Skin Deep

by Lily Luchesi

  The life had been as idyllic as she could ever have hoped. So why had she been so eager to jump right back into the fray in Chicago? Her bloodlust had been nearly legendary, and often deadly for others. A nice simple life just wasn’t for her, not in the long run.

  It was like someone had dumped a bucket of cold water on her. She was awake. Alert. Adrenaline rushed through her veins and her heart was racing. This was exactly what she needed. Not to have her agents threatened, of course. But to have something to hunt.

  Angelica Cross was a predator, and no one, vampire or not, should forget that and try to hunt in her territory.

  Chapter Three

  “Ah, now this brings me back,” Danny said as he and Angelica walked into her penthouse loft in downtown Chicago. She’d owned the building, built it with secret sigils and wards in place to keep demons and spirits out, in case she brought any home with her from work.

  It held memories for them both, particularly from their first year as partners, their first year meeting again after death had taken Danny when he was Jonathan Price.

  “Doesn’t it? I knew we’d need this place again one day, hence my not selling the penthouse,” she replied, whipping the dust cloths off of the furniture. Cleaners came in weekly to keep the place spotless.

  Danny smirked as he leaned against the back of the sofa. “So you always knew we’d be back here?”

  She shook her head. “No. I always hoped, just a little, that there was a day we’d be needed again. Being all powerful in the vampire world can get a bit dull. It was like managing a factory, you know?”

  “I’ll need a coffin,” he said.

  “Sean had one delivered. We can get you a custom one if we have to stay here for a long time,” she replied, walking through the place and re-memorizing what was there. She was filled with memories, both good and bad, all taking place in this apartment. But the one that stuck out the most was the night they’d first slept together.

  Angelica wasn’t a sentimental person by nature, but when it came to Danny, she remembered nearly every moment together, every touch, and every kiss. Every silent declaration of love, something that wasn’t voiced for nearly a year later, after that first night together.

  “You’re smiling. Are you happy or murderous?” Danny asked.

  She chuckled. “Happy. I know it’s me, and it’s not going to last. But right now, I’m happy.”

  Walking around the apartment, she checked that everything was as it should be, including her own coffin, sitting next to Danny’s temporary one. The bedroom had a view of Lake Michigan and Navy Pier, and though no lights were on in the bedroom, it was pleasantly lit with the stars and lights of the city.

  “Angie, I don't mean to be a downer, but do you think that it’s odd, that the creature attacking our workers is a skin changer, and the only person who ever caught one is — ”

  “Me,” Angelica finished. “I wasn’t born last century, Danny. You think someone wanted to lure me back.”

  He nodded.

  She turned from the window to face him and smiled, feeling her eyes spark red. “If that’s what they wanted, they’ll be having buyer’s remorse when I tear their heart from their chest.”

  * * *

  Danny rummaged through his suitcase for his sleepshirt, while he heard Angelica in the master bathroom, at the sink. It was amazing that a few hours ago he’d been in Sicily, and now he was back in Chicago, a PID agent once again. Life with Angelica was never boring, that was certain.

  How stupid was he to think that Angelica hadn’t already realized that this was a trap for her? Human or vampire, she had always been two steps ahead of him. It surprised him that she hadn't thought to mention that theory, however, and just jumped right back into the fray without a single care for her well-being.

  His wife was immortal, but she wasn’t invulnerable. One of these days she was going to bite off more than her fangs could chew, and that was the day he feared being alive (Undead) to see. It was why they played so well off each other: he kept her down-to-earth, and she kept him on his toes.

  “You look pale.”

  He jumped, having been so lost in thought that he didn’t hear the water shut off. Angelica was wearing a Chicago Cubs World Series shirt from twenty-sixteen that she must have found in the closet (how did that thing survive nearly a century?), her hair was swept back from her face, and she was scrubbed free of makeup. Danny thought he was the only person who knew that the world’s most feared killer had the cutest freckles across her nose that she covered up every night with cosmetics.

  “Just...lost in thought,” he replied.

  “And you need to feed,” she said. “We’ve been up, technically, two nights now because of the time change. And neither of us has eaten since we left. It’s no wonder you’re a bit out of it. Come here.” She held out a pale hand and beckoned him closer. Despite being her equal, Danny was nearly lost in her thrall.

  As a human and a psychic, he’d been impervious to the vampiric allure, but now that he was turned, he could be put under, but only by her. No ‘normal’ vampire could ever charm the Emperor and Empress. He sort of liked being under her spell, though.

  It was the feeding he still couldn’t get used to.

  Angelica’s eyes were flaming red, a look he’d once associated with the fires of Hell but now thought of as frighteningly beautiful. She pulled him close and kissed him, just a feather-light flutter of her lips against his. He closed his eyes as her lips traveled across his cheekbone, ghosting over his bearded cheek, and reaching his neck. Her tongue ran over the vein in his neck and he shuddered. This was all familiar, a daily occurrence, but yet it excited him every single time. And yet, again, it still disgusted him, on some deep level that ran back to his human bloodline.

  Angelica’s tongue played with the vein for another moment before she paused and he felt her fangs against his flesh. One swift movement and her fangs were embedded in his skin, draining the lifeblood from his veins.

  He grasped her shoulders tightly, holding her close as she fed from him. While they both required human blood to survive, they also needed each other’s blood to remain at their optimum energy levels. They were, literally, stronger together. Feeding from each other did more than connect them physically: it was a melding of souls as each was given to the other in the most intimate way possible. Sex was nothing compared with this.

  She pulled away from him, smiling as she licked his blood from her lips. She tossed her head to the side, moving her long black hair from her throat. For a long time, Danny would only feed from her wrist, feeling too much like Bela Lugosi to drink from her carotid.

  The moment her blood hit his tongue was always like being renewed with life. Everything was enhanced: the lights out the window, the smell of the lake, even the red lettering of the name on the back of Angie’s shirt and the number nine seemed more vivid. A small part of him still felt perverted to be doing this, somehow evil, but at the same time it was the most amazing thing he’d ever felt in his hundred and forty-odd years of life.

  When he pulled away from her, Angelica kissed him properly, more forcefully than she had been for a while. The renewed fervor in their lives renewed passion in every aspect.

  “You, Danny Mancini, have always been everything I needed to survive,” she whispered. “And you are all I’ll ever need.”

  * * *

  The next sunset, Angelica woke with a spring in her step. She was home, it was autumn so there were plenty of night hours for her to roam in, there was a new case to solve, a new monster to hunt, and she was more than ready to kick some ass.

  “Do you have an actual spring in your step or are you testing out the durability of your new heels?” Danny asked as he saw her bustling in the kitchen, warming up blood bags.

  “Funny man.” She poured the blood into two mugs — Pokémon for her and the city’s flag for him — and continued, “Tonight we’re going to have our first full day of work at the PID in forever. Aren’t you psyched?”


  “There’s a face-swapping serial killer out there. Maybe ‘psyched’ isn’t the right word to use here,” he replied.

  She stuck her tongue out at him before putting her already empty mug in the dishwasher.

  At the PID, she poked her head into Sean’s office to find it vacated. A quick intake of breath told her that Sean was in the next office, deputy director.

  “Something not all Feng Shui in that office?” she asked, poking her head in the doorway.

  Sean looked up at her as if she was the dumbest person alive. “That’s your office.”

  “I never said I was taking the director's job back,” she replied. “I’m a field agent again, in case you don’t recall why you asked Danny and I back.”

  “I know,” he said, continuing to do his work at the desk. “But that’s still your office. Or do you want a cubicle downstairs?”

  Angelica blanched at the thought of her sensitive hearing in a room with dozens of conversations happening at once, along with the sound of computer keys clacking and various other noises created by humanity. “Thanks. Danny and I will be in my office then, looking for clues to get us that skin changer.”

  ‘Looking for clues’, you’re back to being a regular Sherlock Holmes, aren’t you? she thought to herself. With her hearing, she could hear Sean’s phone ring even though she was in the hallway, and stopped stock still when she heard his end of the conversation.

  “Wireman.... Hello, Captain.... There’s a what? Where? That’s impossible, we haven’t —...Yes, sir. Right away, sir. Keep your officers away to prevent casualties.... Angie!”

  She poked her head back into his office. “What the Hell is happening?”

  “That was Captain Callaghan in the two-six. He claims there’s a small nest of vampires on the corner of Honorary Baez Way, by the kids’ ballpark,” Sean said. “He said there are already casualties.”

  Angelica’s mouth dropped. “But no vampire has attacked a human since I became Empress!” Without waiting to hear Sean’s response, she dashed into her office, where Danny was looking over files. “We’ve got a problem. Come on, we need our weapons and to get the Hell out of here.”

  Danny jumped up and followed her at vampire speed down the hundred flights of stairs. “What is it?”

  “Our subjects are attacking,” she said, pushing past the security at the armory doors and grabbing a sword and four blades. Her gun was already loaded with holy-water soaked silver bullets. Not deadly to vampires, but damaging. Danny never used a sword, but grabbed some knives and a second clip for his gun.

  “Is the captain sure?” Danny asked. “We haven’t dealt with rogues for years.”

  “There are dead kids, Danny. I don’t think he’s going to make a misidentification right now,” she replied. She gave him the location and they both sped off, stopping three blocks away. The streets were deserted of passerby, as it was a little past dinnertime. Food smells came from apartment buildings, and she could faintly hear voices speaking both English and Spanish behind the closed doors.

  The closer they got to the ballpark, the less they smelled food and the more they smelled blood. The coppery tang of it was normally appetizing to Angelica, but now, knowing where it was coming from, she just felt sick. She’d always been able to separate her hunger from her humanity, and despised vampires who couldn’t.

  They got a visual of the small park, which was lit up with bright floodlights. She’d been there before, with a paranormal friend who used to help underprivileged kids. She knew Danny’s beat cop days had had stints here, too. It was a bad area for crime, but a very tight-knit community. Families helped each other, as they saw themselves against the rest of the world in their little area. To have their children slaughtered...it was going to be bad for them all, even the ones who weren’t directly affected by the loss.

  A group of about twelve kids had been playing a game. Now nine of them were cowering up against the boys’ changing room, and three little corpses littered the field, their red blood a stark contrast against the grass.

  There were four vampires standing in the field, three of them with blood on their lips. Three of them were men, one was a woman. If not for their pale skin and red eyes, they could have been PTA members.

  The only vampire without a bloody mouth reached for the kids, and Angelica went into action, sword brandished. She took a running start, leapt over the batting cage, and landed cleanly in front of the vampire, blocking him from getting to the kids. Her sword sliced an arc through the air and cut the reaching hand off, splattering her sleeve with blood.

  The vampire hissed in pain and recoiled, but didn’t seem at all surprised. Actually, none of them did.

  Danny arrived a moment later, helping her shield the kids. “I’m guessing by the looks on your ugly mugs that you know who we are,” he said.

  “Oh, we do,” the woman said, smiling with her ghoulish fangs extended. “And to be honest, we’re a little sick of you. Her in particular.” She pointed a claw at Angelica.

  The vamp with the severed hand rejoined the little group, the flesh healing, but he was now down an appendage. Good. One less handful of claws to concern themselves with.

  “You’re sick of me? Take it up with Lucifer, because I didn’t exactly appoint myself to babysit a bunch of half-witted vampires,” Angelica told the vampiress. It was a little unnerving that she was only there because Augustus Caesar had decided to make a deal with the Devil and drink human blood for eternal life.

  “Much easier to cut your pretty little head off,” one of the men said. He darted forward, but his clumsy attack was nothing to Angelica.

  She met him halfway, her sword slicing into his stomach while she let his claws shred her leather jacket’s sleeve. She turned sharply, breaking those claws off from the momentum. The vampire screamed in pain and jerked away, freeing her sword from his abdomen. While he was distracted, she swung her sword again and cut his head clean from his neck, and it landed on second base. It didn’t decay, indicating that these were freshly-turned vamps.

  “I’d offer for you all to surrender now, but since I have to kill you anyway, why not get some exercise out of it?” Angelica said, licking blood from her blade. She knew the kids were freaking out, but the PID would remove these memories for them, so she felt a little better about scarring their psyches temporarily.

  She glanced back at Danny, nodding her head to his hip. He got out his phone and pressed the button for the PID ambulances. The kids in the field were definitely dead, but the others would be needing their brainwashing services. And they’d need ghouls to clean up the vampire corpses.

  All three remaining vampires rushed to battle, and Danny leapt into the fray to help Angelica out. One man — at least six-three and built to be a linebacker, was on him, but his size was no match for Danny’s pure bloodline.

  Danny grappled with him one-handed, while he shot him twice with the other hand: one bullet in the gut, and another in the knee, bringing the big man down to Danny’s chest level. He put the gun away and got out his blades, using them both to chop off the man’s head from his thick neck.

  Angelica took on two at once, a sword in one hand and a serrated hunting knife in the other. The woman grabbed the sword, slicing through her palm and cutting off two fingers, but because Angelica was stepping on the pitcher’s mound, she lost her balance and the sword went flying into the distance.

  The woman let go, also losing her balance, and the man advanced on Angelica, using her slight discomfort to knock her over, dirt flying up around her.

  She kicked out, her silver-tipped heel going smoothly into his groin. Vampire or human, all men are vulnerable where the family jewels are concerned. His breath came out in a squeak and she stabbed through his Adam’s apple, cutting sideways, but only getting the job done halfway.

  She shoved his corpse and Danny caught it, finishing what she’d started. Angelica smiled at him, at their teamwork. It was effortless between them, always had been. She jumped up
and caught the last vampire — the woman — by her collar, shoving her against the batting cage.

  The woman knew she was finished, but still she laughed in the face of her executioner.

  Angelica pressed her knife to the woman’s throat, a thin trickle of blood leaking out. “Why did you do this?” she asked. The woman kept laughing, and Angelica punched her, blood spouting from a now-broken nose. “Answer me!”

  Her chuckles died away. “Not everyone’s happy with your reign, Empress. You’ll soon see that your word is no longer law. It’s time for a new regime.”

  “Yeah, sure. When Hell’s serving ice cream,” Angelica replied, cutting her head off and throwing the body down like a sack of potatoes. Despite getting dirty from the field, she’d barely had to break a sweat.

  PID ambulances arrived and procedure continued normally. They returned to the PID offices, Angelica discarding her ruined coat.

  “You look upset,” Danny said when they got back to her reclaimed office.

  Upset wasn’t really the right word, however. They had had nearly a century of peace since Augustus had been killed. Vampires were under her thumb. Why had a small nest suddenly decided to challenge her authority as soon as she got back to Chicago?

  She pressed a button on her intercom. “Sean, get me the records on the vamps we fought. Who turned them and when?” Turning to Danny she said, “I am concerned. First a skin changer targets my company, and now a group of rogues tell me they want a new regime.”

  Danny laughed. “Angie, you were in the human world longer than I was: you know how they rebel against leaders. Vampires just took longer to follow the trend, that’s all. They’re nothing to worry about. All that will do is distract you from the matter at hand.”