Cashing Out

by SM Reine

“I’ll kill them,” she said. “I promised I’d do it, and now I’m going to do it. I’ll kill every last one of them.”

  Starting with Nissa Royal.

  And as the water continued to rise, Dana lowered her head to finish eating her prey.

  2

  It was a gray-drenched morning and Brianna Dimaria was at an unusual crime scene.

  Not that the burned building, vampire ash, or dead police officers were that unusual for Las Vegas. They didn’t lose cops often, but when pitting human law enforcement against preternatural criminals, things happened.

  What was weird was that the Hunting Club hadn’t been summoned to consult.

  They’d been summoned to retrieve the remains of an associate.

  Brianna didn’t like Dana McIntyre, per se. It was hard to like someone who was that much of a pain in the ass. That didn’t mean she wanted to show up at a crime scene where Dana had been identified as both victim and perpetrator.

  “Fuck.” Anthony Morales wiped a hand over his sweaty face, paced a few steps away, paced back again. “Fuck. I mean…are you sure?”

  “According to witness accounts, yes. There isn’t enough material left to identify her otherwise.” This information came from an outwardly dispassionate Charmaine Villanueva, Chief of Police for the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department. “We’re trying to find all the ash that survived the rain so that you’ll be able to…” She seemed to lose her train of thought, scrubbing a hand over her face. “You can take her home.”

  One more time, Anthony said, “Fuck.”

  Brianna didn’t have the heart to hit him up for money, even though the Swear Jar could have used it.

  They were standing outside a warehouse in the industrial parts of Las Vegas. It wasn’t far from the rail yard. Brianna could hear trains rumbling a block away, and they made the rain-soaked street tremble under her feet like the thunder overhead.

  The amount of rain meant that there wasn’t a lot of sunlight, but the sun had made enough of an appearance to turn full-blooded vampires to ash. And despite the rain, a lone vampire produced enough ash that it hadn’t all gotten washed away. There were traces on the curb, a little around the gutters.

  Dana had been bathed in sunlight and turned to ash like any of the vampires she’d staked.

  Brianna had imagined that Dana’s death would be better than this. She’d expected something superheroic, like managing to hold up a falling building for five whole minutes, allowing old ladies and puppies enough time to evacuate before getting crushed under cement.

  It was so ignominious, using a broom and pail to collect Dana’s remains.

  “What exactly happened?” Brianna asked.

  Charmaine was pacing, hands on her hips, sweat stains on her pits. It had gotten hot again about five milliseconds after the rain stopped. “Here’s the chain of events from my POV: I got a call from you guys at four fifty-seven in the morning saying that you’d lost contact with McIntyre. I sent my guys in—a lot of really good guys. They got on site by five-oh-nine. I lost contact with them by five eleven. By the time backup arrived…”

  She waved at the warehouse, which spoke for itself.

  The building was still smoldering. The only surviving witness to its destruction was Nissa Royal. But she had refused to speak to the police until her master arrived.

  Now Nissa stood alongside Mohinder, the leader of the Paradisos, inside a warehouse adjacent to the one that had burned. The firefighters were using hoses and magic to ensure that the remaining flames didn’t reach its neighbor. It wasn’t a safe place to be, but vampires were short on options. Daytime had struck. They were momentarily imprisoned by daylight.

  Through the doorway, Mohinder and his fledgling looked lifeless. They stood shoulder-to-shoulder with grave expressions and colorless flesh, sheltered by magical wards designed specifically to block light. It was a difficult, complicated spell, but Nissa was their only surviving witness. If they ever hoped to find out what happened to Dana, she needed to be protected.

  “Who provided those wards?” Brianna asked, nodding toward the pair of vampires as Officer Jeffreys interviewed them.

  Charmaine’s expression only became stonier. “The OPA.”

  “Fuck,” Anthony said.

  “There’s other curses you could be using to fill our Swear Jar, you know,” Brianna said. “Show some creativity.”

  Normally Anthony would have enjoyed her teasing, but now he looked stricken. Brianna had disliked Dana. Anthony loved her, full stop. She was the closest thing to a daughter he had. And now the cops were trying to sweep the muddy remains of her ash into a bucket so that they could take her home.

  Brianna’s arm crept around Anthony’s waist. “Sorry,” she said.

  “She’d want you to give me a hard time.” His arm wrapped around Brianna’s shoulder.

  “Do you think?” Brianna asked. “Dana wasn’t acting like herself in the end.”

  “She seemed fine to me,” Anthony said.

  “The sunlight turned her to ash, though.” Gods, was Brianna going to have to say these words out loud? Couldn’t he infer the same thing she had from the evidence provided? “A blood virgin would have left a body behind.”

  “You think she drank human blood.”

  “If she did drink, we might never know for sure. I do know she’d be pissed to see you guys standing around like this.” Charmaine’s tone was bracing, her knuckles white from how tightly she gripped the badge on her belt. “We’re getting a story from Paradisos leadership about what happened to McIntyre and my men.”

  “Are they telling the truth?” Brianna asked.

  “I’m not psychic,” Charmaine said.

  “But you can smell lies.” Most shifters could, and the police chief was a coyote part-time. Their noses were almost as good as those on werewolves.

  “Vampire smells are weird.” Charmaine swept a hand toward the door. “Come on over. You can listen in and tell me what you think.”

  Anthony’s arm was painfully tight on Brianna, and she dug her fingers into his ribcage to compensate for it. It steadied the both of them. Held them upright when they wanted so badly to fall.

  They didn’t let go until they stepped into the Gantry warehouse and through the bubble of protective magic that allowed the vampires to walk near daylight.

  The instant that Brianna crossed the magical line, she could feel it wash cold and wet down her shoulders. She had mastered the hetânâ—a magical language designed after Genesis—and it allowed her to perform staggering acts of magic, but it was still nothing compared to the force of magic she felt inside that ward. She was drenched.

  Mohinder surveyed them, his painted features unreadable. He was as attractive as he was terrifying. Not attractive in the way that actors were; he was jagged and scarred from his many years walking this planet. But there was gravity to him. Authority. His presence was so huge that Brianna couldn’t help but feel pulled toward him, even though she was confident it would have ended with her death.

  That gravity had probably ended in Dana’s death, after all.

  “Charmaine Villanueva, Chief of Police for the LVMPD.” Charmaine shook Mohinder’s hand. It was impressive how little hesitation she showed in touching the vampire leading the Paradisos. Even Charmaine wasn’t a match for Mohinder.

  “I’m familiar with you reputation. I hope we’ll be colleagues soon.” Mohinder’s tone was lifeless. He showed no excitement at the fact that he was rumored to be Mayor Hekekia’s primary rival during elections that year.

  Charmaine hadn’t become the chief by being emotionally transparent. She didn’t show a whit of the disgust she must have felt at the idea of Mohinder getting elected. A vampire mayor—Dana would be rolling in her grave if they’d had anything to bury.

  “These are consultants for the police department with the Hunting Club, Brianna Dimaria and Anthony Morales,” Charmaine said. Brianna grinned at Mohinder. She felt so stupid doing it, but she couldn’t stop. “I’m awar
e you’ve already talked to my detective about what happened here, but I’d appreciate it if you could take your story from the top for us.”

  “Please, Nissa,” Mohinder said. “Tell them again.” He urged the shorter vampire forward.

  Brianna had already had the misfortune of seeing Nissa around a couple of times, and she was shocked to see that Nissa’s eyes were no longer the colorless gray of a blood virgin. Her irises were crimson, like Mohinder’s.

  “I called Dana to our warehouse because I thought I might have stuff to make a cure for vampirism.” Nissa was quiet, but not nervous. She didn’t show a fraction of the anxiety she had the last time she crossed paths with Brianna. “Achlys had been working on the cure before…” Nissa glanced at Mohinder. She didn’t finish the sentence. “I asked Dana to come to the warehouse where Achlys kept the supplies so we could take the cure together. It only worked on vampires who hadn’t drunk blood before, you see.”

  “Vampires who haven’t drunk blood don’t have red eyes,” Brianna said. Anthony’s arm tensed to solid rock. He hadn’t noticed Nissa’s irises until that moment. Gods, he must have been out of it.

  Nissa ignored her. “Dana attacked me as soon as she got here. I’d thought we were friends, but she said she was just using me to get the cure. She’d drunk human blood to make herself stronger than me so that she could kill me.”

  Total. Fucking. Bullshit. Brianna wasn’t normally one to swear at crime scenes, but it took an amazing amount of self-control to keep her mouth sealed tightly shut.

  “You’re claiming that a Hunting Club associate attacked you?” Charmaine asked.

  “I don’t think she did it by the orders of the Hunting Club,” Nissa demurred. She all but batted her eyelashes.

  Now Brianna was the one as rigid as stone.

  “I had no choice but to fight back,” the vampire went on, “and some chemicals got spilled when we conflicted. The whole place caught fire. It filled the lab by the time the cops arrived, and Dana tried to jump out the window to escape. I was too scared to do the same. Mohinder rescued me with a blood bag so that I could heal, and thank the gods he did, or else I’d be dead too.”

  Brianna couldn’t be quiet anymore. “That’s your story?”

  Nissa turned an annoyed stare upon her. “It’s the truth. She jumped out a window because of the fire, but it just meant she was vulnerable to sunlight.”

  “No fucking way,” said a familiar voice. Brianna turned to see a towering figure silhouetted in the warehouse’s doorway. She was tall, stocky, and had horns that mirrored the curves of her curly hair. Penny McIntyre seethed with such anger that the air vibrated. “You’re lying. You are a liar.”

  Anthony bent down to whisper back at Brianna, “Who told Penny to come here? Did you invite her?”

  Brianna had not summoned Penny. She’d texted their healer, Edie, to make sure that someone would break the news of Dana’s death to Penny gently, without obstructing the investigation.

  Nissa’s entire demeanor changed at the sight of Penny. It was like Nissa was suddenly alive. “What makes you think I’m a liar?”

  “Dana wanted to be cured,” Penny said. “She never would have become a vampire for you.”

  Brianna didn’t even see Nissa darting past her. She was suddenly standing in front of Penny, just a few inches away, and tension choked the room. “You don’t know her as well as you think you do,” Nissa said.

  “You didn’t know her at all!” Penny snapped. The orc had lifted her fists, and even though Brianna had never seen Penny use her strength to hurt people before, an enraged seven-foot-tall blacksmith was terrifying.

  The cops freaked out. They shouted, drew guns. To them, Penny was a towering monster. Brianna only saw a girl in pain.

  “You killed her!” Penny said. “I know you killed her!”

  Nissa bared her fangs. “I would never!”

  Brianna took a deep breath and stepped between the two of them. “Hey,” she said, taking Penny gently by the arms. “Let’s talk outside, huh?” Brianna asked. “Just you and me.”

  Big brown eyes fixed on Brianna, unseeing. There was so much pain stirring in there. It was growing, molding, festering. “But she killed her.” A tear rolled down Penny’s cheek.

  Brianna would have said, I know, I agree, but Mohinder and Nissa were too close. “Outside,” she said again, with all the gentleness she could muster. She guided Penny through the door, glancing over her shoulder to make sure that Anthony was still with Charmaine and Mohinder. Anthony would take care of their business. He could keep his cool, even now.

  Nissa watched them leave. She didn’t move.

  But a single bloody tear streaked down her face.

  Anthony knew grief. He had lost family before. Close family. His cousin had been shot point blank for trying to protect Nevada from angels. It had sent his life into a tailspin that had really never stopped since. Not when his girlfriend had been murdered by the Mother of All Demons a couple years later. Not when he lost his mentor, Lucas McIntyre, in Genesis.

  And now…Dana.

  Anthony knew grief, so losing Dana wasn’t surprising or new. But it hurt. It hurt so much more than he’d have expected, which said a lot, considering how much it had all hurt before.

  Standing in a warehouse listening to vampires lie about the way she’d died made it a thousand times worse.

  The fact that Anthony had faced Nissa Royal in Judex and walked away without stuffing a UV grenade down her throat was going to haunt him until the day he died. Even though Nissa was acting like a victim who’d survived an attack, Anthony knew for a fact that she was lying.

  Penny was right. Dana never would have turned into a full-blooded vampire. Not to stop Nissa, and not for anything.

  It felt like his body was filled with a swarm of buzzing bees. They stung him a hundred thousand times and left him painfully numb. It was the only thing that kept him from screaming at Nissa the same way Penny had.

  “The Paradisos kept meaning to close down the warehouse,” Nissa was saying. Her story was continuing now that Brianna had removed Penny, like the two of them were a minor distraction. “Achlys had known that building was a huge fire hazard…that it could collapse.” Her crimson eyes were fixed on Charmaine’s face, and she looked so fucking earnest, and Anthony wished he’d staked her that first time they’d met in Henderson.

  Charmaine was nodding along. Taking notes. Listening attentively. If Anthony had been smart, he’d have been listening too, because Nissa was probably giving them material to build a case against Mohinder. And he wanted to build that case more than ever. He wanted to guarantee that there would never be a vampire sitting as Las Vegas’s mayor.

  Yet he was filled with that aching buzz, and he couldn’t hear anything.

  He didn’t even realize that Charmaine had concluded the interview until the chief grabbed his arm, guiding him away from the vampires. They stepped outside the wards that blocked daylight. Las Vegas summer blasted on them, baking Anthony’s skin instantly.

  “After hearing all that, I’ve got a question for you,” Charmaine said.

  Anthony wasn’t surprised. He’d been monitoring Dana prior to the incident; he’d have to back up her behaviors, provide evidence. “I’ll tell you whatever you need to take those fucks down. But I need you to fill me in on what they said so I can contradict it. I missed most everything.”

  “Actually, I was just going to ask if you want to come back to the department with me. Given what’s happened, it’s a bad time to ask, but…” She’d let her professional mask drop, and there was nothing but concern for a friend painting her features. Anthony had always found Charmaine lovely, even before she publicly transitioned; she had kind eyes for a coyote. “When I was grieving my parents, work helped distract me. Kept me going day to day. And you, with Dana…”

  It felt like he was trying to swallow a razor-studded rock. “Sure. I’ll come to the department. I’ll do whatever you want.”

  “Grea
t,” Charmaine said. “Because the OPA’s coming into town. I’m going to need someone I can trust, like you.”

  “Seriously? I thought they’d backed off.”

  “They’ve heard about…” She waved toward the warehouses. “The secretary’s on his way into town. What he’s going to say at our meeting, I don’t know. But it’s not gonna be good.”

  “Say no more,” Anthony said. The Office of Preternatural Affairs had become a benevolent force compared to the fascistic shit-bucket it had been before Genesis, but they were still kind of assholes. Charmaine needed a friend in her office.

  It was perversely good timing, since Anthony was suddenly feeling pangs for a friend’s help too.

  The chief took his truncated answer for hesitation. “If you don’t want to deal with politics right now, then—”

  “That sounds like exactly what I need,” Anthony said. “So long as you promise to buy me drinks tonight. Once you’re off, we’re going out.”

  The way Charmaine’s lips tugged over her teeth made her smile especially coyote-like. It was appealing. Anthony had always liked wild beasts. “I’ll foot the bill for as many drinks as you can handle, Morales.”

  The detective on the scene called to Charmaine. She loped over to join her staff, graceful despite her professionally creased slacks and low-heeled shoes. Shifters could have been graceful running around in chainmail, though. Anthony had seen it.

  While she was distracted, Anthony edged closer to the smoking Gantry warehouse. The remaining fire made Anthony feel like he was going to combust as quickly as a vampire. He held his breath as he scooped ash from beside the building into a baggie. He always had evidence bags in his pocket, just in case.

  The ash wasn’t from Dana—or whichever vampire had died on the pavement that day. It was from the building itself. Greasy, oily, rank with some kind of chemical. If the OPA was going to take over the department, Anthony was not going to let them take over the investigation. He owed Dana better than that.

  He was going to get answers.