but Samantha wouldn’t have it. She just wanted to help.
Tsk tsk.”
At this point, Sainvire’s hand fell away. Poe avoided eye contact with him. Instead, she crawled to the dog’s makeshift bed. She looked at Penny’s well-bandaged legs and peeked inside the dog’s open mouth. Sure enough, Poe could see neat black stitches.
Shamed but tremendously relieved, she swallowed the urge to hide behind the puppet stage. She had beaten a human who had tried to patch up her dog. She was no better than them. A tear threatened to fall, but she quickly wiped it with the dog’s soft ear. And she had thought Penny was coarse all over.
She inhaled a shaky breath to clear her throat as well as her mind. Something nagged at her. The whole thing was wrong. Why didn’t Sainvire leave her as a vampire snack for Trench’s people? Why the annoying rescue at the risk of pissing off Trench and his thugs?
Why didn’t he drain me dry? And how did–
“How did you know my dog’s name is Penny?”
Sainvire appeared across from her in a flash and kneeled before the dog. His large hand smoothed Penny’s coarse stomach hair. Poe’s injured hand resting on the dog’s ear looked puny and filthy next to his bigger and more immaculate hands. Just thinking about his retractable nails gave her the creeps.
“I’ll tell you,” he paused, making sure their eyes met, “after I take the shards out of your skin.” When 97
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Poe didn’t answer, Sainvire went on, eyelids slowly descending on his dark-rimmed gray eyes, perfect for a walking corpse. “Unless of course, you’re afraid of me.”
Damn right. I’m scared shitless of you, thought Poe acrimoniously. You’re one scary mofo that can slice all of me like thin salami. Sainvire was the baddest, most powerful vampire she’d ever had the misfortune of meeting. There was a reason why he had saved her hide, and it made her sick to her stomach to think about it.
“I’m not scared of your ugly mug, Sainvire. Go ahead and do your worst,” she enunciated. Her quip would have been more effective had she spoken faster and with more boom instead of moronically slow to avoid stutterspeak. What else could a girl who had survived an onslaught of idiot vampires do?
“Then come with me.”
(((
Poe followed Sainvire to the wing across the domed hall. Her squelchy Adidas desecrated the quiet.
Her muscles ached. Her soaked clothing didn’t help either. Limping slightly, the nail wound in her thigh caused discomfort. She could feel every shard and splinter lodged in her flesh as they sliced deeper with every step. The vampire slowed his long gait to accommodate her. She detested him for it even more.
If memory served her correctly, the rooms within had been a gallery of sort. It had held The Wizard of Oz exhibit at one point.
Sainvire waited for her to enter the room then closed the heavy door behind them. The spacious exhibit space was gone. In the center of the room stood the biggest bed Poe had ever seen, although that wasn’t 98
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saying much because most of her years had been spent sleeping on a ratty futon mat. The impressive streamlined bed of the late Art Deco period was dull silver.
The long room had an assortment of intricately carved desks and divans. The place had a feel of Metropolis from 1940s DC Comics. Only a dash of paintings appeared on the walls, mostly the minimalist abstract impressionist work of Rothko and Newman.
By the window, Poe noticed an arresting nude painting of a dark-haired woman, eyes shut, painted in warm orange-brown tones. Below the painting, Poe read the name, Amedeo Modigliani.
“You’d think she was painted by Gaugin, wouldn’t you?” Sainvire asked, noting Poe’s appreciative, open-mouth scrutiny.
Her examination of the woman ended then.
Berating herself, Poe silently swore. She had been staring at a naked picture of a woman in the lair of a vampire. How Rat Pack is this?
To save face, she voiced the first artsy thought to enter her mind. “Right. The guy who painted fruits and naked Tahitians, right? Then he molested them all afterwards.”
“Not exactly,” said Sainvire as he indicated a table laden with medical supplies. Poe sat on Sainvire’s right, placing her arms on the clean cloth covering the table.
“This shouldn’t sting so much,” he assured the girl.
“Well don’t hold back on my account,” Poe gnashed.
Shrugging, the vampire poured hydrogen peroxide on her wounds until they fizzled, and with deft hands, picked up a pair of tweezers. One by