by SM Reine
“There are counter-hexes for every hex known to man,” Nissa said. “We’ll find a way to subvert the daylight bombing too.”
“And then what? You’ll still have a whole lot of humans to contend with, and I know you. You’re not into killing humans.”
“I want to kill like you,” she said. “I want to kill people who deserve it.”
Dana crept around the crate. “Do you really want to do to others what the Fremont Slasher did to you?”
Nissa was quiet.
Without her voice, there was no way to orient her in the building relative to Dana. She was as much a ghost as the draugr had been.
Dana tightened her grip on the iron bar as she peered around the corner.
She saw nothing. No sign of Nissa at all.
“My wife was one of the Slasher’s victims too,” Dana said.
Nissa didn’t speak.
Dana leaped around the boxes, bar raised.
Nothing.
“Like I told you, I hunted the Fremont Slasher for months,” Dana said. “I studied his methods. His victims. I hunted him like I’ve never hunted anyone before, and when I learned what he did…look, I get why you might be a little fucked in the head.”
Still, Nissa was silent.
Dana continued talking.
“He kept them like animals. He put them on display in glass boxes like they were in some kind of zoo, without space to move or food to eat. He didn’t treat his victims as human at all. It broke them down over the course of weeks, and only once he made people feel small did he actually kill them.”
She would never forget how she’d found Penny. As strong as the orc was, she had still broken.
Anyone would break under those circumstances.
The Fremont Slasher had never allowed her to see him, even though he’d visited her cage daily. He’d cut open her back and lapped blood from the wounds. Even when she had already been injured in one area, he had continued to cut the next day, and the next, ensuring her body was incapable of healing.
By the time Dana had found his hideout in the suburbs, Penny had been shattered.
“You say you died to a mugging,” Dana said, easing around a shelf of iron bars. It was so dark on the other side that even her vampire eyes couldn’t pick out movement. “How sure are you that you didn’t spend longer than that in his care? Your memory’s no good.”
“I know what you’re trying to do.” Nissa’s voice came from the complete opposite end of the room.
Dana peered through the shelving. A shape flitted past the stairs. “What am I trying to do?”
“This is part of your hunt. You want me to talk so you can track me and kill me.”
Okay, so she was right about that.
But not entirely right.
“You don’t know me like you think you do,” Dana said. “You missed the part where I want to help you. If you make the right choices, both of us will walk out of here undead.”
“Help me?” Nissa’s soft chuckle came from everywhere and nowhere. “I do want your help, Dana. I want to be friends. You love this city even better than I do, and you kill better than I do. The two of us could be incredible together.”
The only person Dana felt incredible with was Penny.
Not Nissa.
“I know you don’t want to kill people who aren’t deserving, and I’m willing to defer to your definition of deserving,” Nissa said.
It sounded like she was standing somewhere behind Dana.
But when she turned, all she saw was boxes.
“I will give up Mohinder, the Paradisos, everything—if you’ll have me,” Nissa said. “Teach me. Be friends with me.”
Something thumped quietly downstairs. Sounded like footfalls. It was probably Anthony. Brianna would have realized by now that she was out of contact with Dana and sent Anthony looking for her. He might have Dionne and Lina with him. Or even Charmaine’s crew. It would be enough backup to save Dana, surely.
But Dana hadn’t been lying when she said she wanted to help Nissa, and the realization shocked her.
The idea that Anthony would show up with Buffy, their hydraulic staking-machine, and kill Nissa…
If that was what needed to happen, fine.
Maybe it didn’t need to happen, though.
“Mohinder won’t let you go so easily,” Dana said.
“What makes you think that? He loves me.” But Nissa sounded doubtful. There was a crack in her certainty. If Dana could just make that crack widen…
“Mohinder is ultimately a vampire like any other, and you don’t know vampires like I do.”
“I’ve been one much longer than you.”
“Sure, but I’ve killed a lot more of them,” Dana said. “You never know someone better than when they’re on the brink of death.”
That made Nissa sigh dreamily, like Dana was talking about the most delicious chocolate truffles on the planet.
She sounded like she was positioned behind the stairs, right around the corner.
“Let’s be real: You’re not free with Mohinder. Anything but toeing his line is gonna get you ashed,” Dana said.
“I’m not free with you either. I have to meet your standards of redemption.”
“That’s true. Redemption’s a hard road.” Dana crept toward the corner. “But if you’re really still a blood virgin, then none of this has to damn you. If the gods can forgive you, I can too. You’re not free to be a psychopath, but you’re free to be something other than what the Slasher made you.”
“You keep blaming my killer,” Nissa said. “Like this is his fault. Have you thought about how much you’re at fault for this? What you owe me?” Nissa’s voice was growing louder as Dana approached the stairs. It rattled around them. “You owe me your friendship.”
“A friend would try to save you.” Dana jumped around the corner, stake uplifted.
But Nissa wasn’t there, either.
Hands clamped on to Dana’s shoulders.
She crashed to the ground, shoved by Nissa’s weight. The vampire girl was shockingly strong. Even knowing the limits of a vampire’s powers, even being able to feel that strength within her own deadened muscles, Dana was stunned.
Only for a moment.
Twisting, she brought the stake to bear.
Nissa grabbed her wrist. Slammed it against the wall. Pinned the stake down.
“Vampire Vegas debuts in a few short weeks,” Nissa said. She didn’t seem to be exerting herself at all, holding Dana down like this. Her eyes were still bright with excitement. “That’s when Mohinder and I will cut the OPA out of the city. You can be with us. Or we can leave everything behind…together.”
Dana squirmed her other hand under her body. The UV grenade was a hard lump under her glute, but she wiggled it out, eased her thumb underneath the pin. “Which option involves curing both of us and getting you into intensive therapy?”
Nissa looked sad. “Calling it a cure implies that there’s something wrong with me.”
“So that’s it,” Dana said. “You like being a vampire. You want to stay like this.”
“I want us to be like this. Together. You’ve shown me what it’s like to kill without mercy and I love it.” Nissa’s weight pressed harder on Dana, and her colorless eyes brightened. “You can help me kill with justice, or I can use my newfound determination to go after humans. What would you prefer?”
Footsteps banged on the metal stairs. “Freeze! Drop your weapons!”
A handful of human men emerged onto the floor. They were wearing ballistic armor, body cameras, helmets.
Brianna hadn’t sent Anthony in. She’d sent the LVMPD.
Dana couldn’t feel relieved. A whole army wouldn’t have provided backup as good as Anthony, so all she saw was ground beef coming up the stairs.
“No!” she roared.
They turned their guns on Nissa.
And for a half-second, Dana hoped that Nissa’s powers of empathy would still be enough to hold her back.
Damn it all, the holy water healed her.
But Nissa blurred as she accelerated to peak vampire speeds, and she crossed the room before Dana had time to think, to process the situation. She seized upon the nearest policeman. Her fingers dug into his shoulders. Her face was colorless with fear as her whole body shook, yet there was resolve in her eyes. “Just remember, Dana: I didn’t learn this from the Fremont Slasher. I learned this from you.”
She gutted the policeman.
Nissa and the cop screamed at the same time. Their voices mingled. She was shrill, girlish, almost like a child; he was deep and resonating. There was no way to distinguish the amount of suffering between the two of them.
He tumbled to his knees, gun skittering across the floor, hands trying to stem the blood gushing from his throat.
Cold resolve flooded Dana.
This was her fault. Not the Slasher’s, but hers.
Dana’s fault for daring to hope.
Dana’s fault for believing Nissa’s lies.
Everything was Dana’s fault.
She had to fix it.
Nissa was still screaming as she spun on the next officer, hand shooting out to shove his gun down while the other shot for his throat.
Dana pulled the pin on the daylight bomb and threw it.
It ignited before hitting the floor.
The world was bathed in white.
Pain flooded Dana. It was everything. Agony suffused every single sense, from smell to sound to hearing, and her fried neurons could only summon the darkest of memories from her past.
Finding Penny wallowing in her own filth, the gashes on her back infected and seeping.
Harold Hopkins’s body floating in a bloody Jacuzzi tub.
Anthony limp in the mine, poisoned by gas.
And, much more dimly, from her childhood, memories of her father killed by one of the Fates. His enormous bulk reduced to nothing more than a sagging corpse.
The pain left no room for Dana. Her skin blistered and boiled and she dived behind crates, but it wasn’t enough. She’d moved too late. She was completely cooked, inside out. And the police were still crying out in pain.
Dana bowed her head to her knees. Covered her head with her arms.
She counted to thirty.
That was how long the UV bomb should have burned. Thirty seconds.
It felt like eternity.
Her skin rose up in boils. Her eyeballs and tongue dried out. All those foul memories were chased away, leaving behind nothing but visions of blood rivers.
She was thirsty.
Starving.
And then it was dark. The room was black.
Nobody screamed anymore.
Dana staggered to her feet, using the crates for leverage. Her shoulder clipped a shelving unit. It toppled, and iron bars clattered to the floor with the sound of thunder. On the other side, she saw Nissa bowed over dead policemen. The entire human team was dead.
Nissa lifted her head from her victim’s throat.
Her mouth was stained with blood and her irises were red.
Dana wasn’t sure how she ended up on the rooftop of the warehouse. One minute she was facing Nissa with her newly reddened eyes, and the next minute, she was standing in open air.
Presumably, she’d been looking for an exit. The warehouses were crammed together in this neck of the woods. It was plausible that this obelisk of a building would be near enough to another to facilitate her escape.
Except that it wasn’t.
From the street level, the road between this warehouse and its neighbors hadn’t seemed wide. From roof level, it looked like an insurmountable gap. Three lanes of road separated the Paradisos warehouse from its next-tallest neighbor. That was close to fifty feet with sidewalks.
There were other buildings closer, but they were only one story tall. A long enough distance to cause serious pain if Dana tried to jump on them.
She wobbled on the edge of the roof, poised to leap, with nowhere safe to run from there. Rain dumped from the sky. It was needles against her blistered face, her shoulders. One more punishment on top of the rest.
“Fuck,” Dana snarled.
A helicopter circled the building, veiled by the clouds. It wasn’t white-on-black like the OPA choppers. Dana might have been relieved if it was. The OPA would have the resources to help; they had the authority, the tax dollars, the training.
No. This was an LVMPD vehicle. Its light tracked over the streets, looking for a threat. It wouldn’t pick anything up. Nissa was operating alone, and she was still inside slaughtering all those cops.
What kind of powers would a vampire empath develop once she drank blood?
Psychic abilities. Those kinds of powers.
It was Nissa’s voice. Dana heard it in her head as clearly as though someone had spoken to her. She turned slowly to see that Nissa stood in the lone doorway permitting access to the roof.
The woman was drenched in blood and rain. Her blouse was so damp that it clung close to her small breasts, her ribcage, her wide hips. The brown slacks plastered to her thighs. Her shoes had gone glossy from the coating of blood.
None of that was as horrifying as what was smeared all over her face. There were fingerprints on her jaw, like one of her victims had tried to shove her head away as she devoured him. They streaked in the rain like mascara lost to tears.
The worst of it was her eyes. Those big bright-red eyes, so much like Penny’s.
Nissa’s lips pressed into a smile. I’m waking up, Dana. I feel different. I never knew that I could feel this good.
“Get out of my head,” Dana spat.
We’re already deep within each other’s heads. There’s no separating us. We’re meant to be together.
“The gods wouldn’t plan this for us. They wouldn’t—”
Your gods don’t care about us! Even though there was a strangely drippy tone to the whispers of Nissa’s words in Dana’s mind—crawling down the insides of Dana’s skull, pooling in her shock-dried mouth—she managed to sound furious. This isn’t about the gods. This is about fate and what we can accomplish together!
Nissa strode nearer.
There was no sign of fear in her anymore, even though her empathy powers meant that killing those people should have been too much for her. Or maybe killing those people had made her snap completely.
She no longer looked like an innocent Penny-like vampire. She looked like a protégé of the Fremont Slasher. A killer, a sadist, a psychopath.
Dana’s hand slipped into her pocket. She backed up until her heels were at the edge of the building.
“I know people who can help you, Nissa,” Dana said.
She didn’t mean it anymore.
There was still a huge part of Dana that wanted to save this woman from what had been inflicted upon her. But she couldn’t help someone who didn’t want to be saved. There wasn’t a fraction of remorse in Nissa’s eyes.
Dana’s fingers curled around a cold metal box in her pocket as the full-blooded vampire approached her.
I am so different now, Nissa said without ever opening her mouth. I can’t wait to see what you’re like when you become just like me. I can’t wait to see what we’ll be together.
“We won’t be anything,” Dana began to say.
Before she could finish that sentence, Nissa grabbed her. Fingers tangled in her hair.
Nissa’s mouth pressed to Dana’s.
Blood flooded the surface of her tongue.
Dana was in such shock that she couldn’t think, couldn’t react, couldn’t get away. Her instincts won. These were the instincts of a blood virgin who had been suspended in a state between life and death for weeks. Someone who was constantly starving, dying and already dead.
She had to swallow.
The coppery tang of blood filled her.
For an instant, Dana felt…amazing.
Heat radiated throughout her body. It wa
s pleasure much better than sex, even better than the feelings that Penny evoked when touching Dana. Better than being drunk. Better than killing.
Then Dana’s thumb flicked her lighter. It was the Zippo she always carried, the Zippo that had lit Officer Jeffreys’s blunt. A portable flame. The one remaining weapon available to Dana that would have been useless against a blood virgin.
Nissa wasn’t a blood virgin anymore.
Dana shoved the Zippo under Nissa’s shirt. Flame touched vampire skin.
When Nissa screamed, her mouth tore away and blood spattered. It pinged to the concrete rooftop like rain. It dribbled down Dana’s chin and throat and shirt.
There was no way to know if Nissa deliberately shoved Dana or if her hands just flung out by reflex.
Either way, Nissa’s hands contacted Dana’s chest.
Dana was already teetering on the edge of the roof, just one shift of her weight away from tumbling.
Her stomach rose into her throat when her weight shifted.
And she fell.
The last thing she heard before the wind rushing through her ears turned deafening was Nissa’s, “No!”
There was peace in the fall. Tumbling through the wind, head over heels, tasting blood on her tongue and feeling as her body died. Time dilated the way it did when Dana ran at vampire speed. The rotors of the helicopter swung slowly through the clouds, churning the fog.
At the last moment, wind flipped Dana over. She saw pavement. The lines of the street swung toward her.
Dana struck.
She blacked out.
For the second time that year, Dana McIntyre died at the hands of a vampire.
Rain seldom fell upon Nevada. Even the alpine regions were unprepared to handle rainfall in great quantities, and the desert valleys were worse. It was impossible to get an inch of rain without flooding. The night that Dana and Nissa fought, it rained much more than an inch.
Downtown Las Vegas had adequate drainage, even if it was seldom used. They had many thousands of square feet of tunnels. Yet the sewers under the warehouses were incapable of handling any volume greater than what came out of a garden hose.
Sheets of rain hammered the pavement.
It wasn’t enough rain to stop the fire that swept over the Gantry warehouse, but it was enough to flood the sewers.
