Prologue

I sat on the stoop of a burning mansion smoking a cigarette and waiting for my ride and feeling bruised up. It was just after one in the morning, and the driveway was recessed from the road in a gated community, so I didn’t worry about anyone walking passed and seeing the sword sticking out of my chest or asking me any questions about all the blood. Not all of it was mine, of course. The sword was really stuck in there tight. Honestly I’m not sure how I was able to walk around with a hunk of steel lodged in there so tight, my bone and flesh straight up healed around it. Didn’t really like the way it pulled down my blouse, either, but what are you gonna do?

“Wonder if Rook has some club soda…” I murmured, puffing out smoke.

The grim specter of The Wicked Witch wafted into the space beside me, cackling softly. She had enjoyed the last hour. Can’t say I didn’t have a bit of fun myself, even if I felt like I’d been through the ringer now. With sallow green skin and her face always shadowed by the ratty alewife hat she wore, Grandmother is terrifying to most people. But I’ve always found her a comfort. Even as a little girl I loved witches, and she came to me when I needed her most and has stayed with me since. Just like an actual grandmother, she’s very protective, and particularly hates whenever someone betrays me.

We knew this was coming—vampires aren’t the most trustworthy people—but even so it’s always good to make an example. Especially if I get to cut loose and really ruin someone’s unlife. But now the high was gone and the crash was on me. I rubbed my leg beneath my skirt. It hurt more than usual after all this. The wind kept blowing hair in my face as well. I hate not having a hat. But Grandmother put her arms around me and I leaned against her and smirked.

About ten minutes later, a beat up old Crown Vic rolled into the driveway, and Francis Rook got out, slamming the door and—after only the briefest glance at my bare chest—looking at the flames devouring the mansion behind me. He looked like a young Columbo, except instead of the squinty, ignorant charm TV’s favourite detective cultivated, Frank just always looked pissed. I could see he had his gun on, and his badge glinted from his hip. It was still on the leather clip, even after being sliced in half by some kind of claw.

I barely made out the shadow flickering in the light. His own little tag-along. The Detective on Leather Wings. It gave him a Cernabog silhouette. I could even hear the screeching beneath the flames, which had gotten louder at this point as the fire made it’s way to the front of the building. Good thing I turned off the alarms.

“What the fuck happened, Granger?” Frank ran his hand through his hair, looking behind me at the conflagration. I looked at Grandmother, but I’m pretty sure he was talking to me. Not polite to address someone else’s geist like that anyway. “You were supposed to make an exchange.”

I got up from the decorative wall around the main entrance’s driveway—had to move, since the porch was starting to burn—and limped over to Frank, handing him a bag of stolen goods. “Got double crossed.”

“Ah” he didn’t need any more explanation than that. He took the bag and opened it up on the hood of the Vic. “Fuck me.”

“Gotta pay for that, but I’ll give you a friends and family discount” I told him, hobbling over to the passenger door. Huh. How was I going to get in the car with the sword in my chest?

“Fuck you. So what the hell happened here?” He glanced back at my chest, frowning, “Why are your tits out?”

I took a drag from my cigarette and then passed it over to him. “Funny story…”

I stood there in the office of Tyrone Reuben, one of the most unsettling leeches I’ve had the pleasure of knowing. Nothing is particularly off about him at first glance, just an aura of menace. He isn’t particularly intimidating, but he has the vibes of a serial killer or the family relative who doesn’t realize you’re trans and sees your breasts coming in and tells your foster father he “knows how to pick ‘em” and you have to spend the entire barbecue avoiding him. You know. A creep.

Of course, when you do get more than that first glance, you notice he’s completely hairless. Not sure if alopecia is something he had in life, or a matter of his condition. And, of course, there’s the fact that unlike other vampires who have delicate elongated canines, Reuben has rows of needlelike teeth. His gorilla of a seneschal was also hanging around, standing there in his monkey suit trying to intimidate me. He had ushered me into the room and now stood a little more than arms’ length beside me, one hand on the hilt of his gun, the other on the hilt of the fucking broadsword at his hip. Damned leeches.

Grandmother did not like this. She knew what was coming, and squirmed impatiently.

I ignored the goon and put the briefcase down on the desk. I put on a little flair, putting in the code and snapping open the latches, then turning it around before I lifted the lid. An eerie light emanated from within, red and sinister. These things always do. Mostly because Frank lined the lid with LEDs. Everyone needs a hobby. Reuben took the reliquary from the case and held it up. The gold on the totem glinted in the red light, and practically made his eyes shine.

“It’s beautiful,” he said, his voice nasally and ratlike. “I can tell it’s the real thing.”

“It had better be after all the trouble I went to getting it,” I muttered.

“You will speak when spoken to,” the guard growled.

I rolled my eyes and ignored him, “so when do I get paid. Are we going to do cash or is this something you can Venmo?”

The vampire continued to look over the relic, long spiderlike fingers tracing over the ruby eyes of the squat little gargoyle he held. “I believe our business here is concluded, little witch. Nathaniel, darling, kill her.”

That did it. The ogre of a seneschal drew that sword, and Grandmother started squirming. She hated the sting of betrayal. But we knew this was going to happen, and that softened the edge. Peace, I thought. They’ll get what’s coming to them.

Before he could get the sword free, I spun my broom and jabbed the seneschal in the sternum. He grunted, but it felt like I was hitting metal. It did give me a chance to put distance between us. The knot at my hip flared up, but I ignored it.

The ghoul followed up by bringing the sword right over his head and swinging down. I barely had time to interpose the broom handle, but it didn’t matter much. Nat swung with way more force than a normal human, and the blade splintered my broom. I had just enough time to think about how I’d need to make another one before I experienced the sensation of my skull splitting in half. Guess I’d need a new hat as well.

For a moment, everything went black, and when my vision came back the world was slightly askew. It took a moment for my eyes to slide back into place. The ghoul stepped back in horror as tendrils of plasm knit my face back properly. He made a few silly little noises, eyes wide in horror. You’d think he’d have seen everything by now. Guess he assumed I was a mortal, and that I’d die from being killed. But I’m built different.

“What is the problem, Natha—” Reuben started, before he finally took his eyes off the relic. It clattered to the desk as he saw me standing there, still alive, with a sword sticking through me.

“Damn,” I looked down at my Casket Jacket. The death strengthened threads of the blouse were undamaged, but it was still pulled down obscenely and splattered with blood. “This was my favorite top.”

I put my hand on the hilt of the sword and started tugging at it, putting on a show. Damn, it was really stuck in there. I winced, feeling it catch on my ribs. Guess I’d have to leave it in. No way I’d be be able to take the bus like this. The audience was properly stunned.

All the while, Grandmother cackled at my little games. She wanted me to kill these traitorous leeches, but playing with them was so fucking fun.

“Time for the real fun,” I told her, tightening my fist around a Key that wasn’t there a moment before. I could feel it slide through the tumblers and twist in the lock. It burned, hot as can be, and the Pyre-Flame surrounded my body, turning me into a spirit of vengeance straight from Hell. The flames coalesced around my hands as the Black Iron Blade, giving me demonic talons of hellfire. I could feel Grandmother standing there behind me, and for a moment they could see her as well, horrible grin across her face.

Natty pulled a gun on me, and fired three shots into my chest. He hit the blouse with the first two, and I barely felt them. The other one tore into my shoulder and bone splintered. It was agonizing, but I didn’t waste the plasm. Grandmother got off on the pain anyway, and it made us both feel alive. I ignored the goon, and went for the boss man. Sliding over that beautiful mahogany desk I pulled him out of his chair and slammed him into a bookshelf, the plasmic talons of my fists digging into his undead flesh and causing it to flare like papyrus. He screamed and thrashed. Good. I was going to see if vampires could leave ghosts.

Before I could, the rat bastard glared at me, and the world went sideways. All I could see were the eyes, now snakelike with thin green pupils in a sea of red. My body went cold even with the flames, and I could feel his wormlike soul burrowing into my mind. Panic. The rainslicked road. Screams. Emptiness.

I’m here.

Grandmother.

The illusion shattered and failed to take hold. I shook the vampire in my fist and his neck wobbled. He gave up on twisting my mind and simply tried to claw at me, but his weak little arms were no match for me. Fingernails, longer and thicker than a human’s, dug into the muscles of my arm to no avail. He drew blood, but I just let him.

Four more shots from behind. One punched me in the back, blocked by the Casket Jacket. Two went wide completely, splintering the bookcase. One blew my fucking brains out. I had the sensation of my eye being severed, flying out of my skull, and then it formed back from fresh plasm. The previous one was staring back at me with a rapidly glassy expression from one of the shelves. It was sideways, though I’m not really sure how I could tell.

That brief moment of having my head opened up let Reuben slip free. His mistake was going for the relic instead of just running. I grabbed him by the collar, slammed him into the shelves again. Without giving him time to recover, I shoved my hand right through his chest and ripped out his heart, throwing it behind me onto the floor.

The shock of seeing this sent Nathan into a frenzy. He shot four more times, but missed all four times. I turned back around to him and was met with the gun smacking me in the face.

“What the fuck?” I stammered, holding my nose with my still smoldering talons. “Who throws a gun?”

He looked like he was about to charge at me, but instead he rushed to his regnant’s side, corpse now a blackened husk. Nathaniel sobbed and held onto it, some of the bones falling away as ash.

I went and picked up his gun, and looked it over, hands going back to normal. Huh. One bullet left.

The ghoul was just opening up his own wrist with a fallen letter opener, trying to bleed into the mouth of the charred skeleton. There was something sad about it, this mountain of a man stricken by the death of a loved one, even if the love was a twisted, vile thing. I put the barrel to his head and he ignored me. I pulled the trigger.

Grandmother cackled with glee.

I casually swiped the relic from the floor where it fell, then noticed my still lit cigarette. I picked it out of the pool of blood and took a drag, sitting on Reuben’s desk while I called a friend.

“That’s not how it happened,” Frank snorted.

We were going through the sparse 2am traffic now. I’d had to set the seat back to make room for the sword, but managed to get through the door.

“It totally is,” I promised, drawing a little cross over my heart, which had been on the opposite side from usual, meaning I didn’t have to worry about the sword being through it. I don’t think I’d have to worry, but I can’t imagine it would be comfortable. I mean, it was already not comfortable.

“You make everything sound cooler than it was.”

I started looking through the glove compartment out of habit, and he reached over to snap it shut on me. “Ow. No, cool shit just happens to me.”

“Nothing you do is cool,” he grumbled.

“uh, hello,” I said, pointing both hands at my own bloody tits, and the sword sticking out of them.

Frank let out a puff of air and snubbed out a cigarette in the ash tray. “You probably fell on it.”

“Damn, rude.” I pulled at it again, “by the way, you can get it out, right?”

“I probably have something that’ll work.” Frank took his hands off the steering wheel to light a cigarette, but I very pointedly took it from him. “Hey! You topped off?”

I skimmed the Pyre-Flame Key to flick a flame out of my thumb and lit the cigarette, taking a drag before leaning over to stick it between his lips for him. “No, but I’ve got enough in the tank if ripping it out hurts.”

He glowered at the offered cigarette, but opened his mouth. He knew how I feel about distracted driving. “Good, you’re probably going to need it. No way that comes out clean, but I’ll have a nice souvenir.”