Liam looked her up and down to be sure she was the same enforcer from earlier. Though he figured there was no mistaking that golden skin, that skin tight leather suit, and the glowing lines running all over the thing that looked even better than anything in the movie.

She was also leaning in close enough that his mind was filled with fantasies of hitting her with a kiss.

He didn’t do it. Still, having her that close felt good. It had his mind racing through all sorts of interesting scenarios that’d be fun to role-play with a Galactic Enforcer who took her costuming a little too seriously.

“I’m reading a book,” Liam said.

“A book,” the girl said, her tone flat. “But that isn’t one of the primitive ink and paper storage devices I’ve seen in the big room where there are merchants plying their trade.”

“Well yeah,” Liam said. “It’s an e-book. The kind you read on a screen?”

“I am aware of reading on a screen,” she said. “I just didn’t think that was a thing you did on this world. Clearly my research was inadequate.”

“I guess so,” Liam said, grinning and deciding to have some fun with this. “It must suck when that happens.”

“Suck?” she asked, cocking her head to the side and looking so completely obliviously innocent that Liam could hardly believe what a good actress she was.

His cheeks colored. The last thing he wanted was to describe the etymology of sucking dick to a woman pretending to be an alien from another world who didn’t understand the more subtle vulgar nuances of the English language.

Liam wondered if she was doing that on purpose to get a rise out of him. Well, more of a rise than she was already getting.

“You’re staring at me,” she said, frowning. “Have I done something wrong? I apologize if interrupting you while you were enjoying your electronic book goes against the customs on this world.”

“Not at all,” Liam said. “I mean I guess it could be considered a dick move bothering someone when they don’t want you bothering them, but in this case you’re not a bother.”

“Because you want me to bother you?” she asked, cocking her head to the side.

“Something like that,” Liam said.

Damn. He was being all sorts of not smooth today.

“I did a great deal of research on the mating rituals of your world before I arrived,” she continued, which had him coughing as he accidentally inhaled some of his red glowing frozen drink.

Though he didn’t mind the sudden turn the conversation had taken. Mating rituals were exactly what he wanted to get up to with her before the weekend was over.

“They are quite fascinating. I had to learn about them to hunt the vampires, of course,” she said. “They hunt by taking advantage of mating rituals on primitive worlds.”

“Of course,” Liam said, his mouth suddenly dry.

He was pretty sure this lady was trying to hit on him, only she was doing it in the dorkiest way possible.

Though there was something about a pretty girl looking at him like that and flirting with him in the dorkiest way possible that had him melting.

“I could tell from the way your pupils dilate when you look at me and the way you try to look at my body without looking like you’re looking at my body that you’re interested, and I need to learn more about your human mating culture if I’m to track down the vampires threatening your world,” she said, looking him up and down with something that wasn’t a totally blank lack of emotion for the first time.

No, she actually smiled. It was breathtaking.

“If this is your way of trying to hit on me then it’s totally working,” Liam said.

“I’m trying to strike you?” she asked, her face screwed up in clear confusion. She looked down at her hands as though she was wondering if she really had tried to hit him and hadn’t realized it.

Liam sighed. Clearly this lady wasn’t going to drop the alien come to earth routine, but whatever.

An evening of fun with a cute cosplay girl was an evening of fun with a cute cosplay girl. He didn’t care if she was a little out there. It’s not like it’d be the first time he’d gotten with a socially awkward hottie at one of these things, and it’s not like he’d see her after the convention for that matter.

“You know what?” he said with a grin. “I’d be more than happy to help you learn more about the mating rituals on my primitive world.”

She smiled right back at him. It was a very intense sort of smile.

“You would?” she asked, her face lighting up. “That would be amazing. I’ve been trying to track the vampires through these crowds, but it’s difficult considering many at this place are dressed in a manner that glorifies them.”

Something dark crossed her face. Like she was upset, annoyed, and just a touch surprised that people would be glorifying vampires.

“When you commit to a bit you really commit to a bit,” Liam murmured.

“What are you talking about?” she asked.

“The whole Galactic Enforcer thing you have going,” Liam said, gesturing and taking in her entire costume. “You almost have me convinced you really are a Galactic Enforcer.”

She blinked. “Because I am a Galactic Enforcer. I am tasked with patrolling this sector of the galaxy and making certain it isn’t overrun by the scourge of the…”

“Vampire vixens from Planet X,” Liam said, finishing the line from the movie.

“Well they’re one of several threats that could descend on an unwary world and cause trouble, but yes. Fighting the vampires is one of my main responsibilities. You’ve heard the Galactic Enforcer creed on this world?”

“It was a line in the movie we just watched,” Liam muttered, downing the rest of his drink.

“Oh. So it was,” she said, then her eyes narrowed as she looked at the drink he’d just downed, leading to one hell of a case of brain freeze. “So drinking this liquid. That makes you feel good and is part of the mating ritual?”

“Let’s start at the beginning, how about?” Liam asked, needing a change of subject.

“What beginning would that be?” she asked, looking genuinely confused by his abrupt shift.

“The beginning being I don’t even know your name,” Liam said. “I’m Liam.”

He held his hand out, and felt like six different kinds of idiot for doing it. Now who was acting like he was totally unfamiliar with human mating rituals?

The Galactic Enforcer looked at his hand like she really was an alien come down from the stars to figure out the strange hairless primates that ran this planet.

Liam felt strangely self-conscious about her looking at him like that. Finally she took his hand, though she held it in a loose grip and gave it a limp shake that felt wrong.

“It’s nice to meet you, Liam,” she said, then turned to the bartender who’d reappeared and was hitting both of them with a perturbed look.

Liam figured maybe she didn’t enjoy the idea of a pretty cosplaying Galactic Enforcer moving in on someone she’d claimed. Chalk another one up to his theory that the pretty bartender had really been interested and wasn’t just flirting for a tip.

“I’d like two of whatever your strongest drink is!” the Galactic Enforcer said, turning to Liam. There was something in her look that said she was waiting for something.

“What’s up?” Liam asked, his head swimming a bit from the alcohol he’d already downed and also a little from this girl asking for the strongest stuff behind the bar. He figured that could only mean good things for him that she was in the mood to get liquored up like that.

“That’s how you phrase it on this world, correct?” she asked. “You would like the strongest drink they have?”

“Yeah, that’s great,” Liam said. “You’re probably going to get taken to the cleaners when you get the bill, but it’ll definitely get you the best they have.”

“The best,” she repeated. “That sounds good!”

“The best they have at a place like this isn’t going to be the greatest no matter what, and they’re going to overcharge you for it because we’re at a convention,” Liam said. “In case you were wondering how this sort of thing works on this world. Hopefully you have enough of our primitive units of exchange to keep from going bankrupt.”

She hit him with another of those smiles that lit up her face. It also made Liam want to drop the pretense of this cosplaying back and forth they were doing and invite her back to his room already.

Though he didn’t dare risk puncturing whatever weird role-playing this girl was getting off on. She could say she was Darth Vader come down from the planet Vulcan to talk to him about his dating life and he’d play along and compliment her on her excellent Back to the Future reference as long as it might end in his dating life intersecting with hers for an evening.

The bartender returned with a drink. She smiled enigmatically at both of them, but Liam could only stare at the glowing green stuff in the bottle. They were really going all out with the convention concoctions this year.

“What’s this?” Liam asked.

The bartender glanced down at it, her eyes glazing over, then she looked back to the two of them. She shrugged like she didn’t know what the fuck it was, which seemed odd considering this was her bar.

“It’s green,” she said, then turned and stalked off towards Rick.

Yeah, she definitely wasn’t happy about something. He looked at the Galactic Enforcer and wondered if her appearance had something to do with the sudden mood shift.

Liam eyed the bottle. They always came up with the weirdest themed drinks, but this was over the top. Which made sense if it was some of the more top shelf stuff. Presumably they’d want it to look impressive to cater to the convention crowd.

The glowing was new, but his own drink had a slight glow to it that turned out to be an LED ice cube now that he’d downed enough of the frozen bright red concoction to see where the glow was coming from.

“Do all the beverages on this world glow like this?” the enforcer asked.

“It’s a gimmick they pull at conventions,” Liam said, wondering if this was the first time she’d been to a convention like this.

He didn’t think that likely considering how ridiculously accurate her costume was, but maybe she was one of those people who spent years perfecting a costume before she finally made her debut and became the belle of the convention ball.

“A gimmick,” she said, her face screwed up in obvious confusion. “I’m afraid I didn’t come across this term when I was researching your species.”

“Of course you didn’t,” Liam said, trying not to let his frustration bleed through. He was obviously going to have to put in some overtime to get with this girl.

Still. It would be so worth it. The Galactic Enforcers in Vampire Vixens From Planet X! had carved a groove deep in his developing brain when he first watched that movie in all its ancient grainy dusty VHS glory.

He was willing to go the extra mile to enjoy a fantasy that had been with him since before he realized he was into girls.

“It means they make a bunch of special drinks for the convention,” Liam said. “They make them look interesting and impressive by putting LED lights and other cool stuff in them, and then they charge more money, those primitive units of exchange, than they normally would because people come to these conventions expecting to have a good time and spend more money on things for an experience.”

“A curious way to spend your valuable time and resources,” she said. “But I can see where it might be fun.”

“Y’know I never did get your name,” Liam said.

“My apologies. I am designated local authority KT–42,” she said, rattling off the dash in the middle and everything. “I’m responsible for this sector of the galaxy, though this is the first time I’ve had reason to come to this planet. I was pursuing a vampire slaver ship when it came to this system.”

“Right,” Liam said. “Katie, it is?”

She frowned. “KT–42.”

“Yeah, but let’s be honest,” Liam said. “There’s not a chance I’m going to go around calling you KT–42. Katie is a lot easier to say.”

That earned him a deeper frown. Maybe she didn’t like that nickname, but what the fuck ever. He was starting to really feel the effects of that first frozen drink, the intoxicating effects rather than the brain freezing effects, and it didn’t help that Katie grabbed one of the two glasses the bartender had left for them and poured some of that glowing green stuff for each of them.

Liam peered at the glowing stuff in the glass. Then he took a sip and coughed. Which earned him some looks from assholes all around the bar who were looking at him like he was a lightweight who couldn’t handle his liquor.

Which totally wasn’t the case. He could put it away with the best of them. It’s just that this green stuff really had some kick to it. His head swam more from that one sip than after the whole frozen drink.

Or maybe it was the cumulative effect of the glowing frozen red drink and the glowing green drink.

“This stuff is strong,” Liam said as he stared down at the glowing green liquid in his glass and wondered what the hell they’d put in it. “Usually they’re stingy with the booze, but this is the stuff!”

“Odd,” Katie said, frowning at her drink. She took a sip, and her eyes went wide. He noted that she didn’t cough or splutter. “It is very good! I quite enjoy the drinks made on your world.”

She took another sip, and then she surprised Liam by throwing her head back and downing the entire thing in a couple of gulps.

He hadn’t seen someone that skilled at putting away the booze since back in college when he’d seen a girl do a keg stand that’d been something to behold. Both because of how her tank top had ridden up, or rather down, thanks to gravity and because of how impressive it’d been watching her down that much booze in such a short amount of time.

“This is stronger than anything we have on the civilized worlds,” Katie said, swaying after that massive drink.

“You’re telling me,” Liam said. “I wouldn’t mind going to the civilized worlds with you, if you catch my drift.”

There was a part of his brain screaming at him that it was a cheesy pickup line, but the more drunk parts of him didn’t care. Those drunker parts of his brain thought it sounded like the perfect line.

“I don’t know if it’s still supposed to be glowing, though,” Katie said, frowning at her glass and looking at Liam like she was seeking confirmation from a local.

Liam frowned as he looked to the bottle, to the glowing booze in his cup, and then back to Katie. Then back to the bottle, trying to decide if there really was something wrong with the stuff, or if it was just his imagination. There was something that seemed off, like…

Then it hit him through his drunken haze. The liquid in the glasses glowed even though there weren’t any LED ice cubes in there to light them up. He’d been just buzzed enough and just distracted enough by the pretty cosplayer that he hadn’t given it much thought.

Now, though, he was horrified. They’d just drank something that looked like the toxic ooze from an old Ninja Turtles movie.

And as he stared at the concoction numbers popped up all around it like he was inspecting something in a videogame. The stat sheet showed the severity of its alcoholic effects, how much he’d have to drink to get drunk, how much the Galactic Enforcer beside him would have to drink to get drunk with her higher alien metabolism, and most importantly there was a bright red notification at the top telling him there was an unidentified compound in there that was likely a poison of some sort.

Liam shook his head to try and clear away the crazy, but that tooltip still hovered in the air over the bottle as though he had his VR headset on feeding him information.

“Something’s very wrong here,” Liam said, suddenly very worried. Though he wasn’t sure if he was worried about his mind suddenly making up videogame tooltips for a drink, or if he was more worried that the tooltip told him the drink was poison.

“Something is definitely wrong,” that strange voice said, though when Liam looked around he didn’t see that redheaded beauty. It was like she was talking in his head, which was the last place he wanted her.

“What’s wrong?” Katie asked.

He figured it was possible someone had come up with some way of making the liquid in that bottle glow without LED ice cubes, but that didn’t seem likely. Not without adding radium which wasn’t exactly a great drink ingredient.

A new woman stepped up to the bar. Liam wavered as he looked at her. He felt like he’d had a hell of a lot more to drink than he actually had.

Though that woman…

It was like every fantasy he’d had since he was a young man watching Vampire Vixens one-handed was coming true today, because the woman who stepped up to join them was none other than a vampire vixen.

“Well now,” she said, her voice a sultry purr as she looked between the two of them. “What do we have here?”