could shoot seven of them, saving the last bullets for Penny and her.
“Give up, bitch!” Pengle, the one-handed vampire she had hacked, screamed. He hid behind a group of leeches. “Your life’s over. Might as well face up to it.”
“That’s telling her, Pengle,” somebody from the crowd seconded, laughing.
“Are you listening to yourself?” Poe spat. “You’re the one that’s dead and can’t admit it. Go back to the grave and let the worms have you!”
Enraged, Poe shot in his direction and killed a leech instead. A fresh recruit of vampires wearing Kevlar vests marched boldly toward her, unafraid of her gun.
“Fucking cops,” she muttered.
Without even cringing, Poe shattered two vampire heads, a kneecap, and a neck before the rest scattered.
Zombie Hunt and Sister Ann, the dead aim from Tennessee, had taught her well.
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One bullet left. She prayed that Penny was already dead because the remaining bullet was hers alone.
Without further ado, she placed James, the trusted gun, to her ear and fired.
80
CHAPTER 3–A NEW WORLD UPSIDE DOWN
A SWISH OF WIND smacked her face. Her trusted James clanged on the sidewalk, sliced in two like her Uzi.
When Poe opened her eyes, the same raging vampires hissed malevolently. The gun she held to her head lay by her feet in pieces, and a tall man she’d never seen before stood inches from her. His middle finger that looked more like a mini-sword retracted into a regular size digit.
He cut up my James! thought Poe with annoyance, her fear momentarily overshadowed.
He gave a cursory glance at Poe before turning his back. But it was enough. It was as if his strange eyes branded her synapses, leaving them etched in her mind.
“Go home, all of you,” the looming figure said with a quiet voice resonating with authority and power.
Only Pengle had the audacity to protest.
“This is none of your affair, Sainvire.” He dragged out the name as if it left a trail of sticky dirt in his mouth. “She shot Trench and killed a score of our people. We have first rights.”
“Wrong. I was the one who stopped her. She’s mine,” Sainvire answered tranquilly.
“You just got here,” Pengle said as he shook his fistless hand at the master vampire. His face contorted with rage, and a perceptible trembling began from his 81
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knees to his bulky shoulders. “We were on the verge of capturing her.”
“You mean her corpse, don’t you?” His expression mimicked a smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes. Without pomp and preamble, Sainvire pointed at the girl’s Walther PPK on the wet pavement. The litter of bodies on the street that led to the hotel was not quite so easily forgotten. “As I understand, vampires can’t lap up a dead human’s blood. It would kill us.”
“I lost my hand to that bitch,” Pengle roared, raising his maimed left hand for effect. “So lay off.”
“Sorry about your hand, Pengle, but if you have a problem with my claim then you can take it up with the Council,” Sainvire retorted coolly, his expression benign. Pengle immediately took the look as insolence and arrogance that came with being a master vampire.
“The Council! Screw that! Why are you nosing around other people’s business? Don’t you have enough fresh necks for your straw? You have a library full of them,” Pengle accused, dribbling with hate and envy.
Sainvire considered his words before saying,
“Yes, I do have many necks to choose from. But not one this young.”
Pengle’s enhanced olfactory sensory neurons could smell the warm, iron tang of blood on Poe’s injured skin, and he felt entitled. Most vampires were insulted by having to sup on cold refrigerated blood.
He was one of them. He especially resented the privileged few who imbibed warm blood through straw attachments each night. Like many, Pengle believed in the thrill and excitement of the hunt. It was an innate right of the undead and shouldn’t have been banned by the Council and irritating vampires like Kaleb Sainvire.
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“You,” Pengle bellowed, too angry to do anything but make a fist with his remaining hand. “You greedy–
”
“Think what you want, Pengle, but she’s leaving unharmed.” He turned and faced Poe. The girl still reeled from pulling the trigger on herself. Even in the dimly illuminated street, she was startled by the silver-gray intensity of the notorious vampire’s dark-rimmed eyes. Only the white line running vertically from the top of Sainvire’s upper lip to his nostrils interrupted her perusal.
Before Poe could make sense of what was going on, Sainvire spoke. His voice