Rachel Caine: Chicks Kick Butt

“I don’t suppose they left you a phone?” He just looked at me. Of course not. And his penny-pinching ways had led to him skipping the usual magical escape routes.

“I bet you wish you’d invested in a few emergency exits now,” I said harshly.

“You don’t need ’em when you got a portal,” Ray commented, and my eyes jerked to the blank stretch of wall across from the door.

“That’s right. You have a portal,” I said, brightening.

“Had. The senate’s goons were here yesterday. I guess they wanted to plug my link to Faerie before they started on the smaller stuff.”

Typical.

“Then the only exits are in the main room?”

Ray nodded bleakly. I stared at the door and faced reality. As usual, my duffel contained a few surprises, but no way was I carving a path through all that. Not on my best day, which this definitely wasn’t.

I was going to have to come up with something else.

The door opened and Lord Cheung leaned against the sill, looking considerably more upbeat. “I have been reminded that, in a case of disputed ownership, a duel is the common remedy.”

I stared over Cheung’s shoulder at Scarface’s smug grin. I didn’t have to ask who had done the reminding. He’d just seen me walk away from a challenge outside. I was in no shape to duel a kitten right now, much less a first-level master, and he damned well knew it.

“That’s not going to get us anywhere,” I said, trying to keep my voice even. “If you leave me alive, I’ll tell the senate you killed Ray, ruining your chances at a seat. And if you kill me, Mircea will return the favor, for pride if nothing else. Then we’re all dead.”

Cheung’s face gave nothing away, but I didn’t need expressions to know what he was thinking. Mircea could take revenge only if he knew Cheung was responsible for my death, which he might never find out. But then, Cheung couldn’t know who I might have told where I was going. Or, for that matter, what kind of a bond Mircea and I had.

In the end, he decided not to risk it. “You have a better solution?”

“Yeah. You want Ray; so do I. So we’ll gamble for him.”

“You wish to flip a coin?” The sarcasm was palpable.

“Coin tosses can be rigged. I’d prefer something where we both have an even shot, where no one gets dead, and where the outcome is sure.”

“What, then?” Cheung asked, looking wary.

So I told him.

“Okay,” Ray said, coming in from the storeroom flanked by two babysitters. “This is the lot; this is all I got.”

He carried a cardboard box over to one of the club’s small tables, which had been placed in the middle of the dance floor. Cheung had chosen the location, I guess to give his boys a chance to crowd around and see him kick my ass. Ray pushed through the throng, but then just stood there, the glass bottles inside the box chiming against each other because his hands were shaking.

“Put it down,” Cheung told him impatiently.

“Th-there’s not room on the table.”

Cheung looked skyward. “Then put it on the ground.” Ray obliged, and peeled back the cardboard top.

“That should be enough,” I said drily, eyeing the stash that was revealed. There were twelve bottles, each holding maybe a pint. That didn’t sound like much, unless you knew what was in them.

Fey wine wasn’t really wine. It wasn’t much like anything else found on earth, either. A distillation of plants, mostly fey in origin, plus some herbs, spices, and God knew what else thrown in for taste, it could put a bull elephant on his knees. That much would drop the whole damn herd, only they weren’t going to be drinking it.

We were.

I’d have preferred something else, since my metabolism neutralizes regular old alcohol almost faster than I can drink it. Unfortunately, the same is true for vampires. If I wanted to win, Cheung had to end up under the table. And that meant hauling out the hard stuff.

“Is it not customary to cut this?” Cheung asked as Ray poured clear liquid into a couple of shot glasses. A little sloshed onto the table. I was slightly surprised it didn’t eat on through.

“If you feel the need,” I told him sweetly.

Cheung narrowed his eyes at me and tossed back his first shot. He didn’t do anything so unmanly as choke, but his eyes widened perceptibly. And then it was my turn. I’d proposed a drink-till-you-drop challenge for two reasons. Physically, it was all I was up for at the moment. I was in no condition to take Cheung, and even if I somehow did the impossible, no way was Scarface letting me walk out of here after killing the boss. But it was reason number two that I was betting the farm on. Or at least Ray’s continued existence.

One of the interesting facets of life as a dhampir is frequent rage-induced blackouts. They are a natural result of the vampire killing instinct mixed with an excitable human nervous system, but tell that to the people who’ve encountered one of us on a rampage. Not that there are usually any left.

Because of the scarcity of my kind—and the fact that we aren’t on most people’s Christmas card list—nobody had ever bothered to devise anything to control the blackouts. But after hundreds of years of questionable sanity, I’d recently discovered a remedy on my own. It wasn’t a perfect solution: it kept me more or less sane, but it severely reduced my ability in battle—something that, in my line of work, was considerably less than ideal.

It also had some interesting side effects.

I picked up my glass, hoping one in particular was going to kick in. Because otherwise, I didn’t have a much better chance at this contest than I would at a duel. I might drag it out longer, but my half-human metabolism was almost certain to be more susceptible to the wine’s effects than a full vampire’s.

I slammed back the shot, and felt my eyes start to water. Fey wine varied a lot in type and potency, depending on what exactly went into the mix, and this particular batch ought to have been illegal. Of course, come to think of it, it was.

“You okay there?” Scarface asked, looking amused. I nodded, my throat burning too much to speak, and sat the glass down beside Cheung’s. Ray immediately refilled them, while I concentrated on my version of a Hail Mary pass.

I had not inherited the vampire ability to mind speak. But I had found that if I drank the feys’ favorite beverage in enough quantity, I could pick up bits and pieces of what others were thinking. And I could speak to the mind of one vamp in particular.

This had led to some awkward situations, as the vamp in question, Louis-Cesare, was also my … well, I didn’t know what to call him. We weren’t lovers, exactly, at least not yet. And we were only friends in the way that we yelled at each other a lot. But there was definitely an attraction there. And for a few intimate, wine-fueled moments, I’d felt closer to him than to anyone else I’d ever known.

I didn’t know if he could pick up my thoughts from this far away, as we’d never done any actual experimentation with our connection. But a long shot is better than no shot at all. I downed the second shot and thought, Hurry up, hurry up, hurry up!

Fifteen minutes and a full bottle later, it became obvious that Louis-Cesare was not hurrying. I licked numb lips and decided there was a silver lining. At this rate, I wouldn’t be able to feel it whenever they got around to shooting me. “You owe me,” Ray hissed into my ear as I sat staring resentfully at my tenth or fifteenth or twentieth shot. I’d lost count. But it basically added up to too many.

“Nowhere near this much,” I muttered, trying not to slur my words.

“Oh, so now we’re putting a price on friendship?”