as they moved.

Sister Ann helped the whining cattle off the ground and into the van. The woman had wet herself.

46

Rono/That Which Bites

“Morales, Megan,” Sister yelled over the din of gunfire as she slammed the van door closed. “Get these people out of here now!”

Megan’s eyes widened with fear when the skinny dead brashly landed next to Goss from five cars away and smacked him on the head before disappearing in a blur. She didn’t want to be taken as cattle again so she dropped in the driver’s seat and started the engine.

“Sister–” began Morales.

“I don’t need your lip today. Do as I say!” She waited until the van drove off before turning back to deal with the Cirque du Freak vampires.

Goss’ arm muscles bulged as he rained fire over the halfdeads who were obviously toying with them.

Sister glanced at Poe. The girl’s sidearms were down to her side. She’d stopped firing altogether, her eyes carefully following Charlene’s every move. Inhaling deeply, Poe raised her Beretta and fired once. The haze that was Charlene slumped face down on the roof, writhing for a few seconds until her body stilled.

Sister felt a chill through her body. She’d always thought the girl was an instinctive shooter, but hitting a vampire that was a mere blur with one bullet in the heart should have been impossible.

“Charlene,” cried Romeo who watched his partner get killed three car roofs away. He looked at Poe, baring incisors that grew three inches in length. He leapt, easily dodging Goss’ indiscriminate fire. The giant’s clip was nearly empty. The cheeky vampire landed in front of Goss, yanked his semi-automatic from his hand so hard that the strap gave way. With a grunt, the vampire slugged Goss in the face until he slammed against Sister’s Harley.

“F*ck!” Romeo screamed when Sister’s shotgun blast hit. His right shoulder hissed from the garlic burning its way into his flesh like acid. Pissed and high 47

Rono/That Which Bites

on undead adrenaline, he jumped into the air with the intention of squishing the nun like a spider.

The downing of Poe’s colleagues happened faster than her eyes could register, but when she saw the vampire leap to crush Sister Ann, her nostrils flared and all concentration went to exterminating the dead once and for all. She fired twice, shattering the vampire’s head and puncturing his neck. Romeo fell square on Sister Ann. By the time Poe untangled the vampire from her, the nun was drenched in vampire sludge.

“No communication for a month,” said Goss when he came to, his cheekbone and eye swollen already.

“Don’t go to your homes. Hide in other buildings and basements, the ones where we hid canned goods and such. Do this for a month. Assume we’re tracked.”

“We’ll celebrate your birthday on the fourth week Poe,” said Sister Ann.

“We’ll bring weevil-free cake mix and we’ll have a party.”

“Promise?” asked Poe, dreading being alone downtown for four weeks.

“We promise,” said Sister, embracing Poe voluntarily for once. “God bless you, child.”