Rachel Caine: Chicks Kick Butt

Of course, there was one group in China who had always liked tats.

“I don’t have any business with the Chinese mafia,” I told him, walking behind the bar to get myself a new drink. “Particularly not the vampire kind.”

“Then how did you know what I am?” he demanded, coming closer.

The light inside the bar mostly came from the small TV flickering overhead, but it was enough to show me that I’d been right. The facial design was new, but it hid an old secret. I could still see the lines of the original tat, infused with magic so as to be irremovable, flowing under the newer, brighter colors.

“The artist was good, but magical tattoos are a bitch to hide, aren’t they?” I asked with a smile.

The man’s right hand twitched, like it wanted to cover his face. Or maybe rip off mine. “Like my teeth marks in your throat!”

“Not on the first date,” I said, baring my own small fangs. “And I know who you are because I recently met your boss.” As I recalled, Lord Cheung and I had parted as … well, not friends exactly, but I hadn’t expected him to send an assassin after me.

Even one as inept as this.

“You’re dhampir.”

It didn’t appear to startle him. And it should have. The children who result from a coupling between a vampire and a human vary widely in appearance and abilities, with some looking scarier than the creatures who sired them. But not in my case. Except for the vestigial fangs, which aren’t noticeable unless I’m pissed off, I’m pretty much human standard. On first sight, most people think I’m sweet and innocent.

Most people are wrong.

But it looked like Tiger boy had known who he was shooting at after all. And then he confirmed it. “They say you’re almost five hundred.”

“A lady never tells her age.”

He leaned on the bar, like we were having a nice, normal chat instead of planning to kill each other. “If you’re that old, you should know how to avoid trouble.”

“Guess I haven’t been paying attention.” I glanced over his shoulder. Was I being set up somehow? Because he just couldn’t be this stupid. But there was no one there.

I glanced back to find him looking annoyed, like I wasn’t keeping to whatever script he’d worked out in his head. Annoyed, but not afraid, despite the fact that I had one hand below the countertop. That told me he wasn’t that bright. Well, that and the fact that he’d deliberately sought out one of the few things on earth capable of killing him.

“You aren’t clinically depressed, are you?” I asked. “This will be no fun if it’s some sort of suicide-by-dhampir.”

He looked confused for a moment; then his face rearranged itself into a sneer. “I saw one of your kind once. A master I know keeps him on a leash. Like a dog .”

“I doubt that.”

“He didn’t look like much.” He took in my less-than-impressive height, my slender build, and my dimples. His lip curled. “Neither do you.”

“Looks can be deceiving.”

“So can little girls who have been surviving on their reputations for too long!”

Okay, maybe he could be that stupid. “I deserve my reputation,” I said mildly.

“Sure you do.” His eyes went roaming again, sliding over the black leather of my jacket until they fixed on the vee of my red T-shirt. “Prove it.”

So I did.

“Damn it, Dory.” Fin scurried up as I walked around the bar and knelt by the still smoking corpse. The owner was a Skogstroll, a kind of Norwegian forest troll, although to my knowledge the closest he’d ever gotten to the land of his ancestors was a PBS documentary. But it meant he didn’t have to bend down to examine the damage the shotgun he kept behind the counter had done to the bar. “That’s going on your tab!”

“No problem,” I said, showing him the contents of the guy’s wallet.

“No way.” He started backing up, but tripped on his beard. “I’m not touching Tiger money! Not if the whole place burned down!”

I frisked the guy, but of course, there was no ID. Assassins didn’t carry it, as a rule. I did find one thing of interest, though.

“Raymond,” I said, with feeling.

“Is that his name?” Fin asked, staring at the book of matches I’d found in the not-so-recently deceased’s coat pocket.

“No. Tell me about—,” I began, when the body started twitching. So he wasn’t just a regular old vamp, who would have been killed by that shot as sure as a human. Dumb as a rock or not, he was a master. Cheung really wanted me to get the message.

Whatever the hell it was.

“Don’t do it, Dory,” Fin warned, his tiny blue eyes worried. “You kill one, and they’ll all be hunting you. That’s how these guys operate.”

“I’m not planning to kill anyone,” I squawked, because the vamp had grabbed me around the throat. So I stuck a knife through his, pinning him securely to the wood.

Fin’s glare intensified. “Dory!”

“Relax, it won’t kill him. I’d have to take the whole head for that.” I sat back on my heels. “And when did you become so squeamish?”

“I’m not! But you don’t want to mess with these guys.”

“I haven’t been,” I said, exasperated. “I had a run-in with his boss recently, but we cleared that up.” Or so I’d thought.

Fin didn’t look convinced. “He sent a master to screw with you for no reason?”

“Let’s find out,” I said, wrenching the knife out.

But even though I’d taken care to miss the vocal cords, it looked like the vamp had lost interest in conversation. An arm sent me skidding on my back into the forest of tables, reducing a few of the battered old pieces to kindling. I leapt back to my feet, but the vamp didn’t press his advantage. He was gone between one blink and the next, out the door and up the stairs, despite the fact that, in vamp terms, sunlight + major blood loss = bar-be-cue.

If I was lucky, anyway.

Fin hopped about, contorting his body to avoid the shaft of light spilling over the old boards. Older trolls could withstand direct sun, and even those Fin’s age didn’t actually turn to stone. But he said it gave him hives.

“And stay out!” he shouted, flipping the door shut with his toe.

I picked myself up and assessed the damage. Other than for some bruised ribs and a jacket full of splinters, I was unharmed. The same couldn’t be said for my cell phone, which had been in my back pocket. I fished out a few pieces of plastic and some metal innards, extracted the memory chip, and threw the rest in the trash.

It could have been worse; it could have been my head. And maybe next time it would be. Because it was a little hard to stop doing whatever was pissing Cheung off when I didn’t even know what it was.

I walked back over and retrieved the guy’s wallet. “You going to tell me what you know?” I asked Fin.

“It isn’t much,” he said, eyeing the fat sheaf of banknotes peeking out of the natty eel-skin cover. “They call themselves Leaping Tigers, and they’re new. The first of them showed up about a month ago, but they operate out of Chinatown, not here. I heard they pretty much destroyed a couple gangs over there, setting up house. They’re bad news.”

Tell me something I don’t know, I thought cynically. “And this house would be where?”

He licked his lips. “You, uh, you gonna need all that?”

I fanned myself with the fat stack of bills. “I thought you wouldn’t touch Tiger money.” He gave me a limpid look and I sighed. “You’re planning to tell everyone I took it, aren’t you?”

He looked pained. “You can take care of yourself better than me. And you did shoot him.”

“So give.”

“I already did. Nobody knows where they hole up during the day. It’s like they just vanish.”