‘Okay. I have no objection.’
‘Cool. If I get back before seven, assume we’re going out.’
‘I’ll be here. Unless something comes up, obviously.’
Leanne grinned at him. ‘Obviously. Neither of us has jobs with regular hours.’ She turned, hooked her bag over her shoulder, and started for the door. Then she turned back, rolling her eyes as though forgetting something obvious. ‘Do you think Diana will be there?’
‘I… don’t know. I could ask.’
Leanne stepped closer and leaned down, her lips brushing his. ‘No need to bother. Just wondering.’ Her tongue flicked out, tasting his lips, and then she was skipping off towards the door. ‘This shift and then two days off! Yippee!’
Mike watched her go, heard the door close. ‘Yippee?’
~~~
‘I recall my time as an intern,’ Winthrop said, ‘and I assure you that “yippee” is an appropriate sentiment. Even with the changes to working hours, “yippee” cover it nicely.’
‘Huh,’ Mike grunted. ‘So you do have a medical degree?’
‘I am qualified as a medical practitioner, yes. I also have degrees in biology, electronics, forensic science, criminology, mathematics, and parapsychology. And a teaching qualification, which I admit is a little out of date regarding modern methods. My doctorates are in biology and parapsychology, as well as the medical title.’ Mike raised an eyebrow. ‘I’m seventy-nine and I don’t get out much.’
‘I am so getting you on my team for the precinct trivia quiz.’
‘You need Dione for the history questions.’
Mike looked around at the Hunter and grinned. ‘Yeah, she was probably there for most of it.’
Dione looked blandly back. ‘I am quite good at history trivia, but don’t go assuming I was there to witness major historical events. I can’t be everywhere. For example, I was in the Far East through most of the first century BC and well into the next one.’
‘Why would that… Oh. You must get asked that a lot.’
‘And why anyone would think I was interested in a Jewish carpenter with a bug in his ear about how the world should work I don’t know. There were a lot of them about at the time, from what I heard. I did talk to someone who was at one of his sermons. There aren’t many vampires still around from that time.’
‘Are you actually the oldest vampire still… well, alive?’
‘The oldest known. There are a couple of han in China who are almost my age. I attribute my long unlife to keeping fit, eating low-fat humans, and copious amounts of sex.’ The last sentence was delivered deadpan and Mike burst into a fit of half-laughing and half-coughing.
‘Though it’s actually likely the result of mental state rather than physical,’ Winthrop said quite seriously, even if he was grinning. ‘The sex part is as much mental as physical, I suppose. Being immortal takes a lot of willpower and a reason to keep on going. Dione has found one which keeps her wanting to go on, and most vampires eventually tire.’
‘Boredom is the greatest killer of vampires,’ Dione stated. ‘That and house fires.’
‘So what keeps you going?’ Mike asked. ‘What keeps those han going?’
‘Them I’m not sure. We don’t talk much. I believe that they see themselves as the “guardians” of China. They have a duty to keep going to ensure their plans are followed through. Han are a little like bees or ants. They have a weird sort of telepathic thing going which tends to tie them together into a cohesive society whereas everyone else has to do it the boring way. They can’t actually talk that way, but they get impressions, emotions, and the leaders, the ancient han, they act as the central hub of that web.’
‘And you?’
‘People. Humans. Even some vampires. I find them fascinating. I hate it when I lose one I’ve grown close to, but there’s always someone new who comes along to ease the pain and make me want to go on a little longer. Kate was one. An amazing woman, strong and intelligent, passionate. Mary was another. Pat. You.’
Mike blushed and looked away. ‘Oh right. Saddle me with making sure you don’t want to kill yourself.’
‘I’m not,’ Dione said, forcefully enough that it cut through his embarrassment and made him look at her. ‘I’m saying that interesting people keep me going. You don’t have to try; you just have to be what you are. If more people learned to be who they are instead of being what other people want, the world would be a much happier place.’
~~~
Mike was somewhat surprised to discover that Leanne had bought a new dress. Lisa’s short, red dress with a deeply plunging neckline and flouncy skirt, coupled with red pumps with white polka dots, was not a great surprise, but the fact that Leanne had gone to the trouble was a bit of a shock. Not that he was complaining, because she looked incredible in the tank, which was black with a red, hourglass-shaped panel at front and back which accentuated her waistline. However, the low front and the push-up bra she appeared to have put under it was both exciting and entirely unlike his relatively staid girlfriend.
‘You like?’ Leanne asked as they walked towards the door to the dancefloor.
‘It’s… Yeah, I like it.’
‘I wanted her to go with a shorter one,’ Lisa put in, ‘but I think this one looks good on her.’
‘It does,’ Mike agreed and then the music enveloped them and conversation became wishful thinking.
It was different on the dancefloor tonight. No one got in their way. There were glances in their direction, but they were different somehow. Mike saw Lisa shiver as she walked into the room, as though someone had stroked a hand down her back. The volume of vampires put a buzz in Mike’s head now rather than the nausea or the rush. Perhaps knowing what caused it…
That was when he realised what was different in the room. There was something like respect in the glances which came his way. He was Dione’s partner, the word had been spread, and he was untouchable.
Apparently the same applied to his friends since, when they got to the next floor and the quieter music, Leanne said, ‘I don’t feel as dirty this time as last time. Do you think coming twice qualifies us as regulars or something?’
‘Maybe,’ Mike said.
‘We’ve been accepted, some anyway,’ Lisa said. ‘People who come here twice are probably going to fit in.’
The bar was by no means full when they got to the lounge. Behind it, Pat was serving a couple; Mike was unsure because he had not met too many vampires yet, but he thought they were mixed, vampire and human. Pat noticed them walking in and nodded in their direction. Mike was heading to a spot next to the couple, but Leanne diverted him towards the end of the bar where, once again, Dione was sitting on a stool. Tonight’s outfit was a corseted mini-dress in black silk, fishnet stockings, and high-heeled pumps. Red-painted lips curled into a smile as they approached.
‘Hello again,’ Leanne said, smiling back.
‘Hello to you. Mike said you’d planned to come. Good evening, Lisa. It is Lisa, right?’
‘Yes,’ Lisa replied, sounding pleased that her name had stuck. ‘And you’re Diana. Leanne told me about you being Mike’s partner.’
‘Of course. What will you have? I’ll get your first round.’
‘Thanks,’ Leanne said. ‘Would you like to join us?’
Dione tilted her head to one side and watched Mike’s reaction. He was surprised, but not horrified. ‘Okay. So long as you don’t mind Pat joining us now and then. Poor thing gets lonely, don’t you, Pat?’
‘Horribly,’ Pat replied as she appeared beside them.
‘I don’t see that as a problem,’ Leanne said, smiling at Pat.
‘Good. Nice dress. What can I get you?’
They went to a booth not too far from the bar once they had their drinks. Dione slid in ahead of Lisa, and Leanne slipped in ahead of Mike on the other side.
‘I prefer being out of the brighter light, to be honest,’ Dione said. ‘Oversensitive eyes. Great for seeing in the dark, but a real pain i
n summer.’
‘Don’t say that in front of two doctors,’ Mike warned. ‘We’ll be discussing retinas inside of a minute.’
Without looking, Leanne punched him in the shoulder. Lisa started giggling and Dione laughed her soft, warm laugh, and Leanne’s eyes widened.
Dione snapped her mouth shut and looked acutely embarrassed. ‘I’m sorry, I’m normally much better at hiding them.’
‘You have… fangs?’ Leanne asked. Out of the corner of her eye, Dione could see Mike stiffening and she was fairly sure Lisa was too.
‘Mmm, yes. Well, my upper canines are enlarged. Oh, it’s probably better you notice them now and we can get this over with.’
‘But… that’s weird. I’ve never seen a condition like that.’
Dione’s lips twitched at the corners. ‘Well, isn’t it obvious? I’m sensitive to sunlight and I have fangs. I must be a vampire.’
Leanne started giggling. ‘God, you must get that a lot. That has to be such a pain.’
Under the table, Dione patted Lisa’s thigh, more reassurance than anything else, and felt tense muscles relax. Mike was also relaxing as he realised that his rational, medically inclined love was going to dismiss the entire thing as a weird genetic condition.
‘You get used to it,’ Dione said. ‘If I’m going to be spending time with people, I generally show them and then no one freaks out. I just avoid wide smiles.’
Leanne leaned forward. ‘Could I…?’ Dione made quite sure that Leanne saw her eyes dip before she, too, leaned forward and opened her mouth, pulling back her upper lip. Leanne flushed, but she peered at Dione’s fangs and then reached out, lightly tracing a finger over the smooth, white enamel. ‘They’re quite sharp. Couldn’t you get them fixed somehow?’
Dione leaned back, licked her lips, and said, ‘Cutting them back to a normal length would expose the nerve, and I’m used to them. I’ve had them for a long time now. I probably cut my lip a little more often than most people, but I can live with a little loss of blood.’ She grinned. ‘And in a clinch, if I bite someone, they know it.’
Leanne giggled. ‘Right, so Mike’s partner is a vampire. Hey, if it’s genetic, do you think it could have added to the whole mythology? Where do you come from, originally?’
‘I suppose it’s possible that it does, though there are many explanations for the vampire phenomenon. I can trace my way back to Greece, which has a form of vampire myth, and isn’t too far from the regions where the modern mythology started.’
‘I guess you know a fair bit about the subject, being a “weird cases” cop. Lisa’s into the supernatural and Mike’s mother can tell you loads about the old stories from Europe. I’m a lot more rational.’
‘A lot more?’ Lisa said, smirking. ‘If you believed in science any harder, you’d manifest a god or something.’ She turned to Dione. ‘I think she has a secret shrine where she keeps her textbooks and lights votive offerings of mathematical equations written on that old dot matrix printer paper.’
‘I do not! I use filter paper soaked in carefully prepared chemicals.’
‘You have to get these little rituals right,’ Dione said, nodding sagely.
‘I honestly wouldn’t know, but where do you stand on the rationality scale?’
‘Generally, beside our unit’s technical expert. He’s a firm believer in the idea that science will eventually explain everything we come across. He’s also quite happy to admit that there are some things which cannot, currently, be explained. He will even state that there may be some natural phenomena which mankind may never explain because human brains have a limit and some things may be beyond that remarkable organ.’
‘That sounds just like Winthrop,’ Mike commented. ‘I think you two would love his lab. He’s got every gadget for analysing evidence you could imagine. There’s barely room to move.’
‘He wanted an MRI, but he had to give in and admit it just wouldn’t fit.’
Lisa flicked a hand in Leanne’s direction. ‘She’s the expert on medical equipment like that. I get by, but she can make them sing.’
‘Winthrop can make them beg for biscuits and dance,’ Mike said, ‘but then that’s his job, and he’s been doing it for a long time.’
‘He’s almost eighty,’ Dione explained. ‘He should really retire, but he’s unique and he loves the work. He keeps saying he’d have to do it as a hobby if the city stopped paying him to do it. And I don’t know how we’d replace him. He just knows so much.’
‘And I’ve spent most of the week with him telling me about it.’
‘Quite, perhaps a break from that, though I’m sure we’ll slide back into it in time. Pat was right, Leanne, that is a lovely dress. New?’
‘Uh, yes,’ Leanne replied, her cheeks colouring. ‘Lisa wanted to come back here and I only had one suitable dress. I thought turning up in the same one would be a bit… tacky.’
‘You look good in it. And your make-up works for you. A little shadow and liner brings out your eyes. Who borrowed whose lip gloss and nail polish? You’re both wearing the same shades.’
‘They’re mine,’ Lisa said. ‘I told her she’d look extra yummy with the deep red lips.’
Mike was looking between Leanne and Lisa, and ignoring the fact that Leanne was blushing. ‘I didn’t even notice they were the same.’
‘Of course you didn’t,’ Dione said, ‘you may be a detective, but you’re still a man.’
~~~
Pat settled onto the bench beside Lisa, nudging hips together with a grin. ‘You’re getting behind, Mike,’ she commented.
‘I’m… still a little wary of alcohol from Wednesday night,’ Mike replied.
‘Ah yes, Leo and his stories.’
‘Aside from drunken, how has your first week been?’
‘Uh… really long, but it’s flown by. I’m still taking stock of all the information. I think I need a weekend to get it all straight before Winthrop hits me with more.’
‘That’ll change if we catch a case,’ Dione said. ‘Hopefully you’ll have the chance to learn the basics before you need to apply them, but then again, doing is the best way of learning.’
‘How do you get cases assigned to you?’ Leanne asked.
‘Referral. There are a few red flags which detectives and crime scene people are told to look for.’
‘Such as?’
‘Decapitations, exsanguinations, people who’ve seen something weird but aren’t drunk or high, unusual electrical activity connected with crimes, horned demons stomping around shouting about the end of the world…’
‘You don’t get the last one,’ Leanne said, grinning.
‘No, but if we do, someone will put a call in. Probably after the running and screaming is over. And then we get called if an apparently straightforward investigation turns up unusual circumstances. We got dragged into a robbery investigation last year when they caught the guy, who they had on video doing it, and a polygraph said he was not lying when he said he had spent the entire day of the robbery in his garden. He was a normal guy, no criminal record, so they asked us to look at it. Winthrop was able to detect metabolites from various drugs in his system. Turned out he’d basically been hypnotised into it, with the aid of a lot of pharmaceuticals.’
‘Did you get the hypnotist? I didn’t think you could do that with hypnosis?’
‘We did, and you can if you really work at it. Our robber had been kidnapped on his way to a two-week holiday and brainwashed, for want of a better word. But that’s why SCU exists, for the cases your average cop just doesn’t have the expertise to solve. We’re the ones who start outside the box and work in.’
Leanne grinned. ‘I like that. I have to admit I was a bit sceptical about this when Mike told me what you did. I mean, hunting ghosts and ghouls and vampires. Crazy stuff. But it makes sense, in a crazy way, to start from the idea that it might be real and then working to explain it.’ Her gaze shifted to Pat. ‘And you know Mike’s working with Di. I guess you’ve known her a
while?’
‘Huh, yeah. Must be… fifteen years?’
‘Almost sixteen,’ Dione said. ‘February nineteen ninety-nine you turned up in New York. I helped her get this place set up, and it opened on Valentine’s Day the next year.’
‘We have a party here every February fourteenth. Gets a little steamy, but it’s fun.’
‘Steamier than it gets on the ground floor anyway?’ Mike asked.
‘Oh yes. Though, to be honest, I think the restroom stalls see some action at least once a night even on a weekday. This may be a somewhat eclectic nightclub, but it’s still a nightclub.’
Dione noticed Leanne’s cheeks colouring and considered teasing her. Instead, she asked, ‘So what’s it like being a medical resident? Winthrop tells horror stories, but his are from decades ago.’
‘We’re slaves,’ Lisa replied blandly.
‘I prefer “indentured servant,”’ Leanne countered. ‘We do learn from it, I guess, but it’s more paperwork than patient care. Insurance companies are the worst. They want a document explaining everything, and it’s just so they can decide whether it’s cost-effective.’
‘But she’s not bitter,’ Mike put in.
‘Only about twenty per cent of the time. Thirty… Maybe sixty on a bad day. I got into medicine to save lives, not fill in forms on a computer.’
‘Yeah,’ Lisa agreed with a sigh. ‘Sometimes I think about jacking it in and doing massage therapy full-time, but I figure being a qualified doctor would let me charge more so I keep at it.’
‘You do massage therapy?’ Pat asked.
‘Mmhmm. I know a bit about a few alternative medicines, but massage can actually help with physiotherapy and muscle problems. And, you know, none of my boyfriends have ever complained about me practising on them.’
‘Leanne even lets her give me neck rubs,’ Mike said.
‘So magnanimous,’ Dione said, eyes sparkling at Leanne.
~~~
‘Ghosts?’ Lisa asked.
‘Never met one,’ Dione replied.
‘Aliens?!’ Leanne tried.
‘Well… No.’
‘Werewolves?’ Lisa said, not sounding like she was expecting a positive answer.
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