Cashing Out

by SM Reine

  It also meant that she only owned one dress appropriate for Las Vegas’s nightlife. She’d gotten it for the rare occasion that Brianna and Penny invited her out for a girls’ night. But how often did she have time for that? She couldn’t remember the last time they’d gone dancing together. It had been years, for certain. She was surprised that she could still fit into her quintessential little black dress, since years of hard workouts at the police gym had given her thighs like Tina Turner.

  But Charmaine did manage to squeeze into the dress. She dusted off her only pair of pumps, which were cherry red and made her over six feet tall. Charmaine felt a little bit stupid dressing up after so much time working a desk job in slacks and blouses, but she’d have felt even stupider trying to wear business-appropriate clothes to Vampire Vegas.

  “The question is, where do I hide you?” she muttered at her handgun. The thigh holster was so clunky that it made her feel like she was walking around in a diaper. Her belt holster would have bulged weirdly under the dress, too.

  So probably no gun.

  No wooden stakes either. The vampires would smell them coming from miles away.

  It was the lack of weapons rather than the dress that made her feel naked heading back out to the car, where Anthony Morales was stretched out on the hood to wait. He was smoking a cigarette while watching the sunset. As a man, he had put no effort or anxiety into getting ready to infiltrate a club’s opening. He wore a white tank and khakis.

  “I didn’t know you smoke,” Charmaine said.

  Anthony surveyed the smoldering tip of his cigarette. “I don’t do it often. Reminds me of an old friend when I feel lonely.” He glanced over at her, then did a double take and sat up. “Suddenly I’m not feeling lonely. Damn, Charmaine.”

  “I couldn’t figure out where to put a gun,” she said.

  “I’ve got enough to share.” He leaped off the hood, stomped out the cigarette. “The Hunting Club’s got tricks to sneak weapons anywhere.”

  “If it’s illegal, don’t tell me.”

  Charmaine got into the driver’s seat, acutely aware that Anthony was shooting looks at her on the drive all the way to the Strip. She probably shouldn’t have felt so pleased about that. It was bad enough to think of Hunting Club associates as friends—even family, as far as Dana and Penny were concerned—but there was no way in conflict of interest hell that she could date one of them.

  Unfortunately, this was not a date. Charmaine Villanueva was ignoring the restriction that Cèsar Hawke set to hunt down evidence that the vampires were exactly as bad as Dana McIntyre thought.

  The fact that it happened to involve getting dressed up like a sexy spy was not terrible.

  Charmaine felt good all the way to the Strip, and even while she was parking the car. Then she got to the sidewalk outside of the Paradisos’s new casino, and she didn’t feel good anymore.

  “Good gods,” she said. “That’s longer than the lines at a Beyoncé concert.”

  Anthony jumped up on his toes to look over the heads of the crowd. He wasn’t short, but he was shorter than Charmaine in heels, and she had to smother a chuckle. “What?”

  She straightened her face. “Nothing. We didn’t consider the fact that we might not be able to go into Vampire Vegas to find evidence based on its popularity, though.”

  “Where there’s a will…” Anthony put a hand on her back, walking her into the street and to the head of the line where the bouncers were screening people. “Hey there. I’m Anthony Morales with the Hunting Club. I want inside.”

  The vampire at the door looked between them. “You’re with…the Hunting Club?”

  “What the hell are you doing?” Charmaine hissed at Anthony.

  “Bet you fifty bucks that this guy’s gonna call up to his boss and let us in,” Anthony whispered back. Indeed, the bouncer had pressed a button on his microphone and was muttering at that moment.

  “You’re really so confident that your worst enemies are going to let you into their club that you’ll put fifty dollars on the line?” She glanced at the queue. It stretched all the way around the block, and Vegas blocks were long. Charmaine didn’t want to wait that long. “You’re on. Fifty dollars.”

  “Get your wallet out, baby,” Anthony said.

  She didn’t have a chance. The bouncer had already dropped his mic, unclipped the velvet rope, and stepped aside. “Come in. No cover.”

  Anthony grinned at Charmaine and headed in.

  Vampire Vegas was everything the advertisements had claimed it would be. Charmaine’s coyote senses went wild with the flood of information: all those dry snakeskin scents indicating vampires, the heady perfume of shifter pheromones, the adrenaline from the humans.

  The beast inside of her didn’t like how crowded it was. Unlike werewolves, coyote shifters were loners, disinterested in packs and uncomfortable in groups. But battling her instincts in social settings was no worse than in professional ones. There was some comfort in the emotionless paranoia of a coyote now. After all, she’d just walked into a club where she didn’t belong, with the blessing of a vampire master, and without telling Cèsar.

  “Well?” Anthony prompted, holding a hand out. “You lost. Pay up.”

  Charmaine spread her hands wide. “Where do you think I’d have put a wallet in this dress?”

  “I could look for it,” he suggested, and then he looked horrified, clapping a hand over his mouth. “Sorry, Chief. Habit.”

  She tried to hold back a smile. “Apology accepted. I’ll pay you when we get back to the car. For now, you’re buying me a drink.”

  The space between the entrance and the bar was enough time for Charmaine to survey the setting with her eyes rather than her nose. The room met fire codes. She knew that because she’d looked up the permits, secretly hoping to find something that could shut Vampire Vegas down. There were adequate entrances, enough fire extinguishers, wide staircases.

  The staircases led upstairs. From there, Charmaine couldn’t tell if the second story met fire codes. She suspected they would. Damn.

  Still, the club was a police officer’s nightmare. Dark, crowded, noisy. Should an incident happen, the hundreds of witnesses would be incapable of relating useful information. The only thing they would remember was the drag queen up on the stage, laughing riotously as she performed a burlesque-style tease. Or they might remember the impressively colorful fish in that enormous aquarium.

  Charmaine was so absorbed in looking at that aquarium, in fact, that she didn’t look where she was walking.

  She bumped into a tall man.

  “Excuse me,” she said reflexively, looking up.

  And there he was.

  Mohinder.

  Competitor for Mayor of Las Vegas, new master of the Paradisos, probably the guy who had killed an OPA agent.

  He wasn’t looking at Charmaine. He was much more interested in her companion. “I’m surprised to see you here,” Mohinder said. “But pleased. Thank you for coming, Mr. Morales.” He extended a hand, and Anthony shook it. The muscles in their forearms flexed, bulged. Sweat popped out on Anthony’s forehead. Getting into an arm-wrestling match with a vampire was such a bad idea.

  When Mohinder released him, Anthony’s hand was red.

  “You did send me an invitation,” Anthony said.

  “I invited all of the Hunting Club,” Mohinder said. “I thought it might be helpful for you to see the enormous economic benefit that the Paradisos are conferring upon the community, especially now that I’m in charge.”

  He wasn’t even looking at Charmaine when he spoke.

  She glanced over at the nearest reflective surface—a mirror between plush leather couches. Her hair tumbled softly into her face even though it still didn’t brush her collar. The bright-red lipstick emphasized her mouth, whereas she normally went nude-toned at work. With the heels and short skirt, she looked like she was mostly made of legs.

  Mohinder didn’t realize that Anthony’s companion was the chief of police.


  Charmaine was so used to identifying people by scent that she forgot others used sight. Vampires relied on it heavily. And apparently Mohinder was kind of sexist, since he’d glanced at Charmaine, seen the lips and legs, and disregarded her as unworthy of further attention.

  “Well, I love a good party.” Anthony was smiling, slouching, obviously making an effort to look relaxed. But his shoulders had gone tight. “Everyone else is working tonight.”

  “There shouldn’t be much for the Hunting Club to do now that I’m in control. Soon, perhaps, none of you will have any jobs at all.”

  “In a perfect world, none of us would have to fight vampires,” Anthony said.

  “I can’t do anything about the world,” Mohinder said. “But I’ve done an amazing job with Vampire Vegas. I hope you enjoy everything it has to offer tonight. Don’t miss the bubble pool. If you’ll excuse me…”

  He drifted away into the crowd, and Charmaine felt like she only managed to breathe once he was gone. “He didn’t recognize you,” Anthony said, drawing Charmaine to a nearby bar-height table.

  She wiggled onto the stool. “How could he recognize me? He didn’t even look at me.”

  “Good for us. Hey, you still want a drink?”

  He flagged down a waiter, and before she could blink, there were two beers on the table between them. Anthony had gotten Pacifico—her favorite. How did he know? But she wasn’t feeling very thirsty. In fact, looking around at how many vulnerable citizens were in Vampire Vegas, she was feeling nauseous.

  “There’s a lot of shifters in here,” she said. “And we know that Mohinder has enough silver bullets for all of them.”

  “He won’t use them like that. Silver’s got more economical uses.” Anthony took a long drink.

  “Then what’s the plan?” Charmaine asked.

  Anthony looked confused. “Plan?”

  “You must have a plan other than sitting here to enjoy Wenda the Wicked shaking her boobs.”

  “Sure. You’re going to figure out where the silver bullets went so we’ve got evidence against the Paradisos.”

  “While you watch a drag queen?”

  “It’s not like Mohinder’s gonna let me go wandering around in back now that he knows I’m here. Naw, I’m going to make a distraction so that you can do your work.”

  “Good. That works.” She tossed back the Pacifico. “Nobody makes distractions as good as the Hunting Club.”

  “And tonight it’s all for your benefit,” Anthony said. “Shit. I hope that this party’s still going after you find evidence.”

  “Why?” Charmaine asked.

  “I’m thinking I should talk the police chief into dancing with me,” he said.

  She was still gaping after him when he disappeared into the crowd, finding a vampire to pick a fight with.

  As promised, Anthony made a distraction. By the time it happened, Charmaine was too far away to make out details. She could only tell that Anthony bumped into someone, and then words were exchanged. The words quickly turned to shouts. That was what happened when a Hunting Club associate bumped into a Paradisos vampire—they were incapable of coexisting politely.

  Tonight, it was more convenience than trouble. It might spawn paperwork for someone, but not Charmaine. She was off the clock.

  The shouting spread throughout the club. Wenda the Wicked started yelling into her microphone, wagging her finger at people. There wasn’t a single pair of eyes on Charmaine as she headed up the stairs to Mohinder’s office.

  She nudged the door open and peered inside.

  Charmaine expected to be caught by Mohinder. Or Nissa. Or one of his many other vampires. But the room was empty and dark—so much quieter than the rest of the club.

  Adrenaline raced through her body as she slid into the room. She planned to spend less than a minute inside; it was unlikely that Mohinder would have evidence there. He’d be storing the silver bullets elsewhere. But she was hoping to find key cards or anything else to make her search easier.

  She walked so briskly toward his desk that she didn’t notice the body until she tripped over it.

  Charmaine hit the ground on all fours, twisting to look at what had made her fall. She couldn’t make immediate sense of the body in the darkness. She had to piece together the shape of the clothing he wore based upon the hints of luminous copper skin that were left exposed. Short sleeves, slacks, a collared shirt that had been torn open to expose his throat…

  And his throat.

  There were bite marks on both sides.

  She checked him for a pulse, but she knew he was dead the instant skin brushed skin. The missing OPA agent was a sidhe. Agent Eichmann was dead, and he had been killed by vampires.

  Mohinder was too smart to leave a body out. Charmaine had never found evidence of wrongdoing on his part before, to the degree that she’d almost believed Mohinder’s protests of innocence.

  Except now there was a body.

  Charmaine hadn’t had enough room to hide a firearm or a wallet, but she’d still crammed her cell phone in her cleavage. She took close pictures of the body, and then distant pictures to set the scene. To orient Cèsar Hawke to what had happened.

  When it had been a matter of looking for silver bullets, Charmaine had been happy to do everything in secrecy without OPA endorsement. This was different. This was a body, and the fact she’d found any body at all was a terrible sign. It either meant she was about to get caught by a cleanup crew or that Mohinder didn’t plan on needing a cleanup crew.

  Charmaine had already spent too long in his office.

  She still fell upon his desk, shuffling through the drawers, searching for any indication of where the bullets might be hidden.

  Instead, Charmaine found plans for the Hoover Dam.

  “The dam?” she muttered, flipping through the papers in his pen drawer. There had been updates made to the dam to preserve its integrity in recent years, but it remained a major source of electricity for the region. These plans were printed on actual, physical papers. The plans themselves might have predated Genesis.

  Charmaine took a few more snaps then began drafting a message to Cèsar. She couldn’t wait to deliver this information more gently. There was no time.

  It seemed like she wasn’t going to have time to dance with Anthony, either.

  Gods, she wanted that dance.

  “Damn dam,” she sighed, shooting a dirty look at her phone’s pictures.

  The reception in the casino was terrible. It was rare these days; most areas had repeaters to ensure that wi-fi coverage was complete. But that was probably deliberate on the vampires’ part. A way to disconnect their visitors from the outside world.

  Charmaine needed to get outside to send the pictures.

  She hurried toward the door, stepping carefully around Agent Eichmann.

  “Leaving so soon?”

  Her head snapped up.

  Mohinder stood in the doorway, arms folded, and silver claws tipping the fingers of his right hand.

  13

  The bubble party had started by the time Nissa got downstairs. The waterproof area took up most of the floor between all the spike-backed chairs, mirrors, and leather couches, with only a low rim to contain the majority of the foam. There was enough room for most of the dancers to wade into the pool, get soaked by the bubbles. It was supposed to be sexy. It was supposed to conceal the dancers’ activities so they felt like they could really go wild. Part of the dangerous allure of the vampire club.

  Mostly, for the moment, it served as a thorough distraction.

  That meant Nissa had something close to privacy when she approached the aquarium. Her curly-haired reflection grew in size until it was almost as big as the vision of Dana on the other side. Their eyes lined up. Two pairs of crimson eyes.

  Dana had changed into a full-blooded vampire after all.

  A laugh rose in Nissa’s throat. Not that the situation was funny. It wasn’t. There was nothing funny about Dana’s presence at Va
mpire Vegas, since, if she was there, it meant that people were going to get killed in ways that Mohinder didn’t intend.

  But Penny had said that Dana wouldn’t turn into a vampire for Nissa. Said that Nissa didn’t know her at all.

  Penny had been wrong.

  Dana had changed for Nissa…and she had come back to her, too.

  “You look good,” Nissa said through the tank. There was no chance that Dana would be able to hear the words through two layers of thick glass, many thousands of gallons of water, and the veil of shimmering silver fish. Nissa projected the words with her mind so that she’d be sure Dana understood the meaning.

  The waves coming off of Dana were angry—the same anger that had drawn Nissa toward her in the first place. “I look dead.” Dana’s lips moved. Nissa wasn’t sure if she could actually make out her voice over the thumping music or if she was reading Dana’s mind. The effect was the same.

  “You are dead,” Nissa said. “We’re both dead. But you’re back.”

  “That’s because I’m going to kill you,” Dana said matter-of-factly. “Couldn’t die until I finished what I should have done weeks ago.”

  Heat rippled within Nissa. She glanced over her shoulder at the bubble pool to conceal her cheeks, flushed with blood from the sidhe. She was probably blushing in shades of copper.

  Lights flashed through the bubbles, almost like a proper rave. The mingling humans, shifters, and vampires reminded Nissa quite a lot of the clownfish and jellies within the tank. So many pretty colors. So few important thoughts in their pretty little heads. So much delicious meat waiting to be roasted on a skewer.

  In less than an hour now, the doors would close, Mohinder’s special cocktail would kick in, and they’d start dragging bodies downstairs.

  Nissa regained control of her expression and turned back to Dana. “You’re a vampire now, but you still want to obliterate your kind.”

  “They’re not my kind,” Dana said.

  “Oh, no?” Nissa asked. “I think you’re in denial. You wouldn’t still be here if you thought vampires were that bad. In fact, I think you find being a vampire pleasant. Don’t you?”