by SM Reine
“So if you had fangs from an otherwise-ashed vampire, could you make fledglings?” Brianna asked.
Dana glanced at the open door. A handful of black-suited OPA agents walked past, talking among themselves. They didn’t give Dana and Brianna a second look.
By all appearances, none of them cared about the room where vampire remains were kept.
“We could figure it out,” Dana said.
She stuck her hand into one urn.
Brianna covered her mouth, turning green. “What are you doing?”
“Looking for fangs.” Dana wiggled her fingers through the ash, feeling around the pieces of bone.
Brianna made a bottle of hand sanitizer appear and squirted a dollop onto her palm. She scrubbed where she’d touched the ash earlier. “We could take these to the Hunting Lodge and sift through them.”
“Don’t need to. There’s no fang in that one.” Dana set it back on the shelf. She checked another jar, and again found nothing even though the inventory said there should have been three inside.
In the third jar, Dana managed to hook her forefinger around something hard and yanked her hand out with an audible pop. Dana was holding part of a jaw. It looked like the left side, with a single fang.
“Gods,” Brianna said. She scrubbed her hands harder.
Dana inspected the fang closely. “It’s drained of venom. Nothing in the sac.”
“Vampires do desiccate upon death.”
“They do,” Dana said. “There’s a needle mark in here at the base of the tooth. Look. Someone extracted the venom.”
Brianna was downright green. “What do we do now? Stab someone with the fang?”
“No, we can’t test our theory about venom from dead vampires unless we find a fang with venom. We’re going to have to take all these back to the Hunting Lodge after all. Get Chris sifting.” Dana wiped the ash off her fingers onto her snug black jeans. “How many fangs are missing? How many are intact, but don’t have venom?”
“Gods.” Brianna had started grinning. She was freaking out internally and doing a shitty job trying to hide it. “Which humans have had access to this room?”
Dana glanced at the open door. More OPA agents were walking past. “Fuck me.”
“I’m not thinking them.” Brianna tapped the tape on the door again.
The one that said the LVMPD had already been in the room.
The last thing Dana wanted to do was supervise OPA agents collecting the urns from the mortuary in Vampire Vegas. But when she texted Cèsar for permission to leave, he said no.
It rankled. Not just his refusal, but the fact he had an opportunity to refuse. Because he dictated Dana’s every motion now.
She felt like the implant had burrowed into her marrow and was radiating pain all the way down to her fingertips.
Dana spent a while standing back to watch the agents carefully pack urns into boxes, moving them to the Hunting Club’s van one shelf at a time. “You want the evidence, you manage the collection,” Cèsar had said. “We don’t have resources to spare.” In his esteem, her time was worth less than Cèsar’s.
Fucking faerie douchebag.
She couldn’t leave Near Dark. Within the next five minutes, that stupid implant would ping Cèsar, and he’d know she’d disobeyed him. But she could head upstairs, leaving the agents to handle all those dead vampires.
Dana found herself in Vampire Vegas again.
It was one of the last places she’d confronted Nissa Royal, and the only site of their real head-to-head conflict. The giant aquarium was still in shards across the dance floor. Glass sparkled at the bottom of the pool. Nobody had swept that up. The business was closed and the OPA didn’t care.
Even though it had barely been weeks since Dana had hurled a sword through the aquarium and fallen into the burning flood, it felt like it had been another lifetime.
Her senses had been sharper in that fight. Her reflexes faster. Her mind clearer.
Dana had come back to life after Vampire Vegas, but she felt weaker than ever.
Mohinder’s office overlooked the floor of the club. Like the glass-filled bubble pool, his room had not been cleaned out. It wouldn’t be touched until every inch of the kennel room had been examined under a microscope. That meant there was still all that sidhe blood soaking into the carpet, the desk messy with diagrams for the Hoover Dam, and all the decorations the Fremont Slasher had used to mark his personal space. Dana walked among them and tried to imagine what it meant. Mohinder’s plants were all potted in glass planters—a reference to the Slasher’s cages, or just an aesthetic? Was the stylized metal art on the wall reflective of the claws he’d used to cut up his victims? Did any of this mean anything?
She stood in front of the window, looking down at the water-damaged club. A lot of the furniture imported from Hell had been exported again. Where it went, Dana didn’t know. But there was nothing preventing OPA agents from carrying boxes of urns on a straight line from the basement stairs to the door that glowed with blazing sunlight. They must have been close to finished with collecting evidence.
The trash bin under Mohinder’s desk caught her eye. It had a lid, and it was taped closed.
“Who tapes their trash closed?” Dana muttered, sitting in his chair.
She pulled the bin out and peeled off the tape. Sunlight spilled over her hands as she popped the top off. She tilted the can so that she could see inside.
Brilliant yellow sunlight fell upon hair.
Curls of soft brown hair inside a perfectly clean trash bag.
Dana’s fingers were shaking with anger as she reached a hand into the curls, feeling the texture. She knew it better than she knew her own hair. She was always cutting hers, bleaching it, stripping it. The texture was bad and ever changing. But this hair was soft enough that it could have stuffed pillows. Dana had mounded her fingers in it while writhing in ecstasy and stroked it out of her wife’s face on the nights where bad dreams woke her.
This was Penny’s hair. The source of the curls that Mohinder had sent to Dana every year.
She dropped the trashcan and stood, feeling so furious that she could have vomited.
Dammit, she’d driven a stake through Mohinder’s heart. The Slasher was dead. He shouldn’t have the power to make her feel this angry anymore.
The Fremont Slasher is gone.
But there was another killer loose.
Someone had been taking vampire fangs from Vampire Vegas and siring fledglings.
Dana braced her hands against the window. She stared down at the line of OPA agents carrying evidence out of Near Dark again, this time with cold calculation turning her heart to ice.
There was no record of the OPA working in that room, but that didn’t mean one of them hadn’t stolen the fangs.
These people had access to everything. Evidence, the Hunting Lodge...
Penny.
Dana’s fingers flew over the phone as she raced downstairs. She shot a text message off to Cèsar the instant she had reception again. “I need to make sure my wife is okay. Going home.”
He texted back immediately. “Agents are watching her condo. She’s fine.”
Agents were watching Penny.
That did nothing to reduce Dana’s sudden fear.
One more text message. “I’m going. Don’t blow me up until I know she’s okay.”
And then Dana was racing into sunlight, jumping into the Hunting Lodge’s van, and driving down the Strip with one pair of big brown eyes fixed in her mind.
9
It took a solid two minutes of pounding on Penny’s door to get a response. Two long minutes wherein Dana struggled not to fear the worst. She didn’t breathe until Penny cracked open the condo’s front door, one eye peering through over the safety chain. “Dana?”
“Lemme in.”
Penny shut the door, undid the chain, locks, and wards, and then opened it. Dana pushed through.
The condo was emptier than she remembered since her stuff was sti
ll in storage at the Holy Nights Cathedral. A perfectly good place for it. It could stay there for all Dana cared, up until it all rotted away into nothing.
She pushed the curtains aside with a knuckle to peer down at the street. A lone black SUV stood on the opposite curb. Agents surveilling Penny.
Dana yanked the curtains shut.
“What’s wrong?” Penny asked. She remained in the living room, wringing her hands, as Dana shut each window in turn.
“You’re being watched by the OPA. Have any of them given you trouble? Acted weird?”
“They’re all weird.”
“You know what I mean,” Dana said.
Penny tugged on her left horn. “They’ve been courteous and professional. Why?”
“I’m worried one of them is the new killer. Dickless.”
“Il Castrato Senesino, you mean,” she said.
Dana would never, ever call him that. “I just got you back from the Slasher. I’m not giving anyone else a chance to get at you.”
Penny’s shoulders drooped. “Honey, you got me back more than four years ago. This killer’s not out to get me. I don’t fit his profile. You know for a fact that I don’t have anything in my pants he’d wanna rip off.”
“I know,” Dana said, even though it hadn’t even crossed her mind. She’d been too wrapped up in the fear of losing Penny again to think logically about Dickless. She leaned against the kitchen island, massaging her temples. “Fuck.”
Penny wrapped her arm around Dana’s shoulders. “Of the two of us, only one is being predated by a vampire. I’m not the victim and the vampire isn’t this Dickless guy.”
“Nissa’s not predating me,” Dana said. She tensed up, pushed her elbow between their bodies. “I’m not a victim!”
“She’s in your head,” Penny said.
Dana held her breath, waiting for the anger she expected. Anger followed her everywhere.
This wasn’t anger making her guts roil. It wasn’t anger that made her want to embrace Penny as much as she wanted to push her away.
“Are you sure you weren’t looking for an excuse to come to the condo?” Penny asked in that quiet, gentle voice that even Dana couldn’t get pissed over.
“I wasn’t,” Dana said.
Not on purpose.
But now that she was here with the familiar sights and smells of home—even if most of her stuff was nowhere to be seen—Dana didn’t want to leave.
Damn it, she never wanted to leave again.
She grabbed Penny by the horns. “What if I promise to fill out the paperwork Charmaine gave me?” Dana asked. “The employment paperwork. Which would get me hired into the LVMPD.”
“Oh.” And then Penny realized what she meant. “Oh.” She’d been advocating for Dana to get a job with the LVMPD. It would be more stable and more legitimate than working with the Hunting Club. Most of all, it would give Dana something to think about other than her alleged vampire obsession.
It wasn’t an obsession. It was a completely worthy prejudice.
But Dana would give it up if it meant getting to come home every night. “Don’t get too excited about the idea,” Dana said gruffly. “Charmaine hasn’t guaranteed me a job. Mayor Hekekia might veto my employment, what with my record. But I’ll apply.”
“If they offer a job to you, will you take it?” Penny asked.
Dana wrinkled her nose. “Yeah.”
Her unconvincing answer made Penny’s expression melt into something embarrassingly similar to gratitude. “You really do want things to work out with the two of us.”
Penny kissed her.
She clutched Dana’s face in both hands, holding her so tightly that Dana thought her creaking skull might shatter into pieces. And what a great way that would have been to die. Her brains spilled like Anthony’s, pouring onto the carpet of the condo she shared with a wife. At least she’d go out in ecstasy. She’d go out while held in Penny’s powerful arms.
Dana could think of no better death.
“I’m going to move back in,” Dana said, shoving Penny’s shirt up. Her tongue lapped a line between her pectoral muscles, traced to a nipple. She pinched it gently between her teeth.
“Dana,” Penny said. The utterance could have meant anything. Don’t stop, Dana. Or, We can’t talk while having sex, Dana.
Whatever.
Dana was pushing her against the counter, yanking on Penny’s shorts until the elastic waistband snapped and they puddled around her feet. She dug her fingers into the muscles of her glutes. She raked her nails down Penny’s thighs and left golden lines on green flesh.
“Dana,” Penny said again.
This time, the tone was more warning.
Dana stopped. She was on one knee, staring up at the pouch of Penny’s belly to her small breasts and the double chin she got when looking down. She looked like a towering goddess.
She was alive and the Fremont Slasher wasn’t.
There was no reason for Dana to fear anymore.
Nissa is in your head.
“What?” Dana asked, her mouth dry, tongue too clumsy.
“We have to talk more if you want to move back in,” Penny said. Her fingers trailed through Dana’s spiked hair, sending tingles down her spine. “If you’re willing to apply for the LVMPD, I’ll believe you’re contrite. I will. We can talk about this rationally.”
“Great.” Dana wrapped a fist around the side of Penny’s underwear. “Do you want to talk right now?”
Penny hesitated. “Well…” She finally broke into a tiny smile. “Talking is the last thing I want to do.”
“Same here.”
Dana yanked.
The underwear snapped off.
And then Dana’s mouth was occupied by things so much more interesting than talking.
She let her tongue do all the communication. She lapped lines along Penny’s labia, dipped the tip inside of her, tasted the honey that flowed from within this boulder of a woman.
Dana would never be able to tell Penny that she was still afraid for her.
There was no tangible threat left. Maybe there had never been a tangible threat. Mohinder had only kept that basket so he’d have material for taunting Dana, and even that game had been meaningless to him in the end. He’d been kicking anthills, in his own words.
So what specter had Dana been chasing all these years?
Why did she feel like she was suffocating whenever she couldn’t embrace her wife?
Dana suckled and licked and stroked, and she hoped Penny would take it as a helpless apology. She wanted Penny to know the things she could never say—all of them—and this was the only way to let her know.
When she climaxed, Penny’s thighs locked around Dana’s head hard enough to crush her. She felt the moans vibrating through the muscle. She dug her fingers into Penny’s thighs and hung on tight, making sure she didn’t fall.
And she wasn’t done, even when Penny collapsed bonelessly to the kitchen floor. Dana crawled over her so that they could kiss, her lips sticky-sweet, her tongue warm.
“I know you’re sorry,” Penny whispered breathlessly. “And it’s okay.”
Dana couldn’t even thank her with words.
So she kept thanking her with her body instead.
Enough time passed that her phone began vibrating in her pants pocket. The jeans had been abandoned by the refrigerator at that point. Dana and Penny had ended up moving to carpet, leaving behind a trail of denim, cotton, and elastic.
Penny was a trembling heap, and she couldn’t seem to stop grinning.
“You need to answer the phone before Cèsar blows your head up,” she said, kissing Dana as deeply as she could with those big thick tusks of hers.
“He can blow me up,” Dana said. She rolled onto her back beside Penny, and the orc snuggled against her shoulder. “My life’s complete now.”
Penny giggled. Dana gazed down at her with simultaneous hunger and satisfaction, now that her wife was completely naked. Penny had well-develop
ed pecs that gave her the impression of bigger breasts—not fatty tissue or implants, but rock-solid muscle. Her chest, shoulders, and back were a thing of wonder, too.
Those were the only muscular parts on Penny. She didn’t have visible abs, but rather a curved belly, the cutest hip rolls, and thighs that were even thicker than Dana’s. Her hair was darker, thicker, and curlier below her navel than it was on her head.
She hadn’t thought she’d get to see Penny like that again.
“What will you do without a vendetta against vampires?” Penny asked.
Dana frowned. “What do you mean?”
“You got the Fremont Slasher. You’re going to get Dickless, and you’ll get Nissa too.”
“So much confidence in me,” she murmured, nuzzling Penny’s temple. “That kind of bullshit is why I love you.”
“I’m serious. I know you’re going to get them, so I wonder what happens next. Especially since the city’s gonna be daylighted. No vampires.”
Dana pulled away.
She hadn’t thought about the implications of a daylighting.
“I’ll quit, if you want,” Dana said. “Stop fighting preternaturals. Maybe I’ll be a traffic cop.”
Penny giggled. “Yeah right. You’re a hero, Dana, through and through. I think when you get rid of these enemies, you’ll find another worthy cause.”
“You think, or you hope?”
“You wouldn’t know what to do with yourself if you weren’t drenched in war.”
Her phone rang again, saving Dana from having to think of a response.
Dana groaned and crawled over to look at her device. “It’s not Cèsar. It’s Charmaine. My head is safe from getting exploded by OPA implants if I ignore it.”
“You better answer it anyway,” Penny said.
Dana reached up to set her phone on the counter, and then pounced on Penny. They kissed as it continued ringing. It rang and rang until Penny wiggled a hand between them, resting her fingers on Dana’s mouth.
“Answer the phone, McIntyre,” Penny said.
