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.”
198
Rono/That Which Bites
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.
199
Rono/That Which Bites
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