Cashing Out

by SM Reine

  It was endless and black and empty. The screaming from the crowd echoed around her, rattling as though she were in a bell that someone had just rung. She knew what dying sounded like. Those people back there were dying. Permanently.

  “Charmaine!”

  Hands gripped her arms.

  “Fuck!” She jumped and swung a hard right hook.

  Her knuckles connected with Anthony’s face. He slammed into a wall, eyes unfocused in the dimness of the hallway. “Holy shit, Charmaine, it’s just me. It’s Anthony.”

  “Sorry! I thought you were Mohinder.” She shook out her fist. He had a hard face. “He killed Agent Eichmann. I saw the body in his office—got pictures. Can’t get a signal through to the undersecretary.”

  Anthony absorbed this information surprisingly well, considering he wobbled when he stood up. “We won’t get a signal in this direction.”

  “I smell silver too,” she said.

  “Oh man.” He grabbed her by the arm and yanked her down the hall—away from Mohinder, toward the silver stink.

  “What were you doing back here?” Charmaine paused long enough to kick off her shoes, then kept running. It put her level with Anthony’s height. “I thought you were going to create a distraction for a while.”

  “I did it as long as I could,” he said. “It worked too well. I went into hiding so a werewolf wouldn’t smear me against the wall.”

  The hallway turned, led into an elevator. They jumped through its waiting doors. The buttons went down a dozen basement levels. Anthony punched the lowest button, and the elevator gave a menacing chime as it shifted into movement.

  “So you didn’t see the vampires dying?” Charmaine asked.

  Anthony’s gaze sharpened on her. “Dying? How?”

  “All the ones in the bubble pool looked like they were…shriveling.”

  “Gods,” he breathed. “It sounds like—”

  The elevator chimed again. The doors opened.

  There was a cavernous bunker on the other side filled with cages. A lot of cages. It looked like videos that Charmaine had seen of factory farms before Genesis—back when pigs had been permitted to be packed into tiny crates where they couldn’t stand or turn around or even get out of their own shit.

  But the animals in those cages weren’t animals at all.

  They were humans.

  When Charmaine stepped out of the elevator, Anthony immediately grabbed her back.

  “What are you doing?” she demanded, shoving him away.

  “You see that?” He pointed through to the warehouse—a shifting, stinking room of wails far more painful than the ones that they’d left behind upstairs. “That’s the proof we need to get Undersecretary Hawke on Mohinder’s ass. If we get the OPA down there, we win. Instantly.”

  “Those are humans, Anthony!”

  “I know,” he said tightly. He hit the button to take them back up to the level of Vampire Vegas. “I know. But we need backup.”

  “We should go directly to the lobby level,” Charmaine said. “We’ll be able to get out faster. And I may get cell phone reception.”

  “No, we have to go to Vampire Vegas first. Like I said, I recognize how those vampires are dying.” Anthony’s eyes were shadowed with anger—but deep inside, lit by inner starlight, she saw a faint glimmer of hope. “Someone’s dosed them with Garlic Shots.”

  The chaos of emotion and rushing water was too much for Nissa.

  As soon as Dana’s sword went through that aquarium, Nissa was useless.

  Fish washed over the shards as the room flooded. The wave swept through the legs of the crushing crowd. Screams signaled vampires touched by tainted water, and the crowd shifted as they began to drop.

  “Hey asshole,” Dana said, seizing Nissa’s attention again. “Go for a swim.” She brought her legs up between them and kicked.

  Nissa flew backward.

  For one breathless instant, she felt like she had when tumbling out of Achlys’s tower. She was in zero gravity. Suspended in midair, heading toward certain death. As soon as she brushed the tainted water, she was dead.

  She never hit the water.

  A hand shot out, biting into her shoulder.

  Mohinder swept Nissa into his arms, off of the stairs, far from the spray of the aquarium filling his club. “McIntyre!” he snarled.

  “Slasher,” Dana said. She jumped to her feet with super-speed so fast that Nissa couldn’t see her moving.

  Apparently Mohinder could.

  As soon as she was upright, his hand clenched on her throat. The silver claws dug into either side of her neck even as Mohinder’s other arm bracketed Nissa tightly against his chest.

  As fast as Dana and Nissa were as master vampires, they were still new.

  Mohinder was old.

  He lifted Dana from the ground by her neck, and she thrashed, kicking him ineffectually. Nissa was still throbbing from one good kick. Mohinder looked like he felt it as much as a cinderblock would have. “You smell like the sewers where you’ve been stewing,” Mohinder said, tightening his claws on Dana’s neck. Trickles of black blood oozed into the neck of her shirt. “Did I keep you awake at night when I sent her hair to you? Did you feel fear or anger?”

  “Fuck you,” Dana squeezed out.

  “Sometimes it’s fun to kick an anthill and see the ants go wild.” He yanked her close so that he could glare into her eyes from inches away. “Only sometimes. It gets boring after a while. And I’ve kicked your anthill for quite a while, haven’t I?”

  She sank her teeth into his cheek. Dana had fangs like Achlys’s, with multiple sharpened teeth, and she ripped off a chunk of skin the size of Nissa’s fist.

  Mohinder roared and flung her away from him—down the stairs, into the club, where the flood was now three feet high.

  Dana splashed down amid the crowd and vanished.

  “No!”

  The cry came from behind Mohinder. Anthony Morales stood there with the police chief, and he looked stricken. Only for an instant. Then he was running to the end of the landing, kicking off his shoes, and he dived into the water too.

  Mohinder faced Charmaine Villanueva. Nissa clutched his shirt to hang on, ensuring he wouldn’t have to drop her if he wanted to slash Chief Villanueva. He only strode past the chief without touching her, and without ever letting go of his fledgling.

  “The night’s over,” Mohinder said. “We’re going on lockdown and escalating to the next phase right now.”

  Nissa glanced over his shoulder before he turned the corner. She saw Charmaine hurrying down the stairs after Anthony, trying to shout to people, directing them to alternate exits. But Nissa neither saw nor felt the presence of Dana McIntyre.

  15

  In the poisoned waters of Vampire Vegas, Dana McIntyre found the cold embrace of the death she’d been hoping for.

  She didn’t feel relieved sinking under the surface, battered by the thrashing legs of people who were trying to escape, bumping against bodies that had already withered away to nothing. She only felt searing pain unlike any she’d experienced before.

  Dana saw the light.

  It was like she was in a tunnel, out of body and mind, soaring toward some damn light, which was bright white.

  Or neon pink?

  “Is that Hell?” Dana asked, reaching her hands toward it. “Am I going to Hell? You gods are assholes.” Not that she didn’t deserve to go to Hell. Any one of the thousands of terrible things she’d done in her life could have earned her a seat right next to the mythological Satan.

  She was distantly aware of voices.

  “There was a Garlic Shot in her pocket. She must have been saving it for a specific target.”

  “I have a theory—this book Brianna found for me—if I inject the Garlic Shot into me and then she drinks my blood—”

  “We can’t experiment on her.”

  “She’s dying anyway. I’m shocked she isn’t already dead.”

  That voice sounded like Penny’s. I
t was surprisingly hard-edged, determined. It was the way she talked when she was trying to convince Dana that they did, in fact, need to remodel the entire kitchen, and it was okay to delve into their offshore savings to finance it.

  Penny was going to get exactly what she wanted, whatever that was.

  I’m not dead, Dana wanted to say. She was conscious, even if she couldn’t feel her body, couldn’t move her hands or her feet or her head. She couldn’t open her eyes. She was staring inward rather than outward, at this flaming brightness.

  The voices retreated.

  “Shoot me up.”

  “It’s your funeral.”

  Not yet, it’s not.

  Those last words were silent, projected directly into Dana’s mind—or maybe her soul. It was similar to the way that Nissa spoke to her with psychic powers. This voice was so much bigger, though. It came from the light. It came from beyond.

  Hands stretched out of the light to hold Dana.

  She felt small in those hands. They reminded her of being a child sitting in the lap of an adult, falling asleep as she watched television. Pale fingers had stroked through her white-blond hair, leaving behind cheap ribbons, plastic flowers, Barbie glitter. Dana had never cared much for the girly stuff. Neither had her favorite babysitter. But she’d still never felt more content than when she was in those milky-fleshed arms, surrounded by the veil of black hair, nestled inside a bubble of absolute safety.

  That was where Dana found herself in death.

  Don’t go just yet, whispered a voice. There’s more for you to do.

  She felt as though she were turned around. Pushed back down the path away from the light.

  Dana tasted blood on her tongue. Sweet, rich blood. Spicy. A little bit salty, like sweat. It tasted hot as a blacksmith’s fire and warmed her belly.

  She had a belly again.

  She was alive.

  Dana felt the white fingers running through her hair one more time…and then she woke up.

  Blackness.

  Dana was surrounded by absolute black.

  It was the way she’d woken up every night since Achlys had filled her with vampire venom, turning her into a crypt-dwelling member of the bloodless. But it had never filled her with such panic as it did now.

  She was in a tiny space with no room to move. She couldn’t wiggle. Couldn’t breathe.

  When she slammed her palms against the lid in front of her face, she was too weak to move it.

  Because of the Garlic Shot?

  How had she survived the Garlic Shot?

  “Hey!” she shouted. “Hey! Let me out!”

  She felt like she was suffocating, but that was ridiculous. Why did she keep inhaling anyway? Why was she exhaling?

  Nobody was coming to help her.

  Dana’s mind raced. The lid was heavy, but she could move it. She needed to. For whatever reason, her body was dying in this enclosed sarcophagus, and it didn’t make sense.

  She didn’t need to understand it to escape. She just needed to get out.

  Bracing her hands and knees against the lid, Dana squeezed her back against the thin foam pad. She put all her strength into shoving. Harder. Harder…

  Stone groaned. Faint light flooded the chamber through a tiny crack between lid and grave, and fresh air came with it.

  Not enough.

  Dana redoubled her efforts, pushed again. As soon as the slit was big enough she wiggled her fingers into it and kept dragging.

  Finally, she was free.

  Claustrophobia had her tumbling out of the sarcophagus without first surveying her surroundings for a threat. She was unacceptably vulnerable but she had to move.

  Dana hit the floor next to her grave, and her palms hurt slapping against the stone. So did her wrists. Everything hurt. Her body…her lungs… Why did everything hurt so much?

  She might have been surrounded by vampires for all she could tell, her eyes were so blurry. She couldn’t make out the Sharpie labels on the boxes around her. Couldn’t see anything clearly.

  Dana’s hand shot out to grab the rim of the coffin. She got to her feet, and her thighs felt like they did after performing her max deadlift one rep too many. She was going to collapse. Wobbly as a newborn doe.

  The world was so full of sensation. Cool air blew over her skin as she stumbled toward the door. Harsh rock scratched at the tender soles of her feet. The screeching of the door’s hinges was relatively muffled, like the sounds had gone dull-edged. Her foggy head had put a layer between Dana and the world.

  She stumbled against a wall. Ran her fingers over jagged rock and marveled at how much she could feel it.

  This hurt. Everything hurt.

  Her bare feet slapped against the floor. Distant voices echoed—people having a serious conversation somewhere. It sounded like she was hearing them through a pool.

  Daylight splashed over her suddenly.

  She’d found one of the few cracks in the catacombs under Holy Nights Cathedral that allowed the sun to penetrate. Dana gave a shout of surprise, scrambling away.

  But there was no pain. No burning.

  Her eyes focused on her hands. And with some effort, she managed to focus down at her body too. She was wearing the clothes she’d taken from Tormid’s people. They were drenched in blood, but it had dried stiff and brown, so it must have been hours old. She was dry, too. She’d been pulled out of the water at Vampire Vegas for at least half a day.

  That wasn’t as interesting as all the bruises developing on her legs and arms. And the fact that when she ran her tongue over her teeth, her elongated canines felt loose. They were going to fall out.

  “Gods,” Dana said.

  She was human.

  “Holy shit!”

  And then people were on top of her. A pair of strong green hands steadied her as Brother Marshall lowered to his knees in front of her, holding her head, staring into her eyes. “Dana,” he drawled, “tell me how you feel.”

  She blinked rapidly. Seeing a face up close like that was too much sensory information. “I feel…alive.”

  “You can thank Penny for that,” Lincoln said.

  Dana twisted. Penny was behind her, and the instant of relief Dana felt at the sight of her wife was completely blasted away by realizing that Penny’s arm was bandaged from wrist to the crook of her elbow. She was more gray than green at the moment. There were deep shadows under her eyes. “Hi,” Penny said tearfully, her voice thick.

  “Did I do that?” Dana asked. She knew the answer to that question. It was a stupid question to ask. Even with her fog-filled brain, she remembered sinking vampire fangs—her fangs—into a muscular arm and tasting the blood of a living person for the first time since she finished transforming.

  Dana had drunk Penny’s blood.

  “It’s not your fault,” Penny said. “I wanted you to do it. I made you.”

  “You stupid…” Dana didn’t even have words.

  She grabbed Penny and kissed her hard.

  Even as they were kissing, it was almost more like wrestling. Penny was trying to push her off and pull her closer at the same time. Her fingertips had bruising force. Dana wanted to smack Penny around for bleeding herself out for a vampire—any vampire, even Dana—because that was what had clearly happened while she was sleeping. But she also just wanted to hug her and never let go.

  Penny was mumbling at her without really breaking the kiss. “You let me think you were dead.”

  “I was dead,” Dana said.

  It was hard to have an argument while jamming her tongue down Penny’s throat. She decided she’d rather be kissing than fighting, though.

  Either option felt incredibly difficult. Dana was exhausted, and now that the shock and confusion of waking up had worn off, she could barely remain upright. She turned to jelly against Penny’s chest, and her wife stroked her hair while continuing to say things like, “You’re stupid,” and, “I hate you,” and, “Oh my gods I am never going to let this go.”

  Lincoln
stood back against the wall, waiting patiently.

  “How?” Dana asked him, linking her hands behind Penny’s back. Probably tight enough to squeeze the breath out of her.

  “It was all Penny,” Lincoln said. “She tracked down Tormid with his guys in the sewers. She took one of the Garlic Shots you stole and injected it into herself. And she managed to force blood on you while you were still dying from exposure. Dunno if it was the double exposure that did it, or filtering through Penny’s system, or…” He shrugged.

  “It was the gods,” Dana said.

  Penny leaned back to look at her. The orc’s cheeks shone with tears. “You saw them?”

  “I think? It wasn’t like normal. It was like a fever dream. I don’t know.”

  Dana didn’t know much. She’d traded one type of numbness for another. Vampires didn’t feel much of anything, even though their acute senses permitted them to observe everything with intense precision. On the other hand, humans were sensory marshmallows. Dana felt mushy and somehow it was so much more intense than being a vampire.

  She wasn’t a vampire anymore.

  The cure had worked.

  It had worked on Dana even though she’d been a full-blooded vampire, and there was no discernible reason for it to have worked, but it had. They could figure out the whys later, with experimentation. For now, Dana’s skin was as hot as Penny’s, and she was about ready to sleep for the next week.

  “I’ll get Dale Junior to help you guys home,” Lincoln said, checking his watch. “I’ll ping Anthony too.”

  “Anthony? Where’s Anthony?” Dana asked.

  “Vampire Vegas. He found humans captive in their basement. The OPA’s trying to raid Mohinder’s casino right now.”

  Dana’s exhaustion vanished in a heartbeat. She pushed Penny off, got up. Had to lock her knees and plant a hand on the wall to stay upright. “I need to see this.”

  “Now? You want to go back to work now?” Penny stood too, gripping Dana’s hand.

  “You surprised?” Dana asked. Gods, standing was difficult. Too difficult. She didn’t even want to bother with it.

  “Well, yes,” Penny said. “This obsession of yours got you killed twice. I thought you’d be willing to take time to rest finally.”