“The ones the master vampires didn’t take, the elderly and the sick, were slaughtered along with Sainvire’s people. They were gutted. Their insides were yanked out and used to spell messages like: A RECKONING AT HAND; STEALING WILL GET
YOU KILLED; SAINVIRE YOU’RE NEXT.”
“Man, that’s so medieval. Imagine how many yards of intestines they needed to spell a long message like that,” Poe contemplated quietly as she watched Passionada bust open another bag of cotton candy, her third. “Really brutal the way they killed the old folks. No respect.”
“They have orders to leave no cattle behind.
What they can’t carry or eat they kill,” the woman said. She shook her head. “It’s all for Sainvire’s benefit, of course. He’s a Judas to them for turning his back on the vampire way of life. They think Sainvire’s a greedy thief, and they’ll do anything to get him back.”
Despite the warm day Poe shivered. Although she was loath to admit it, she still had feelings for the vampire. He was her first, after all, and the best person she’d ever met, vampire or not. The thought 24
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of every vampire in California pledging to tear his flesh into fish bait for stealing their food source frightened her. All this trouble because Sainvire freed up hundreds of human cattle from vamp farms. Doing the right thing sucks!
Her large dark eyes followed a miniscule dust devil skipping across the sand as it teased a grungy Penny into chasing it, and she only looked up when Passionada Cruz’ feminine and musical voice spoke once more. Penny still didn’t trust the substantial woman though they’d shared dessert on a bench.
“The new Vampire Council will give whoever destroys him master status and fifty heads of prime cattle. Two hundred if they bring him in alive. For human traitors, a mansion in Beverly Hills, free supplies of human food from Valley farms, and lifetime immunity from predators. Instant royalty,”
Passionada explained. “Sainvire’s followers are to be beheaded, disemboweled, and dried in the sun like jerky for one whole year like the Brits did to Captain Cook when they caught up with him.”
“That’d be you, I guess,” Poe said, trying her hand at comedy.
“And you,” Passionada snorted. “You’re second on the most wanted list. You aided him and killed off a few Council members. Worst of all you marred Trench’s beautiful face when you threw garlic water at him. Plus everyone has a theory that you and Sainvire were…close.”
“Well they’re nuts.”
It was one night. Saying it was a mistake just wouldn’t cut it. So she shifted the subject slightly off center. She thought about Joseph, Sainvire’s ever ebullient tattooed best friend who shared the same 25
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name as her brother, and thoroughly felt ill. Sainvire and Joseph did not deserve to be hunted down. If only there was a way of protecting them.
“Is Joseph alive?”
“As alive as a dead man can be, no thanks to the Council.”
“That’s good. He’s an okay guy. He’s Pinoy like a quarter of me. Practically my brother.” Poe sighed.
“You look it with your can’t-put-my-finger-on-it ethnic background,” said Passionada. “What are you again?”
“My dad’s Scot-Irish and Mexican,” said Poe proudly. “And my mom’s Filipino and Japanese.
They were the best sort of people. Really fun parents.
No complaints on that score.” She took out a battered Bad Badtz-Maru Velcro wallet encased in three zip bags and pulled out a picture of her parents flanked by her older sister, Sirena, her brother, Joseph, and Poe. “That’s them.”
“Good looking family you have there.”
“I think so,” she said proudly, tucking the picture away with infinite care and placing the wallet in the Ziploc bags once more. “I guess it’s no surprise the Council went haywire after the mass exodus of their cattle.” She wondered again about the five most powerful undead in the city. She and Sainvire had decimated their ranks.
“They have a new set every few months. Just for show, you know.”
“So who’s the leader now?” Poe scratched her sunburned scalp.
“No one really,” Passionada sighed. “There is no more Council as you knew it. They’re mere decorations of days gone by. It’s just one vampire 26
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now from San Francisco named Peter Newbitt and his lap dog, Quillon Trench. Rumor is you made Trench so ugly he doesn’t leave his lair anymore. The two of them are running the show.”
“His face wasn’t so bad,” said Poe. She remembered his craggy face at a Council meeting two years before.
“Well you know how egotistical he is. And the head cheese is Trench’s Obi-Wan. His objective is to take back the stolen cattle and kill Sainvire.”
“I should’ve killed Trench when I had the chance,” Poe said as she stabbed the sand with her stick. Deep down it gave her goosebumps to think Quillon still harbored a grudge against her. She didn’t think he would easily forget the incident. “I hope he never gets his hands on me ’cause I’m really gonna get it. Vanity’s a top motive for violence.”
“So I take it you don’t know about the bounty on your head.”
“Bounty?” Poe swallowed with an audible gulp.
“You said I was number two? You’re serious?”
“Yes, but never mind,” Passionada waved the business away. “Anyway, last year Sainvire put out an APB on you to his people throughout SoCal and the Central Valley. We’ve been hard at work making sure you don’t get into any trouble.”
“You’re kidding, right?” Poe gave the woman an annoyed glance. “I didn’t even know there were any of you around. And for the record I never got into any trouble.”
“Despite what you think, it’s hard being invisible while keeping you out of a sticky muck,” said Passionada. She pursed her lips as the last cloud of oh-too-sweet cotton candy melted on her tongue.
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“Burning down a house on Iowa Avenue, I’d call that trouble.”
“What?” Poe shook her head then remembered the charred bungalow she’d looted for can food and towels a few days ago. “I didn’t burn that house down.”
“Well somebody was roasting a can of cream corn on the stove and forgot about it.”
“I, I—” Something nagged in the back of her mind. “I didn’t mean to do it.”
“Still, a team of us had to leave our comfy hideaway to extinguish the blaze. Couldn’t have smoke signals for greedy vamps and scavengers to notice.”
“Um, I didn’t know,” was all Poe could say.
“Then there was the incident with the cars parked along Armacost Avenue. Did every single windshield have to meet with the thick end of a baseball bat?” Passionada droned, her large eyes in slits. “You know, some of those cars are operational.
They’re laboriously kept up for emergencies.”
“Look. If I had known, I wouldn’t have done any of those things,” Poe said, wincing. “I was super-depressed that day.”
“Fair enough,” Passionada acceded. “I’ve told Sainvire from the beginning that keeping you ignorant was a stupid idea. Truce then. Let me properly clean your wounds and give you a set of rabies shots.”
“Oh no. Sister Ann gave me those shots four years ago,” Poe said, letting out a long breath. “If we’re going to be friends, Passionada, you gotta know I can’t handle needles. To me they’re worse than rotten vamp teeth.”
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“Very well then. I see your point. I don’t like flat shoes.” Passionada shook her head with disgust.
“Even though heels make me look like a female Paul Bunyan, I love them to death. If you can believe it, I can run with three-inch heels without breaking a sweat or injuring myself.”
“Nice. With or without heels I’m clumsy. No chance of looking graceful or classy there.”
She followed the gian
tess to one of the clothing shops on the boardwalk that had been converted into a plush dwelling. Porcelain poodles in different shapes and sizes occupied every table, bookshelf, and cranny while posters of Clive Owen, Christian Bale, and Matt Damon covered the walls. Meeting Passionada gave an extra lilt in her step.
Before she could think of magic carpets, cloud cities, and the healing power of friendship, her happy mood quickly turned to shock. Passionada thwacked Poe on the head with a weighty granite pestle. Poe collapsed into confused oblivion.
Something stunk.
Like Roquefort cheese with veins of blue mold.
The kind Mom and Dad chomped noisily while watching Conan O’Brien. Why did the floor heave? The liquid sugar in my belly is troubled.
The wet and sandy thing that touched her face had a faint smell of decomposition. She had no desire to open her eyes. Only bad things could come, but Sister Ann’s voice persisted in her brain.
“Lord, child,” the nun said in a voice of irritation.
“You have an intrinsic gift of hitting the bullseye, no 29
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thanks to me. I only handed you a gun and told you to hit the red circle. The rest was all you. That’s a gift if I ever saw one, especially in these perilous times. Now cut the bullshit and open your eyes!”
With a start Poe’s eyelids fluttered open.
Bright blue sky stabbed her eyes. Her watery gaze eventually focused on her molester, Penny the half-tongue. Why does my dog have wavy auburn hair? And she smells.
Shaking, she pushed the dog at arms length and entangled her fingers in something spidery in the process. Once her clearing eyes saw what had snagged in her fingers, Poe belted out a shriek, too embarrassingly girly in her opinion, which pierced even her own ears.
“Get this off of me!” she screamed as she thrashed about. “Help!” The colors processed by her dark eyes were just too stark.
Cold metal held her wrists and ankles. Her eyes registered what it was, and she had to fight back panic.
I’m clapped in irons like a goon in pirate movies!
Penny inched closer to her. The dog had on a makeshift collar and leash that was tied to an anchor. Anchor?
“I’m on a boat?” she croaked, her parched lips cracking. Queasiness assaulted the center of her belly.
She was surrounded by ocean that painfully reflected the sun and made her squint.
What she had thought was Penny’s new hairdo was auburn tresses of a nylon rope. It was hung out to dry and held suspended by laundry clips along the rails of the boat edge where her chains coiled against. Drying carcasses of salted fish, abalone, and squid dangled to be cooked by the sun along the same laundry line.
Interspersed with the seafood, more of the spidery 30
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fibers in different shades of color were pinned to dry out like salted fish.
“What the hell is this?” Poe asked in disbelief. She noticed the few dozen monstrosities that looked like human scalp. She pulled herself as far away from the grit and blood drips that collected on the edges of the deck.
Poe had a headache like she’d been stepped on by a monster pachyderm. She wanted to belt out another girly scream that would last for days. But vampire killers and cattle rustlers were supposed to be made of tougher material.
“Fuck!” she cried as her fingers combed through a livid lump on her head. Seasickness had taken hold of her throat and midsection. “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph!
That loca clobbered me, and now I’m gonna get scalped!”
“The notorious Poe, awake at last,” said a voice from below deck. It was a voice full of gruff and sarcasm. Penny, the ballsiest dog Poe had ever met, crept closer with her tail between her legs.
Poe spotted deeply tanned bare feet a stone throw from where she huddled in chains, uncomfortably near bloody drips, scalps, and seafood. Her dark eyes crinkled around the corners to reveal fire building within. Ferociously Poe flicked her eyes up to brown legs bursting with little black hairs. Her gaze rose higher until she saw a savage tree of a man in below-the-knee shorts, tattered from sea water and exposure to the elements. He had a grizzly beard that was slightly shorter than Moses’. His head must have gleamed in all its bald glory a few weeks ago but now sported an inch thick of dark growth.
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She blinked a few times to uncloud her thoughts.
Most of his skin bore puncture scars as if he’d been the fresh slab of tuna to go with the dinner party’s sake.
A jinn’s got me. Or maybe an end-of-the-world loon sniffing for a disciple. His fierce, deranged eyes the color of green rhinestone supported at least one of her theories.
“Whoever you are, I don’t got a religion,” she said shakily, her mouth dry. “My parents made sure of that, so forget about converting me into your scalp-happy sect.”
The man continued his hard stare. His eyes and strong cheekbones jutted out in halleluiah glory from the nest that was his face.
“Who the hell are you?” Poe asked uncomfortably.
“I’m the poor sod who’s been duped into bearing you to an undisclosed location two days from now,” he answered dryly. He took a half-smoked thin cigar from behind his ear and lit it with a pink disposable plastic lighter. “So I’m supposed to take the long way round.”
“Long way around? What?”
“Kill time,” he spit out an invisible curl of tobacco on his tongue and ran his eyes lazily over Poe.
Awkward and insecure, Poe surreptitiously checked if her brassier was in place. She often had nightmares about throngs of humans and vampires ridiculing her for being on the bounce during her growing years. Her discomfort was due to neglecting to wear a bra until she was twenty-two, and she took up the practice at the behest of a few of Sainvire’s allies.
“Oh I get it now,” Poe said, massaging a wrist that itched to punch a hole in the man’s chest. “This is about the bounty on my head.” Without mirth she accused,
“You and Passionada will split the reward, right? The 32
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upstairs mansion in Beverly Hills for her and the pool house for you?”
Instead of answering, the bearded man trained his searing, no-nonsense eyes on Poe until she looked away, burned. He has no sense of humor, this guy.
“Think what you will,” he finally said. “Just don’t do anything idiotic. I’ve been quite short-tempered these past ten years.”
“Mister, I can’t do shit with these things clamped around my limbs,” she said between coughs. Her throat was sandy from lack of moisture. “Can I have some water?”
Maybe you need to take another tactic, she told herself. The society of today was one misstep away from Thunderdome and complete chaos. Before her ability to speak forsook her, she added, “Do I detect Scottish in your accent?”
She was again given “the look” and had to bear it until he broke contact by handing her an Evian bottle filled with foggy water. “You have a reputation,” he said and let it sit.
Poe prodded him after she’d downed her water.
“Yes? What about my reputation?”
“Took me a while to get used to this boat, and I’m not keen on losing her because of something foolish you do.” He was shirtless, and his skin stood darkly against the light color of the floor as he sank down cross-legged in front of Poe. “We have two days to funnel away. Two days to kill. That’s the official time they’re expecting you.”
“Them?” she asked calmly.
“Them,” he confirmed.
Infuriated knowing he would feed her filtered and twisted information, Poe took deep yoga breaths to 33
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calm down. Anger will accomplish nothing. Take another approach, said the voice, the rational one in her head that had saved her from so many scrapes .
With sufficient air in her lungs, she began a negotiation tactic. “Mister, I
don’t know how to swim or drive a boat. I can’t tell north from south for that matter. East and west could be straight to the moon or Mars. I don’t know,” she exhaled, proud that she hadn’t stuttered at all. “My skin is burned. My skull is throbbing. I’ve no choice but to do what you say ’cause it’s between you or Orca the killer whale.”
She turned her arms and pulled up her sleeves. Her red and browning skin starkly contrasted with her light upper arms.
“My face is pretty badly off, too. I can feel it,” she added. “And there’s no shade where I am. Could you take off these metal thingies? Or at least consider moving me below deck?”
He didn’t speak, but his eyes never left her face.
His doggedness was a takedown, a humiliation. Poe was rattled and for once was afraid. All those fang bites must’ve made him callous, she thought. He never turned. When finally he did speak, it was with a smile.
But his words froze Poe’s heart.
“I have no sympathy with humans who consort with vampires,” he said slowly. “Intimately, that is. To me that is lower than being a ruddy vampire.”
34
CHAPTER 3
BLUE.
She was surrounded by water that could drown or pickle her for the sea life. The bearded man had tossed her an umbrella, the type that doubled as a walking stick with a sharp point. She seriously contemplated skewering him with it, but she wanted the sunscreen and lip balm he offered her. He had also freed her ankles from their metal bonds and as a bonus handed her a bucket. How generous. Now I can do my business right under his nose.
She hadn’t said a word to him since he’d told her that she was a stained traitor to the human race for sleeping with a vampire.
Does the whole world know my life story? It happened only once.
She didn’t know why his words affected her so much. He was a dirty fisherman and bigoted against good vampires and who knew what else.
Occasionally she would turn her head to watch him throw a line or snag wriggling fish. But his words continued to echo with each wave lashing against the bow of the boat where she was chained. The implication that she was a whore and a traitor tore her up.
Dead Surround - The Julia Poe Vampire Chronicles Page 3
