“Maple, watch her,” Sainvire ordered as he flew up into the hazy sky toward the stone throwers. His killer talons gleamed in the moonlight and his elongated fangs were bared in anticipation of the fight.
Poe shivered, grossed out at the thought that she semi-fancied the fiend.
Maple and Poe heard scrambling and an occasional pain-filled scream, nothing more. The pelting stopped, but Sainvire did not return. Maple hissed and took off her white coat. Her forearms had become hard as steel with goose bumps until little deadly spikes appeared on the surface. The middle-aged vampire had turned into a bludgeon machine.
“They’re coming,” warned Maple.
Poe stood up from her crouch and readied her Uzi.
Blood was still trickling from her ear and forehead, but she ignored it. She was more paranoid that disgusting gutter water would splash her wounds.
With the help of the bright moon, she saw shadows slinking their way. She thanked the bottles of beta-carotene she had been taking all those years for clear vision. The moon shadow made the band of over twenty vampires and halfdeads more sinister and frightening. Poe swallowed then fired a round.
Vampires who could fly took to the air. Those who could move with the speed of a bullet train attacked. The rest hovered, hissed, and sliced at them with talons not quite as long as Sainvire’s but deadly nonetheless. Either way, Maple and Poe were outnumbered.
The vampire fought as if she were Joan of Arc herself, battering heads and severing spinal cords with 181
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her arms without even an expression on her lined face.
She was frightful. No wonder Sainvire had chosen her to accompany them.
Poe had trouble. She had a hard time seeing with the moon intermittently ducking behind clouds. She had to contend with drops of bothersome blood dripping from her many head wounds, blurring her vision. She wiped her eyes with the sleeve of her coat for the hundredth time. Inattention cost her, for a vampire took the opportunity to tackle her from behind.
Her arm weight pinned the Uzi, and she couldn’t very well get to the Glocks in her shoulder holster. So she went limp and pretended to be unconscious. She took the nasty punches the undead gave her. When the vampire was satisfied, he turned her over. That was when she blasted his mothersucking head off.
“You stupid piece of shit!” Poe yelled maniacally as vampire blood and brain showered her face. No time to wipe them up, she thought, as three more halfdeads surrounded her, guns at attention. She grunted and pulled the trigger.
Nothing happened. The manufacturer’s oath that the Uzi would not lock was utter rot. She hated Uzis.
She jumped behind a garbage drum to shield herself from the raining bullets. Before she could reach for her guns, Poe fell back, as a bullet went through both sides of the thick drum and missed her by a sliver. Steel-tipped bullets. Yikes! A shadow fell on her. Before she could look up, she found herself airborne.
Her arms were yanked by two leering vampires, her weapons out of reach. Unlike Sainvire, two undead flunkies were needed to lift her up in the air and not very high at that. With arm and shoulder tendons stretching like a twisted violin cord, Poe shrieked.
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“That’s right, girlie. Cry your eyes out,” said the pudgier of the two. “Trench is gonna kill you tonight, and we’re the ones who’re gonna bring you in.”
“That’s a dozen janitors each, hombre,” said the other vamp with crooked teeth that shimmered in the dark. “Mexican janitor neck or not, that’s a fresh kill every night! Fuck that refrigerated shit.”
“Besides, this little mutt killed our friends,” said pudgy hombre, tightly gripping his hold on Poe’s arm as an early round of punishment.
Poe forced herself to stay calm. She refused to make a fool of herself any more in front of these vampires by hollering like a coward. But in the end, she couldn’t help it. She took a deep breath and screamed, “Saaainvire!”
Before she could even blink three times, she saw him silhouetted against the moon. His face was fierce and full of bad intent. His two-inch fangs frightened Poe more than she would admit. When the two bozos saw the master vampire, they let go of Poe and fumbled with their weapons. Three things happened at once. Sainvire caught her by the scruff of her coat with his left hand and dodged the deads’ bullets by sheer speed alone. With a grunt, he threw