by Lily Luchesi
Kill Angelica. Can I kill her? Miranda thought. Do I have the power to kill her? Miranda and Angelica had never gotten along. As far as she was concerned, if she had to make a few heads roll in order to get what she wanted, so be it.
“Do you think I’m stupid?” she asked. “You want Danny for yourself. I kill Cross, and you sweep in and take him from me.”
“I am a woman of honor. I am willing to give you a chance to have him. If we get rid of Angelica, you can glamour him to forget everything about his past life and his present. He can choose between us,” Fiona offered.
“I can see your passion runs deep. I respect that. You and I have a similar desire, and we both deserve an equal chance at getting it. So, what do you say? Will you help me, or will you go back to the PID and pretend nothing is wrong while you watch that little brat slobber all over the man you want for yourself?
“Are you going to just let him go and be her little minion for the rest of your immortal existence? Or will you stand up and take what’s yours?”
Miranda felt lightheaded. Fiona was right. How could she return to the PID? How could she watch her man canoodle with another woman? How could she pretend everything was normal when she really wanted to rip Angelica’s throat out with her bare hands?
“I won’t help you,” she said, but she wasn’t even convincing herself.
“You will, but you won’t be doing it for me, you’ll be doing it for you.” Fiona reached a hand out to Miranda. “Join me. Don’t be her lackey any longer.”
“I am not a lackey, for her or anyone.” Miranda said.
“Prove it.”
They stood there, simply staring at each other, neither one backing down.
“You’ll just kill me no matter what, so why are you bothering?”
Fiona rolled her eyes. “Because I highly doubt you’ll just stand still and let me cut your head off, will you? If you’re willing to fight with me, I can offer you a fair fight. You have my word.”
Miranda closed her eyes, her inner battle slowly coming to an end. That’s the thing about jealousy and selfishness. It takes you over, makes you do things that you would never dream of doing otherwise. It strips away your common sense and you become the slave of the Green Eyed Monster. It could take even the kindest person and make them do the vilest of things.
Miranda Valdez had never the kindest person. She’d had a little darkness within her even as a human. Being turned had brought it out a bit more, and her envy towards Angelica had brought it full force.
Looking up into Fiona’s pale eyes, she held her hand out and said, “You’ve got a deal.”
Fiona gave a satisfied laugh. “I knew you’d see it my way. Now…before we begin, you’re going to need your strength. You can’t help me while you’re drinking bottled blood like a baby.”
Miranda smiled. She knew just how to get her strength up and give Angelica a warning at the same time. She had to hurry; it was nearly sunrise.
****
Rarely did Angelica wake from slumber feeling warm. Between needing to feed and having to keep her house cool because vampires can’t stand heat, she usually woke up feeling as if she had slept in a comfortable tomb, but a tomb nonetheless.
That particular afternoon, she woke feeling comfortably warm, the kind that comes after feeding from the vein and being enveloped in an actual human’s arms. She opened her eyes and smiled to herself as she looked over at Danny, who was still asleep. His lips were parted, and his hair was completely askew. A sight she had missed, and one she most definitely could get used to again.
Glancing at the clock, she knew they needed to get up. While she felt better keeping vampire hours, it did leave a little less time to plan a preemptive strike against Fiona. Gently, she kissed his lips, his beard tickling her fair skin and making her giggle.
Danny’s eyelids fluttered open, and he smiled, wrapping an arm around her waist. “Morning. Or…whatever.”
His hands were rough against her skin, fingers tracing some of her scars. She had been in too many battles, but she was comfortable baring her violent past with him. One day, he’d ask her about the scars, and she’d tell him about the possessed humans and evil werewolves she’d defeated, hopefully never letting him know how hurt she’d actually been.
Her life was not easy, and she hoped to keep him safe and far from that part of it once this fight was over.
Her thoughts were interrupted by the ringing of her phone. “Cross.”
“It’s Bart. I was supposed to check in with the director now, but he’s not here. Have you seen him since yesterday?” he asked.
Angelica felt a bolt of worry hit her gut. Not in forty years had she ever known Frederic to be late or miss work without calling. “No. Can you send someone over to his place to check on him?”
“Sure. I’ll let you know when I hear something.”
Bart hung up and Angelica sighed. “This is not good.”
“Do I want to know?” Danny asked, running a hand through his curls.
“The director never came in today, and I have no messages from him saying he was taking the day off,” Angelica explained. She leaned over the bed and grabbed the clothes she’d discarded. “I’m going to get something clean to wear, and we need to get ready. One man being late to work should not cause all this alarm. It’s not natural.”
After she’d showered, she met Danny downstairs in her office. Her office had a microwave and icebox to keep bagged blood in for the days she was working too hard to think about food. She also had a mini-fridge with food for her human side.
“Hope you don’t mind microwave burritos,” she said, reaching into the fridge. “Can’t exactly fit a lot in this thing except for cold cuts and frozen dinners.”
She and Danny ate while they went over their witchy research.
“This was so not how I wanted this morning to go,” she muttered.
“Me neither, but what can we do?” Danny said. “When this is over, we can have all the lazy morning afters we want.”
He touched her hand, sending currents of electricity through her body. She could feel and hear his strong heartbeat, smell his distinctive scent, and see his pure aura—all white with only few spots of red: honest, kind, but with emotional scars.
“You deserve a normal life,” she said quietly.
“I want this life with you,” he replied.
She went to respond, wishing all her long years on Earth had prepared her for a love so strong, but as she started to talk, there was a frantic pounding on the door. “Enter!” she called.
Bart came in, his wild hair in even more disarray and his tanned, scarred skin ashen. “Boss, it’s Director Dom— He’s dead.”
****
A good night gave way to a day from Hell. Danny had laid his heart on the line for Angelica and had been quite satisfied with the result. He had thought that he could bask in the afterglow for much longer than ten minutes, but duty called.
Angelica drove like the Devil across town to the director’s apartment in a small suburb right on the borders of the city. The PID team already had the place blocked off. Humans didn’t know, but the police tape they had also had symbols to keep out evil spirits, demons, and even vampires. They had to cut them and rearrange them just to let Angelica through.
While he didn’t notice anything amiss as they walked up the staircase to the third-floor apartment, Angelica whispered, “The scent of blood is permeating the place.” She closed her eyes tightly, and when she opened them again, he saw the whites had darkened. She was hungry.
Swallowing his disgust at the thought of someone finding blood tasty, he squeezed her hand, and they walked into the apartment together. Now he could smell the blood. It was an iron tang, as if someone had flash fried pennies. He’d smelled it many times at crime scenes during his career.
CSU was already there, taking samples and bagging evidence.
“What have we got?” he asked automatically, forgetting that Angie was in charge. She didn’
t seem to mind. In fact, her smile was more amused than anything, and she let him take charge as he had always done at the CPD.
“Vampire,” one of the workers said. He walked to the corpse and moved the broken neck, so they could see the wide gashes that indicated a vampire bite.
The director was sprawled on the couch in a tangle of stiffening limbs. His eyes were bulging from his skull in either surprise or fear, and his nails were missing and bloody as if he’d tried to fight back against his attacker. His skin was barely bruised and there was hardly any decay, thanks to the lack of blood in the body. He looked like a prop in a bad horror film—as gaunt and pale as a ghost. Danny knew that he’d be seeing that expression of frozen fear in many of his nightmares in the future.
“Did you guys get enough DNA from his fingernails?” he asked, tearing his eyes away from the body.
“We know who did it,” another agent said as she handed Angelica an evidence bag. Danny looked over her shoulder and saw a note and a PID badge. The note read, “You’re next, Cross. Oh, and I quit.” The badge was Miranda’s.
Chapter Twelve
It was war. Double war. Danny and Angelica were fighting two different battles, or at least, that’s what they thought. They had no idea that Miranda was now working with her, and that was exactly what Fiona wanted, what she counted on.
Using Miranda’s vampiric blood, Fiona was able to speed along the creation of her own hybrid werewolf minions, thus making the day she killed Angelica Cross rapidly approach. In fact, it had already dawned.
Miranda was in her coffin, away from the sunlight, while Fiona was readying her army for war. She looked at the ugly, scarred, and vicious hybrids with disgust. Who would have thought that one halfling could cause so much trouble? But she was of ancient blood, and there was nothing she could do, unless she cut Angelica’s head off. And Fiona wasn’t one to get her hands dirty.
Normally, a bunch of shifters would not be too much of a challenge for Angelica and Danny, but the wolves were not going to kill the vamplet. Oh, no. She had a bigger plan in mind, a way to make the whole thing come full circle, like the ouroboros.
She dipped her fingers into the vampire blood Miranda had happily shed and drew symbols on the fur of the newest were.
“Soon, you elusive bitch. Very soon I will watch you suffer and die, and it will have been worth waiting for.”
****
At the PID office, Danny was surprised to see Angelica crash into her chair and burst into tears. He didn’t know how long she’d known the director, but he had not expected to see tough Angelica cry.
He wanted to go to her and hug her, hold her, but he was afraid she’d get mad. She did not like to be coddled or treated as weak. He knew that. He handed her a tissue and kissed the top of her head instead, laying one hand on her shoulder.
She wiped her eyes and looked up at him, face ghastly and eyes rimmed with blood. “It’s not fair. He was fucking retiring later this year! I shouldn’t have let him go home last night. She wouldn’t have dared to attack him within these walls.”
He knelt down by her, taking her trembling hands in his. “Hey. It’s not your fault. Don’t blame yourself for Miranda’s decisions. You didn’t make her, and you don’t control her. You did what you could to help her from day one.”
“Well, I did my best. It didn’t work. Was she always this crazy?” she asked.
Danny sighed. “Looking back, yes. She was always controlling, selfish, and suspicious. I just didn’t notice it before.”
“Well, at least your taste in women has improved,” she murmured, wiping her eyes one last time. “We have to kill her tonight. We can’t have her being in the way of our true objective, which is Fiona. Rest up if you need to. Meet me in the armory a half hour before sunset.” She stood up to leave.
“Where are you going?” Danny asked. He was planning on a twenty-minute power nap, food, and a short workout before sunset.
“Blood bank,” she replied.
“Why can’t you just drink from me?” he asked, confused. His hand automatically went to his neck, where the bite from the previous night was still very visible.
She stepped up to him, almost an inch taller in the heels she wore, and placed her cool palms on either side of his jaw. “You’re so sweet to offer, love, but you need your energy. I can’t drink from you when you need to be in battle so soon. I told you, part of love for a vampire is to feed from the one they love. I, however, can show more restraint than others because I’m still part human. For me, love is also keeping you safe, and doing things for your own good rather than putting my hunger first.” She kissed him, her lips light as a feather.
He put his hands on her waist, wishing them both far away. One of the worst crime scenes he’d witnessed had been committed by someone he once loved. All he wanted was to be alone with Angie, no vampires, witches, or werewolves to bother them.
“When this is over, you and I are going to have some much deserved alone time,” he said.
“Yeah, like maybe a year’s worth,” she replied, disentangling herself from his embrace, and exiting the room.
He watched her walk out. Oddly enough, she was the only good thing in a world gone insane.
****
The armory was actually Angelica’s favorite part of the building. She was comfortable in very few places: Danny’s arms, her bed, the armory surrounded by weapons, and tattoo parlors. When she had been a girl in England, she had loved cemeteries, but after having to kill so many rising vampires and hungry ghouls, she didn’t like them as much as she used to.
Being surrounded by beautiful and deadly antique murder weapons made her feel safe and powerful, as if she could handle anything and anyone. She could tell that Bart’s mood had been dampened by the events of the day, and as the new official boss, she felt she needed to reassure him that everything was covered.
“You know I’m going to take care of this,” she said, polishing her falchion. “I won’t let his death go unavenged.”
“Do you want any of us to help? I mean, she killed someone we were all close to. You and Mancini shouldn’t go at it alone,” he said.
Angelica shook her head. “Look, Miranda did this because of me. Fiona is on a killing spree because of me. I won’t unnecessarily endanger anyone else. If Danny wasn’t already involved, I wouldn’t keep him in this fight, either.”
“Too bad,” a voice said from the doorway. There Danny stood, wearing his suit and with his weapons out, ready to be reloaded or upgraded. “I’m with you all the way till the end.” He walked in, giving her a quick kiss before perusing the weapons before him. He had always been a firearm kind of guy, but against a vampire, he needed a blade. He picked up a smooth machete and decided it would do.
Bart handed Angelica what looked like just a long black hilt with no blade. If she hadn’t caught the paper-thin slits on either side, she would’ve thought Bart was mad. There was a crest in the center with a rose, a bat, and a crescent moon. The Delarue family crest. “I’ve been making this for a while. Press the crest with your thumb,” he said.
She did so, and a six-inch silver blade engraved with demon killing and protection symbols popped out of either side. A literal double-edged sword, and it was perfect. “I’ll put it to good use when I slit that miserable bitch’s throat,” she promised. “Danny, do you know where she might be hiding out? Places we should look for immediately?”
“There was this old cabin in the woods. Her family owned it, but no one ever used it. We had our first time there. It’s away from sunlight, and no one really knows it’s there now that her family is dead,” he said.
“Let’s go then,” she said, grabbing her car keys and leading him to the parking garage. Her gloved hands gripped the steering wheel tightly, and she bit her lip in frustration. This is unnecessary and a waste of time. We need to hunt Fiona. Couldn’t Miranda have defected another time? “How far from the road is the cabin?”
“About three quarters of a mile,” he repl
ied.
Angelica parked about another quarter mile from the small, hidden path that Danny said would lead to the cabin and made sure her weapons were readied in case they ran into Miranda.
“You know, I planned to possibly die by Fiona or Miranda’s hand,” Danny said, “but I did not plan to die from your speed demon driving. I will be driving on the way back, so I don’t have to go through that again!”
Angelica rolled her eyes. “I’m two hundred, Danny. I think I know how to work these nasty Chicago streets in a car that is barely a fraction of my own age. Now, what’s the layout of this place like? I tried looking at Google Maps earlier but came up empty.”
“It’s a small open clearing, maybe three hundred yards or so in all directions. The cabin is in the center of what was a man-made circle in the trees,” he said, also holding his blade in his hand.
The night was pleasantly cool, and there was a nearly full moon making it easy for them to see. Angelica knew that building there and destroying the forest was illegal. Miranda’s family must’ve kissed some political ass to get Cook County officials to look the other way. Probably the same way Miranda had gotten into such a good law school with her poor grades and questionable juvenile record. As a part of the FBI, Angelica had access to background information, and Miranda’s never seemed to add up. She wondered if Danny had ever known any of it.
“I feel something,” Danny whispered suddenly.
They couldn’t have been far away from the cabin, and Angelica wondered what he felt that she couldn’t.
“Strange energy. If Miranda is here, I do not think that she is alone.”
“She could have an army behind her, I will kill her regardless,” Angelica said. “And if she is not there, whatever is there will probably have to die, so be prepared.”
“You think whatever is in there knows we’re coming?” he asked.
“Proceed as if they are aware,” she replied.