Skin Deep

by Lily Luchesi

  * * *

  It’s amazing how quickly one can jump back into a life they’d left behind decades ago. Angelica had found out that being the Empress of all vampires meant little more than a supervisor in this day and age, as if she were chaperoning a bunch of eight-year-olds as opposed to keeping a deadly species in line. She’d made three executions in the ninety-seven years she had been the Empress. Most vampires had already been afraid of her, since she had founded the Paranormal Investigative Division in eighteen-eighty-one, rounding up rogue creatures who killed humans and executing them all over the world. She had a reputation, and it was one she was proud of.

  She’d quit the PID when she found out she was the Empress because it didn’t seem fair to police other species when she already had full control of her own. Sean was the fourth director they’d had since she retired: the first was the Grand Coven leader Harriet Galbraith, who was murdered by the vampire Emperor before Angelica decapitated him. The second had been Danny, taking control for a little over two years before he left to do as Angelica had requested, which was make a normal life for himself. The third had been a young British girl named Hannah DeWitt, whom Danny had met and recruited along with her boyfriend and another friend. They had all been hunting the Emperor together. Being so young, Hannah had lasted for decades, proving herself extremely competent as a leader. When she retired at seventy, Sean had taken over.

  Angelica hadn’t been back at the PID building since she gave Sean a good luck hug outside the doors in twenty-eighty-seven. She hadn’t been inside since the spring of twenty-seventeen, when she found Harriet’s mangled corpse.

  In the beginning, she had wanted to quit. She had just gotten engaged, just become the Empress, and needed a break to figure her life out. In the decades since quitting, she’d traveled the world, visiting everyone and seeing how different vampires lived depending on their locale. Modern cities were all the same, but more tropical places proved interesting. It was amazing to see that some vampires lived in caverns that they converted into homes, or treehouses in dense forests.

  After she’d come back to Danny, to turn him and make him her official Emperor, they’d gone traveling together, taking the two-decade-long honeymoon they’d never gotten to take when they had actually gotten married.

  She taught him everything she knew, and a few things she wished she didn’t, like turning into a bat. It was just so uncomfortable, and she hated being unable to see. Between the Delarue inheritance and what she’d taken from the former Emperor, Augustus, they were set for another few centuries at least and had planned on traveling somewhere new every decade or so.

  It looked like that wasn’t going to happen now.

  Being as settled as she was with her life as the Empress, Angelica was surprised at her own willingness to jump right back into hunting. She hadn’t thought much about it, but as soon as she knew there was a prospective criminal to hunt and kill, her body gave a familiar shiver. It was a vampire’s nature to hunt, and she hadn’t actively hunted for decades. The animal inside, which was what Sean had taken to calling her vampiric spirit, wanted to come out and play. Every fiber of her being wanted to fight again, to feel her sword rip flesh and her claws draw blood.

  She loved the fight, the physical and mental stimulation of working a case, and it really had been too long. After all, the last thing she wanted was to get rusty. That certainly wouldn’t do if a bigger threat arose.

  Clicking on the files Sean had sent her, she projected them onto the wall from her phone so they could read them together. The first thing that popped up was a photo of a man who had been eviscerated, through and through. Twinkling Christmas lights could be seen through the hole in his abdomen.

  “Well, that’s pleasant,” Danny muttered grimacing at the image. “I remember when normal police reports began with a benign written report. We didn’t open up our files to a scene from Nightmare on Elm Street.”

  Angelica ignored him and flipped to another photo, which was of high-heeled footprints in the snow. She could tell immediately that it was a tall woman, size eight, with vintage Jimmy Choo shoes. Probably weighed about one-ten. Not that it mattered. If she was a skin changer, chances were she wouldn’t look like that ever again.

  Angelica clicked on the next photo, and this time Danny had to close his eyes and let his mind adjust to the sight. She hid a smile. Danny might be the vampire Emperor, but he was still very much human in the way he acted, and that was just one of the things she loved about him.

  The file said that this corpse belonged to Bryant Jones, a young field agent who was one of Sean’s new recruits. His skull had been caved in like a cantaloupe, but there were very little brains scattered about, because the skin changer had presumably eaten them. The white bone and blood brightly contrasted with his dark skin. Angelica thought that it was almost like some kind of grotesque art.

  She didn’t say that to Danny, however.

  “This thing is sick,” Danny said when he got to the point in the report about the brains being eaten.

  “It has quite the appetite,” Angelica replied. “The thing about them is they don’t need to feed on humans completely to survive. Like werewolves, they could take organs from the PID’s donor organization to live: it doesn’t need to be from a live human. They transform by ingesting part of the person they wish to replicate, and that constant transformation gives them something that mimics immortality.”

  She clicked to the next photo.

  It was a split picture, the first half was a head, perfectly severed, sitting on a silver platter in the middle of a dining table, blood pooling beneath it and soaking the victim’s long blonde hair. The tongue was missing. The second photo was of the body, mutilated. Arms and legs were detached, as were her breasts. The agent’s name was Gilda Oropher, a transfer from Europe.

  “I’m gonna be sick,” Danny muttered.

  The fourth victim’s wounds were tame in comparison, an older man with his neck broken, almost literally in two. The bone peeked through the flesh, but otherwise he seemed intact. His name was Victor Schwartz.

  “Wonder why the thing didn't eat any of him,” Angelica said.

  “Wait...zoom in on the neck wound,” Danny said, peering closer.

  Angelica saw it then, too. The monster had used the broken bone as a straw and sucked out the bone marrow like a milkshake.

  “Okay, now even I’m disturbed,” she muttered, clicking to the final picture.

  A man had a small hole near the left side of his abdomen. A bloody kitchen knife could be seen near the body. His name was Gavin Choi, and the SC had performed impromptu surgery on him to get to his liver. Sean had made a notation that Choi never drank, and his last physical had shown that his liver would have been as healthy as a nun’s.

  She clicked a button on her phone and the projection went black. Standing up, she went to the veranda again and gazed out at the crescent moon shimmering, its reflection nearly as bright in the Mediterranean ocean. Her nerves were on fire, it seemed like every sense was heightened at the promise of a new hunt.

  “Our plane leaves in one hour, and we’ll be landing in Chicago right after sunset,” she told Danny. “We won’t be getting much sleep, so drink whatever blood we’ve got in the freezer.”

  She grinned, feeling her fangs extend.

  “It’s playtime.”

  Chapter Two

  Angelica glanced out the window of the private jet, a smile lighting up her face like a kid on Christmas morning. In the distance were the twinkling lights of downtown Chicago’s skyline, lightly dusted with freshly fallen snow. Her heart lifted, and she couldn’t stop her joy from rising.

  “We are here for a murder investigation, you do recall?” Danny asked, staring quizzically at her from his seat across from her.

  “Don’t be so dour,” she chastised, unable to look away from the sight of the city for long. “We’re home.”

  He chuckled. “So much for calling me a sentimental mortal.”

 
“Shut up.”

  It seemed like eternity itself for the plane to be cleared for landing at O’Hare airport, and Angelica was never known for her patience. She just wanted to set her feet down in the one place she had ever truly felt at peace, even during some of the most trying times of her long life.

  The plane began its slow descent onto the tarmac, and Angelica impatiently tapped long black nails on her armrests as they had to wait for all the standard security and safety checks before they could disembark.

  The moment the “fasten seatbelt” sign clicked off, she was out of her seat and to the door. She took a deep breath, inhaling the smog and the salty lake air with her enhanced senses.

  Danny came up behind her, wrapping his arms around her shoulders and rested his head against hers. “Welcome home, Angelica Cross.”

  “Mancini,” she corrected with a smirk.

  “This city, it’s the city of Angelica Cross. Always has been. Always will be.”

  A voice called out, “Now you’re fucking talking!”

  Standing at the bottom of the staircase leading from the plane to the tarmac was a shortish man with hair so close-cropped it might as well not be there, clad in a long black duster and motorcycle boots.

  “Sean fucking Wireman!” Angelica cried. She hadn't seen her closest friend since she’d left him at the doors of the PID. She dashed down the stairs, running right into his arms.

  “Damn it, Angie, twenty something years is a little too long to go AWOL,” he said as he hugged her tightly.

  “Well, not like we’re on human time, is it?” she asked, kissing him on the forehead and leaving a slightly sparkly black lip print.

  Sean pulled away and faced Danny, holding his hand out to the vampire Emperor.

  “Good to see you,” Danny said, being the good sport.

  The two men hated each other, but tolerated each other for their love of Angelica. She thought it was cute.

  “Yeah, if you say so,” Sean replied. He glanced up and down at Angelica’s flowy black dress, which was far too cold for Chicago at Christmas time. “Anyone sees you, they’re going to think you’re a psych ward escapee.”

  “Then let’s get to the PID,” she said, as she and Danny followed Sean to his car. “At least there everyone already knows I’m insane.”

  From O’Hare Airport, they drove through the city on the I-90, turning onto Michigan Avenue eventually. Sean took the scenic route, a little over forty-five minutes, to drive past Lake Michigan and turn around to get to the building that housed the PID.

  As they got closer to the PID, Angelica felt anxiety gnawing at her stomach. The bad part about being descended from the original Empress meant that she still felt every single human emotion acutely, unlike most full vampires whose emotions were dampened.

  The last time she had been inside the PID building, her new director and longtime friend had been lying dead on the floor, killed by the Emperor Augustus Caesar. And that murder had been Angelica’s fault, for trusting the devious Emperor for even a moment. She hadn't been able to set foot inside the building since then, but she knew she was being silly.

  Harriet, the witch who had been murdered, would remind her that the PID was her baby and she shouldn’t let that narcissistic asshat’s actions keep her from it.

  The PID was a hundred story, glass-walled building with great city views, that housed the PID (including training rooms, an armory, apartments for agents to kip in when they were on a difficult case, and the portal to Hell in the sub-basement), restaurants, a few random businesses, and apartments for regular humans.

  Despite it being after midnight, the PID was abuzz with activity from the nocturnal employees, most of them vampires.

  As Angelica and Danny walked the halls to get to the private elevator that would take them to the top floor where the big shots’ offices were, people peered around their desks, one human even going to far as to fall out of her chair.

  Murmurs went amongst the agents, all boiling down to one statement: the Emperor and Empress were there. Neither of them had been there in decades, so what could be happening to make them show up now.

  “Still turning heads, my love,” Danny told Angelica as the three of them entered the elevator.

  “Yeah, they’re wondering if you’re going to execute some of them, probably,” Sean added. “It’s been a Hell of a long time since you set foot in here.”

  Nearly one hundred years, Angelica thought, leaning her head against the wall. I never should’ve waited so long to come back home.

  * * *

  Returning to the PID, Danny felt a wave of nostalgia hit him as he recalled the very first time he had ever walked these halls. He had been a mortal then, an alcoholic riddled with depression and one drink away from finally putting a bullet in his brain. And then Angelica Cross had shown up at his doorstep, and his life was forever changed.

  Back then he was an insecure human, half-mad and half-convinced that Angelica was a hallucination brought on by his mental state combined with too much Jameson. Now, he had to wonder again if all of this hadn't been some sort of dream.

  Now he walked the halls as the Emperor of all vampires, descendant of Augustus and husband of the Empress. If someone had told him back in twenty-fourteen that this would be his life, he’d have laughed till his sides split.

  Angelica ducked into a small room on their way to Sean’s office and Danny didn’t wonder about it much. She wasn’t someone you could keep tabs on, after all. And this was her domain.

  Sean’s office, which had temporarily been his at two different junctures, was neat and orderly, exactly the opposite Danny had pictured for the siren.

  “So, all that time in the Mediterranean and you didn’t tan?” Sean asked with a smirk.

  “Go fuck yourself,” Danny replied with a smile.

  “As a siren that is tantamount to suicide.”

  Danny laughed out loud this time, finding that time away from the arrogant prick made him hate him just a little bit less.

  The door banged open and Angelica entered. She was wearing a pair of dark-wash skinny jeans, black leather motorcycle boots, a matching jacket, and blood red shirt with the neckline cut low. “You need more black clothes in a size sixteen in the clothing closet for undercover agents,” she said. “All this color feels...icky.”

  Danny smiled. Black clothes or not, this was the Angelica he knew. Polished, hard-eyed, ready to get down to business and slit some throats. It was like someone had flipped a switch inside of her. Despite the prolonged vacation, the detective side of her was never too far beneath the surface.

  “Okay, let’s get started, shall we?” Angelica asked. “Sean, how did the first report come in, when, and by whom?”

  Sean arched an eyebrow and said, “Back to normal, are we, Angie? All right, the first report came in on November first, by the family that lives next door to our agent. His corpse was left on his front lawn for all to see. They called nine-one-one, and our agents caught it right away. Time of death was probably around midnight or one A.M. at the latest. He was last seen at the Halloween ball at the Congress Hotel.”

  “Okay, with whom?” she asked.

  “He arrived alone, and left alone. Witnesses said he danced with three women while there.”

  Angelica inclined her head. “Okay. This is a skin changer, it could have been the same woman all three times, getting more and more info from him. Have you been able to ID any of the women?”

  “One,” Sean said. “Definitely human, she’s a manager for a law firm here in the city. The other two are still in the wind, but we’re working on it.”

  “I want the personnel files on all agents who were killed, to see if there are any similarities other than the fact that they worked here,” Angelica said.

  Sean nodded. “I’ll email them to you. You can compare them automatically that way.”

  “Can I get the physical versions?” Danny asked. “I work better having paper in my hands.”

  Sean cocked
an eyebrow. “Wow, you’re showing your age, aren’t you?”

  Danny sighed. Playful banter was one thing. Now it was just wishing the siren would shut up. “You’ve still got five hundred years on me, buddy.”

  “Will you both stop acting like infants? We have a serial killer on the loose who can look like you, me, or Michael fucking Jackson. Shape up, boys. Now,” Angelica commanded.

  Sean, who hadn’t heard anything harsh from her mouth in years, clapped her on the back. Singing Elton John style, he rang out, “The bitch is ba-ack!”

  Danny smiled genuinely as he saw Angelica laugh. Yes, she’s back, he thought. And thank God for that.

  * * *

  Angelica marveled at how wonderful the PID was running. She’d been right to make Sean the director. Except for the serial killer, this place was running like clockwork. After the briefing, she walked along the halls, and this time the agents were a bit more discreet in their shock that she and the Emperor were back.

  She’d been living as the Empress for nearly a century already, and it still hadn’t really hit her that she controlled these people. Each and every vampire in that room, in the world, was hers to command. She never asked for much of them, just to continue obeying the laws she’d set for them in the late nineteenth century.

  After she’d faked her death to Danny and went traveling for seventy years with Sean, she’d visited Mexico, South America, Puerto Rico, and Australia, seeing how vampires of different cultures lived so she could get to know her subjects on a more personal level.

  When she’d returned for Danny and turned him, she’d headed for Africa and then Asia, where vampires were nearly eradicated from religious fanatics. They’d spent a decade there, building the communities back up before Angelica had decided to head to the Mediterranean.

  Vampires originated in Italy, and that had always been a place she imagined retiring to. So after a quick check of the rest of Europe, she and Danny had spent the next fifteen years in Greece and Italy, and finally settled in Sicily’s islands. The life suited her, very low-key after decades upon decades of high-intensity action and death. And in Italy and Sicily, they catered to vampires, so she and Danny were never short on fresh human blood.