Holy cow, I had a spare 45 minutes today! It's the first since classes started up again—where I didn't have to work, entertain my kid, fix the latest thing to break in my "new" house, or pass out cold from exhaustion. Life is good!

Oh…and thanks to whoever pointed out that Erika's nephew would be Ivy's son. Uhh…hehehe…I meant "cousin." Or some relative, anyway. *lol*

Action and Reaction

I loved being a vampire.

Why hadn't I ever done this before? Most of the fights Ivy and I had ever had revolved around my inability to see things from her point of view. All this time, it had never occurred to me to literally give her point of view a try. Granted, I was currently her sister, which was kind of icky on some vaguely incestuous level, but that didn't mean I couldn't enjoy the experience.

I owned the darkness, roaring through the city on my borrowed bad-ass-mobile. My senses were full of a whole host of scents and sensations, distracting and heady. The faint hint of rain in the air became stronger as I flew through the nearly empty streets of Cincinnati. Even though we Inderlanders had finally gotten the midnight curfew rescinded, most of the low-powered folks still stuck to it for their own safety. Sure, vamps still ruled the night, but weres (who now could only shift on full moon nights) and witches (who, without ley lines, were no more powerful than your average human) listened to common sense, not their internal clocks, and wisely stayed indoors. Humans had given up their nocturnal ways during the Turn.

My borrowed coat flapped like mad, and I vaguely wondered how the chrysalis was faring. I gave the pocket I'd tucked it into a gentle squeeze, and it wriggled, warm and squishy. Ew. As far as I could tell, though, the skin of the cocoon was still intact. Little Al was taking its time to get born, I though, though I could hardly hold it against the…creature? Thing?...unknown weird demon gift bug. Good grief, why had I thought it a good idea to bring the thing along, again? Surely I wasn't expecting Al's gift to be anything useful. Honestly, I expected no more than a pretty blue butterfly. With fangs, maybe. But having lost Ivy and Jenks, and been forced to leave Bis behind…it was vaguely comforting to have a tiny reminder of my bad-ass demon mentor with me, on the most important mission of my life. He'd have helped out, had he been here, if only because the problem of saving a vampire's soul intrigued him. I think.

Well, at the very least, maybe his mystery bug gift would serve as a brief distraction, while I armed myself with a broken table leg or something…

As I rode, enjoying my enhanced reflexes and increased speed, I ran through what I remembered of Cormel's lair. It had once been Piscary's, and I knew that Cormel had taken the older vamp's daytime sanctuary for himself. Ivy would definitely be down there, well-protected from the killing sunlight. Rynn would probably be there, too—I couldn't just assume he'd go to pick me up from my place himself. But I could fool him. This disguise was as foolproof as it got. Hell, the FIB could test my DNA right now, or take my fingerprints. Ford could look into my head. Even my aura would match, if anyone thought to check. Hell, the curse even replicated the recent bite marks on Erika's throat. Demons don't fuck around when they want to be somebody else, and I'd had a super fresh focusing object, freely given.

I pulled up to a stoplight, and that's when the first flaw in my brilliant plan hit me. Hard.

The woman had just moused her way across the street, darting into the shadows on the other side, and every sense I had was suddenly trained on her. She was short, pale, nondescript in just about every way. I was shifting my weight to slide off the bike before I even realized how my breath had paused, how my blood had begun to race, how my every sense was fixed on her. The nearly dull grey monotony of the night sprang into vivid color around me, though it remained grey and indistinct at the edges, and my gums tingled as a wash of delicious, anticipatory pleasure welled up my spine in a warm, sensual rush. A strange sensation, not quite pain, skimmed and blossomed at various points under my skin as my body responded to her, releasing the pheromones that would soothe and lull my prey.

She looked up, saw me staring, and froze in place.

Weak.

Unclaimed.

She'd been bitten before. Her blood was free for the taking.

I saw my pheromones take effect, her face relaxing into the blissed-out expression of the entranced, for all that her eyes were still wide with terror. Need, raw and hungry, pounded through me. Rain began to patter onto my jacket and jeans, each drop a surprisingly loud little pop in my suddenly super-sensitive ears. Run, I willed her, feeling my inner feline wiggle its haunches in anticipation. Run—

The honking of the car behind me broke the spell, and my start nearly toppled the bike. What the hell am I doing? The woman did run, then, and I clutched the bike with clawed hands and tight thighs until the urge to chase died down a little. It took every single ounce of my willpower, and the driver behind me gave up waiting in disgust. Whoever it was veered around my bike, and I felt the rush of air and sound and heat rock me as the car whooshed by far too quickly and way too close. Now I had to resist the implied challenge, every nerve poised to chase and strike. I leaned forward and embraced my trembling steel steed, sweating, and tried like hell to get control of the completely unfamiliar set of instincts that Jane Doe and Joe Roadrage had just set off in me.

Holy shit.

I don't know how long I sat there in the middle of the freakin' intersection, until the kaleidoscope my dilated pupils had made of the world faded back to monotone once more. I do know that by the time I got it back together, I was soaked through from the light rain. I sped off again, not nearly as recklessly this time. My hackles were still ruffled, every nerve sensitized. Worse, I felt like the slightest trigger would tip me back into that feral state.

I no longer owned the night. I feared it owned me, instead. God, I'd never felt anything like that before.

How was I going to respond to another vampire? Fucking hell, how was this vampire body going to respond to undead vamps? To Cormel? To Ivy? Was I more Erika than Rachel? Would my instincts treat her as a sister rather than a lover? Or would I try to jump her in her sister's shape?

Ew. The thought made me cringe. But then, another thought struck me: would appearing to her as her sister make undead Ivy think twice about trying anything seductive on me? Perhaps this was the safest way to go in…but no. Ivy would see through the ruse. My aura might be a different color, temporarily, but she'd know it. She'd shared it, and shaped it…she was practically part of me. No, this disguise wouldn't protect me.

And now I knew its weakness. I had no fucking idea how to handle being a living vampire.

Hell, now that I'd experienced it, I had a whole new level of respect for Ivy's restraint. If this was the kind of thing a regular vamp had to put up with on a daily basis, just how much worse had it been for Ivy…? Years of abstinence, while her best friend and love tried to work out her hangups about vamps and blood and sex, each day having to deal with our mingled scents and every other way I inadvertently triggered her instincts. Especially after that bastard Piscary had honed her into a voracious predator, until acting on instinct had become second nature.

Shit, it was a wonder I'd survived those first few years. But my Ivy was one tough woman.

And so am I, damn it! I'm a demon. I'm the last demon woman. I'm the most powerful magic-slinger on this miserable planet. Nothing is going to stop me from taking back what's mine.

I had no idea where in my body I was housing my dear one's soul, but I briefly rubbed my hand over my heart. A briefly warm sensation, like a hot flash of passion (or maybe just heartburn), rustled across my soul like wind dancing through leaves, and I felt somehow comforted.

I swear I'll save you, Ivy. You didn't spend all those years fighting to save yourself in vain. You're mine. I'd crash my way into Hades itself to bring you back.

Somewhere, somehow, I had the distinct impression of someone rolling their eyes at my mental declaration. Melodramatic, much?

I sniffed, finding my way suddenly blurred with tears, and blinked furiously. Damn right.

Still, perhaps a reevaluation of my hasty plan was in order. This was the love of my life, after all.

I scowled at the obnoxious inner voice urging caution. I only had until dawn, damnit! Time was precious!

But then, I was a demon. I was effectively immortal. And I held Ivy's soul. I had time. I had all the time in the world. I blinked as the unexpected thought occurred to me: I'd watched Al give Pierce's ghost a new body, with a curse I'd made myself. Even if I couldn't anchor Ivy's soul into her original body, there was nothing preventing me from—

From what? Murdering someone else so that Ivy could live? Not happening. We loved each other, body and soul, but Ivy wouldn't forgive me if I cut short someone else's tomorrows so that she could share hers with me. Besides, her defiance and control of her body's instincts was part of what defined her. Would she even be the same person if she no longer had them? No…I'd save her, body and soul both. All or nothing.

I always did choose the hard way. But wasn't there another way to protect myself from vampiric influence? To keep my head clear and my instincts dampened?

I put on an additional burst of speed. If I tried that, tried to block the influence with a curse or something, they'd notice, wouldn't they? No, I had to be Erika, through and through. I had studied her mannerisms in the brief time we'd had, and gotten a quick rundown of the day she'd spent in Cincinnati, having arrived only this morning. She'd been cut off from her camarilla for years. I could fake being her, I knew I could.

Some part of my brain really wasn't buying that, but I had to believe it. Maybe there was a curse that could help me? One that didn't require much preparation to twist? I was suddenly struck by another memory: Al explaining the curse he used to mess with peoples' heads—the one that looked inside and found their deepest fear. Heh. It was a thought. It was better…or rather, less wrong…than most of the other ideas I was coming up with, anyway. A slight tweaking, and perhaps it could be used to pick out their general expectations of a person and fake them out into seeing exactly what they expected. Sort of a camouflage, if combined with the doppelganger curse. Combine looking the part with a general don't-question-this aura, and perhaps…

That could work, I conceded. If I could recall the curse, anyway…

Aaah, yes. There it was. I grinned a savage grin as I twisted it. There were a lot of curses that no longer functioned shorthand, since most of the demon database had been lost with the ever after, but this one appeared to go off just fine. Now if only I'd thought to question Erika's veracity—

I blinked. Why would I be suspicious of Erika? The poor girl had been at her wit's end! And she'd warned me about Cormel's nefarious plans to nab me. I had no doubts about her sincerity, and neither had Bis—and Bis was a far better judge of character than I'd ever been.

Still, I couldn't rid myself of that nagging thought that just perhaps I'd missed something. I fought to shrug it off, because suspicion and paranoia were vampire nature and were triggering my instincts like woah. Even I could smell the pheromones I was oozing from every gland. That must be what that odd tingling sensation was. Couple it with the adrenaline pouring through me, and the shock to my confidence in this cockeyed scheme thanks to Miss Mouse's mad dash in front of me…? My hands were shaking something fierce as I slid off the bike and faced the building I loathed most in Cincinnati. Once it had been the best damned pizza place in the city, then the weirdest night club in the history of vampire-line-dancing clubs, then nondescript offices…now it was a nightclub again, but a much seeder-looking one. It catered to the living and the undead, and the few others who hadn't figured out by now the big lie of vampire allure and decided to make healthier choices. I could hear the wubba-wubba-wubba of the monotonous music from here, pulsing like a giant heart in the ugly structure squatting before me.

I left Erika's bike with the others in the parking lot, though I did pause to put a swift do-not-touch curse on it. I was loaded with those, thanks to the druggies who'd look for anything not nailed down. Then I put on my best do-not-touch face and elbowed my way past the security, through the crowd, through the kitchen, and straight to that damned elevator .

The guards stationed to either side barely even blinked at me, and I paid them no attention whatsoever. I had a sudden urge to drag the hot blond one into the elevator with me—after all, kissing hot blonds in elevators while on the way to certain death had seemed like a good idea the last time I descended into Hell, convinced I'd never come back out.

As the doors slid smoothly closed, I wasn't entirely certain that the same wasn't true right now.

At least I wasn't alone. I had Bis. I gave him a mental buzz, and he buzzed back. We couldn't talk, but we could share very simple emotions, and his buzz was mellow, with only a hint of concern. Cormel's cronies hadn't shown up yet? I shrugged, trying not to see that as a bad sign.

And I had my trusty mystery demonspawn thing in my pocket. I reached to pat my pocked again, thinking that I'd be a little disappointed if it only turned out to be a butterfly—

I frowned, patted the pocket again, then dug inside and drew out the chrysalis. The cocoon had split right down the middle, now merely a dried out husk that smelled faintly of milkweed and burnt amber. There was nothing unusual about it. It looked just like any other discarded shell, ugly and grey-brown and dead.

It was empty.

And so was my pocket.