glass dropping into a tin container filled the uneasy silence.
Color drained from her face. Each extraction hurt like magnified paper cuts, only deeper, wider, and with a squeeze of lime. Poe forced an immovable cattle rustler veneer.
“You want me to stop?”
“No. Doesn’t bother me,” she said, lying through her teeth.
Despite the warning her brain shouted, Poe snuck a tentative look at the vampire before her. This corpse with dark hair that rivaled her own, fastidiously plucking shards from her arms and palms was dangerous. He very well could have tortured Sister Ann and Goss. And yet, why did Poe find herself having to feverishly work to despise the guy? The vampire mystique was wreaking havoc in her already addled mind.
She didn’t encounter a decent-looking vampire everyday. The ping of glass hitting the tray echoed in the room. Poe marveled at his black coat, completely dry already. Did he have some sort of inner dryer function to go with the retractable digits? And how was he able to get Penny out of the pack without calling attention?
Again she stole a look at the vampire. For such a little thing, the harelip scar was pronounced. He could never be handsome, she thought. Not with a nose that looked like it was bashed in by the great Ali himself.
But who was she to talk? Her face bore a deep vampire slash that dwarfed Sainvire’s twenty times over and could never be hidden with cosmetics.
Despite the facial quirks and the deformed shoulder of the undead before her, Poe had never seen anyone so striking. Each defect came together to form an interesting visage. Outside of movies, he was the 100
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most interesting-looking person she’d ever met, except, of course, her father, Goss, and Morales. But those men never made her feel strange. Goss was gay.
Morales was an arrogant prick.
Long black eyelashes feathered his smooth cheeks as Sainvire carefully ministered to a particularly nasty cut near Poe’s elbow. His touch was mortuary-cold, but he was peculiarly warming, like the feeling in her gut after two swigs of whisky.
“Sorry. My hands are cold,” Sainvire said, like he’d read her mind.
“That happens when you’re dead.”
No wonder he wore a lot of black. It wasn’t to perpetuate the cliché vampire look or to veil his gnarled shoulder, but to complement his dark hair and eyelashes that truly seemed like hairy tarantula legs.
His high, slightly twisted nose had a tiny bump on the bridge, making him look menacing and of this earth at the same time. He could have been a poster boy for all the beaten up and downtrodden Roman soldiers of old.
And then there were his lips.
His lips weren’t cursed like the majority of leeches and vampires she’d killed who unfortunately had thin lines for mouths. His were simply lush and riveting. The more she sat staring, the more interesting the thin upper lip scar looked.
Stop it! The words in Poe’s head halted further musings, forcing her to look away.
Your friends were killed today, for chrissake! Legs is dead and Penny is tongueless, she admonished herself. That no-good Pengle had called her a bitch – a first in her lifetime. It’s sick to drool after the one vampire that could’ve set up the torture and death of my friends. He’s a regular Mengele. He’s the one who came up with cattle milking.
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“Did I hurt you, Poe?” Sainvire asked, concerned that he had tugged too hard on a piece of glass shaped like Florida.
“No.” Poe couldn’t help herself. “Look, why don’t you just suck my blood? Get it over with. This Frankenstein patching before eating me is sick.”
Sainvire looked up briefly from his ministering, shocking her yet again with the wintery tint of his eyes.
The vampire lowered his gaze and dug out a fat piece of glass lodged near her left thumb. “I’ve already had my dinner, but I’ll take you up on your offer one of these days.” To further his point, he threw her a suggestive smile and licked the bloody shard with relish.
Poe looked away muttering in a low, cowardly voice, “You try it, and I’ll pull your guts out through your eyes and feed them to Penny.”
The vampire succeeded in spooking the socks off of her. Needing to know the truth, Poe broke the quiet by asking shakily, “Did you have Goss for dinner?”
The memory of her comrades drained of blood twisted her empty stomach into a knot.
Sainvire blinked slowly, never leaving Poe’s volatile gaze.