cavernous building. For being so old, they can sure move fast.
They were so fast that she did not see one of them sneak up behind her.
A vampire hurled her like a sack of potatoes at the interior wall. Her already severed and stitched ear took the brunt of the blow to the side of the head. The moment she landed on a pile of scattered mah jong chips, she was yet again hauled by her coat and hair and tossed headfirst by a squat Ancient with a missing fang.
“You’re that girl we’ve been hearing about, aren’t you?” said One Fang. “The one who’s thirty but’s never been bit.”
Poe yelped, already imagining the ridged metal on her face. She tried reaching for one of her guns, but her coat pinned her arms. Without meaning to, Poe cringed and made herself small in expectation of the impact, allowing herself to slip from the big pea coat and fall to the sticky floor with a groan. Better fall than wall, thought Poe, and grabbing her Kalashnikov, sprayed the ancient thug with blessed bullets.
“I’m only twenty-two, you dipshit!” she coughed, truly insulted.
Her ear was bleeding. The stitched lobe had dislodged again. Poe’s hand shook from being so cursedly angry. Before she could scramble to her feet, Burgundy Tux Vamp flew straight at her and grabbed her ponytail.
“I don’t care who you are,” the debonair undead spit with venom. “You killed my friends. It’s hard enough to live when packaged blood is everyday gruel.
Now you’ve left me without my poker chums.”
231
Rono/That Which Bites
Airborne from a fistful of her hair, Poe struggled to pry the vampire’s fingers. Her scalp was screaming to be left alone. “Oh boo hoo already,” she cried. “If you’re so bored and lonely, why don’t you let me kill you?”
The vampire growled, his jowls salivating. His already long incisors shot up another inch. “I’ll rape you, desecrate your body, then drink you until you’re one of them,” he said as he positioned Poe so she could see a view of the naked cattle standing around like animals, waiting to be turned into patties. “I’ll turn you into my personal cow.”
Feeling ill, Poe took out a butterfly knife from her pocket and flipped it into position. With one stroke, she cut off her ponytail. She made sure she had a view of the vampire as she fell fifteen feet to the crud-softened flooring. With hate, she plugged the undead until hot shells and vampire entrails decorated the warehouse, all before her back hit solid ground.
She didn’t move. The vampire’s body fell entirely lifeless by her feet. Tearing up, she kicked the cadaver away from her. “That’s for even mentioning the word
‘rape’ to me, you piece of shit!” She kicked him again for good measure. “And that’s for nearly breaking my spine.”
She remained on her back and rubbed her burning scalp. She kept her stunned position even when Sam put a bullet through the vamp with Poe’s knife in his eye. Her ponytail lay by her left hand. The sight angered her.
“Are you okay, Poe?” asked an exceptionally bruised Samantha who put on her pea coat without asking.
“My back is shot,” Poe sniffed. “And I’m lying in squishy shit, but I’m all good. You?”
232
Rono/That Which Bites
She extended a hand with a chipped coral manicure and helped Poe to her feet. “Oh, you know. I got beaten up again. That’s my lot in life.”
“Listen, I’ve been meaning to apologize.”
“Rescuing me is better than an apology,” said Sam, wiping her snot on the coat sleeve. “At least I wasn’t raped by corpses.”
“Yeah, that’s something.”
(((
“We’ve got to find the others,” said Samantha who dressed the three bitten, drooling humans with the loud clothing of the fanged departed. “I don’t know where to go. I was taken before one of our people could tell me anything.”
Poe sighed, seething inside. “We can’t do anything now. You’ll all have to stay at the Japanese American Museum while I track down Sainvire.”
Joseph and Sainvire led me into a trap. I’m going to blow some kneecaps, Samuel Jackson-style.
“I thought gambling dens were myths,” Samantha said softy.
Poe kept her mouth shut. She wanted to cry and bludgeon Sainvire to pomegranate pulp. He fucked her a third time knowing she was going to be beaten and raped by Ancients the next day. “Can’t wait until we see each other again, dick. My lower back for your gullet,” she murmured quietly, looking surreptitiously from under her straight lashes at each of the surviving faces behind