Poe. The tendons and flesh were beginning to snap. All Poe could think of was the movie, A Man Called Horse.
“Okay, Pengle, that’ll do,” said a silky voiced Kawana. “Put her down.”
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Pengle ignored her and continued to suspend Poe like a slab of meat. Kawana sighed and aimed her six-gauge shotgun at two of her fellow cops who were relishing Poe’s torture as much as Pengle. They died confused and headless.
“What the fuck?” screeched Pengle, dropping Poe’s body on concrete with his hook still caught in the flesh of the girl’s chest.
“Sorry, Pengle, but your time is up, too,” the photogenic vampire said. “Say hello to Milosevic and Pinoche for me.” Kawana discharged whatever round was left in the shotgun. Poe shielded herself as best she could from black blood and flesh. The execution complete, Kawana unhooked the claw from Poe’s breast and pulled her to her feet.
“Cancer,” Poe gasped, clutching at her breast.
“I’m gonna get cancer for sure if I don’t become a bat head first.”
“It’d take at least twenty baby bites to turn you.
They’re not that potent,” the cop said. “That’s what happens when a dead couple breeds something unnatural, disgusting, and useless. It doesn’t happen that often, but it happens.”
This fact revolted Poe more than anything. Dead breeding dead was gross. “You’re a copper and a vamp,” Poe shook her head as the officer of the law picked her up like a child and began running. They were about the same height. “Let me down, sell-out bitch, or I’ll thumb your eyes out!”
“Shut it!” the vampire hissed. “All will be explained. And if you call me sell-out again, I’ll flatten you!”
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Goss was here so he’d do a piledriver on your coco-Nazi ass!”
Wordlessly, the vampire stopped and swung Poe like a bag of soiled diapers onto a brick walkway. Her elbow and rear took the brunt of the throw. “Mary and Joseph!” Poe cried after she got her wind back.
“I saved your skin back there, Julia Poe, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to take your lip!” the vampire roared without volume. “If I wanted you harmed, you’d be squashed already. Now you need to clam it shut so fuckers looking to claim the bounty on your head won’t overhear us!”
“Where are you tak–”
“What did I just say?” The vamp asked her lips stretched white with frustration. “I’m taking you to Sainvire!”
(((
“She was a double major at UCLA: history and black studies. Black studies at UCLA you say? Ha!
What a joke! They accepted seven blacks for a freshman class of five thousand when the world was running normal,” Morales said, finally able to take a peek at the girl’s much maligned mammary glands. He was acting medic for the Chinatown triage station where a chunk of Sainvire’s people who survived the siege laid low. “I can’t believe you called Kawana a sell-out!”
“And a coco-Nazi,” Poe supplied as another shimmering example of her stupidity. “I feel rotten.”
“You should,” Morales frowned. “She could’ve gone on to law school or some such but she was naïve enough to think she could make a difference in law enforcement. To right some of the wrongs, you know.
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smeared its ooze.” He wiped the sweat off his brow and scratched his nose. “What the hell did this fucker do to you? You’re going to be scarred terribly unpretty, I’m afraid.”
“What’s another hook-hole scar when there’s this centipede thingy on my face?” She watched him douse the wound on her chest with oxygen peroxide once more before sewing a few stitches. The folks fondly called him T-Doc, short for temporary doctor.
“She’s been a double agent since the very beginning, taking Trench’s shit for the good guys,”
said Morales as he made a fist. “The poor girl is a favorite of his because of her unusual Mighty Mouse strength, and because she’s a looker. Imagine doing someone like Trench for almost ten years for a higher calling? Takes brass cojones, don’t you think?”
He patted the edge of the cot. “Now let’s see that delectable thigh of yours,” the attractive smuggler winked. “I have it on high authority that Kaleb outdid himself with his claw because he’s smitten with you.”