by SM Reine
Everyone looked at Dana. She jolted. She hadn’t realized until that moment that they had been going around the table in a circle, talking about Anthony. And somehow it was her turn.
Dana’s throat had a lump in it.
She had a lot of stories about Anthony that she could have jumped in with there. Stories about ways he’d protected her heart, even when her heart didn’t need protecting. Stories about times he’d helped her finish homework and showed her how to operate a particularly obscure gun.
But Dana’s words weren’t good enough for that. She would say them the wrong way, the crass way, and she’d never be able to encapsulate what Anthony Morales had been to her.
She dragged an ashtray over. There was a half-finished cigarette left on its edge.
“Anthony used to smoke when he was lonely,” Dana said. She took out her dad’s Zippo, lit the cigarette, took an inhale. The tobacco reminded Dana of being a child. It made her feel less lonely too.
“To Anthony,” Dionne said, lifting her margarita glass.
“To Anthony,” Penny said. She took the cigarette from Dana and inhaled once.
Everyone clinked glasses underneath a veil of tobacco smoke. It swirled and clung to the paper lanterns and stung Dana’s eyes until they grew moist, making the bar swim around her.
“Hey. Sorry to interrupt, you all.” Charmaine came up and grabbed Dana’s shoulder. “Got a call from Undersecretary Hawke. He’s on the roof in the chopper, and you’ve only got sixty seconds to get to him because you’ve been ignoring your phone.”
Dana slid off the barstool, blinking her eyes clear. “Why?”
“Someone’s gone crazy on the Strip, running around and raving, totally naked.”
“Lots of people have been doing that lately,” Lina said, reaching over to grab the rest of Dionne’s drink. “But the undersecretary wants Dana to look into it this time? How come?”
“Naked crazy guy doesn’t have clothes,” Charmaine said. “Or a dick.”
Dana wasn’t used to being brought to a scene in one of the OPA’s black choppers. Even the inside of it was black. Had it not been for a dense layer of temperature-altering charms, her ass would have been welded to the sun-heated leather seats.
They landed on one of the pedestrian bridges between casinos, which was apparently allowed when you were in a black helicopter with bold white lettering on the side. Seemed wasteful, but hey, that’s what happened when you put a sidhe in charge.
Faeries were great at looking pretty. Those were expensive vintage Ray Bans wrapped around Cèsar’s noggin, and they made him look like sparkly James Bond when he was in an assault chopper. That was his special skill. Looking good.
Saving money by skipping the chopper to walk downtown, not so much.
Dana moved to jump out. “They go first,” Cèsar said, pulling her back so that the agents could jump out ahead of her.
She resisted the urge to bite Cèsar’s hand. He had a detonator somewhere that could, presumably, blow up Dana’s head or something. Biting his hand would qualify as pissing him off. “Why are they going ahead?”
“They’re sidhe and shifters. They’re going to neutralize this guy for us—safely, without risking human life. When I say human life, by the way, I’m talking specifically about you.”
“Sure. I’m a preternatural when I go to prison. I’m human when it means keeping me out of the action. Your classifications seem awfully convenient.”
“Big boss privilege,” Cèsar said. She couldn’t see his eyes through the sunglasses. “I could classify you as a Heffalump if I wanted to.”
“Try it and I’ll break your jaw. Why am I even here? You don’t need me to consult for a eunuch nudist.”
“That’s what I get to decide, because I’m your boss now and I have limitless blackmail material on you. Okay? Great.” The last of the agents vanished through the open doors leading into the casino. “Now you can go.”
“I don’t like you,” Dana said, jumping out of the chopper.
She leaped through the doors before they could swing shut behind the final sidhe.
Security had already cordoned off the floor, and most of the tables were empty. Or maybe that was the natural result of having all of Las Vegas’s vampires implicated in mass murder. The casino might have been that empty before anyone interceded.
“What the fuck?” Cèsar asked. He’d sauntered up behind Dana, completely unhurried, and had slid his sunglasses down to frown at the room.
The problem was that it was completely empty.
No tourists, no employees, no castrated nudist.
“Where’s my guy?” Cèsar asked.
An agent answered. “I don’t know where the fledgling vampire could have gone. He was here a minute ago, but he walked behind the tables and—”
“Find him,” Cèsar said.
The agents spread out, dissolving among the slot machines.
“Who was supposed to keep eyes on him?” Dana asked.
“Casino staff,” Cèsar said. “They’ve only got about ten people in the building at a time right now, and that’s mostly to stave off thieves.” His eyes focused over her shoulder, and he swore colorfully. “The press.”
Reporters were pressing at the doors, trying to get footage. Pixiecams butted against the wards with electric zings. It wouldn’t take them long to bust through, especially since casino staff had cleared out. The wards were the only thing that kept them from flooding in.
Dana would have been happy to have a chat with the press. Crack a few skulls together. Make them aware of what jackasses they’d been.
Except it still wasn’t safe for press to come inside with a confused fledgling vampire on the loose.
The agents couldn’t find him because they didn’t have the hunting experience Dana did—or the experience she’d earned as a vampire. They were still looking too close to his last seen position, near the tables. Vampires could move fast when they were scared.
Dana’s gaze skimmed the edge of the room and the stairs in the corner—the ones with the big, elaborate chandelier, a waterfall, and the fountain. Lots of hiding spaces.
Cèsar wasn’t looking at her. The reporters had his attention. She slipped away, chasing the shadows along the edge of the wall.
She spotted a wan figure crouching by the rearmost waterfall, back among the lilies and hidden by statues. The lighting kept that area in shadow. Probably wouldn’t have even shown up on security cameras.
“Hi,” Dana said.
The flowers exploded with activity.
A naked man flew out, arms flapping, mouth wide in a scream. She could see why he was freaking out. He had a couple rows of bloody indentations on his chest and stomach, identical to those that Rodgers had showed on his back.
He slammed into her. Dana was ready for it—she shifted her weight, caught him, threw him over her hip. He skidded over the slippery edge and splashed into the decorative pond.
“Over here!” she shouted.
She was trying to get the agents and their vamp-neutralizing charms. Instead, she got a camera shoved into her face. The press had gotten through, coming down the back escalator. And now there were cameras filming everything.
Dana was going to be on the news.
There were three things that Nissa required in any hideout situation: no sunlight, great defensibility, and the fastest wireless internet available in the country.
Having those three features had made her time hiding out in an old mine town reasonably pleasant. She was holed up in a Taylor Town cellar with its windows boarded and its one door guarded by thralls. It was an old construction, something that probably didn’t meet fire codes. But it was also far enough from the mountains that it got great internet access. She could step out at night and see the satellites providing the connection.
She’d been downloading petabytes of video games and movies ever since her escape, and it was awesome.
With all of that together, Nissa had found being a fugitive to
be a pleasant experience. Having thralls to feed off of at will helped, too. Especially once she ordered them to turn off their personalities so that she didn’t have to suffer through their emotions every time she fed.
Sometimes, if she drank enough blood and watched enough 90s-era cop shows, she could even stop obsessing about Dana McIntyre for a few minutes.
It didn’t usually work.
Nissa replayed their interactions a thousand times as she sat in solitude, alone but for Netflix and her thralls, who were less engaging than house cats drugged with morphine. She turned their relationship over and over and over in her mind. She analyzed Dana’s every expression, her every word. She dreamed of Dana’s stake pressed against her chest.
The obsession was such that she didn’t believe what she saw on the news the first time.
“Wait,” Nissa had said abruptly, sitting upright so that her current feeder fell to the floor. He didn’t even try to catch himself on the way down. He splattered to the floor of the cellar, dribbling blood over her shoe.
She fumbled for the remote, paused the news, backed it up a few seconds.
That was Dana McIntyre.
There was no other hunter in this world like her. A woman both tall and broad with hair bleached white. The roots had grown out an inch. Her hair was naturally light brown, which was interesting. Her broad shoulders were wrapped in stretchy black cloth, her ribs encased in loose corsetry, leather snug over her thighs.
The news networks filmed Dana in this getup while she was squatting on top of a naked male.
Not just a naked male, but a vampire.
“She’s back,” Nissa whispered. Her trembling hand swiped the blood off of her lips.
Dana McIntyre was back in Las Vegas.
And she was hunting vampires again.
Nissa stood up, kicking her feeder aside. “Did you get a car?” she asked another thrall. The one who had been driving her prison van when she’d escaped.
“Yes, I have the car,” he said, staring blankly at the wall. “Do you want to go somewhere?”
She grinned. “Las Vegas.”
4
“Morons,” Dana said. “Fucking morons, all of you.”
Cèsar relaxed in his chair. “Hi. Welcome to your first day working for the Office of Preternatural Affairs. We’re so happy to have you here!”
“You let the media name the serial killer!”
“How long have you been doing this…job thing you do? Being a rogue vigilante wandering around, stabbing the people who you think need to be stabbed?” Cèsar gave a shrug. “You should know by now that we don’t ‘let’ the media do anything. The OPA’s got an entire department dedicated to warring against the media and we still can’t do a damn thing to control them.”
Dana straddled the chair on the opposite side of his desk. “Il Castrato Senesino. It’s even a sexy name, you morons.”
“Did you forget the part where I have a button that can kill you?”
She had not, but she’d been kind of hoping that Cèsar had. “Okay. You’ve got a whole department dedicated to media relations. Flex whatever muscles you have and shut this coverage down.”
“Can’t do anything about that. We don’t win all wars,” Cèsar said. “Just most of them.”
One of his victories was the reason that he was still seated behind Charmaine Villanueva’s desk. The OPA hadn’t had time to prepare another office in Las Vegas. The nearest base was in northern Nevada, new constructions took months, and any office space they rented would have to be retrofitted with elaborate wards sturdy enough to protect Undersecretary Hawke.
The LVMPD precinct that Charmaine worked out of was already equipped with desks, wards, and even support staff. So Cèsar had walked into the precinct and declared it his territory. Bold claim, especially since a coyote shifter currently considered it her territory.
Clearly Charmaine hadn’t won that particular war.
“Il Castrato Senesino was an eighteenth-century singer,” Cèsar said. “You know, a guy who had his balls cut off so he could sing like a sweet baby girl for the rest of his life. Worked with Handel.”
“So what?”
“Being a castrato isn’t sexy,” he said. “By calling him a castrato, they’re saying that they think the killer is dickless. He’s not gonna like that. It’ll piss him off.”
“Pissing him off? That’s your strategy?”
“I already told you that I don’t have control over the media. So here’s your assignment, McIntyre—”
“Assignment? Fuck you.”
He drummed his fingers on the arms of Charmaine’s chair. “You remember what happens if you don’t work with me on this?” Cèsar would press a button and Dana’s head would pop off her neck like a champagne cork.
“I go back to prison,” Dana said. “At least I was respected and feared in prison. I wasn’t held back so that inexperienced agents could run in ahead of me and—”
“You want to go back and get beaten up? Okay. Great,” Cèsar said.
“I didn’t say I want to go back. I’m not going back to prison when someone’s making new vampires and ripping their cocks off in my city. And especially not when Nissa Royal is wandering free.”
“You don’t get a choice in whether or not you go back. I do.” A passing agent knocked on the window to Charmaine’s office. Cèsar waved her away and then stood, straightening his jacket. “You’re not investigating Nissa Royal’s escape.”
“Makes me wonder why not. I’m the one best equipped to fight her.”
“Take it from a guy who’s been fighting preternatural archvillains for the last…what is it, thirty years?” Cèsar didn’t look like he’d been on the planet thirty years, much less working for that time span. Sidhe magic was a hell of a thing. “Letting the two of you at each other’s a great way to end up with a lot of collateral damage. Split you up, take the wind out of Nissa Royal’s sails, tidy things quietly. Easier for you and better for the world.”
“You’ll never catch her without me,” Dana said.
“You’re good, McIntyre, but nobody’s that good.”
“That’s not what I mean. I mean, she’s not going to come out of hiding unless it means she can get me. You will literally never catch her without my involvement.”
“We’ll see about that. We’ll put the expertise of a long-time public servant who works with the preternatural—yours truly—against the expertise of a reject from Black Death with an attitude problem.”
Dana stood. Kicked her chair aside. “An attitude problem’s only the start of it.”
The agent stopped by to knock on the window again. Cèsar held up a finger. A silent, Just a moment.
“Right now, with the Il Castrato Senesino case, we’re trying to rehabilitate and question the fledgling victims,” Cèsar said. “You’ll understand why you aren’t welcome to question them. I want you to go to the location where we found Rodgers, the first victim who transitioned. Give it a second set of eyeballs. Question the folks around there. See if the residents of Las Vegas will be chattier with a McIntyre. Understood?”
“Fifty bucks says Nissa Royal is going to come for me within the week, and that you won’t be able to keep us apart.”
“The bar. You. Witnesses. Investigate.” Cèsar escorted her to the door, pausing with his hand on the knob. “Fifty bucks says I can handle Nissa Royal without you.”
“You’re on.”
They exited. Cèsar headed one direction, Dana headed another.
She could already taste all the O’Doul’s she was gonna buy with the fifty dollars she won from Cèsar Hawke.
Dana got a lot of stares and a little applause winding her way out of the precinct. Normal stuff. What wasn’t normal was so much of the applause coming from people clad in black with pretty sparkly unicorn skin. As in the sidhe OPA agents.
How the hell did they end up idolizing me too?
She shot foul looks at the men standing around a desk. The sidhe were grinning, and it
wasn’t a friendly grin.
They were mocking.
Didn’t matter if Dana was inside or outside prison walls. Her reputation preceded her. And it seemed the reputation she’d earned with the local OPA agents wasn’t positive.
Good. She didn’t need more fans.
Dana needed people who’d be smart enough to get out of the way when Nissa Royal’s jaws started to close around them.
“Hey, McIntyre!”
She turned. “Chief. Hello again.”
Charmaine was looking ragged, hair a mess, her shirt tucked in so that the line of buttons was askew from the fly of her slacks. She hadn’t looked that tired since she was the detective leading the case against the Fremont Slasher. “I’ve been questioning the victims of Il Castrato Senesino,” Charmaine said, matching strides with Dana.
Dana groaned loudly. “Not you too. Il Castrato Whateverino? Really?”
“Okay, let’s just call him Dickless. Is that better?”
“Much.” Dana rolled the name over in her mind. Dickless. That was a properly unimpressive name for a properly unimpressive murderer. “What about Dickless’s little Dicklings?”
“We can call him Dickless, but his victims aren’t Dicklings. They’ve suffered enough without your mockery.”
“I’m not mocking them. The Dicklings aren’t even in earshot.”
“I am. Cut it out.” Charmaine tapped her cell phone, and Dana’s pinged in response. The chief had transmitted updated case files. “The victims have been given blood and are regaining memories.”
Dana clenched her jaw against what she wanted to say.
Namely that they never should have given a couple of victims with that degree of trauma human blood.
Trauma victims were hard to work with when they were mundane humans. Give them preternatural strength, give them blood, wait for them to snap…
“What are the victims saying about Dickless himself?” Dana asked.
“He looks like Dracula,” Charmaine said. “And not the sexy Dracula from one of the 90s film adaptations, or the TV show. Sketch artist got us a mockup.” She held up her phone, showing the illustration. It looked like Count von Count from Sesame Street, except with a long human face. The exaggerated fangs and vee on his forehead with the slicked-back hair completed the look.