by SM Reine
Dana was quiet.
She had tried to keep Mohinder’s status as the Fremont Slasher a secret. She hadn’t wanted Charmaine to know the truth.
Unfortunately, killing Mohinder without a warrant had landed Dana in jail, so Lucinde Ramirez had insisted on telling the truth to earn leniency.
Dana hadn’t earned leniency.
And Charmaine had learned that the vampire she arrested for the murders—an arrest that had vaulted her up the hierarchy to become the youngest chief of police in the region’s history—had been a patsy for the Paradisos.
“Your perp confessed. The evidence lined up. It’s not your fault that we didn’t see Mohinder right under our noses.” Just as it wasn’t Dana’s fault that Anthony, an experienced hunter, had tried to rescue her at the wrong moment. Anthony’s death was indisputably Mohinder’s fault, and his fault alone.
That didn’t mean Dana hadn’t spent every day in prison regretting the last few years of decisions that had led to Anthony’s death.
“I thought I should apologize for that before I apologize for the next thing,” Charmaine said. “I’ve got more bad news. I asked Cèsar to let me deliver the information.”
Whatever the bad news was, Dana didn’t get to hear it.
Because the victim jerked under her hand at that moment.
She took a reflexive step back, hand going to her belt where she usually kept a stake.
Dylan Rodgers sat up, gasping. He clutched his chest as though it hurt. His eyes struggled to open, and there was a dullness to his gaze as he cast it around the room, trying to see where he’d ended up.
He hadn’t merely been drained of blood and castrated. At some point, he’d been injected with vampire venom.
Now he was bloodless.
“Is this another commonality with the other victims?” Dana asked, angling herself to stand between Charmaine and the rising undead.
The police chief shook her head. “No, we didn’t think—sir, calm down, sir.”
He was trying to get off the table. “Where am I? What’s going on?” he mumbled, like his lips and tongue weren’t working yet. He slid off the table and immediately collapsed. The movements stretched the skin on his back, making the wounds tear.
“He’s destroying evidence!” Dana said.
“Restrain him. Gently. I’ll grab our fledgling advocate.” Charmaine slammed out of the doors, leaving Dana to try to grab Rodgers’s attention.
She crouched in front of him and easily deflected his confused blows. He hadn’t acquired preternatural-vampire strength yet. He’d barely acquired tiny-rain-soaked-kitten strength.
“Calm down, sir,” Dana said, yanking the blanket off the table to wrap it around him. “You’re in the Clark County Coroner’s Office. You’re safe.”
He focused on her, continuing to hyperventilate. He was probably confused as to why it didn’t feel good to breathe. He didn’t need to anymore, and he’d be a lot happier once he realized that.
“Who are you?” he asked.
“Dana McIntyre. I’m working with the police.”
He stared around the room, blinking rapidly. “Why…how…?”
“You’re a vampire. Congrats. Welcome to being undead.” The fledgling advocate would have a nicer way of breaking the news, but Dana had no patience for that. “Tell me who did this to you.”
He shoved himself away from her, back hitting the counters. His groping hands knocked an entire jar of clean swabs off the counter.
“Don’t make me restrain you,” Dana said.
“I was attacked,” Rodgers said with the hushed horror of a man reliving the incident. “It was…” His eyebrows creased. “I don’t know. I don’t remember.”
Unfortunately, that was normal. When Dana had turned into a vampire, she’d only managed to keep her memories during the transition because she hadn’t been completely exsanguinated. But Rodgers had been drained. He’d need help regaining his memories.
“That’s okay,” Dana said. “Tell me anything you do remember. Where were you? What were you doing?”
He didn’t seem to hear her. A shaking hand moved to his mouth, fingers tracing over the puckered lines of his lips. “Dracula,” Rodgers said. “I was killed by Dracula.”
Dana couldn’t help it.
She laughed.
Which was why she got a dirty look from Charmaine when she returned with the advocate.
“Dracula? Really?” Dana asked. “Do you mean he looked like an actor who played Dracula? Or Halloween Dracula? I need more specifics.”
“No you don’t,” Charmaine said. “He needs time with the advocate and a whole lot of TLC.”
An orderly helped Rodgers to his feet. He kept fighting—hard enough that one of them finally slapped a charm on his neck. He sagged between their arms, unconscious. But not before muttering one more time, “It was Dracula.”
3
The limousine hadn’t stuck around long enough for Dana to rejoin her wife in plush leathery comfort, drinking mimosas and watching trash TV on the government’s dime. It was after six o’clock, so the limo had taken Penny to the taquería where Anthony’s memorial would be unfurling.
Dana shot a text message to Cèsar to let him know she was going to the memorial in Charmaine’s car. He responded with assent.
“I’m such an obedient bitch,” Dana said, jamming her phone into her back pocket again. “Woof woof.”
Charmaine cranked up the AC and pulled out of the parking lot. “What do you think about the witness’s initial testimony?”
“I think he’s gone crazy,” Dana said. “Dracula’s not castrating men around Las Vegas for fun.”
“There’s a first time for everything.”
“Not this.” Dana pushed back the seat in Charmaine’s car as far as it could go, propping her boots up on the dashboard. She swiped through the files that Cèsar had given her again, looking for something new she hadn’t yet noticed. “Who’s gonna be at the taquería?”
“I don’t know who’ll be there, but the whole Hunting Club’s been invited,” she said.
“Good. We can sink our teeth into this case over tacos.”
“The case will wait until tomorrow. It’s going to develop overnight as the fledgling advocate helps Rodgers through the change, and as Rodgers begins supplying information,” Charmaine said. “The memorial’s about looking our grief in the eye. You need a day to handle those feelings—maybe more than a day.”
“I need time off about as much as I want an enema. I’m not fucked up over Anthony. I just wanna get to work.”
“There’s plenty else for you to be upset about. You were arrested then attacked by inmates. The city’s shriveling up into a ghost town. You have to work for the OPA. And…” Charmaine’s hands went all tight on the steering wheel. “Nissa Royal never made it to prison.”
Dana wished that news had surprised her.
But she’d seen the way the vampires looked at her. The hints of fear lingering in their crimson eyes hadn’t had a damn thing to do with Dana’s reputation. That had been the fear of vampires who were being smashed under the thumb of a much more powerful vampire.
“How? When?” Dana asked, feeling heavy.
“She escaped shortly after the arrest and took several good men with her. We thought we’d guarded against psychic control, but we’ve never come across a vampire with this strength, and we weren’t ready.”
So Nissa was still out there, taking the mantle of her fallen predecessors.
Dana had no clue what she felt.
Fuck. She preferred to have no feelings at all, but the roiling cauldron of her belly meant something.
“There’s a serial killing vampire and you didn’t see fit to tell me the Fremont Slasher’s fledgling is loose,” she said. “That’s real nice, Chief. Real fucking nice.”
“I told you about Nissa as soon as you needed to hear it. Did Rodgers look like Nissa’s work to you?” Charmaine asked.
“I don’t know. I saw t
he first time she killed anyone, and it was messy, but not castration messy. If she’s decided to follow Mohinder’s footsteps, she’ll still be choosing her preferred methodology.”
Methods that Nissa would have picked up from Dana.
I didn’t learn this from the Fremont Slasher. I learned this from you.
That was what Nissa had said before tearing a policeman’s throat out with her teeth.
“If it’s Nissa, I’ll know soon.” Dana felt hollow. That was the only sensation she could pin down. “Nissa will seek me out.”
Charmaine parked outside the hole-in-the-wall Anthony used to claim had the best Mexican food in Vegas. They entered the taquería to the sound of applause. Their arrival had been anticipated, and the cops gathered in the dining room cheered at the sight of Dana.
This was more kind-hearted than the noisy greeting at the coroner’s office. These were people she had worked with on multiple cases. They knew Anthony and would miss his temperance.
Even so. If anyone deserved to be cheered, it wasn’t Dana. Especially not now.
She gave the cops looks of stony-faced disapproval. It didn’t seem to help. They knew what a misanthrope she was, knew that she had no interest in even the most tenuous celebrity. Anthony used to say that being an ungrateful asshole was Dana’s brand.
Gods, what she’d have given for Anthony to be giving her shit right at that moment.
Penny was seated at the bar with Brianna, Lina, Dionne, and even Chris—the secretary at the Hunting Lodge. All the associates that regularly worked in Las Vegas. Their shapes were hunched over shot glasses, haloed in light from the red and green lanterns strung between tequila bottles.
“Gonna go sit with them,” Dana said, jerking a thumb toward the bar.
Charmaine nodded. “I’ll be around.”
“Not coming with?”
“Don’t think I’m welcome.” The chief had gotten tense since coming in to the bar.
“My offer of murdering transphobic dillweeds extends to the Hunting Club too, for your information. But they won’t fuck with you.”
“Not about that,” Charmaine agreed.
“They blaming you for Anthony?”
“Among other things. I’ve got to talk to these guys anyway. I’ll be around if you need me.” The chief headed off to a cluster of cops.
Dana bellied up between Penny and Brianna.
“I’ll spare you the applause,” Lina said, “but we’ve gotta hug because you’re out of prison.”
“Don’t even think it,” Dana said.
“Too late.” Lina wrapped her skinny stick-bug arms around Dana’s shoulders, squeezing her tight. “It is so good to see you.”
“Yeah, right, whatever. Thanks.” Dana was nice enough not to push the feline shifter away, but that was as good as it got.
“How was prison?” Dionne asked, watching Dana through thick-framed glasses that sparkled with magic. Her golden shifter eyes seemed to glow.
“It was like a big sleepover with pillow fights. How the fuck do you think prison was?”
Dionne pushed the glasses up the bridge of her nose. “They still don’t let cameras into OPA detention centers. I’m mostly wondering how detainee quality of life compares to mundane prisons.”
“Can’t compare. Haven’t been to mundane prison.” Dana stole a shot glass Dionne hadn’t emptied yet and knocked it back. “I’ll let you know when I get that item off my bucket list.”
Brianna didn’t have hugs or smiles for Dana. The puffy redness of her eyes made it look like she’d been crying for weeks. “If you go to prison again, I’ll shank you myself,” Brianna said.
“Oh, cheer up, B,” Dana said. “We’ve got a fun case.” She slapped the tablet down on the bar between them. Then she waved down the bartender. “Margaritas for all!”
“How can you think about a case?” Brianna asked. Someone had hung a picture of Anthony by one of the rearmost booths. It was surrounded by flowers, candles, trinkets.
“The only reason I’m out of prison is the case,” Dana said. “Should I turn into a weepy baby like you?”
Brianna jumped off the barstool. “Forget you, McIntyre.”
She left.
Dana felt dead inside. Much deader than she’d ever felt as a vampire.
“She’s having a hard time of it,” Penny said, rubbing the back of Dana’s hand. “It’ll be okay.”
“No,” Dana said, “it won’t.”
“I don’t think it’s even just what happened to Anthony,” Dionne said. “Brianna’s only gotten worse since the OPA absorbed us. She’s too professional to say it, but it hurt her pride to have the business taken away.”
Alarm rocked through Dana. “The OPA absorbed the Hunting Club?”
Before Dionne could reply, a man approached their table. At a glance, he looked like any cop there to join in grieving their fallen comrade. He moved his broad-shouldered frame with the confidence of a man who kept his surroundings under close observation, ready for attack at any moment.
But once he sat next to Dana and waved down a bartender, she realized she knew the hard lines of his face, the brush of blond hair. She just didn’t usually see Brother Lincoln Marshall when he wasn’t wearing monk robes.
“The fuck is this?” Dana asked.
He glanced down at his chest, as if surprised to see that there were no robes. “Clothes? You talking about my clothes?”
“You look weird.”
Dionne rested her chin on her hands and said, “I don’t think he looks weird.” Her smile was predatory. She’d smelled testosterone in the water, and feline shifters could get as randy as sidhe. “How can we help you, Brother Marshall?”
“Just coming to pay my respects, like the rest of you,” he said, oblivious to the were-kitty’s interest in his casual clothes. “Haven’t seen the Hunting Club around much lately anyway. Got me all worried.”
“You haven’t seen us around because we’re working for the OPA now,” Chris said much too cheerfully.
Dana winced at how casually he said that. “You guys still gotta walk me through that one.”
“We were all invited to enlist, very kindly, by Undersecretary Hawke,” Lina said, “in this way that made it very clear that we wouldn’t work as vigilantes ever again if we didn’t assent.”
“They’re waving the normal training requirements, but we’re still no longer licensed vigilantes,” Penny said. “The Hunting Club now has an OPA contract.”
“Fuck,” Dana said again. She suddenly wasn’t as excited about hunting down Dracula for Undersecretary Hawke. She’d hoped to find at least one killer, shake off her murder charges, and return to nosing the grindstone with the Hunting Club.
Now there was no line between Hunting Club and OPA. There was no escape.
“So it’s all true, then.” Lincoln accepted a beer from the bartender, but held it without sipping. “Never thought I’d see the day a McIntyre willingly worked for the OPA.”
“Who said anything about willingly?” Dana’s phone buzzed in her back pocket. She ignored it. “I don’t want to work for the OPA. The OPA’s shit. They’ve failed all of us. They failed to save Anthony, and the city, and Penny, and—”
“Hey,” Penny interrupted. “Nobody failed me. I’m okay.”
Dana’s phone buzzed again.
“Anthony thought we should work for the OPA,” Dionne said.
“He did not,” Dana said. She turned her phone to silent without looking at it. The buzzing was obnoxious.
“He did. We talked about it sometimes when we were reviewing old files. He thought it would make our lives easier—but didn’t want to mention it because Dana would hate the idea.”
“I do hate the idea.”
“See?” Dionne sipped her margarita. Her tongue darted out to lap salt off the rim of the glass while her gaze remained fixed on Lincoln’s features. “I wonder who’s going to play peacemaker within the Hunting Club now he’s gone. We need a strong, reassuring, masculine pr
esence.”
“I could never do it as good as Anthony,” Chris said. “He’s the only reason Dana didn’t fire me for being late all those times last September.”
“It’s true. I filled out the paperwork to terminate your employment and Anthony shredded it,” Dana said. She’d kicked his ass for that. Or at least she’d tried to. They’d settled the matter with a sparring match. Anthony had beaten her, as he usually had. “Never was sure why he earned that black eye for you. I assumed you bribed him into cooperating with your evil Chrisly agenda.”
“I was late because of cancer,” Chris said. “My mom’s cancer. I was taking her to appointments.”
Dana choked on her margarita. “Why didn’t you tell us that?”
“It was hard to talk about,” Chris said. “I love my mom a lot. Anthony understood. I didn’t ask him to stand up for me.” It was the kind of thing Anthony would have known instinctively to do.
“I’d have let you out of work to visit your cancer-riddled mother,” Dana said. “How’s she now?”
Chris’s eyes lowered to his margarita glass. “Dead.”
“Fuck.” And Dana called his mom “cancer-riddled.” No wonder Anthony and Chris had wanted to keep the reason for his absences silent.
“Anthony liked this beer,” Lincoln said, lifting his glass to survey the lamplights through the bubbles. “He got me started on it years ago. Introduced it to me when he asked me to start the Hunting Club with him, as a matter of fact.”
Dionne’s eyebrow lifted lazily. “I didn’t know you were invited to be a charter member.” Like Lina, Dionne had only been with the Hunting Club for a year or so. They were young associates. There was a lot they didn’t know.
“Yeah. Back then it was Anthony, Brianna, and Seth and Abram Wilder. Great team. I wasn’t a monk then, either. But I was too stupid to know a good offer when I heard it.” Lincoln drank his beer in one long, slow chug. He dropped the glass with a sigh. “I’ve got too many regrets in the rearview mirror, but that’s one of the ones that looms big.”
“Anthony bought me a KitchenAid stand mixer for my wedding,” Penny said. “Anthony was great.”