Cashing Out

by SM Reine

  The water pumps were set back in a depression where the light barely touched. Nevertheless, Nissa knew that there were humans huddled against the wall. Two of them. She could feel their fear.

  “Melissa,” one whined to the other.

  “Shut up, Shannon!”

  Nissa turned questioning eyes on Mohinder, who was kneeling to open a briefcase he’d left in the sewers. “I found them in Paradisos territory with a dead vampire.” He withdrew a large bottle from the padded case. It was a cocktail of iron and silver.

  “Aspiring vampire slayers?” she asked. It happened sometimes. Not in Las Vegas, where the Paradisos were the most powerful preternaturals, but in other cities where vampires were regarded as disposable.

  “These were would-be victims of one of my couriers,” Mohinder said. “Remember Maximillian? I sent him out to gather the Lone Mountain Paradisos and he got hungry. I’d have killed him if he hadn’t died attacking them.”

  Nissa tilted her head to survey the dim shapes of women against the wall. “They killed him defending themselves?”

  Mohinder took a moment to say, “Yes. But they’re no threat to us.”

  He had paused before answering.

  For some reason, Mohinder didn’t want Nissa to know who had really killed one of his Paradisos. It must have been embarrassing.

  “Have you sent another courier to Lone Mountain? We don’t have much time before Vampire Vegas opens,” Nissa said. She knew that, even if her mind was too fogged with the past to know anything else.

  “Don’t worry about the spread of the couriers. I’ve got everything under control.”

  Nissa trusted this was true. She opened her mind to the women cowering behind the pumps. The girls, Melissa and Shannon, used to enjoy vampire fetishism. Now they felt nothing except visceral terror. That degree of fear would have been too much for Nissa before she drank from that cop.

  Mohinder unscrewed a cap on one of the Gaslight Corp pumps and poured the contents of the bottle inside. Then he pressed his thumb to a button on the wall. It lit up green. The pumps began to churn and the rhythmic beating of machinery sounded almost organic, like a throbbing heart within the ribcage of the city.

  “Why’d you keep these two?” Nissa asked. Her canines had elongated with hunger, making it difficult to speak. “If they witnessed a courier gathering the Paradisos, and they tell the LVMPD what we’re about to do—”

  “They don’t know anything,” Mohinder said dismissively. He tossed the empty bottle back into the case.

  “How far will the pumps spread the solution?” Nissa asked.

  “Only two or three blocks. Just for the test.” He reached into his pocket. His hand came out wearing those long metal claws. “Two women, Nissa. Do you want me to kill them before you feed?”

  They started weeping.

  Nissa’s tears flowed, too. She didn’t have much. Her body was drying out. But she cried, and it felt…

  Glorious.

  The emotions of these women felt like a cable connecting Nissa’s mind to theirs. She could travel along that cable to enter their minds. Nissa was no longer passively receiving the output of mortal minds; she was able to input new information, too. “Shannon,” Nissa said. “Come here.”

  Chains rattled.

  “A moment,” Mohinder said. He released a couple of hooks on the wall. “Try again.”

  “Shannon,” Nissa said.

  Come here.

  The command was mentally projected. She spoke directly into Shannon’s mind.

  And a woman shuffled out of the darkness. She was dressed for the club—curvaceous, beautiful. The kind of woman who might have seen Nissa on Fremont Street that night four years ago and kept walking.

  Shannon looked dazed. She’d gone expressionless even though tears continued cascading down her cheeks.

  “Thrall,” Mohinder said. “That’s your talent. You have matured into thrall.” He sounded proud.

  Nissa felt proud.

  And scared.

  And alive.

  She opened her arms, and Shannon collapsed into them. The human trembled wildly. But her chin tipped back, exposing her throat, even as she continued to sob.

  Nissa was going to kill another human. Her heart pounded with the force of anticipation, and it was almost as good as those first beats Dana McIntyre had helped her feel. It was almost as sweet.

  She bit.

  Melissa’s scream echoed through the sewers.

  Within the flood of blood, Nissa tasted the entirety of Shannon. The childhood abuse that had made her link pain and pleasure. Her fascination with vampire movies as a teenager. Shannon had a cat named Lestat. She didn’t want to die.

  Nissa drank deeper, deeper. She pulled the grief into herself. And as blood filled her body, fresh tears flowed down her cheeks. Her crying mirrored Shannon’s.

  It was no longer too much. It was just right.

  She felt a hand cold on the back of her neck. Mohinder was steadying her as she drank. Nissa wondered if he was going to stop her. She was about to kill Shannon, and that was illegal, after all. But Mohinder’s grip never changed. He didn’t try to slow her. He was simply sharing in the moment.

  Blood carried Shannon’s memories to Nissa. This was the second time that night that Shannon had been attacked by a vampire. The first time, she had been attacked by Maximillian, and she had been saved…but not because she defended herself from him.

  Shannon had been rescued.

  She hadn’t gotten a good look at her savior. The sewers had been dark and flooding from the rainstorm. But Shannon had gotten the impression of a tall woman with bleached hair.

  Nissa’s heart stopped beating again, just like that.

  Did Dana McIntyre save this woman?

  It should have been impossible. They had found Dana’s ash on the street.

  Shannon fell, dead, from Nissa’s arms. And she still didn’t have an answer. But she did have another witness to the rescue that could offer information, if she wanted. “I’m still hungry,” Nissa said.

  Mohinder must have known it was a lie, but he smiled. “Then eat your fill.”

  4

  Glutted on Melissa and Shannon’s blood, Nissa felt as though she could have done anything.

  But she didn’t want to do anything.

  She wanted to figure out who the hell she’d seen in Shannon and Melissa’s memories.

  Both of them recalled a towering blond woman rescuing them from Maximillian. Neither of them remembered any details beyond that, though. They’d quickly fled once Maximillian was felled, and their savior had been so coated in sludge that they couldn’t tell anything about her at a glance anyway.

  It was unsurprising that Nissa would mistake that blond woman for Dana McIntyre. Her head was filled with the huntress—her scent, her predatory grace, the way she filled a room with her personality. It had been barely hours since Nissa had dared to press her lips against Dana’s. She could still smell her dusty vampire flesh.

  Someone had killed Maximillian. From the brief memories supplied, he had been eaten, too. There was a preternatural out there who had killed at least one vampire. Nissa wanted to know who.

  Nissa slipped through the private tunnels behind the animal habitats and headed out onto the streets of Las Vegas.

  It was a different experience drifting over asphalt bathed in neon now that Nissa was full-blooded. She saw colors she’d never seen before, as though someone had added a few new primary colors to the spectrum. She had no words for the shades. They weren’t really there; the glistening fog that slid off of mortals she passed was the residue their minds left upon the world around them.

  They didn’t overwhelm Nissa anymore. She wasn’t victim to their fears, griefs, and pains. She slid between them untouched.

  And disinterested.

  What colors would Dana McIntyre’s mind have displayed?

  Nissa imagined she must have been a bloody rainbow splattering hot pinks and lime greens on her environ
ment.

  But maybe she hadn’t known Dana well enough to guess.

  She never would have become a vampire for you. That was what that hulking green woman had said.

  Nissa was familiar with Penny McIntyre, though only distantly. Dana had mentioned a wife a couple of times. They had been estranged.

  Feelings clearly had not vanished along with their marriage.

  She never would have become a vampire for you.

  Why not?

  Because Nissa was so unremarkable that nobody noticed her? They hadn’t made eye contact in the days where she’d been a college student, hadn’t wanted to share drinks with her on Fremont Street, hadn’t intervened when a murderer dragged her into an alley.

  Penny McIntyre didn’t see Nissa.

  But damn it all, Dana had seen her. She should have chosen to survive as soon as Nissa changed her.

  “What if she did survive?” Nissa wondered aloud. Even when she spoke, standing on the intersection of Las Vegas Boulevard and Flamingo Road, the sound of her voice didn’t draw gazes in her direction. Even people who glanced at her quickly turned away the same way that her college professors used to.

  Penny insisted Nissa didn’t know Dana. Something had changed Dana at some point, turning her into the merciless killer Nissa found so interesting.

  Someone who might have faked her death to survive.

  Someone who might have rescued Nissa’s last victim from another vampire.

  Someone who could still be out there.

  Surely if Dana were still on this Earth, she’d want to tell her spouse as soon as possible.

  Penny McIntyre was easy to locate. Nissa had looked up Dana’s address once, weeks earlier, and knew that the couple owned a penthouse at the top of the Allure building. It was a condominium tower that had been built shortly before Genesis and had been rendered many aesthetic updates in the years since—a shining pillar of glass at the heart of Las Vegas.

  When Nissa stepped into the lobby, a doorman stopped her. “Hello! Who are you here to visit?” With his fingers poised over a keyboard, he surely intended to register her arrival, and most likely notify her target.

  Nissa did not want anyone to know that she was coming.

  She opened her mind to him.

  Nirav Piliszek was ex-military. A Marine. He was stronger than he looked, though that was a low bar to clear, since he was near eighty years old. This was his retirement job. He was a widower, but at peace; he found comfort in his grandchildren.

  “Hands off the keyboard,” Nissa said.

  His hands dropped.

  What could she make this deeply decent man do? She saw his love of animals at his core, and Nissa said, “Do you see the cat?” She pointed at a potted plant between two couches in the lobby. That’s a cat, Nirav. You love cats. You love to press your ear to their furry flanks and listen to the purr deep within.

  “Pretty cat,” Nirav agreed. He saw what she had told him to see. He was still at ease, unaware of the intrusion upon his mind.

  Nissa’s heart was beating again.

  She could control him the way she’d controlled Melissa and Shannon.

  “Kill it,” she said. Kill that cat, Nirav. Kill it.

  He walked around the desk. His movements were smooth for a man of his age—likely a result of his rebirth as a shifter in Genesis—and when his heel lashed out toward the imaginary cat’s skull, it was with enough force to kill an elephant.

  Nissa slipped his security badge off his lapel and stepped into the elevator. He was still stomping pottery shards.

  Her heart was pounding.

  Floor by floor, she climbed to the apex of the Allure. Nissa found Penny by opening her mind again, detecting the people who lived on the same floor. They were professionals, and mostly couples rather than families. The orc woman stood out. She poured agony that radiated for miles.

  Nissa was drawn to the pain.

  Dana. Oh gods, Dana.

  Penny was crying inside of her penthouse. Nissa didn’t have to break in; she just invited herself into the minds of the mortals within, peering through their eyes.

  Lincoln Marshall, a triadist monk, was sitting beside Penny while Brianna Dimaria sat on the other side to hold her hands. All three of them were crying. Lincoln was trying to be restrained about it, as such men were wont to do, but Penny saw his eyes glistening. The orc didn’t like Lincoln. She liked him even less for trying to hide how upset he was.

  “There’s no way that she’s dead.” Penny was glaring mistrustfully at the wooden box on her coffee table. An urn.

  “You keep saying that, but…” Brianna patted Penny’s hand again. “Do you think she’d leave you like this? Feeling like this?”

  “She never cared about my feelings,” Penny said.

  She never cared about my feelings, Nissa thought.

  Nissa had been wrong to think that Dana would run to Penny if she survived. She wasn’t there.

  Nissa leaned against the wall, trying to separate her mind from Penny’s. She clutched at her skull in both hands and screwed her eyes shut. Isolating herself from her normal senses only made the blurring of lines between them worse; she plummeted deeper into the gray depths of Penny’s despair.

  “Well, I gotta get going,” Lincoln said. It was an awkward way to interrupt all the crying. All the more awkward when he shoved a box at Penny. “Sorry to run, but I only came here to give this to you anyway.”

  Penny’s fingers lingered over it. “Wardbreaker?”

  “You should have it,” he said. “You can have anything else from the crypt too.”

  She shoved the box off of her lap onto the floor. “Screw that. Dana’s not dead, and she’ll be back for all that crap before she comes back for me. I don’t want Wardbreaker. I don’t want anything.”

  Lincoln stood, shifting uncomfortably on his feet. Apparently this was not how he wanted the conversation to go. His awkwardness made Nissa feel all sweaty. “Well, uh…”

  “I don’t know why I loved her,” Penny said. It took her a full two seconds to get each word out between sobs. “She treated me like shit.” And Penny felt horrible for thinking that. For thinking that she wanted out of the condo that she’d tried to make a home with Dana. For wishing desperately that it were Dana herself, rather than Brianna and some stupid triadist monk, offering her comfort at that moment.

  Penny hated Dana, she loved Dana, she was addicted.

  It used to be less complicated. Years earlier, before Dana had changed, before…

  The Fremont Slasher.

  Nissa was walking down Fremont Street. It was dark, and she had one of those tall plastic hurricane glasses in her hand. The melted remnants of an alcoholic shaved-ice drink sloshed at its bottom. It sloshed in her belly. She was heavy, drunk, dazed.

  And then the hands.

  The alleyway.

  The blow to her skull.

  Waking up in a glass box, bleeding from multiple gashes.

  Was this the night Nissa had been killed? Or was this the night Penny had been abducted?

  “No,” Nissa whispered, forcing her eyes open, pushing Penny out of her mind.

  She wasn’t Dana’s wife. It wasn’t Nissa inside that glass box, cut open by the Fremont Slasher. She wasn’t some dirty, smelly, green-fleshed orc who liked to sweat over a forge. She was Nissa Royal: a vampire with power over the minds of mortals. Soon Nissa would help Mohinder secure the future of the Paradisos. She was powerful, worthy, important.

  “What do you want to do with everything in the crypt?” Brianna asked gently.

  Penny’s mind radiated anger. She’d just given everything to Dana in the divorce. That terrible lawyer, Lucinde, had spent hours bothering Penny about getting boxes moved to Dana’s daytime resting place. Now she was dead. They had to move the boxes again.

  “Donate it to the other associates, keep it for yourself, set fire to it. I don’t care.” Penny never had. She shouldn’t have bothered fighting Dana over that crap in the first place.<
br />
  “Should I take Wardbreaker back, you reckon?” Lincoln asked.

  “I guess I’ll keep that one. There’s no way to know when I might need something like this again.” If Penny’d had Wardbreaker four years earlier, she might have been able to escape the Fremont Slasher’s glass cage. Which meant the sword was four years too late: too late to help Penny, too late to help Dana. “Brianna…”

  “What?”

  “The book. Did you find the book?”

  What book? Nissa probed Penny’s mind, and she got no images from her. Whatever book Penny was talking about, she hadn’t seen it yet, had no visual information on it.

  “I found someone online who says they have a copy,” Brianna said. “But what good would it do now?”

  “I don’t know. I just want to see it. Even if I can’t help Dana with it anymore…I don’t know. Maybe I can help someone else. Can you just get it for me? Like you said you would?”

  “Of course,” Brianna said softly. “As soon as possible.”

  Penny collapsed against Brianna, who patted her shoulder awkwardly as she continued to cry. Lincoln edged away. “Yeah, so…I’m sorry for your loss, ladies.”

  “Just go away,” Brianna said.

  Lincoln strode toward the door. He was going to realize there was a vampire in the hallway.

  Nissa wrenched herself out of the dense core of Penny’s aura and climbed into the elevator before she could be spotted.

  When she reached the first floor, Nirav Piliszek was crying over the shattered pottery he’d stomped into dust. A cluster of baffled tower residents stood around him, looking horrified, confused, worried.

  And Nissa went to visit the nearest police precinct.

  The police station nearest the Strip, just outside the invisible borders of Paradise, was a recent structure built of sun-resistant stucco. The exterior xeriscaping had the ugly pebbled look of the Nevada desert. Swoops painted around the windows were surely meant to evoke the colorful local sunsets.

  Like the Allure, the precinct’s lobby was unlocked. Unlike the Allure, Nissa was met within by police officers—human police officers. They didn’t look at her any more than people on the street did, though that may have been for different reasons. Nissa was far from the most attention-getting person in the lobby. Compared to the people piled on the hard benches, Nissa in her Judex-branded suit was civilized.