Dead Surround - The Julia Poe Vampire Chronicles (11 page)

“What’s happening?” he asked Poe who seemed to be locked in a trance. When he didn’t get an answer, Maclemar nudged the girl with his shoulder.

“Trying to figure out where the shots are coming from,” Poe answered with exasperation.

“And?”

“And I think two of them are firing from the clump of cypresses ahead. Three are hiding near the ranger cottage. A couple of vamps are zigzagging super-fast by the stubs near the pond. You can see their blurry images against the water at the edges of 91

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the pond. And there are at least two more crack shots in Jorge and Romulo’s side of the clearing.”

“You got all that from listening?”

“Don’t be annoying,” Poe gritted her teeth.

“Maple drew them out. We’ll need to take down the goons up those trees. They’re closest, and their vantage is bad for the five of us. I’m gonna run real fast to that fat tree over there.” She pointed at a thick redwood that must have been a few hundred years old. “Get to that boulder near the redwood and cover me. Don’t run! Crawl on your belly ’cause you don’t camouflage.”

She handed him two clips and quickly scrambled from tree to tree, barely dodging bullets. Maclemar blew out a breath and followed her lead, throwing himself on the floor when needed and crawling like a Marine under barbed wire.

From the other side of the clearing, a furious Romulo announced his location to the world by hurling a string of curses per shot fired.

“Fucking turds!” he yelled as he squeezed the trigger. “Ball lickers!”

Stupid asshole
, thought Poe at hearing the commotion he was making.
They’re going to plow
him down because of his potty mouth! And he might
just take poor Jorge with him.
In her book the cycling fanatic was more than alright.

Her eyes darted to the crop of diverse tree species only a few hops away. In the center were pretty cypress trees familiar to her from her dad’s collection of colorful California crate labels from the 1920s.

Poe paused behind an overturned picnic table to better gauge where the bullets were coming from, 92

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usurping a hare that dug its hole alongside the crumbling artifact of days gone by.

Know how I know that you two are up there?

‘Cause you’re firing at my ass and you’re not even
changing trees!
She leapt behind the nearest redwood. Bullets grazing the earth exploded into dust as they pursued Poe’s heels. Despite the peril, the dog and pig doggedly continued to trail their leader.

She crouched inside the elbow of an especially leaden tree root and waited for Maclemar who made every effort to hide his broad body from the snipers perching on the tree.

“The unfortunate chump looks like he’s going to need a defibrillator,” she muttered under her breath as she recalled the oft used term in medical dramas she’d ingested over the years. “He can’t be more than forty. He hardly has any white hairs,” she said.

“C’mon, Welshman. I need to get to where that squirrel is,” Poe complained. “Duck for fucksake!

That tree won’t cover your hand!”

Maclemar reached the boulder near enough to take a good shot at the dubious trees, and Poe took off running in a crisscross manner.

Never run in a straight line under fire, or you’ll
be road kill,
Sister Ann had inculcated in her brain
.

Maclemar shot at the tree tops, drawing fire his way. Poe bit the bullet and dropped and rolled to the nearest tree that provided an improved underside view. “Close enough,” she said in a whisper and waited.

Within seconds she spotted movement from a lanky cypress. She fired twice. A distended body fell with a wound around the shoulder and neck, and an 93

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obese daywalker in fatigues lay permanently dead not too far from where she kneeled.

Poe cast her eyes to the other vamp sniper perched overhead and waited.

“I know you’re up there, brother,” she said calmly. “I’m not going anywhere.”

As predicted, a succession of movement shook the top branches of a nearby tree. With lightning movements, a creature jumped from tree to tree.

Maclemar nearly emptied a clip without grazing the enemy. Poe seethed.

“Hey, Welshman,” Poe said loud enough to be heard over the din of gunfire. “Don’t waste bullets

’cause they don’t grow arm hairs!”

“Right you are,” he articulated with contrition.

Poe focused on every shaking branch and wobbly tree with the barrel of her gun but did not shoot. “Go slow, Poe,” she whispered to herself.

“Don’t shoot unless you’re certain. Can’t waste bullets. The Welshman’s already used up most of

’em.”

She watched him leap to an engorged oak ten feet away and back-flip toward a eucalyptus. He was barefoot. The monkey vamp was wily. With a deep breath Poe allowed instincts to take over.
He’s going
to fake a right but will land on the cypress sculpted
like a woodpecker
, the ever reliable voice in her head told her.

Twisting her lips, Poe uttered, “I knew it.” Her prediction proved wise. But not wise enough, for the orangutan undead swung back on the branches and launched himself thirty feet to Poe’s tuckaway. A vicious sleet from heaven, his dirt-caked feet landed savagely on Poe’s chest.

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The pain, virulent and convulsive, took the fight out of the vampire killer. Her upper body burned like skinned flesh drizzled with unbleached sea salt.

Possible
breast cancer in the future.
With her eyes tightly shut, the squeal and whines of her animals became vague mournful sounds, overshadowed by the sobs that escaped her own lips.
Let me not get
cancer.

No calluses ever developed in that part of her anatomy.

Her faithful dog tried to block access to the injured Poe, and the dotted piglet stood indomitably next to the mutt who had adopted her as kin. Penny’s yellow fangs, slick from overactive saliva glands, didn’t even faze the reeking vampire with incisors triple the length of the canine’s. With scorn the vampire kicked Penny in the underbelly. The dog shot up a few feet in the air and hit the ground with a thud. Chops imitated Penny’s protective stance and was quickly given the boot as well.

“No more animal blood for me,” the predator declared to no one in particular. “From now on it’s high-grade stuff or bust. Ha, my very own farm!

Patience pays off. It don’t hurt to be loved by the sun, neither.”

Able to draw a piddling, careful breath again, Poe pried her eyes open and stared into the sneering face of the vampire with stringy, oil-matted hair.

The fucker’s a girl!

“Better stay the hell down, Julia Poe,” a sharp, twangy voice suggested while confiscating weaponry and pack from the downed vampire killer. “You’re my ticket to ride outta obscurity. After tonight I’ll be a fuckin’ master vampire. Me, Missy, the dissing girl.

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Can’t wait to see those jerks’ faces when they see who reeled in the big bad fish. Guess living on trees for 64 days straight paid off.”

The skinny vampire with bunny teeth and protracted incisors giggled like a hysterical three-year-old. She kicked Poe soundly in the shin and wrenched her pack away before launching herself on Maclemar’s boulder. Her shins didn’t hurt. Poe was used to abuse where her legs were concerned. Her chest was killing her.

“I hope I don’t get cancer,” she prayed once more to her parents.

Wheezing, Poe crossed her arms over her upper body and hugged herself. She couldn’t rise up just yet. The pinhole ducts on the corner of her eyes pumped out tears that flowed unbidden down her cheeks. A second later she heard gunshots followed by yelling.

Stand up, you!
the voice in her head said with urgency.
The monkey girl’s wrestling with the
Welshman right now. Can’t you hear him yapping?

Poe took an excruciating gulp of air until she was satisfied that no ribs were broken.
Only my
boobs
, she thought wryly. Biting her lower lip, she took the first step toward the fisherman that seemed a long stretch away.

“Dos i ffwcio dy hun y cont!” Maclemar cursed.

He spewed saliva threads in vehemence.

“I don’t know what you’re saying, but I know it ain’t nice,” the congo bongo girl said, smiling at the blows he was raining on her cheeks and chin. The hundred-pound girl didn’t even bother to block the punches that skinned Maclemar’s fist and left blood blush on the vampire’s face. The girl appeared as 96

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though she was sunbathing on the boulder instead of being pinned down and clouted by a large man twice her size with muscles in the right places.

“I said, ‘Go and fuck yourself, you cunt,’”

Maclemar ranted, disgruntled that his best punches had barely an effect on the vampire with a flat figure and blonde hair browned by filth and oil.

“Hang me now, Lord. I’ve just been insulted by a cute guy,” she said. She looked to the sky in exaggerated injury of pride. “What kinda language is that you’re insulting me with anyway?”

“That’d be Welsh, you slag.”

“Never heard of it, handsome,” she smiled, and her thin, colorless lips curdled Maclemar’s blood.

“Such a shocking way to behave in front of your future mama master. If I were you, I’d be kissing my ass right about now. Your future cattle status might be upped a notch.”

“Och. Sorry, no. I don’t kiss flat asses,” he said with wry grin. “I like my women to have a bit of padding, top to bottom,” he bleated. “Slatternly anorexic girls are positively a turnoff.”

The woman’s close-set eyes narrowed as she felt truly insulted at last. She obstructed his forearm diving down for a jab with one sweeping block. In a breath the vamp flipped positions with the man, effortlessly pinning his larger body. A delicate hand, thick with grime and translucent veins, captured the wrist of the sturdy fisherman who’d just disparaged her. Ill intentions on her face, the vampire forced his fist to her lips and sniffed the rusty blood like it was ice cream. And like the creamy ice cold dessert, she licked his wounds clean to the horror of the crass-tongued scholar.

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Her lengthy teeth, grimy with rot, remolded into a form more lethal and micro-sharp.

“Oh shite,” escaped from Maclemar’s suddenly dry lips.

“You don’t insult your executioner, foreigner,”

she said, her pithy knuckles landing strikes to his face and succeeding in slicing skin. “She might just kiss you to sleep and violate you for a year.”

“I’d rather,” Maclemar began, set on dying with class, “do myself in first, thanks.”

“Then get ready to die,” she said with the fire of an ugly woman who had been scorned most of her life. She grabbed an ear and yanked it back, exposing his brown, fisherman neck. Within seconds the vampire’s three-inch fang dug into Maclemar’s jugular, and she thirstily ingested the Welshman’s blood.

Poe walked into the grizzly scene in time to witness Maclemar’s green eyes roll up the sockets. A limping Penny and twitchy Chops flanked her sides.

She picked up a rock and aimed it at the vampire’s spine.

A four-pound rock was the interruption needed to stop a bloodletting, and it landed crisply on the vertebrae of the feeding vampire.

The succubus bailed her greedy teeth from Maclemar’s neck, not bothering to wipe the thick and salty juices from her mouth. The vampire was pissed like nothing else, and she glared noxiously at Poe who grasped another hefty rock with her hand.

“I was aiming at your skull, but I didn’t want to smash my friend’s face in,” Poe said with a perverse grin that didn’t quite reach her dark eyes.
I just
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shared a memorable kiss with the Welshman, you
bitch!

“I squashed your ass,” the dirty-nailed vampire griped. “You should be crippled on the floor.”

“Um, no. You dropkicked my boobs,” Poe corrected, her wing-tipped brows drawing closer together. The particular spot was a sore point with her. “But I guess I’m tougher than I look.”

“Don’t give me cheek, girl.” The vampire stood to full height, a half an inch taller than Poe. “I might get fifty less heads of cattle, but it would be worth it to kill you.”

“Bummer then, you future master fanger, you!”

Poe said lightly.

She kept her eyes trained at the vampire with dirty hygiene, but her peripherals followed Maclemar’s shaky trek from the boulder to a nook out of range from Poe’s granite projectile.

“Your guy ain’t going nowhere unless you carry him outta here. My venom will drug him like a crank toy for a year. He’ll be like the other cattle, squirting blood into a milk bottle.”

“And I was just beginning to like him,” Poe sighed with regret. “But changing the subject, are you allergic to garlic?”

The flat-chested vampire hissed. She angrily located the girl’s pack and guns by her own feet.

Satisfied that Poe was weaponless, she answered,

“I’m a goddess. Of course I’m—”

Thwack!

Quick as a cough, Poe’s left wrist released a knife slick with garlic oil. With an expert flick it embedded into the vampire’s heart. Two seconds 99

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later another four-inch blade from the right wrist pierced the same dead organ.

The vampire hunter bridged the ten yards that had separated her from the fallen body. Hair and dirt clung to her head like Christmas ornaments.

“Bye now,” she waved to the woman foaming at the mouth and twitching by her feet. “Black sludge ooze equals dead vampire, right? Well so long, slim.”

Like one who dreamed of revenge frequently, Poe kicked the woman’s head and pounced on it Bruce Lee-style and with a neck snapping twist.

“How in heaven’s name did you do that?”

Maclemar asked with fevered eyes. Poe was taken aback as she had thought the Brit had turned bovine.

“Holy!” Poe exclaimed. She darted to where Maclemar massaged his bruised neck. “I thought you turned cow already.”