by SM Reine
“Body cameras on,” Chief Villanueva said, and the folks in blue checked their devices.
Dana left her camera on the table.
Why the fuck would she want evidence of the fact that she put her life ahead of the law? They’d take her to court and make her justify shooting a vampire to save her jugular. No thanks.
The cops started filing out. Dana followed, but Anthony stepped in front of her before she could leave. He looked as uncomfortable in his ballistic vest as Dana would have felt. He wore the camera and helmet, and he’d abandoned his usual sidearm for the police-issued weapons.
“You’re not ready to go,” he said. He patted the bulk of his chest.
“It’ll slow me down,” Dana said.
Anthony knew better than to say please or ask nicely. “Put on your fucking gear, fuck-face, or I’ll leave your ass and tell Penny what you did.”
Dana’s eyes narrowed as she studied him. “I’ll rip off your fucking mustache.”
“You could rip off my whole lip and it wouldn’t stop me from telling Penny.”
“Could rip off your jaw.”
“I’ll write a message down for her,” Anthony said.
“So much for your fingers.”
“I’ve got a prehensile dick.”
Dana couldn’t help but laugh. “Don’t tempt me to cut that thing off.”
“It’d be a fucking shame to deprive the world of this.” He gripped himself through his pants.
Dana cringed away from him, shielding her eyes. “Fuck! All right! But if this armor slows me down enough to let a vampire get one up on me, then you get to tell Penny her beloved wife is dead.”
“Beloved.” Anthony snorted.
He helped Dana get into her gear. It was as bulky and uncomfortable as she’d known it would be.
They weren’t that far behind the cops when they climbed into the truck that took them to Judex. The casino itself was open—casinos were always open, and the ones run by vampires were especially popular after dark—but some of the attached attractions were not. The zoo, yes. The outdoor hookah lounge, totally. The wax museum? No way. Even people who liked vampires didn’t want to be creeped out by wax figures after midnight.
The wax museum was the location of the supposed torture closet. Dana watched the building approach through the reinforced windows of the police transport. The signs advertised celebrity lookalikes and a year-round Halloween-style haunted house inside.
Behind the circular building stood an enormous, glistening image of a succubus—a magical hologram meant to advertise Judex’s darkest pleasures. She bent forward to press the swollen globes of her tits together, her nipples just barely hidden behind a shelf bra. She extended a hand to beckon at the Strip.
Her crooked finger was an invitation.
Come with me for fun.
Come with me for pleasure.
Come with me.
The words rotating around her waist like a belt said Valhalla. It was a nightclub within Judex. Dana kept a close eye on Valhalla, but it was on the straight and narrow as far as she could tell. Just because the advertising was offensively garish didn’t mean it was illegal.
The vehicle stopped between the feet of the magically projected succubus. As soon as the doors opened and cops started piling out, they were approached by confused Judex valets. “Is there a problem?” asked a pimply teenage boy in a too-small jacket.
Chief Villanueva flashed her badge at him. “Stay back. This area is under police control.”
“I should call my manager,” he said.
“Yes,” she agreed, “you should.”
They didn’t wait around for a manager to show up. The chief directed one officer to stay back for crowd control as they climbed up the ramp to the wax museum.
The doors were locked and warded.
“Jeffreys?” Charmaine asked.
Officer Jeffreys slapped a charm on the door. It dismantled the wards first with a flash of green—a color faintly reminiscent of the succubus straddling the museum—and then the lock itself clicked after that.
The wash of magic made Dana’s eyes burn. If the Paradisos behind Judex hadn’t known the cops were onto them, they knew now.
It wouldn’t be long before they had company.
At the moment, the wax museum was hollow in its silence. They were greeted at the door by famous reporter January Lazar holding out her microphone as if to interview the visitors. She was poised in front of a replica of the old “Welcome to Las Vegas” sign.
The January Lazar figurine was magically enhanced, and, unlike the wax museum, the magic didn’t stop outside of visiting hours. Her hair ruffled gently when cops passed. Her fake skin had a subtle moisture to it. She looked like a person, just stiffer—not unlike a vampire.
Officer Jeffreys found a light switch and flipped it. Nothing happened.
“Power’s off,” he said.
“Bet the Paradisos did it,” Anthony said. “They don’t want to make our job easy.”
“Flashlights on,” Chief Villanueva said.
They slipped through the hallway in formation, like an arrow tipped by riot shields. Dana was in the back. All the way in the back. Not a position that she was used to—she was usually punching her way straight through a cluster of hostiles while someone else took the rear.
It was boring.
Dana could tell that there was nothing at the wax museum as soon as they got inside. Call it instinct, call it experience. The cops were acting like they might get attacked from any angle at any moment, but there was nothing happening to write home about.
Charmaine led the way with her head tilted back, nostrils flared. She sniffed and pointed.
Her coyote senses were beckoning them deeper into the museum.
Deeper, deeper.
They passed through an exhibit with an array of Oscar-winning movie stars and headed into the room of musicians. The main feature of this room was Black Death. They were a pre-Genesis metal band comprised of demons, and their preternatural status had elevated them to infamy once the truth became known. And when half of the band had been assassinated after Genesis, their mystique had shot through the roof.
Gun-mounted beams of light slid over the fake band, casting stark shadows on the sequined curtain behind them. Their lead singer, Misery, was dressed in typically androgynous fashion, narrow hips swaying, shirt cut low in the front to expose a slim line from collarbone to navel. The dripping black eyeliner looked like it had just run down their cheeks.
Chief Villanueva pointed silently toward an employees-only door. It was hidden behind Siegfried and Roy’s taxidermied tigers.
Half of the police force remained outside the door while the other half went in. Anthony was at the chief’s elbow, keeping close to Charmaine, watching over her as she beelined past the manager’s desk to the closet on the other side.
She was sniffing the whole while, her eyes sharp with lupine cunning.
Dana stayed back, even further back than the other police officers in the gallery. She kept her eyes open. She watched the room.
Until that moment, she hadn’t felt she needed to watch. Something imperceptible had since changed.
The wax museum still looked empty. As empty as it could while filled with inanimate human figures. Rage from the Forbidden’s wax figure was mid-sing-scream in the doorway, and Dana had to stare at it for a moment to realize why it had caught her attention.
His long hair was moving.
There was nobody on that side of the room. No air conditioning had turned on. It was totally still.
But his hair.
“There’s nothing in here,” said Officer Jeffreys from inside the office.
Dana glanced over the heads of the various officers. From there, she could see them lighting up the space that had been rumored to be a “torture closet.” There was a broom inside. And that was it. Although Dana considered cleaning to be torture, it sadly wasn’t illegal.
She checked her hand. Dana always
wore a thumb ring that would light up when she was in close proximity to magic. If there were glamours hiding the true nature of the closet, it would have burned with starlight.
The stone was lightless.
Chief Villanueva stooped in the closet. She sniffed the area. “Blood,” she said. “Barely any blood. That’s what I was smelling. Let’s get someone in here to collect it.”
The officers moved, obviously relieved of enormous tension. They were fools. This was the time when they needed to be getting scared—the first time, in fact, because now they were all the way in the back of an unoccupied wax museum, far from the exit, and something had ruffled the hair of a figurine.
Nobody noticed when Dana slipped away.
Britney Spears’s skirt was resting differently on her hips than when Dana had first passed through. Dana knew this for a fact. She was an expert on Britney Spears’s hips, and the slit hadn’t been exposing her left glute when the cops first entered.
Dana inhaled a shallow, long breath, taking in the odor of the room. Her nose wasn’t sensitive like a coyote shifter’s. Didn’t need to be.
When she inhaled, it was like smelling a few inches over a snake’s tank. There was a dry smell. An old smell. Like skin being shed.
“The dead are walking,” she muttered.
That was what the bloodless smelled like.
Dana’s hand went to her body camera, and she thought about yanking it. Turning it off. Stopping the feed. If she was going to fight vampires, she wanted to do it on her terms.
Then she thought about Penny and stopped.
“Fuck,” Dana said.
She drew her sidearm. A police-issued Glock.
Dana proceeded into the next room.
The figures in here were all from comic book movies. The Godslayer’s wax figure, positioned on top of a wrecked car with twin swords and leather pants, looked more like the actress Mia Carano. The way that waxen Mia Carano scowled made her look like she was pissed off at the Dean Cain Superman suspended in mid-flight.
With only Dana’s flashlight to illuminate the room, she could light up one figure at a time. Godslayer, Superman, Iron Man. When she moved from one figure to the next, the long shadows distorting behind them made it look like they were moving.
One of them was moving.
The Godslayer’s hair.
Dana inhaled again, ears perked.
The scent of shedding snakes was stronger here, but Dana couldn’t make out any noises other than the cops in the next room. They were starting to talk more loudly now that they felt comfortable. This was a potential crime scene, but not a live one.
The speaker on Dana’s shoulder crackled.
“Where’d you go?” It was Anthony.
She pressed her button, tipped her mouth to the microphone. “Room with all the capes. Got a hunch.”
“Coming,” he said. “I’ll tell Charmaine.”
Dana silenced her Walkie-Talkie after that. She needed her dull human senses at their best.
Her feet rolled over the floor, rubber soles silent on the linoleum. She widened her stance, reduced the rubbing of cloth on cloth. Dana tried not to breathe too much.
The next room, past the superheroes, was one of the last in the building. It had a fake red carpet replete with wooden cutouts meant to represent paparazzi, and strobes flashed in lieu of cameras.
The celebutantes represented were meaningless to Dana. A lot of buxom blonds. Men who had low body fat and no fighting skill. Nobody interesting.
It was such a long hallway that Dana’s flashlight couldn’t illuminate more than a couple feet down. The black-painted hallway, with artificial stars picked out on the ceiling, seemed to suck up what little light she did provide.
Dana was taking care to be quiet, so her dull human ears picked up the faintest click from behind. And at first, Dana didn’t react. She pretended she didn’t hear, even though that was the distinctive sound of a door being shut at her back.
Dana lifted her gun higher. The flashlight mounted on its barrel was shiny chrome, almost a mirror.
There was motion behind her.
She swung around, aiming the gun at the door.
Her flashlight spilled over Jennifer Lawrence’s blank wax grin.
“Fuck,” Dana muttered again.
The next instant, half of the shapes in the room began to move.
A half-dozen figures swooped in, moving too fast for Dana’s eyes to track, and she was standing on a fucking red carpet in heavy ballistic armor with no exit.
Move. Fast.
Dana hurled herself at the nearest of the vampires, head lowered, feet digging in for traction.
They met halfway.
Collision.
Dana and the vampire—a male, a pasty-fleshed thing with unsettlingly perfect hair—rolled over and over. She outmassed him significantly. It was easy to get on top and unload her gun into his chest, opening up a fist-sized hole.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
Might not kill him, but it sure fucking hurt. And it meant he didn’t follow when she used that momentum to roll herself behind fake paparazzi.
Dana didn’t stop moving.
Her heel lashed out, splintering the stand that held the paparazzi upright. She yanked the cutout from the floor. She swung it.
The wooden edge slammed into the necks of two vampires that had been running toward her.
And then she realized it wasn’t wood, because even though they fell back, they didn’t die. Must have been some weird textured plastic.
So vampires don’t put wood in their businesses. Surprise, surprise.
She turned on her microphone.
“McIntyre here, need support in—”
A hand shot over Dana’s shoulder. White fingers curled around the cables powering both Walkie-Talkie and body cam, yanking hard enough to disconnect both.
Then that same hand planted into the back of Dana’s skull and slammed her face-first into the floor.
She was stunned.
Not so stunned that she couldn’t twist the gun around her side, pointing it up under her arm, and open fire. She was rewarded by a feminine shriek.
Dana flipped over to find herself looking up at Achlys.
The vampire was infamous, and she was as unearthly in person as the rumors claimed. She wore her skin-tight black dress that bared way too much cleavage and too little leg even now. How she could maneuver like that, Dana would never know. Maybe that was why Achlys moved as jerkily as a Disneyland animatronic gone haywire.
“You attacked me,” Dana said. “You’re fucked.”
Achlys was a law-abiding citizen. Squeaky clean. Impossible to pin down.
Until now.
“I was going to say the same thing,” Achlys said.
The door to the hall slammed open.
Dana caught a flash of Anthony and Officer Jeffreys out of the corner of her eye.
Then the men were swarmed by the disguised vampires. Dana heard gunfire, shouts, scuffling. Bodies slammed into the walls.
Achlys seized Dana. The master vampire was a brittle stick of a woman, but she effortlessly lifted the hunter off of the ground.
They slammed into the far door so hard that Dana felt a rib snap.
Pretty sure it’s only one rib.
The rib wasn’t the problem. It was her head bouncing, Achlys’s fingernails digging into Dana’s shoulders, the vampire’s lip peeling back to expose long fangs.
Whatever sub-species of bloodless Achlys was, she had the pretty kind of fangs. Not a mouthful of sharp teeth, but elongated canines with an edge capable of shredding anything on Dana’s body.
Dana never saw vampires up close like this.
Don’t want to ever do it again.
Gotta end her now.
Dana emptied her gun’s magazine into Achlys’s belly, but the master vampire didn’t seem to feel it. Achlys yanked the gun out of Dana’s hand. Tossed it aside. It hit the floor and spun away so that the flashlight shone on the heeled f
eet of a wax model.
Achlys’s head snapped forward. Her teeth tore into Dana’s jaw, exposed over the stiff collar of the ballistic vest.
Blood sprayed, hot and wet and shiny.
Felt like burning alive.
Dana jerked a UV grenade off her belt.
Achlys caught Dana’s thumb just when it had slipped under the pin. Dana’s joint snapped.
“Anthony!” she roared. “Daylight!”
Did he hear her? Was he still alive?
Dana couldn’t even tell how many vampires were in the gallery anymore.
Achlys lifted Dana’s feet from the ground. She took a knee in her wounded gut and gasped, but kept grinning, baring those pretty fangs painted black with Dana’s blood. “You’re not as tough as they say,” Achlys said, wrenching open the vest to expose more of Dana’s throat.
She bit again. Harder. This time she got a whole lot of neck-meat in her mouth, and the sharp pain was so immense that Dana couldn’t breathe.
“Nice aim,” Dana ground out through her teeth.
Dana felt the instant that Achlys’s fangs punctured the subcutaneous charm implanted in her throat. A failsafe designed to save her in case of a vampire going for the jugular.
Balefire shot outward in a thin jet.
It was white flame, brighter than bright, hotter than sun. No UV, but balefire didn’t need UV. It burned uncontrollably once no longer contained by the layers of warding charms.
The balefire flooded Achlys’s mouth.
She reared back, screaming, clawing at her jaw with her freakishly long fingernails.
Aww. Poor thing. That musta hurt. If Achlys got herself to a witch fast enough, she might only lose a few teeth, maybe half a jaw.
But the furious light in Achlys’s crimson eyes said she was in no hurry to leave.
Not until she got vengeance.
“McIntyre!” she snarled, the word slurred by her destroyed mouth. Balefire flashed white behind her teeth as she choked it out.
Two things happened from there at the exact same moment.
Cops flooded the far end of the room, breaking through whatever barriers Achlys had used to isolate Dana from her backup.
And Achlys, seeing that she was at risk of being caught, threw Dana headfirst through a wall.
