Free Last Vampire Standing by Nancy Haddock

a quiet flavor of scary next to Laurel. Vampzilla is bossy, bitchy, and wears human bones in her cornrowed hair. The other two vamps I’d met in March were Ike’s muscle. Tower and Zena are very tall, very built, and very loyal to Ike.
    Ike had left me alone since our meeting five months ago. Would he take my turning up on his turf with Saber and the Daytona cops as a declaration of war?
    If so, I’d just have to talk him down out of the boughs. A vamp had chomped on a human, and that simply wasn’t kosher. Of course, there was the off chance—way off—that the biting had been consensual. In March, I’d also met four blood bunnies that hung out with Ike, and I’d later asked Saber about their bite marks. He’d explained that biting could be consented to during sex. Not an encouraged practice, but the VPA overlooked love bites just as it ignored small nests. Sometimes, bureaucracy bites. Consensual or not, a vampire should never leave a bitee to wander around under a partial thrall. The effect was like turning a drunk loose. Without the upchucking.
    Saber killed his light and siren and turned into a parking lot behind a two-story cinder-block building painted Caribbean blue. Not the color choice I pictured for a place called Hot Blooded, but I imagined City Hall controlled the colors of buildings. St. Augustine’s city government did the same.
    The parking lot teemed with official vehicles and uniformed men and women from the Daytona Beach police force. I joined Saber, and we headed for a tall, rangy black man wearing a Daytona Beach cop uniform and a scowl.
    “Captain Jackson,” Saber said, “this is Cesca Marinelli.”
    “I know who she is,” Jackson snarled. “What the hell is she doing here?”
    That’s me. Making instant friends wherever I go.
    “I’ve deputized her on the good chance she can ID the biter, and we can get out of here fast.”
    “How is she gonna do that?”
    I smiled, being perfectly pleasant. “I have a sharp sense of smell for blood, Captain Jackson.”
    “Just stay out of my way.” He turned the full weight of his gaze on Saber. “Are you clear that this is our operation? You’re here as a consultant for now.”
    “You mean until you throw your hands up and dump the mess in my lap?”
    “That was Hake’s style. It’s not mine.”
    “Then your way will be a nice change,” Saber said.
    Jackson blinked, then nodded and handed Saber a photo of a man with ragged, bloody bite marks on one side of his neck.
    “Since you know the head vamp, you can assist me in questioning him while my teams conduct the search.”
    Saber murmured his agreement.
    “We round up all the vamps and any humans still in there and put them at opposite sides of the room. I’ve assigned people with silver ammo to guard the vamps.”
    “Good plan.”
    Mollified that Saber wasn’t here to upstage him, Jackson seemed to stand down.
    “Fine. So you question Ike, and she”—he pointed to my quiet, respectful self—“can do her bloodhound thing.”
    “Arf,” I muttered too softly for Jackson to hear.
    Saber did hear and shot me a zip-it look.
    At Jackson’s signal, one group of officers fanned out to cover the back door while others took up positions with rifles aimed at windows. Another five men marched along the sidewalk to the front entrance, with Jackson leading. Saber and I followed. Tower was on doorman duty. Skin and eyes the color of dark chocolate, he nearly filled the double doorway in height and breadth but wore a flat expression.
    Jackson flashed his badge under Tower’s nose. “Daytona Beach police. We have a search warrant.”
    “Ike is expecting you.”
    Well, of course he was. It’s not like he could’ve missed the circus in his parking lot. I kept quiet and slinked behind Jackson and Saber into a cavernous room dominated by an empty dance floor. Two massive flat panel TVs hung suspended over an elevated DJ booth, and both were tuned to ESPN.
    ESPN in a vampire club?
    A bar of