by SM Reine
Though, to be fair, Dana normally wouldn’t have come at them like this in the first place, since she’d have had something to lose.
But this time wasn’t normal. Dana felt no adrenaline. It was like all the chemicals in her brain had taken an off day, leaving behind nothing except the reactions that her daddy had trained into her beginning the moment she could walk.
Her reactions were good.
Dana dodged to the right. Wham, jump out of the way, just like that. It didn’t even feel as though she was moving fast. But as soon as she registered the twitching of fingers, she had dodged, and the sounds of gunfire only hit once she was already out of the way.
She did get struck by one bullet. It passed through her arm with almost no pain.
No wonder vampires were such a bitch to slow down.
Dana leaped, planting a boot in the wall, and she brought the other one up for a kick at head height.
Boot heel hit skull.
Skull went crack.
Vamp went down.
Dana landed on top of him, boots planted on his chest, and she swung the bat. The nails sank into Tweedle Dee’s balls. He definitely felt that.
“Normally this’d be the point where I let you guys limp off,” Dana said to the vampire writhing on the ground with his hands over his junk, “because I can’t legally kill you without warrants. Real talk: I’m a vampire now, and I was done with the law the moment Achlys bit me. All you fucks are going down.”
She got up, turned the bat around. Its end had been sharpened into a point by Anthony. Made for a pretty nice wooden stake.
Tweedle Dum realized what she was about to do. His eyes went all wide, his hands came up to defend himself. “No!”
Dana slammed the bat through his hands and into his heart.
Didn’t take long for him to stop moving. And there was no blood. Stakes were a nice way to kill vampires—so fast and tidy.
“Fuck! Johnny!” Tweedle Dee was trying to stand, but he should have been trying to level his gun at Dana. He’d have some dignity going down shooting.
Dana whipped the bat in an arc and crushed his skull to the carpet.
She staked him.
Two vamps down.
Dana wasn’t even breathing hard, which was new. No panting, no sweating. She felt like she’d barely been moving. Pretty wild, considering she’d demolished the handicapped stall downstairs with her various excretions.
The air stirred.
Dana’s head snapped up, and she sucked in a quick breath. Not to breathe. But to smell.
Snake skin. Bloodless.
She had more company.
Dana could have stuck around to fight vampires until the vampire cows came home at dawn. Achlys had hundreds in her murder. Thousands. Maybe more. It was too many vampires for Dana to kill single-handedly.
She grabbed her bat and ran.
When she skidded around the next corner, she glanced over her shoulder. Achlys’s security team was approaching. They looked like a gang ripping off the Matrix, with all those leather pants and the long jackets. They were going to die wishing they looked as awesome as Carrie Ann Moss. So damn pathetic.
Oh, and there were eight of them now. Eight vampires after Dana. Cool. Whatever.
Then she turned her attention back to the hallway she’d just entered, and she stopped.
There were seven more vampires outside Harold Hopkins’s room.
“Oh, man,” Dana grumbled. “Guess we’re doing an endless fight scene after all.”
She finally heard footsteps from the rear contingent, which meant that they were within a couple of feet, and put them well within range for the spiked baseball bat.
So she used it.
Dana drew a Glock as she swung the bat, and she was shooting even as the nails in the bat were burying themselves in some asshole’s cheek.
She blew holes into a vampire’s chest. Little ones, tragically.
That was all the time she had before both fronts of the storm crashed into her.
She punched, she kicked, she shot, she swung. But fifteen vampires who’d been drinking human blood were a hell of a lot stronger than one mortal who was still mid-mortem. Dana took punches and kicks more than she delivered them.
Her gun clicked empty. She whipped its barrel across a vampire’s face and was rewarded with the sound of his jaw snapping.
But that wasn’t enough. Her back got slammed into the wall, the drywall cracked, and her momentary imperviousness gave way to a weird kind of exhaustion.
Her body wanted to be still. It didn’t want to fight.
It wanted to die.
Not. Fucking. Yet.
Dana shoved off the wall, and her gauntleted fist went through the triple-paned window.
Hot Nevada wind blasted into the tower, turning all those Matrix coats into kites behind the wearers. The force of the zephyr was enough to stagger a couple of them as the pressure equalized.
A moment of surprise was all Dana needed.
She grabbed a guy by his shirt and threw him through the window to widen the hole. It was super effective. He Wilhelm-screamed his way down seventeen stories, and Dana was bummed that she couldn’t see if he made a cloud of dust when he hit the sidewalk.
Dana managed to hurl two more of Achlys’s lackeys out of the tower before the rest of them rallied to surround her. A dozen vampires couldn’t attack simultaneously, but they sure as hell made it impossible to escape. Like this impenetrable wall of cadavers.
One of them managed to get a hand on her ankle.
Another got her by the throat.
Between the two of them, they had no trouble lifting Dana, even though she struggled hard enough to make them regret the effort. A couple of their ugly friends had to grab her other limbs.
They fumbled at the straps of her armor. Wards whizzed, light flared, and they cried out.
“Did I forget to mention all my shit’s enchanted?” Dana asked through gritted teeth.
“Just leave it on,” someone said. “Go under the arm.”
They pulled her arms up. There was a hole in the armor under her armpits to make mobility easier. Not a lot of space, but enough to give access to part of her ribcage.
A vampire wrenched the baseball bat out of her fingers.
“That’s mine!” she roared.
“You want it back?” asked a horse-faced man, his eyes lit up with sadistic pleasure. “I’ll give this back to you!”
He turned the bat around so that Dana was facing the pointy end of it. The wrong end.
She managed to rip a leg free and kick him in the face. But they caught her again fast, and they held her pinned as he drove the wooden stake down her armpit and into her chest.
12
Landing a wooden stake in the right place was never as easy as people expected. Dana trained Hunting Club recruits in vampire takedowns and only one newbie hunter had ever hit the heart on the first try. It took practice. Lots of practice.
The vampire trying to kill Dana had clearly never staked another vampire before.
Piece of shit newb-for-brains.
Dana was looking down at the place the baseball bat entered. She suspected that her left lung was punctured, but the vampire definitely hadn’t hit the heart. And now the bat was stuck in her ribs under her armpit even though he yanked on it desperately.
She laughed. “Fuckhead.”
The elevator at the end of the hallway chimed. Doors slid open. Anthony Morales stood on the other side, and he had UV grenades in both hands.
The pins had already been yanked.
“McIntyre!” he shouted.
Dana took the moment of surprise to wrench herself free of the vamps. Most of them, anyway. The two holding her arms had nice big coats. They’d be useful.
She hit the carpet and pulled the vampires on top of her, voluminous coats and all. The vampires, a table, a painting from the wall. She buried herself deep. Everything except her left arm, which was stuck over her head because she co
uldn’t put it down with the baseball bat in the way.
Dana felt it when the grenades detonated.
It had burned to stick her hand in sunlight earlier that day. And it sure hadn’t felt like a frolic through wildflowers when she’d yarked onto the bathroom floor. This was still the new most painful experience of her life—rays of artificial sunlight bouncing off of the walls and windows to cast secondhand beams on her parched flesh.
Felt like she’d jumped into a pot of boiling water.
Dana’s screaming was drowned out by the other vampires’. Drinking blood meant higher UV sensitivity, so the grenades vaporized them.
It was the first time that Dana felt like she was going to do the same thing.
“Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!”
The light extinguished a lot faster than it should have. Dana had trained with those grenades a thousand times so she’d know deep in her bones how long she’d have the safety of daylight to fall back on, and she knew the timing the same way that she knew the chorus of her favorite song.
Those grenades only kept burning for thirty seconds, even though they should have lasted at least two minutes. It wasn’t long enough to kill all the vampires.
More importantly, it wasn’t long enough to kill Dana.
Anthony thudded through the hallway. His approach was heralded by the stomping of Timberlands, the hiss-pop of the hydraulic gun they called Buffy, and the screeches of vampires dying.
Dana struggled out from under the two on top of her, which were still on fire, but alive.
Only momentarily.
Anthony slammed one of them flat onto her back and aimed Buffy at her chest. Anthony was experienced at staking vampires, but Buffy helped supply force behind his precision. Buffy looked like a cannon, or maybe some weird post-holer. A big ol’ stick jutted out of the end, jabbing in and out every time Anthony hit the button. It jabbed with enough force to shatter brittle vampire bones and dig a path straight to the heart.
He used Buffy to stake one vampire, and then the next.
They died.
Dana pulled the studded baseball bat out of her body, and she screamed in frustration more than pain.
The handle was streaked with blood. All that expulsion, and Dana was still juicy on the inside. She wiped the bat clean on some jack-fuck’s Matrix coat so that it wouldn’t interfere with her grip. “We’ve gotta move,” Dana said, clambering to her feet.
“Hey,” Anthony protested. “That’s it? Just ‘we gotta move?’”
“You wanna stick around for Achlys to send more to us?”
“You’ve got a hole in your armpit.”
She looked down to find that he was right. She could see straight into her body. “Fuck.” But Dana shrugged. “What am I supposed to do?”
“Try this on for size,” he said. “Tell the team when you’re going somewhere you’ll be outnumbered. Take backup. Don’t just fucking vanish on us because you think that dying means nobody cares where you go.”
“You my babysitter now?”
Anthony grabbed her arm. Hard enough that Dana could feel it, and hard enough that it might have bruised if she’d still been alive. “I’m your friend, McIntyre. And your dad would come back from the dead to kill me if I let this be the end of you.” He lifted his chin. “Take a bite and let’s get going.”
“Fuck no.” Dana shoved him off. “I’m not sticking around like this.”
“You’ve got a hole in your chest!”
“There’s necromancy that can close that up if I need to. Or if this Harold Hopkins guy has a cure, then I’ll just need a month in the med bay with Edie once I’m human again.”
“A cure?” Anthony asked. “For vampirism?”
“Maybe. We’ll find out soon.” She gave him a suspicious look. “How’d you find me? I didn’t tell anyone where I was going.”
“You went missing so Penny hacked casino security feeds all over the Strip,” Anthony said. “We assumed this was a suicide mission. I’m here to save you from yourself.”
“It’s not a suicide mission, dumb ass,” Dana said. “That Harold Hopkins guy? He’s a microbiologist for Hardwick Research looking into curing vamps. Achlys has him in custody right there.” She pointed at his door.
“Shit.” Anthony wiped a hand over his upper lip. “Then let’s get him out of here.”
“Great.”
Dana stalked onward, kicking the bodies aside. There’d be more soon. Killing seventeen vampires might have been enough to deplete Judex’s enforcement staff, but there were more casinos nearby to supply reinforcements, and more vampires around Vegas besides.
“This doesn’t change anything about how you disappeared on us deliberately,” Anthony said from behind her as she swiped the key card.
The lock turned green. Clicked.
“Like it or not, I am dead, Morales.” Dana pocketed the card. “Unless this Hopkins guy has the cure, I’m gone. Y’all need to get used to it.”
She kicked the door open.
Harold Hopkins had been given some sweet-ass upgrades as part of the Paradisos Victim Package. He was staying in a sprawling penthouse with marble and platinum features. Nice stuff.
The perks that he’d have cared most about were all the computers, the microscopes, the circle of power carved into the middle of the room. The candles melted into the cardinal directions looked like they were still cooling.
Dana swung the bat at her side. “Hopkins! Come out! We’re here to save you!”
“Save him from the huge gratis liquor cabinet and Jacuzzi tub?” Anthony muttered. He was gripping Buffy in one hand, the other on the bandolier with the rest of his UV grenades. He wasn’t worried enough about Dana’s condition to rule out weapons of mass vamp-destruction.
“You never know about the Jacuzzi tub. Tahoe Tessie could be in there,” Dana said. “And that much liquor would kill an army of microbiologists.”
“Who’d make an army of microbiologists?”
She threw open an inner door. It led into a huge bedroom that looked unused, since its million-thread-count sheets were still pulled taut into that housekeeping-perfect square. Harold Hopkins hadn’t been sleeping much during his captivity.
“Bedroom is empty,” Dana said.
Anthony said, “This one too.” He was across the living room peering through another door, over past the sparkling glass foosball table, wet bar, and holographic television.
Dana opened the bathroom.
A smell swept out that she didn’t recognize, at first. It swept through her senses like an ocean cresting over a sandcastle.
Hungry.
It was meaty, but smelled better than barbecue. It also smelled more refreshing than the biggest malt milkshake on a hot day. The first whiff of it made her feel as excited as she did before going four-wheeling in the desert. It was emotion, pure emotion, and the thirst overwhelmed her.
Dana flicked on a light switch.
“Hey,” she said, wiping drool off of her chin, “I found Harold Hopkins.”
The tub in the bathroom was even bigger than the Jacuzzi in the living room. It was like a small swimming pool. That meant it had enough volume to contain an exsanguinated dead body and most of his blood.
Someone had taken the time to individually remove Harold Hopkins’s organs, and that someone clearly had no medical experience cutting people apart because they hadn’t been tidy about it. Super-sharp blades had shredded him to ground beef.
The mess was somehow not the worst part.
No. The worst part was that there was a fucking faerie sitting at the head of the tub, lounging naked with an erection hanging over one hip. He was listening to music on headphones with his eyes closed. Head bobbing along.
How could Dana tell that he was sidhe? It wasn’t just the fact that his skin looked like it could have been turned into a rug for Liberace. It wasn’t the sheer size of his dick, which Dana really wished she hadn’t had to see.
It was the way that the room warped around him like he
was the eye of a hurricane.
Dana was barely at the edge of this sidhe’s power, and she wasn’t sure if she was standing on the ceiling or a wall or what.
At the stirring of air, his eyes opened lazily.
They focused.
He bolted upright, knocking his phone into the blood-filled tub. He fumbled the headphones out of his ears. “You’re not Nissa.”
Nissa. The vampire girl. She had gotten this hotel key from…this guy. It looked like he’d been hoping Nissa would use it for a bloody naked rendezvous.
“Nice to see some people have more fucked-up love lives than mine,” Dana said.
His eyes focused over her shoulder. The sight of Anthony coming up behind Dana was a literal boner killer, and the sidhe leaped to his feet a few inches shorter than earlier. He slipped on the blood. “Hunting Club!”
“Shawn Wyn!” Anthony raised his Browning. “You’re under arrest!”
Shawn cackled wildly. They didn’t have authority to arrest him and he knew that. Just as he knew it was impossible for them to be carrying iron bullets.
He flashed at them, bending the room. Walls bowed inward so that they looked like turgid bellies touching at the navel. The floor heaved under his feet.
Anthony couldn’t track Shawn’s movement. No human could have.
But Dana did.
For a strange moment, it looked as though he was coming at her in slow motion. She could see his half-deflated dong flopping like a windsock. She saw Shawn’s hand coming up, and the spike of magic that arced from elbow to fingertips. She saw it forming into a blade of magic.
A very, very sharp blade of magic, which was going to cut from the left judging by the way that he moved.
She should have connected two and two sooner. It had taken a few minutes and it made her feel stupid.
Magic blade.
Dead guy.
This Shawn Wyn was the vamp killer the LVMPD was worked up in a froth over.
Dana’s hand shot out. She slammed him into the wall.
Shawn looked shocked by her reaction speed—almost as shocked as Dana felt. She hadn’t been rendered helpless by his sidhe magic. “Oh fuck,” he said. “They’re changing you.”
She swung her bat to crush his skull.