That Which Bites

chapter 7–THE BICYCLE

POE WRESTLED WITH DOGGED images of the past days that would not give her rest. When she fell into an uneasy sleep, she did not quite reach the peace of mind she was after. The dream was the same thread of faces and events that made up an epic six-hour movie, full of beheadings, blood drinking, and fornicating nuns with breasts like Shady Melons.

She dreamed the night and day away, feeling more exhausted with each breath. Her body screamed to be woken at the slightest excuse.

Wake up!

The familiar voice she’d tagged as her utterly reliable half interrupted her dream. At once, Poe quickly snapped out of her slumber and sat up. The voice had never let her down before. Blinking awake, she barely registered a man hurrying out of the room before he completely disappeared.

“Who, who the heck was that?”

At first she thought it was Sainvire, but the man was inches shorter. The realization gave her a troubling feeling. She waved away the disturbing events from the night before and headed straight for the bathroom, taking her clothes, weapons, and pack with her.

In less than ten minutes, Poe came out decked in her vampire executioner outfit of olive green army pants and a Pixies t-shirt. She had twenty pairs of the 191

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same clothing in her bunker since she had found that bright colors gave her migraines. Her collection came in handy for someone who hated shopping despite the fact that everything in town was free.

“Not again, Poe,” she reprimanded herself as she crouched down to check if she had double-knotted her Adidas. She knew she really had to stop that nonsense.

Up she stood.

Penny’s worried gaze silently followed her every move. Poe bent to look eye-to-eye at the dog.

“Hey there, doggy,” Poe said awkwardly. The dog looked away, perhaps sensing the girl’s discomfort.

“Look, Penny,” she started, not knowing what to say. “It’s just you and me now. Sorry about kicking you that one time. And for calling you ratty.”

The dog stared into her eyes. “Once you can handle being carried, I’ll take you to my house.” Poe sighed. “I’ll need company since I probably won’t be able to kill vampires or turn cattle loose anymore.

“I’m retired, I guess. If I hunt, I’ll be putting Sainvire and his people in danger.” She kissed the dog’s head that smelled like popcorn. “There’s only foraging and movies for us now.”

She gently pried open the mutt’s mouth and checked the severed tongue. The swelling had gone down, and the wound had almost completely fused together. Good! Her legs, on the other hand, would take longer to heal. Poor thing.

(((

Like an ant farm tossed around by a dumb kid, the whole library shook, explosions ricocheting down to the foundation.

“Shit! An earthquake,” was Poe’s first assumption. Tremblers seemed to have been more 192

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frequent the past few years. But the explosion and gunshots deleted the thought. She ran outside the circular foyer to find clots of people splashing into each other, completely disoriented and panicked. Poe ran down the side staircase, her unreliable Uzi at the ready. Because she felt nervous not knowing if the semi-automatic was going to jam on her again, Poe fired a shot at a potted plant on the landing, crumbling soil and roots everywhere. It worked. After an involuntary glance at her shoes, Poe continued downstairs.

Bullets zipped by her as a barrage of halfdeads wearing bulletproof vests poured forth from the black hole that was once Spanish metal-studded double doors and into the threshold, mowing down Sainvire’s people with their semi-automatic weapons.

“This is like a bad Chuck Norris flick,” Poe said over the sound of gunfire.

The chaotic sounds of running footsteps and screams curdled Poe’s blood. Gun smoke raided her nostrils and stabbed her eyes.

“Please, Bruce, Ali, Xena, light my way and deflect any bullets meant for me.” Positioning herself between the cold wall and a small hallway leading to the stairwell, Poe aimed for the heads of the invaders.

She ruptured quite a few melons before the wall started dissolving chunk by chunk from each steel-tipped bullet fired. Poe had no choice but to run back up the staircase and blindly aim at the halfdeads that dared to follow. From the upper landing, she shot accurately through balcony grates at every head that appeared until the stairs below were littered with smoking skulls.

On the opposite side, halfdeads and vampires that could withstand the sun infiltrated her floor. A scream of warning clued her in.

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“Watch out!” Poe swiveled back and saw a woman with sordid bruises on her face pointing at the escalators. Her eyes widened, realizing that the woman with the swollen face was Samantha, the nurse who had tried to help Penny but took a beating from Poe instead.

Cursing herself, Poe fired at the enemy ascending in droves by escalator and the opposite stairwell. In the time it took for her to shoot nine halfdeads, twenty of Sainvire’s people were shot dead where they stood.

Under the great painted sun dome twitched bodies beset and pierced by bullets. Samantha was not among them.

“Please make it, Samantha, so I can apologize properly and thank you for all you’ve done,” Poe prayed, crossing her fingers.

Poe’s arm shook from the force of the Uzi.

Unconsciously she bit on her lower lip until it bled.

“Mom, don’t let the gun jam again,” she entreated. She was alone among dead and halfdead, shooting every which way the enemy poured forth. A bullet pierced her triceps clean through without touching bone as she adjusted the grip of the weapon. It was her first gunshot injury, and it shook the shit out of her.

Out of the blue, Joseph appeared next to her crouching form, firing a semi-automatic from each hand.

“Go get the dog!” he screamed over the ruckus.

Shaken but fully loaded, Poe backed her way into Sainvire’s room and bolted the door.

“Gadzooks, dog, I got shot,” she said to Penny, shivering.

Penny’s ears stood like satellite dishes at the disturbance. Poe tried to stuff the dog in her pack. Her legs stiff in a plaster cast wouldn’t fit in Poe’s pack.

She wrapped the dog in Sainvire’s dark blue sheets and 194

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taped two pairs of bulletproof vests Maple had given her about the dog. She slung the mutt on her backpack and reloaded, taping two magazines together to have more bullet reserves.

Gunshots still blazed outside. She could almost swallow her heartbeat. “Blast!” Poe took a step back.

“I can’t do it.” She did not want to go out there.

She took a deep breath and carefully opened the door. With her guns ready, she stepped out. She spotted Joseph, floating barefoot halfway between the floor and the ceiling and plugging bullets at the enemy.

Poe joined in, pounding a group of already wounded halfdeads.

Joseph lowered himself, dragging Poe behind the safety of a wall.

“Joe, what’s–”

“No time, Poe,” he whispered. “Listen to me.

We’ll try to find whoever’s alive and evacuate. You’re on your own, kiddo.”

He spotted a head peeking at them from behind a defunct but decorative antique card catalogue shelf. He rested a hand on the girl’s shoulder and fired. Poe jumped, grumbling that she was going to be deaf before her next birthday.

“We’ll try to meet at 6th and Olive three nights from now.” Again he glanced over her shoulder. “Hope to see you and Penny there.” Careful not to hurt the dog, Joseph stuffed five pieces of paper in her backpack and kissed the top of her head before resuming his double-handed blasting. “It’s the formula for Plasmacore, Poe. Spread it around.”

Before she could beg him to take her along, the question vanished from her mind as a small incendiary device rolled in her direction. Shit shit shit!

Hardly thinking, Poe kicked the explosive like a hockey puck toward the escalator where vamps dressed 195

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in paramilitary uniforms were pouring out. The device exploded after hitting metal stairs, spraying limbs on the walls and ceiling and forever disabling the escalator. There goes a Renoir, Van Gogh, and Rembrandt, she thought. Poe fired at the remaining bodies flailing on the floor.

“Mom must really hate me now,” Poe gritted.

It was clear. Poe ran down the stairwell, encountering a vampire more or less bursting from excess. His maw was covered in blood and pieces of meat where he had taken a chunk out of his victims’

flesh. Apparently certain vamps became overexcited at the leeway given to them. Poe helped him out of his misery by shooting his engorged gut and spilling some of the load.

Downstairs she saw only litters of twice-dead corpses and human carcasses. It was so easy. The fighting had transferred to the other side of the library, and from the sound of gunfire and grenade blasts, the laboratory was the target. All she had to do was run out of the hole that used to be the front entrance of the library, and she would have been free. But stupidly she had second thoughts. Her feet turned toward the freight elevators at the rear entrance of the building. The level of noise and activity made it easy to find.

Her eyes squinted menacingly at the spectacle of Sainvire’s slumbering vampires being carried and tossed outside like garbage bags, the sun incinerating them slowly and painfully. Where are the clouds and rain now?

“Get the hell out of here,” Poe ordered herself.

“The more bloodsuckers dead the better.”

Poe’s jaw muscles tensed. Sainvire’s vampires hadn’t treated her that badly. In fact, they treated her fine with the exception of the humiliating incident in the cafeteria. There was Maple, Joseph, and…Sainvire.

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Knowing she would regret it later, Poe hoisted her Uzi and ran to the back elevator leading down to the basement where the sun-sensitive slept like stone.

Slick from gore she did not see, Poe nearly lost her footing around the bend. It was a wonder she did not crash into padded figures that took the horror out of vampires.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” she asked the four outsiders covered in gray astronaut suits with tinted face shields to avoid the sun. “Drag those bodies under the stairs or I’ll shoot your stupid Darth Vaders and microwave you to a crisp.”

Once the vampires were safely under the stairs, Poe executed the four invaders anyway. It irked her that vampire slumber equaled truly dead for once.

When the elevator opened for another shipment of sleeping undead, Poe was waiting. Her jaw dropped as she recognized the man ordering the Pillsbury Doughboys about. His goatee and I’m-so-mean Jim Carrey face would always be in Poe’s A*shole Hall of Shame.

“Ambrose, you f*cking snake!” she hissed, blasting the three suited up vamps in the elevator, saving the Judas parasite for last.

The only thing the man could say was, “F*ck me!” as he tried to press the close button.

Unfortunately the body of one of his bloated suit people blocked the elevator door from shutting.

“Hey, let me explain,” he started. “I’m innocent.

They forced–”

Poe shot off each of his kneecaps. Without taking a breather, she ignored his cries. She reached for the axe slung in her pack and hacked at Ambrose’s pleading arms. It only took four strokes to cleave the traitor of his limbs, bones and all.

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Convulsing from shock and the loss of blood, Ambrose cried, “Mercy. Please!”

“That’s for calling me a bitch at the lab,” she spat in his hysterical blood speckled face.

Poe shot the control panels of the elevator to make sure it wouldn’t make any more trips that morning. She left, leaving a quaking, armless Ambrose, blood squirting out of severed arteries like overflowing cow teats.

She knew her cruel tendencies would bother her later, but for now she waved away the incident. The bastard deserved it, and she fervently hoped he would survive his ordeal so he’d be turned into a permanent vein tap for Plasmacore production.

Leaving behind the sound of bullets, screams, and breaking glass, Poe stepped out of the library she had loved and called home for three days. She looked west.

It was barely 7:30 in the morning, and the sun shone brightly over the city. It was exactly the kind of sunny California day tourists used to pay big money to experience. A map to the stars’ homes, shorts, visor, camera, and a double-decker tourist bus were all that was needed.

(((

“Where’s the smog when you need it?” Poe grumbled.

She hadn’t seen the cloud of pollution in years, and it bothered her. After all, smog was a Los Angeles benchmark. It went hand and hand with the Hollywood sign and lusty Angelyne billboards.

“Sorry, Pen, but I gotta stop,” she said lamentably having walked for miles. “Your fifteen pounds of fur is equivalent to the heft of an elephant right now.”

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With an elbow, she punched a hole in the front window of an inconspicuous Korean restaurant in the heart of the Mid-Wilshire district. Her head throbbed from an especially nasty migraine, the kind that had compelled her to vomit in the boulevard ten minutes prior.

“It’s like staring at neon-pink biker shorts after leaving the theater,” she complained about the brightness of the sun, letting them inside. Bamboo walls, pleasant Ikea lamps her mom would have hated, Korean calligraphy scrolls, and Jungi Ta’l shamanistic masks greeted them.

Without bothering to wipe the dusty seats, Poe sat down and placed the bundled dog on the table. She unwrapped the Kevlars and Sainvire’s sheets. The little dog shook from the pain in her legs. Poe uncapped a Tylenol gel cap, tapped the powder onto Penny’s half-tongue, and downed some for her own pains. She blew at the dog’s face and rubbed her pink belly until she fell asleep. Reluctantly Poe forced herself to eat a protein bar for strength. It was indescribably disgusting after she’d tasted ambrosia at the library.

She cleaned up her wound and tried to sleep away the pain in her head by stretching out on top of one of the tables. The thought of those she left behind haunted her. She prayed to the only deities she knew: her parents.

“Perla has no supernatural powers. Please let her be alright. I never did thank her for washing my clothes. And those vampires in the basement. Don’t let those bastards singe them. Look after Joseph and Maple. And Sainvire, too,” she sighed. “Even though he’s a vamp and his cold touch is a little repulsive, his heart’s in the right place.”

On that note, Poe fell into a feverish sleep for twelve hours until a clutter from the kitchen woke her.

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Clutching her Walther PPK, Poe groggily headed to the kitchen area.

A cleaver missed her stitched up ear by a bead, landing with an evil thud on the bamboo wall behind her. An old man with a bloody apron over an immaculate white formal shirt stood weaponless, having discharged his cleaver. Poe, itching to pop his head, stayed her trigger finger.

“Did Trench send you, leech?”

“No! Nobody sent me,” he said with a thick accent. “I came here to cook this.”

The old man pulled out a dead rabbit from the sink. The floppy bunny conjured goose pimples from her flesh. She pointed the handgun at the man.

“Don’t even think about sautéing my dog,” Poe warned huffily.

The old man shook his head, disappointed. “You people all alike. You see Asian man, you think he eat dog.” He shook his head again. “Only poor, hungry Asians, Africans, Europeans, Middle Eastern people eat dog.”

Fine. She got lectured wherever she went, even at a wretched two-bit Korean restaurant. Being bloody ignorant is no walk in the country gardens.

“Alright. I get your point. Sorry,” she apologized snappily. “But you did try to kill me with that crazy knife.” She pointed at the cleaver stuck in the bamboo siding.

“You scare me,” he sniffed.

“I guess you broke out from a blood farm, right?”

“Yes. And you?”

“Long story. I don’t know you enough to waste my breath. Continue with your skinning and me and my dog will be outta your hair.”

(((

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Even without a coat, Poe sweated like it was raining. Her black hair acted as a conductor, absorbing all the heat in whacked out Los Angeles. She avoided major arterials like Wilshire Boulevard and cut through residential areas. She was distracted and feverish from her gunshot wound and the pounding she’d suffered the past few days.

“Choose a pad, any pad, Penny girl,” she said tiredly, taking a right on Carondelet Street. The street banked up like she imagined San Francisco streets to be. The grade was so steep that it felt like climbing Mt.

Everest. She was winded in no time. Cardiovascular activity only came up when killer vampires gave chase.

The hill led her to a row of old Victorian and Edwardian mansions. “Can you believe this, Pen?

Amityville houses in L.A.?” The houses looked too well cared for. Some of the front gardens had tomatoes, snap beans, and eggplants growing from the vine.

“Gah,” she mumbled, heading downhill again.

“No vacancies in this neighborhood. We best chance it and head home, eh? We’re too sick to sleep out here.

We might get our necks cleaved by escapees who can mistake us for spies.”

Her mouth dropped. An aqua Schwinn leaned impressively against a lamp post. Upon closer inspection, she found that the bicycle was oiled and in good working condition. Best of all, it had a basket on the front. Some runaway had looked after it with love.

She carefully arranged Penny in the basket and kicked out the bike stand.

“Finder’s keepers,” she mumbled, not feeling an iota of guilt for the beaut of a bike.

Nearly twenty-four hours after the attack, Poe set off to her bunker. She was careful to avoid the streets known for master vampires and their farms. After a 201

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time, the heavy bicycle took its toll as her creaky limbs began shaking. That’s karma for you for stealing off with someone else’s pride and joy.

“Don’t think about going there, Poe,” she told herself upon returning to the edge of downtown. “The library’s gone. Get your butt underground.”

Her feet pedaled their way to the vicinity of 6th and Hope out of curiosity and subterfuge anyway. She just had to see if the landmark library was still standing with a distant hope that Sainvire had repelled the invaders.

Poe’s musings ended as she passed the old building, gently applying the Schwinn’s brakes. Most of the black painted and tarred windows lay in billions of sticky pieces on the ground. Black, soot-like burns licked the once immaculate exterior walls.

“Somebody was grenade-happy.”

The front doors were completely smashed like they had been bazooka-ed. Missing chunks of walls left holes in the once beautiful Egyptian-eclectic architecture.

Poe squeezed her eyes shut for a moment, forcing herself not to think about all the priceless books inside.

The only thing she could say was “F*cking Nazis.”

Poe pushed back every thought of the tragedy and biked toward Little Tokyo. It was imperative to pedal double-time to get away from the scene of destruction.

She didn’t go a block before she saw a pack of dogs ravenously devouring a man wearing a bloody lab coat.

The urge to shoot the four feasting dogs made her hands shake. She knew, however, that gunshot would alert doped up leeches and sun-immune vampires.

Reluctantly she let it go.

(((

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By the time she reached the Japanese American Museum, Poe was shaking from exhaustion. Her legs, not used to pedaling over three miles, felt like jelly.

She parked the bike inside the museum where she normally stashed her moped and lifted Penny carefully out of the basket. Her wobbly legs walked the block in screaming rage. She couldn’t reach the tiny, old hotel fast enough. The sweat on her brow, neck, back, and bra-encased chest added to her ire.

“You gotta stretch, or you’ll be screwed tomorrow,” she told herself.

All she wanted was to get Penny comfortable in her bunker so she could steal up to the third floor of the hotel and shower in cold, discolored water. Poe checked the undisturbed hair on the front entrance and stepped inside, carrying Penny like an infant. From the basement she pulled up a hidden door and descended the stairs to the bunker. She clapped twice and a weak light automatically switched on. Good ol’ Clapper.

As she bolted the door shut behind her, the solar-generated bunker lights and air ventilation automatically turned on. She placed Penny on the futon mattress on the floor, arranging the dog comfortably with soft towels and sheets. Penny, unable to make any sound except for an occasional whine, let a sigh escape.

“No more rickety Schwinn basket for you!”

Only after she placed a bowl of water and stale Lucky Charms cereal by the futon did Poe expel a sigh of relief herself. She looked around her sorely missed home. Anime stickers covered one wall marking her adolescent years. Hanging on hooks on the opposite side was an alarming collection of handguns, pistols, semi-automatic weapons, and knives, complemented by a nasty machete marking the end of childhood. A smattering of Japanimation, Sanrio, and Totoro toys 203

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taken from the abandoned shops around Little Tokyo sat on top of DVD and book stacks.

Three sets of robot alarm clocks of Mazinger Z, Ultraman, and Doraemon were displayed on top of the television. Next to the small desk were a mini-gas stove, a fridge, and a milk crate full of canned goods, cereal boxes, and bottled water. A set of bullet tongs and bullet mold lay discarded on the floor. Clear barrels of silver and gold jewelry and sterling utensils lay next to the wall like sweets in a candy shop for bullet smithing. Another two barrels filled with lead pellets sat on top of the small fridge.

Poe’s favorite possession, a replica of Yoshitomo Nara’s painting of a little girl smoking, hung above her futon. Nara was her favorite artist.

“Sorry plant,” she said while watering the browning Chia Pet. “It was outta my hands.”

She was home, and it felt really good despite the awful day. She grabbed a pair of pajamas and sniffed to make sure they were clean. Just in case, she cut off a big piece of plastic cling wrap and wrapped the .357.

Quietly as possible, she let herself out and went back upstairs to take a shower, the water as cold and goopy as ever.

(((

Poe allowed herself to veg out on the extra-long futon with Penny in petting distance. “We deserve this, Pen,” she said emphatically in her Little Twin Star jammies while watching Cool Hand Luke. She devoured the last of the yummy Trader Joe’s banana chips.

To live in her bunker away from vampire politics was all she needed in life. Thirty feet underground was as safe as she could have been.

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“I hate Nazis,” she commented randomly. “And vampires are true fascists, especially when it comes to the color of their food.”

Oh no you don’t. You can’t think about negative shit. You’re retired.

She squinted at the image of thick-necked George Kennedy on the screen and thought of some good points.

“Well, I’m a bit bolder now. I can enunciate well when need be. A few idiosyncrasies and ticks have been pushed back a little. I didn’t even check my shoelaces before going upstairs to take a shower.

“I don’t fear vampires or death that much anymore. If I die, big deal. There’s Penny to think of, though. Then there’s Plasmacore. It’s the perfect symbol of hope. The idea behind it is well worth dying for. And let’s not forget, I’ve tongue wrestled with a hot vampire.”

To prove that her newfound intrepid self had little fear left, Poe crawled out of her futon studded with Bad Badz Maru and Iron Giant pillows and searched for the one DVD she had avoided all these years.

When she finally popped it in the player, Poe plopped back down on her bed, hugging a fuzzy Keroppi blanket around her.

After this, nothing can scare me anymore.

Nosferatu’s creepy white face leered at her in the silent film classic. Poe was so hypnotized by Max Schreck’s demonic image that she forgot to read the subtitles. The movie still creeped her out. But it made her realize how overrated and horrendously boring it was. Terrence Malick had proved that a beautiful metaphor-ridden film didn’t necessarily spell a good movie. She had to violently shake her head to keep from dozing off.

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The immortal undead scratching outside her bunker door with his deathly long nails, depriving her of many a good night’s sleep, was nothing more than pasty complexion and bad teeth. She rubbed Penny’s belly and blew out a calming breath.

“For ages I believed Nos to be the total shit. What a waste, huh, Pen? If the creature ever did show up on our doorstep, I would–”

Then it happened. There was a knock akin to a scratch from the outside. Poe thought the sound was part of the dramatic orchestral score until she turned the volume down. Penny whined, plunging Poe’s heart thirty feet. Clutching the rosary around her neck, Poe inched her way to the weapons section of the bunker and seized a Colt .45 semi-automatic pistol. She wasn’t about to just unlock the door without some sort of protection.

She cursed herself for watching the damn Nosferatu flick. I just jinxed myself and summoned the f*cker in the flesh! Her false courage crumpled at once.

Most likely she had been followed.

The sham titanium door let out a scratching, knocking sound again. This time it was stronger, more urgent, and highly menacing. The gun shook in her hand. My nightmare has come true, she cried silently.

Goss had never drilled a peephole. The best thing she could do was to wait it out but the noise took a toll on Penny who shivered like she was covered in ice.

Poe bent down to kiss the mutt’s soft ears and whispered, “It’s okay, little doggie. I won’t let any bloodsuckers get at you. I’ll kill you first before that happens.” Such downcast words did not soothe the terrified animal.

The knocking became more urgent and sharp, hurting her teeth. The dog whined more violently.

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keeps up. Poe wiped the sweaty tip of her nose with a forearm.

Her nostrils flared. Poe resolved to end this once and for all. Either she or Penny was going to perish in cast and flip-flops, or they were going to demolish Nosferatu once and for all.

Squaring her shoulders, Poe secured the chain lock and opened the door a crack, just enough for a quick glimpse. A squeal sadly eked from her mouth as an extremely bloodied vampire stood outside her door, carrying an oversized gym bag and a much-dinged Kalashnikov.

(((

According to her three alarm clocks, it was only 3:50 in the afternoon. He should have fried out there in the sun. The master vampire was sun immune in addition to his many other unsettling talents?

Poe observed the vampire collapse wordlessly on her squeaky computer chair, peeling off his bullet-ridden shirt. A dozen bullets lodged in his body, arms, and face were pushed out by healing skin. Sainvire looked like hell, so diametrically unlike his usual indestructible demeanor. She guessed that even vampires got tired after a few rounds of bullets to the kidneys.

“What happened to you?” she asked, but he shook his head, too exhausted to speak. After a time, he asked where a working shower was located.

“Goss rigged up the rooftop cisterns to trickle down to the third floor. Head for room 305, but don’t expect any water pressure,” she told him. She watched his muscular, perforated back as he walked unsteadily out the door, holding a bag of Plasmacore and a shirt.

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Like a girl with a purpose, Poe hastened to straighten out her bunker, stuffing used socks and underclothes in the laundry sack and folding the clean ones into a nice, neat pile. She tidied up the bed and moved the now calm dog to a stack of soft pillows on the floor next to the Froot Loops and water.

As if Paul Newman himself were going to pay her a visit, she swept the room with a long-handled broom.

She picked up the bullets fallen from Sainvire’s body.

It was then that she noticed an odor. Poe sniffed the bullets.

“Garlic oil?” she mulled with fear. “And he didn’t die or melt. Jesus, what kind of vampire is he?”

She set the bullets aside near the trash bin and washed her hands in the mini-sink with a pump-action water supply. She was petrified. Desire, lust, and virginal horniness were demolished with one sniff.

Almost an hour later, she heard the oddball scratching on her door. Sainvire was back. Poe ushered him to the same chair he had collapsed in before. He looked like his old self, with a little more color, perhaps. He smelled of Irish Spring, her soap of choice. His dark hair dripped on the same bullet-encrusted black shirt, revealing bits of flesh here and there.

Poe couldn’t quite speak. His presence in her most prized bunker didn’t exactly leave a minty fresh taste in her mouth anymore, and she felt foolish for cleaning up. So she stood over him until he spoke.

“In case you’re wondering how I know about your home, Sister Ann and Goss told me,” he said and cleared his throat. “I was to look in on you if something happened to them. Sister tried her best to teach me the secret knock-scratch, but being tone deaf and musically disinclined I couldn’t quite remember it.

So the rough scratches.”

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At least he finally sucked at something, Poe thought disagreeably.

“I want to thank you for letting me use your shower and bunker,” he said wearily.

“Oh whatever,” Poe waved his indebtedness away. “You let me sleep in your giant bed so it’s only right.” She added, “But I can only offer you that lump of futon on the floor. Sorry.”

Sainvire’s strained face eased. “It looks really comfortable, Poe.”

She didn’t know why her ears reddened at the manner he said her name because it was delivered in such a normal, non-suggestive way.

He stood up and walked around the 200-foot-by-50-foot room replete with junk, karaoke machine, and other perplexing rubbish. He read the titles of books strewn here and there.

“You like to read?”

“Sure. When I’m tired of watching movies. I can read a book a day,” she said proudly.

“Impressive. I see you read all genres.”

“Yeah. I read whatever I find.”

He perused strange-looking stuffed animals and smiled.

“I like this one. What is it?” he asked, tapping the head of the bobbing ceramic toy.

“That’s a forest ghost from Princess Mononoke.

You know, Miyazaki,” she explained. “It glows in the dark.”

“Miyazaki? Can’t say I’ve heard of him.” He put the item down.

“Oh, he’s a great animator and writer. His stuff’s better than any lousy Disney cartoons.”

Sainvire, truly fascinated, asked about the other unfamiliar toys until Poe’s tenseness wafted away, and she became a willing tour guide of her own pad. How 209

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to explain the bluish Moomin, the pear-shaped Totoro holding a leaf umbrella, or a bobbing Mr. T from the Rocky III movie for that matter?

It was tough, but she tried her best until he came upon a near-naked fourteen-inch Rei Ayanami resin doll from the Neon Genesis Evangelion series. Blue-haired Rei only had a skimpy towel covering her most embarrassing body parts. Her perkies were completely at 12:15 attention. Poe evaded his questions and referred to her guns instead, then quickly turned to her movie collection and the subject of the giant poster of Jim Kelly.

“I had to borrow a ladder from the museum to get it down,” Poe said with a sigh.

Since they were already on the topic of video stores, they pleasantly discussed Poe’s favorites, such as Harold and Maude – great soundtrack – and Croupier with Clive Owen, both films sitting in the middle of the stack. Sainvire picked up a copy of Mission Impossible: The Impaling of which the cover had a long, thick, most amorally veined weapon of destruction ever conceived. And it wasn’t Tom Cruise’s exasperating toothy grin, either.

“I don’t think I’ve seen this version before,” he commented with a raised eyebrow.

It went downhill from there. The videos and DVDs, towering high, seemed to spit out awkward titles and jacket covers. Her attempt to drag him to the comic book pile was a no go. Not even her stacks of CDs and records were incentive enough. Poe had no choice but to leave the vampire to his own exploration in the guise of checking on the sleeping dog.

Sainvire’s occasional cough, sniff, chuckle, and throat clearing nearly drove Poe to claw her way above ground for the creatures of the night to have a go at her throat. She was so damn mortified. In my own home, 210

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too! Even Sister Ann didn’t make her feel that low.

And cheap.

Poe gave Penny a heaping rubdown, complete with scratching, petting, and massage. When she couldn’t take Sainvire’s laugh at her expense any longer, Poe finally let out a defensive explanation about the amount of X-rated smut in her living quarters.

“I took whatever I could from the shop next door, okay? I told you, I didn’t know this kind wasn’t like other movies until Sister Ann told me they were bad.”

She glared at him from the bed. “Besides, I mostly put them in the player for the music!”

Sainvire smiled benignly, which pissed Poe off even more. “And how come you’re not melted or dead anyway? You’ve been shot with garlic bullets!”

The vampire put down the tape he’d been holding, walked slowly to the chair, and dragged it to face Poe.

Only when he comfortably straddled the chair, his arms leaning on the chair back, did he answer Poe’s question.

“I’ve developed immunity,” he said simply.

“Say that again?” Poe demanded with disbelief in her voice. His abilities were so damn much that he was starting to become scary. Was he indestructible?

“Perla has been using me as a guinea pig for the past fifteen years, even before the gray clouds.” He rubbed his jaw. “She started giving me tiny amounts of processed garlic extract. It made me sick at first, causing rashes, singed skin, and break-outs. When the discomfort let up, she pumped the dosage up a notch.

Eventually my body didn’t reject the garlic’s venom anymore. It took quite some time for my body to accept the poison, and it hurt like hell.”

Poe cleared her head, thinking about Westley, a.k.a. Dread Pirate Roberts, from the movie The 211

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Princess Bride. He drank poison until he became immune to it.

“What about the sun? Were you able to walk during the day the moment you were turned, or did you sunbathe in increments too?”

“No on both counts. A couple of scientists believed that most vampires developed a combination of HPS or Hermansky-Pudlak-Syndrome, also known as Albino syndrome, and red cell depletion a day or two after crossing over. However, the one percent who could stand a little ultraviolet rays tended to be from warmer weather places like California or desert countries.” A hint of a smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. “Again, I volunteered to be experimented on even though I didn’t know much about science and such. They injected me with an extremely high dosage of Vitamin C, beta carotene, melatonin extract, and other serums they concocted in the lab.” He chuckled,

“they even made me drink a pint of fresh orange juice for a week straight, making me so ill that I was laid up for a month.”

Poe didn’t see the humor. Vampires drinking orange juice and getting shots to be able to walk during the day was a freaky and sick idea. Not only would they suck the blood out of the crumbs of the human population, they would also pluck all the citrus in the state. F*ck that.

“You’re a regular lab rat, Sainvire,” she said, her voice hard. “If I didn’t know you were from Chicago, I’d a thought you came from Beverly Hills, the body altering capital of the world.” Her nostrils flared,

“However did you convince your plastic surgeons to implant those insane extending talons of yours?”

Sainvire’s smile didn’t falter. “Those came with the original package, Julia.”

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“Bet they did,” she sneered. “You’re like that Michael Jackson I saw at the Hotel Otani a couple years ago, but instead of getting your skin bleached, you go to the tanning salon.”

His face sobered, gripping the back of the chair.

“You’re wrong, Poe.” Had she succeeded in irking his macho pride? “I get color from being out in the sun like most people. I travel a lot. Secondly, I’m not Michael Jackson, whoever he is.”

“Oh, c’mon. Everybody knows who Michael Jackson is, you faker,” said Poe, smacking the side of her head for emphasis. “What do you want then?” Poe gave a very derisive smile and asked, “To be human?”

Sainvire lowered his chin onto his arms resting on the back of the chair. “Why, yes,” he answered coolly.

“I wanted to fight a fascist government, not be dinner for some rancid Spanish whore who fed on me while I was dying from shrapnel wounds in the shoulder and belly. She left me to turn into one of her kind, spitting her black blood into the hole she punched into my head. That was out of my hands.” His tone hardened. “I prefer a steak and rhubarb pie over drinking blood to live, Poe, even though blood’s a very easy thing to get.” To belabor his point, he stared at the throbbing vein on her neck and was on her in a blink of an eye, his fangs extending inches from her face.

“With our strength, our speed, and near indestructible ways, we can achieve almost anything.”

He tapped the pounding vein on her neck, causing an involuntary whimper in Poe. “We can easily drink from you humans after hunting you down for sport like Quillon Trench and his followers had imagined. So damn easy.”

Poe tried to push the heavy body away from her own, but it was like nudging a car that was still in park position. “Get off me!”

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“What’s the matter, Poe? Don’t you want me to be the vampire that you envisioned? A beast? A lecher? A killer?” He lowered his face even closer until Poe could feel his arctic eyes and his cold breath on her cheek.

He pushed her head aside for better access to the throbbing artery in her fine pale neck. Poe felt the tip of the fangs make contact with her skin, and she had no choice but to close her eyes and wait for the end. But only a cold tongue lingered at her neck, licking at the skin. Lips followed until Poe’s fear turned into something completely different.

Sainvire’s tongue traced a path to her collarbone, then down to the opening of her pajama neckline, burning a path in its coldness to the hint of fullness beneath. First the top button and the second, then the third were undone to reveal more of the milky softness of her breast, dusted with small bruises from the past week. When his tongue found an upraised peach nipple for his mouth to suck on, Poe let out a moan. Only then did the vampire release a flushed Poe, and he sat back down on the chair.

“I’ve hunted for blood for far too long,” Sainvire said quietly, his face and body rigid from having to push away from the woman who incited a fever in his dead body. “To want to be what I was shouldn’t be a sin.”

Poe’s hands shook as she buttoned up her pajama top. Cold sushi or not, the dead man conjured up desire, and she wanted to cry. To be doused in cold water after such heat was plain rude. Why did you have to use my body to make your point?

Because she couldn’t look at him and there was nowhere to hide in the crowded bunker, Poe pulled a blanket over herself and hid from the vampire’s stare.

She had such an awful feeling of loss.

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The vampire would have to sleep on the floor. She wasn’t relinquishing her bed. How easy for him to throttle the passion then slam down the breaks. It wasn’t right. She clapped her hands two times under the blanket, and the lights turned off.

Under the safety of the blanket and the cover of the night, Poe achieved some privacy. She didn’t know whether to laugh, weep, or throw up from getting licked by a cadaver.

Sainvire didn’t take long to figure out that Poe was hurt and insulted by his callous way of proving a point. No one in more than thirty years had made him feel so many different emotions in a span of seconds as the young woman with the five-inch scar.

Silently he shed his clothing and shoes and crept to the futon on the floor. Ignoring Poe’s protest, he scooted his way under the blankets.

“Get off my bed, f*cker,” she snapped. “You can sleep on the goddamn floor!”

“Sorry, but I can’t. I’m recuperating, you see,” he apologized half-heartedly. “You did promise me your futon in exchange for sleeping in my bed, remember?”

Poe was so annoyed that she forgot to be sorry for herself, hissing, “Fine, freezer meat!” She tried to get up and dragged the blanket with her, but Sainvire had anticipated the move. The girl was sometimes so predictable.

“Let me go, you freak! You feel like an iceberg!”





She tried to wrest her arm from the immovable grip of the master vampire.

“No.”

“I’m sleeping on the floor! I could catch hypothermia being next to you,” Poe screamed, panicking.

“No,” he said again without humor. “Keep the insults coming. I’m starting to like it.”

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“Look, this is my bunker. And why are you naked ? ” she asked as she felt his bare thigh pin her belly hostage.

He put his right arm across her chest to make his edict absolute.

“I’m naked because I’m going to do what I’ve wanted from the first time I saw you.”

Poe ceased struggling, her eyes wide in the dark.

She clapped her hands once and the weak bunker lights turned back on. She stared angrily at the vampire.

“What do you mean?”

Without batting an eyelash, Sainvire answered her query with a smile on his face. “I’m going to make love to you all afternoon. And all night if you can handle it.”

She swallowed and bravely met the hypnotic eyes bordered by dark eyelashes. All she could do was take another swallow. A weak “no” escaped her mouth followed with, “I won’t sleep with a glacier guy.”

Then Sainvire nodded. “Sister Ann told me that you were an honest person. She said you never lie. Is that true?”

“Of course it’s true,” she answered, not liking the mocking sound in his voice.

“Then if I ask you a question, you won’t lie to me?”

“Of course not! I don’t lie!” Poe insisted, despite the nagging recollection of a string of white lies told to both Goss and Sister Ann about certain DVDs.

“Fine then,” he said. “Are you attracted to me?”

Poe balked at the trap. She should have smelled it coming. “Well I’m attracted to many people.” She stared at his forehead to avoid his searing look.

“There’s Morales.” Poe rejoiced inwardly when Sainvire’s brow furrowed. “Then there’s this guy I met yesterday at a Korean restaurant in Mid-Wilshire. He 216

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tried giving me his cleaver. He was a gorgeous halfdead.”

“I’m not asking about them,” he interrupted, sounding more than a little annoyed. “I’m asking about me.”

“Sure, I guess.” Poe looked at his face and lifted the blanket for a peek at his endowments, acting as nonchalantly as she could. “You’re tall. Not as pasty as other jerkoffs out there,” she said, crinkling her nose.

“Your face is tolerable enough. Not handsome or anything. That scar makes you look like you once had a harelip, but who am I to talk, right? Your lower lip’s a little too fat, but it’s alright, I guess if you like that sort of thing. And your touch is cold, short of reptilian.”

“Harelip?” Sainvire said irritatingly. “A piece of shrapnel smacked my face, kid.” His eyes narrowed,

“And fat lips? Reptilian?” He shook his head. “I hope you’re kidding.”

She couldn’t help but see flashes of the naked body under the blanket. “Your body is tolerable, too sinewy maybe,” she continued with the bashing. “That broken shoulder is an eyesore. Not very easy to ignore.” She shook her head. “And if you think you’re doing it with me, then you’re a moron. You make me shiver, but that’s because you’re a walking icebox.”

“I heard many things about you from our mutual friends, but none of them mentioned your mean streak,” he said tiredly. “You can only kick a dog so many times, Poe. I’ve lost my lusty feelings toward you, so if you don’t mind, kindly vacate the bed and sleep with your dog. It’s been a tough couple of days.”

Her ears burned. She’d certainly overdone it by describing him as a beastie instead of someone who could charge the march of her heartbeat. She was off 217

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the hook, but why did she feel so bad about scooting off the futon?

You’re just as bad as the bigoted vampires running the show, dictating which tone of neck color they can pierce or what have you. Sainvire’s a good guy, and you’ve just shat on him. You’re a prejudiced heel, Julia Poe, accused the voice in her head .

“Sorry, Sainvire,” Poe croaked, scooting to the edge of the mat. Apologizing hurt like heck. “I overdid it. Truth is I do like you, and I admire your work with Plasmacore. Maybe I’m too fond of you. And, um, I’m interested in doing it with you, but your, um, lack of heat sets my teeth chattering. So anyway, sorry for being such a dick. You can go to sleep now.”

The vampire reached over and pulled her back under the blankets. Wordlessly he just held her in his arms. When her teeth began rattling, he quieted her with a kiss, brutal at first, then soft and languorous.

Poe didn’t resist.

She laced her fingers through his hair, becoming excited by its soft texture and freshly showered smell.

Kiss him like he’s alive. He’ll warm up soon enough, advised her mental counterpart. Like a pro, Poe answered each cold tonguing with a few warm strokes of her own. The feel of his cold, naked flesh against her warm body became tolerable.

Once nothing covered Poe’s body but the bruises, gunshot, nail hole and scratches she’d accrued the past few days, Sainvire simply stared, besotted by the full breasts, tapered waist, and nicely rounded hips. Her thighs and calves were sleek, and the tough calluses that ran down her shinbone were a wonder.

“There’s still time to back out of this, Julia Poe,”

his hypnotic voice whispered in her ear. “Although I can’t wait to feel your legs wrapped tightly around my 218

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waist, I don’t want to pressure you and be wracked with guilt afterward.”

“There’s no pressure now,” she said with haste, her own voice husky. “I’m used to your temperature, and really, I want you to put your thing in me.”

Sainvire laughed. He couldn’t help it. How he’d love to bottle her voice. “Since obviously you’re new at this, let me give you a boring summary of what I’m going to do to you. If you’re still interested, then I’d be happy to make love to you all day.”

With his face pensive, he began, “It’s important that you have several orgasms before I enter you. For lubrication and such,” he explained, tracing her mouth with his finger. “Thereafter, I will devote some time getting acquainted with your nether region, especially this little bit here.”

His finger honed in on her nub. She smiled. “Do what you need to do. Believe me I’ve seen enough foreplay thanks to the Black Yella Bruthas video store to bring Sister Ann back to life.”

“Shall we see?” he challenged, parting her legs, determined to make the experience as pleasurable and pain-free as possible. With every thrust of tongue, her hips jerked upward, meeting the strangely cold, freely moving organ. And when she couldn’t take it anymore, Poe moaned and found herself using porno vernacular from the hundreds of DVDs she’d watched.

Sainvire lifted his head from between Poe’s soft thighs for a second, unsure that he’d heard the young woman correctly. With a smile, he brought her to an itchy crescendo until her body convulsed. Only then did he rise to enter her slick, still pulsing, opening.

(((

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They lay tangled until Poe’s limbs cramped up and had to shift position. Sainvire draped his leg over the girl’s bruised thigh, his elbow propping him up to stare down at her. He wiped the beads of sweat from Poe’s nose, licked it, and grinned. He smoothed down her tangled hair. Not done yet, Sainvire enthusiastically ran his tongue on the sweat between Poe’s breasts.

With her palm, Poe explored his misshapen shoulder, lingering on the scar where the shrapnel had embedded. Up to no good, Poe smirked. “I like deformed men.”

“Why, thank you, Ms. Poe.”

“You’re so welcome, Mr. Vampiro.”

His black-rimmed silver eyes danced. “You’re beautiful, Julia,” he said, adding, “You make my dead heart beat again.”

What could she say to such sweet words? She simply blushed and looked up at the ceiling. “Apart from you being dead, you’re not so bad looking yourself, Kaleb.”

His eyes twinkling, he teased, “That wasn’t what you said not so long ago. You made me sound like an ogre, third from your line-up of Morales and a Korean halfdead with a cleaver whom I am truly intimidated by because I don’t know him.”

Poe smiled, her dimples deepening. “You’ve been kicked up to number two, second to Mr. Cleaver. Now that I’ve had a taste of your talent.”

“Mighty big of you,” he said dispassionately, tracing her hips with his large hands that paused in the vicinity of her near-hairless sex. “Beside your head, you hardly have hair anywhere in your body.”

“It runs in the family,” said Poe, laughing throatily.

“Did I ever tell you how much I love the sound of your voice? How dearly I love your eyes? They’re very 220

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expressive,” he confessed. “I’ve wanted to undress you since the moment I plucked glass shards from your arms.”

“You’re depraved!”

“Hey, I know you molested me with your eyes that night.”

She giggled then abruptly stopped. It was such an alien sound to Poe’s ears.

“And you do know that you sweat mostly on your nose?”

“That’s private stuff,” said Poe, embarrassed.

“It’s charming, like your luscious red lips.”

Poe blushed and asked shyly, “What about my scar?”

He traced the five-inch scar. “It shows how courageous you are. I wouldn’t change it for the world.”

Tired of getting compliments, Poe pinched his nose. “I’d get rid of your lip scar in a second.”

A little offended, he growled, tickling Poe until she was close to throwing up.

“Truce,” she begged until he stopped and cradled her in his arms. After a comfortable silence, Poe asked,

“Why are you so idealistic, Sainvire? You fought against Franco even though it wasn’t your war, in another country for crying out loud. Then the Plasmacore thing. I don’t understand you. With your powers, you could rule the world.”

“Don’t romanticize my life, Poe. I’ve done my share of killing. You can say I just don’t like what I see, and I have the means and vision to change things.

And to be truthful, you can blame Upton Sinclair for my so-called idealism. I read his work as a young man and was forever changed.”

“Upton Sinclair, huh?” said Poe. “He wrote The Jungle.”

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“You read it?”

“Oh, don’t act so shocked. I read everything I find on hunts. I’m not such a plebe despite the looks of me.”

“I never said you were a plebe. In fact, I think you’re one of the sharpest people I know,” he said, kissing her hypnotic mouth. “That’s why I think you should join us. I don’t want you to be alone ever again.”

Poe shrugged. She didn’t want to reply. She knew, however, that he could hear the escalating beat of her heart.

He reached down to the moistness between her thighs. “Again?” Poe asked. “Don’t you ever get tired?

“That’s the beauty of being a vampire. We can go on forever,” he said with a grin. Sainvire made love to her again until she agreed to boot him up to first place.

(((

“Sister Ann and Goss never really trusted me.”

Poe blinked her droopy lids at the vampire. She was tired as hell, but she simply had to know. “You were in the ins so you can tell me.”

“Sister and Goss loved you and were in awe of you for surviving on your own. Sister was especially impressed by your instinctive ability to hit the target, whether with a bullet, knife, or stone,” Sainvire said, pushing strands of hair away from Poe’s face.

“That’s nice, but you didn’t answer my question,”

she said with her lids shut. She was on the verge of sleep.

“They had some misgivings. You had survived vampires and leeches since you were eight. The probability that you were a plant hovered in everyone’s mind.”

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Sainvire thought she was asleep for the silence stretched on, but he was wrong. “Sister never told me where she lived. That hurt. She trusted you, the vampire who organized the cattle milking.”

The vampire winced. It was a sore spot for him.

“True. I’m the one who masterminded the whole damn thing,” he said morosely.

The girl’s breathing deepened, falling into an exhaustive asleep. The vampire studied her slumbering face for a time. Her plump, slightly swollen lips tugged at his consciousness. He memorized the moment then rose. It was time that he left.

Several hours later, Poe awoke to find herself alone. If it weren’t for the plastic daisy on top of a hastily written note, she almost believed she’d dreamed up her time with Kaleb Sainvire. The bold, old-fashioned script where the r’s looked like s’s said: I will see you at the meeting. Yours, K.

“Meeting. I forgot about that,” she said, rubbing her eyes. She swung her legs off the futon and shrieked. Her inner thigh muscles burned like they were getting pelletted by B.B.s. Who’d have thought she had some unused muscles left to exercise? “Better stretch. Otherwise I’ll be less than useless.”