Dead Surround - The Julia Poe Vampire Chronicles (2 page)

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Crustaceans on the sand sidling every which way, their antenna eyes missing nothing, fascinated Poe.

“Face paint and candy apples,” she mumbled once then continued on.

Methodically Poe bent down to tighten the double-knot on her dark blue Adidas. Her obsessive-compulsive shoelace problem had been tamed to three incidents a day.

“Let’s have our lunch first, shall we, Penny girl?” Poe said and reached into her pack. She tossed Penny three dry slabs of jerky. Poe munched down on two apples and crackers and took a swig of water.

The rest of the liquid she placed in a plastic bowl for the dog.

“What do you know? People are actually living in Venice,” Poe pondered. “Ballsy.”

9

TO SAY VENICE WAS no more would be a dry joke.

The famous Ocean Front Walk that bore the weight of artists, bizarre street performers, and pierced denizens covered in tattoos stood cracked and baking under the California sun. It wasn’t a noble end for such illustrious concrete. Bleached and wind worn, the hostels and businesses in the vicinity had a look of sagging carnival floats a hundred days after Mardi Gras.

No muscle men or boisterous vendors selling velvet paintings and braided hemp bracelets harassed the girl and her dog. Nor were there rollerbladers, skaters, bicyclists, unicyclists, or pedestrians to be seen.

At least it smelled the same – fishy ocean mist and mesquite with a hint of excrement.
Correction
, she thought.
A lot of excrement. Folks certainly still
live here
.

“Should’na come,” Poe told Penny in a tight voice. “Now I’ll only remember the graveyard feel of this place.”

Expecting a predator to rush out and ambush her any minute, Poe positioned the assault rifle with her index finger ready to fire. Poe sweated copiously, especially on the tip of her nose. She was suspicious of every swaying palm tree as if monkey-vampire-10

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men straddled them with ill intentions. She always felt that way when the nagging voice in her mind warned her and turned out to be correct at every galling turn.

“Hello,” Poe cried. “I know folks are living here.

It’s way too clean. Not even bird shit on the ground.”

As she spoke, her shoe stepped on fresh pretzel-shaped poo, soft enough to be a few hours old.

Disgusting!
No bird crap, alright, but dog shit aplenty decorated sand and concrete like flies on key lime pie.
How could I have missed them?

Penny curled her lips and bared her sharp yellow teeth.

“Even my dog can smell you all,” Poe continued, wiping the sole of her wet sandy shoe on sharp, uneven concrete. Revolted and sweating in her dark windbreaker, Poe focused her eyes on building windows and ledges for possible trigger buggers. She was nevertheless pleased with herself for not stuttering, an embarrassing problem she’d finally conquered her last few days in Downtown Los Angeles.

“I’m no stooge. I’m nobody’s Igor. Just wanna check this place out since my folks liked to take us here. Got my face temporarily tattooed here Maori-style by a one-armed holy man. Ate tons of cotton candy and caramel apples with my brother and sister right at this spot.” She banged the rust layered storefront with the rifle nozzle for emphasis. At the moment Poe looked more like a sixteen-year-old than her creaking old age of twenty-four.

She pointed the rifle on a metal slab that used to be a bench. “And it’s really rude to ignore me and my dog. I know people live here. I have a sixth sense 11

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about these things,” she lied. “I’ll have to check each and every one of the buildings, I guess.”

Not two seconds after Poe’s less-than-poetic soliloquy, a shrill whistle pierced the roar of surf crashing on four-ton K-rail cement barriers once used to divide freeways during construction. Before Penny could bark a warning, dogs of all sizes and breeds swarmed from every beach house and storefront. The mass of growling canines streamed endlessly, backing Poe and Penny into the nostalgic bench of happier days.
There’s more than three dozen of them
.

We’re Alpo!

Not a bite did they receive. Though demented guttural sounds emitted from their drooling chops, the dogs refrained from barking. Poe could see engorged ticks hanging brazenly on fur-lined skin and tiny fleas jumping to and fro on matted fur. The little hairs on her arms rose and looked hurriedly at Penny
. You ticks better not infect my extremely
hygienic dog. I’ll have to waste my bullets on you all!

“This is kinda unfair, don’t you think?” Poe screeched, climbing vigilantly up the bench and lifting Penny’s 24-pound bulk along with her. With a shaky voice she recited another mantra, “I am Bruce Lee’s daughter, Muhammad Ali’s niece, and Xena’s clone, and I’m not gonna get eaten by dogs today.”

Thinly spread doggy muscle and tendon flexed in her hand. Tense Penny was about to snap like over-wound fiddle string. Poe could almost feel those yellow teeth chewing on her bones. She didn’t have enough bullets to exterminate the packs of mastiffs, bulldogs, and dotted, mutated mutts. How many could she realistically kill before one of them clamped down her throat?

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“This is the last time we go exploring, Penny,”

Poe whispered to her uncowed and growling dog.

“Really sorry for mixing you up in this.”

A Doberman twice removed and a couple of his Rottweiler friends were especially annoyed by Penny’s sass. Poe’s medium-sized companion wasn’t at all daunted by the larger dogs’ scars of seasoned street fighters. Masticating, Penny continued to snarl at them. She tried to leap at the growling creatures three times her size but was held back by her friend.

They’re waiting for some kind of command
, Poe thought.
Otherwise we’d be lamb stew by now.
Lucky for Poe and Penny, the rest of the bunch took a step back. Before the words “we’re dead” crossed Poe’s mind, the pissy Rotts with pink herpes mouths lunged at the punier Penny.

Bedlam hit and Poe found herself shooting at dogs at close range and having a miserable time of it.

The rifle proved to be too long and inconvenient for the melee. The blunt end bludgeoned implausibly thick skulls that seemed to get denser with each thwack. Within seconds Poe’s windbreaker looked like shredded wheat. Her arms dripped blood and saliva as she reached for the Glocks in her shoulder holster concealed beneath her quickly disappearing jacket.

An ankle buckled, held captive by a motley dotted creature that could possibly have belonged to the collie family. Sharp teeth obstructed by bone dug deeper. Like a spit laden chew toy, Poe was dragged nastily to the ground.

It was like off-roading. Instead of a sturdy jeep, there was Poe’s sweaty back. Tail-waggers that had merely stood watch suddenly angled in to join the 13

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frenzy. She fired at those closest to mangling her flesh.

What vampires couldn’t accomplish the past thirteen years, the flea bags put to rest in a span of seconds. Dogs snapped their jaws at Poe, embedding crusty teeth into her skin. The older ones lost rotten teeth in their haste to take their share. Their breath, akin to freshly squeezed dumpster surprise with a dash of sewer, made her want to faint.

Before the shrill cries of a whistle put a halt to the melee, the dogs managed to bite Poe more than a dozen times, an amount greater than her kill tally.

Fresh lines brimming with blood covered her arms and legs and overlaid old scars.

At least they didn’t get my face
, Poe murmured thankfully. The deep, five-inch scar running from forehead to cheek courtesy of a vampire’s slash when she was a kid was quite enough decoration. The slightest more would have been overkill.

Penny, to her knowledge, remained uneaten.

Around her silent friend several dogs lay dead or twitching, their necks and bellies oozing. Poe was amazed for a medium-size dog to still be standing after such a skirmish. Penny’s mouth trickled with blood and bits of flesh from dogs she’d thrashed. Not quite done, Penny continued to gnaw on the convulsing body of a mangy Spitz, its blood like pungently thick sangria sprinkled indiscriminately on tangled fur.

“Hey, enough of that,
perro
!” Poe gently kicked Penny in the rump to get her attention. Poe hopped backwards when her own dog snapped on instinct.

“Hey! Dog’s dead, Pen. Calm down. No need to eat him to boot!”

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Penny eyed her as if irritated by the interruption.

“I’ll have to check you out for injuries later, Pen,” she said unevenly, trying to catch her breath.

“After I kill the whistle-happy jerk that set the Cujos loose.”

It took exactly three whistle commands for the dogs to stand down. A delay would have found Poe sprawled on the floor, her major veins spraying the hot cement of the Venice boardwalk.



What kind of chupacabras could command hundreds
of killer dogs? It can’t be a vampire. That’s for sure.

Dogs can’t abide the dead.

Dainty of step and supple of hips, the creature Poe wondered about materialized as if in answer to the girl’s question. Mouth slack from surprise, Poe watched the most exquisite woman she’d ever seen in her life slowly strut to where she stood. Her movie-memory pegged a glimpse of Sofia Loren at her most fetching with rounder flesh and wider hips. Excitable dogs drooled and danced around her. They, too, seemed hypnotized by her presence.

Her face was immaculate, brushed with burnt rose rouge, bronze powder, and other beauty essentials that brought out the fine panes of her cheekbones and the slight opulent puff of her lips.

The woman’s skills were surely lifted from Kevyn Aucoin, make-up artist extraordinaire whose books she had happened upon at the West L.A. public library.

As the woman drew nearer Poe noticed the dark lashes that curved around her tremendously wide 15

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brown eyes. Her russet skin emitted a floral smell that clashed with the dizzying stench of dogs. Poe couldn’t help but feel like a bug trapped in a spider web, waiting for the final puncture to do her in, but for the life of her she couldn’t stop looking.

She has so much hair – triple mine at least. And
she’s so tall! Amazonian goddess in the flesh.

The woman was all curves. And height. Her body was a number 8 with emphasis on the lower half. Her tiny waist blossomed into size 44 hips.

Without shoes she stood over six-foot-two, roughly the same height as Sainvire. With the yellow open-toed heels that hugged her feet, she would easily tower over him. The gold whistle about her neck brought Poe back to reality. It was twice the size of the silver one Poe wore around her neck. The altitudinous woman’s shrill whistle could order dogs to kill at her will.

“Um, you’re human right?” Poe asked tentatively. She breathed hard from the beating she had received from the woman’s dogs. “If you’re one of those leech caretakers for vamps, then I’ll need to shoot you.”

“Yes, I’m human. Passionada Cruz is the name,”

she answered with a secret smile. “I’m supernatural in looks, so I’ve been told. But I’m no vampire puppet.”

Poe remained guarded. She ogled the yellow high heels that kept the voluminous woman upright like stilts supporting ornamental Hollywood Hills homes.

“Tried wearing a pair of those a couple of times.

Just playing around,” said Poe as she nodded at the shoes. “Both times I injured my ankles.”

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“Hmm. Well not every woman can handle heels.

It’s an art. You must be Poe,” the dark woman proclaimed lightly.

Poe, having swallowed spit the wrong way, coughed.

“How the heck do you know that?” she asked when her throat finally cleared. She could feel the veins in her eyes throbbing.

“No offense, girl, but the missing earlobe and the scar’s a big giveaway,” she said with amusement.

“And people didn’t exaggerate about your raspy voice, either. Oh don’t look so shocked. Everybody knows about you on the Westside,” she said jovially.

“And quite possibly all of California.”

“H-how? Who told? I thought I was alone,” Poe blurted all at once, tugging self-consciously at the ear with a flap eaten by a wiseass part-vampire halfdead infatuated with capoeira, a laughable martial arts dance in her opinion.

“Girl-child, who do you think planted those fist-sized tomatoes you love to take? And the nice yellow squash that plump up like a man’s arm two blocks from where you live?”

“I, I thought they were wild,” Poe said, her voice wavering.

“No inkling, really? Even when you found a perfectly suspect skateboard with shiny Swiss ball bearings two houses away where you pick up fresh eggs?”

“Um, no,” Poe shook her head, paling. “I thought it was a gift from my brother. From the grave, you know. He was into skateboarding.”

“You’re serious?” the towering woman asked.

Seeing the girl’s mortification and finally accepting 17

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that Poe was probably not quite one hundred percent in the head, she nodded. “Right. You mean it.”

“How come nobody tried to contact me?”
And
why didn’t the reliable voice in my head let me know
I wasn’t alone?

The woman shook her head and tapped the gold whistle resting closest to the mound of her left breast.

“Because you have a bad reputation, girl. Granted you’ve saved lives, but you’ve also taken a few to the grave.”

Poe swallowed. The woman’s reminder released an unpleasant stink in the armpit of her memory.

She’d killed innocent vampires in a fit of rage, and they had been loyal to the cause of Plasmacore, the alternative food source Sainvire had been trying to introduce until the Vampire Council put an end to it.

“Don’t worry about it, Poe,” the woman said with kindness. “You’ve been allowed to stay because you’ve more than made up for your mistakes.”

“H-how?” Poe asked. Her old stutter had resurfaced. In case the words ‘torture’ and ‘revenge’