by SM Reine
“It’s okay.” Achlys’s cool hand stroked jerky lines over the halo of Nissa’s curls. “Ride out the feelings. Let it pass. The blood will digest.”
The blood never digested. It always came out one way or another, since her body would only absorb a teaspoon of it. “Thank you, master,” Nissa whispered as the nausea rippled through her.
She lifted her head to see that she was in Achlys’s private den. Someone had carried Nissa from Henderson to Paradise. Its glass walls were exposed so that they had an excellent view of the super-huge pyramid of Luxor 2, the oversized holographic figures advertising Wenda the Wicked’s strip show, and the levitating Ferris wheel alongside the old High Roller.
Between the bars of light radiating from Luxor 2, there were no stars to see. Just the occasional blink of helicopter lights passing below them and the reflection of Achlys’s figure slithering toward a man draped across a clear acrylic chair.
Tormid was an enormous man, so even though Nissa’s eyes wouldn’t focus, she identified him by the length of his body. One leg slung over an arm and his back nestled across the opposite arm. He was laziness personified, almost too lazy, as though he were deliberately trying to conceal his more avian quirks.
“Wrist,” Achlys said.
Tormid lifted his arm. She took his elbow with delicate, brittle fingers. Nissa’s vision doubled when Achlys popped her head to the left, angling herself so that her fangs aligned with his vein. Sharpened bone slid through skin, parting tissue until tooth and blood met.
Nissa felt it all through Tormid’s feelings. It wasn’t too bad, since he was willing to give Achlys his blood. The shifter would quickly regenerate anything that she took from him. But it was still so much sensation, so much life, and Nissa wanted it all to go away.
A hand blocked Nissa’s view.
The fingers were blue, but not the dead-blue of a bloodless corpse. They were sapphires in sunshine and ocean waves cresting over a frozen beach. “You all right?” Shawn Wyn asked.
Nissa was glad she couldn’t blush. She took his hand and allowed him to pull her into a sitting position. “Yes, I’m fine. Did you kill them? All those people out in Henderson?”
“Not this time,” he said with a wink. “Got interrupted. But do you know what I’d have done to them if I could have?”
“What?”
Shawn’s lips brushed her ear, and it felt like a moth’s wings beating inside the dusty bones of her chest. “I’d have ripped them limb from limb and reassembled them into entirely new people.”
“Oh.” Nissa could vividly envision it. The fantasy was safe, since the imagined victims didn’t have emotions to assault her with.
She wished she could have seen Shawn kill like that.
“Stop it, Shawn,” Tormid said, his golden gaze cutting through the room to the sidhe. “You won’t rip anyone apart. You know we have to behave.” He spoke loudly so that everyone could hear the admonishment.
They were not alone in Achlys’s penthouse and Achlys was not the only one drinking her fill. There were many other vampires from the murder, many people who were feeding off of many willing humans. They relaxed in other glass-walled rooms on the floor, just beyond the reach of Nissa’s empathy. Achlys must have commanded her murder to feed from a distance safe for Nissa.
At that range, while she was still so disoriented, Nissa could only see the vamps and victims as a lot of colorless shapes moving together. Some were smoking lethe from hookahs and passing the smoke from mouth to mouth. Others drew blood from throats and thighs. Some people were dancing, their mouths so caked in blood that it looked like they’d scribbled lipstick over their indistinct faces.
“You failed,” Tormid said. “You didn’t get the package.”
“You’re a package,” Shawn said.
Tormid’s eyes slid halfway shut as Achlys drank. “We sent you to get someone. You didn’t come back with him. Where is he?”
“You didn’t send me anywhere. Achlys sent me because she’s the master of the murder, and you’re just some bird-brain who fucks her.”
Achlys withdrew her teeth. Nissa felt it like the fangs were coming out of her face.
The room snapped into focus.
“You’re a sidhe here by my good graces,” Achlys said. She touched her tongue to one fang, then another, sucking the vestiges of blood down. “My good grace lasts as long as you’re useful. You didn’t find Harold Hopkins, and I don’t care why; you’ll locate him without making another mess or my grace ends.”
Shawn gave Nissa a conspiratorial wink. “Yes ma’am.”
“Escort him out, Aggy,” Achlys said.
Aggy had been turned into a vampire as a tiny, withered old lady, but she was confident grabbing Shawn’s arm. She’d have killed herself if that were what it took to execute Achlys’s order. “Let’s go.”
Did his feet even touch the floor when he slid out of the room? The acrylic floors seemed to light up under the balls of his feet, but he made no sound other than the singing of wind chimes, the rustle of soft silk.
Aggy led Shawn to the one opaque structure on the floor—the elevator—and he winked again at Nissa before going down.
“It will never happen with you two,” Achlys said.
Nissa’s gaze snapped to her master. “What?”
“Shawn. You. It’s not a good idea.” Achlys’s tongue rasped up the inner line of Tormid’s arm, and her lips were on his palm when she said, “Give us a moment?”
“All the moments I have belong to you,” Tormid said. They kissed briefly, mouth to mouth. Blood streaked his chin when he pulled away.
His legs swung over the chair and his feet hit the floor. He rolled out his shoulders when he stood. There was already no sign of injury on Tormid’s body. Shifters healed anything short of silver in moments.
When Tormid stepped out of the room, Achlys pressed a button on her remote control. The walls went opaque. They could no longer see the Strip or even the vampires feeding elsewhere in the penthouse. It was just master vampire Achlys and Nissa, her travel expert who had never once tasted human blood.
Achlys let out a sigh and whipped off her wig. The hair underneath was baby-soft blond, curling around her contoured cheeks. Her fingers plunged into the neck of her dress to extract the inserts from her bra. They plopped to the floor and wobbled like jelly, leaving Achlys’s cleavage much less impressive. Then she collapsed to the sofa beside Nissa. She no longer moved jerkily.
“I’ll get rid of Shawn to keep the peace if that’s what it takes,” Achlys said with none of her chilly affect. She sounded and looked like an average twenty-something girl, though she wouldn’t have been twenty-something for twenty years. “I don’t want you to get attached to him. He’s not even one of mine.”
“Would it matter to you if he were?” Nissa asked.
For a master vampire who controlled the largest murder in the world, Achlys was not a fan of vampires. Aside from Nissa, the only person she showed real signs of liking was Tormid. A shifter.
“Most likely not,” Achlys said. “Ugh. Can you please unzip me?” She lifted an arm so that Nissa could get at the zipper concealed within the hem.
The woman underneath was neither as gaunt nor as curvaceous as the dress made her appear. Her ribs seemed to drag underneath the tissue of her skin rather than slide the way that they did on a mortal. Her breasts were deflated. She wiggled into the knee-length t-shirt that she liked to wear in her coffin during daytime and mopped at her face with wipes to remove the dramatic makeup.
“At least the night’s over,” Achlys said, relaxing against the back of the couch. “The next night, for your information. You slept for a night and a half.”
“What happened while I was out?” Nissa asked.
“The chief of police slapped us on the wrist. She’s afraid. The OPA is threatening to daylight bomb Vegas, which would be terrible for cash flow.”
Nissa had heard whispers of the OPA daylight bombing other cities. It was a magical t
hing—like encasing the town in a bubble, inside which UV-heavy sunlight perpetually blasted. Daylight bombing was obnoxious for humans, especially since it was guaranteed to jack up the prices on blackout curtains. But it was deadly for vampires. They wouldn’t be able to leave their dens until the magic faded.
“Not too bad,” Nissa said. “Most of our tourism is human, so perpetual daylight won’t stop them from coming to us.”
“Who’s going to entertain them if it’s never nighttime? Who wants to go to a vampire city without vampires in it?”
“We could go completely underground. Get extra sexy about it.”
Achlys picked at the edge of her false black fingernails. “I don’t want the OPA taking my playground. Shawn is useful, but I will get rid of him when his usefulness ends to protect my stake in Vegas. So please don’t get attached.”
Nissa swallowed hard. “I won’t.”
She wouldn’t. She wasn’t.
But she had seen the way that Shawn hung the people in the air, and the effortless power that he wielded. He didn’t fear everything. He didn’t feel everything. Stepping outside didn’t make his guts get all twisted up in knots, and he lived life without having to experience it through the senses of the mortals around him.
Shawn was layers of beauty, layers and layers of it, and Nissa envied him.
Achlys pushed another button on her remote. A wet bar emerged from the floor. She rattled around with all those little parts that produced espresso—the only thing that tasted strong enough to register on a vampire’s dead taste buds—and she gave Nissa a tiny steaming cup.
“Drink up,” she said, tucking a hair behind Nissa’s ear.
Nissa took an obedient sip and was rewarded by a smile from Achlys. She hated to wipe that smile off of her master’s face, but there was unfinished business to worry about.
“The Hunting Club,” Nissa said.
Achlys groaned and rolled her eyes. “I know. They claim they didn’t do anything with Beelzebub, can you believe it? You’d think that after all I’ve accomplished, they could at least have the courtesy not to pretend I’m stupid.”
“What do you think they’re planning with Beelzebub?”
“I don’t know,” Achlys said. “I’m afraid it will get worse.”
Nissa rubbed her fingertips over her breast, wishing that she could have felt empathy for her master. Someone who cared for Nissa. Someone who loved her more than anyone else in her murder.
“It won’t get worse,” Nissa said gently. “We’ll take care of the Hunting Club, the OPA, and anything else that needs to be taken care of.”
“I know. I’m already working on it. In fact, I called in to the anonymous LVMPD tip line tonight. I’m opening a net for the Hunting Club. If they attack us first and we kill them defending ourselves…” Achlys shrugged.
“You think the Hunting Club will respond to a tip that goes to the cops?”
“They’re in each other’s pockets. I fully expect the LVMPD to get tipped off to the naughty vampires’ torture closet and send in the Hunting Club to handle it.”
Nissa tensed. “Torture closet? You tipped them off about a torture closet?”
“It’s not real, and there’s nothing for them to find. Don’t worry yourself.” Achlys’s smile was soft, so soft. “You’re still gentler than the rest of us. Dying hasn’t changed you.”
Nissa tried to return that smile. She knew that Achlys meant it as a compliment. “Thank you.”
“No. Thank you for reminding me that I will take care of everything.” She cupped Nissa’s cheeks in her hands. “I’ll take care of you, too. I promise.”
3
Las Vegas was a hellhole for Nissa. There were mortals everywhere, and those mortals came along with mortal thoughts, feelings, fears. They assailed Nissa when she took the elevator down to the Strip and headed into work, and she hated it.
She needed to hurry through that hellhole for multiple reasons, only one of which was the preservation of her mental health. The horizon was turning orange. As a blood virgin, Nissa might have been able to walk around at full noon and survive to see the night. But she would need more than a few drops of Achlys’s blood to get back on her feet.
She took the monorail a few blocks up. The whole time, she chewed on her hands, eyes screwed shut, rocking back and forth on her feet after incurring that much damage.
The window of time to get to work was narrow. When she got off at the station, she didn’t have any fingernails left.
But it got her all the way to work before the sun started touching the streets.
Nissa’s involvement with the Paradisos was that of a glorified travel agent, but it was not how she made her money. Actual employment occurred at a casino owned by her sire, Mohinder, and as soon as Nissa stepped into the square outside of Judex, her anxiety begin to mellow.
She was almost there—back in her office, back in her territory.
Judex was, like all casinos owned by Mohinder, a luxury environment intended for high-class gamblers. The first few floors were a shopping mall built into an artificial forest with real weather patterns and billion-dollar brands. You had to get up to the fifth story before you even reached the casino floor with its waterfalls and evening gown-clad cocktail waitresses.
Achlys loved her gaudy transparent acrylic, but Mohinder’s design was sleek metal built into organic lines to mirror his plants. Animal habitats had been so seamlessly integrated along the edge of the gaming tables that you couldn’t see the glass separating you from the sleeping leopards and caimans. He’d designed the casino so that it evoked prehistoric forests, dissimilar from anything currently on the planet.
It looked like it should have been uncomfortably steamy amidst the fog and artificial swamps, but the temperature was cool, the music was subtle, and the cocktails were strong. It was impossible to tell the time of day or night in Judex. Humans occasionally got lost among the tables for weeks on end.
Mohinder had built a special entrance for Nissa that avoided the card tables and was concealed behind the wildcat habitats. Her entrance was separate from the utility access corridors too, so as soon as she got off the casino floor, she didn’t have to encounter another mortal mind all the way up to her office.
He was waiting for her there. Mohinder sat against the edge of her desk with legs extended, crossed at the ankles, fingers drumming on the sinuous metal curve forming the desk.
“Late today.” Mohinder’s curls hung over one side of his head, silver threads tracing from one ear to the back of his scalp. “Very late. Close to thirty hours late.”
“Sorry.” Nissa took a long inhale through her nose, filling the raisins of her lungs to maximum capacity. She held the air. There was no need to exhale. “I slept at Achlys’s again.”
“She told me. You know I don’t mind when you sleep away from me. However…” Mohinder’s crimson gaze turned to a door beyond Nissa’s desk. It was framed on either side by plants that seemed to grow directly from the floor, supported by silver struts.
Nissa sat at her desk and logged into her computer. “It’s fine. I’m still well within the time limits for these things.”
“So time is your meter? Not suffering?”
She wasn’t even looking at her computer, though the desktop had loaded. Her wallpaper was a slideshow of flowering cacti, mountains blue from sunset, sunbaked empty riverbeds. “Do you think that he’s suffering?”
“I don’t think it matters,” Mohinder said. “But you do.”
Nissa opened her messaging program. She’d been out of Judex for long enough that she had hundreds of things to catch up on, hundreds of things to fix. “Did you let him go?”
“No.” Mohinder slipped around to stand behind her chair. He was a sign marker on the path between Nissa’s desk and the door on the other side. “This is your choice. I want to see what you’ll do, even if that means abandonment, starvation, and oblivion.”
Nissa had no appetite for email. Pushing back her chair, sh
e stood on wobbling legs. The wormy husks of her intestines had come back from the dead to curl themselves into Gordian knots. They slithered through her the entire time she crossed the office to the door between the trees.
But they silenced when she opened the door.
It led to a closet. A tiny, lightless closet.
Before all of the bricks that she’d stacked in there, it had been a normal-sized supply closet. Now its floor space was less than a meter in each direction, with two enormous hooks on the ceiling and one on the floor.
Achlys may have described it as a torture closet, had she known it existed.
Apparently Achlys and Nissa were more similar than either of them ever realized.
A vampire was stretched between the hooks. When Nissa had first packed him behind her desk, he’d worked himself into such a state of panic that he sweated blood from his last meal out of his pores.
Now the blood had dried to a crust on his skin, and his struggling had fissured that crust into spider webs. Actual spiders had begun to build webs on the bricks by his head too.
A vampire could last without human blood indefinitely, so long as it had another supply. Synthetic and animal blood were the primary options. With no blood at all, a vampire began to get thirsty. They said that a vampire could only last two weeks without any blood.
Beelzebub had been in her closet for over a week, and there was no color or stretch to his skin left. His twitching had ripped divots into his flesh to expose dusty muscle underneath. His cheeks were plastered so close to his skull that they were ridged by a visible outline of teeth, and the long points of his fangs lay over lips as thin as spaghetti.
He was distinctive from other vampires because of his body modifications. Metal spikes were implanted in Beelzebub’s forehead so that it looked like he had two rows of horns above his eyes, sprouting from the arch of his brow and running through his hair. Nissa had discovered by close investigation that the horns were anchored in his skull by screws. The amount of pain a vampire could handle was amazing.
