Kill Game: An Urban Fantasy Thriller (Dana McIntyre Must Die Book 2)

by SM Reine

  Beyond it all, there was endless suburbia bordered by even more endless desert. Dana could make out the jagged hills. They were a dull red to her acute almost-vampire eyes.

  Nothing remarkable from this angle. But it was the best view of the city. Dana could see everything that she’d dedicated her life to protecting.

  Her eyes tracked down to the road. It was so far away that the city buses looked like pieces in a miniature game of Monopoly.

  “We’ve got the night’s travel records.” Charmaine passed a tablet over to Dana.

  The interface on the company’s proprietary database was clunky, but Dana figured it out after tapping around for a moment. “This one,” she said, pointing at a one-way incoming airship. “Do you see this? It’s different.”

  “It’s a Grand Canyon tour. They only run that once a day,” Charmaine said.

  “But look. Every airship came in to sleep the night before. There’s no record of this one having stayed somewhere overnight, and it doesn’t exist otherwise.”

  “Borrowed from another tour company? I know they subcontract sometimes.”

  “I don’t think so.” Dana’s instincts were telling her that this was more than that. She peered around the airship dock again—the painted concrete pad, the neon over the tower itself, the nearby Stratosphere. “Why not push Irma Stoppard?”

  Charmaine glanced over the safety gate at the road. “Push?”

  “If you want a witness dead so they can’t report on you, it doesn’t matter how you kill them. Right? That death is distinctive.” Dana jerked a thumb toward the body, which was now being examined closely by Penny. “My girl’s gonna know what weapon did that. It’ll lead us right to the killer.”

  “You think that the killer wants us to find them?”

  “Just saying,” Dana said. “There’s a reason she died the way she did, and there’s a reason we had an extra airship visit.”

  “You’re suggesting organized crime activity,” Charmaine said. “A gang shipped something into town, and when the victim came out to see what was going on, they killed her.”

  “The Paradisos wouldn’t try to make a statement this big. Attention is the opposite of what they want.”

  “Rivals?”

  “Maybe,” Dana said. “A splinter cell from the Paradisos.”

  Charmaine muttered under her breath. Dana would have thought the chief was swearing if she weren’t too professional to do that at a crime scene. “I need a different theory to present to the OPA.”

  “Hey! I know what this is.” Penny waved them over. She had forgotten to be disgusted by the wounds, and now held one slit open with gloved fingers. “Do you see how jagged the cuts into the meat are? Messy, irregular…”

  “Multiple cuts, a crime of passion,” Dana said.

  But Penny shook her head. “No. They’re too sharp, tight, and numerous to have come from multiple cuts using a single blade. This is from an unusual weapon I saw while working with the American Gaean Coalition. You know the AGC?”

  “Run by Deirdre Tombs,” Charmaine said. “I’ve seen them on the news.”

  “Her right-hand man is a valkyrie. Vidya. Scary woman, very scary.”

  “I remember the controversy around her. Vidya was the escapee from an OPA detention center who got the immunity deal with the Alpha.” Dana had been a teenager when it happened, but she dimly recalled how conspiracy theories had run wild on the news. What had a valkyrie with terrorist associations done to earn forgiveness from the highest preternatural authority in the nation? Nobody knew.

  “Well, when I was working with Deirdre on armoring the AGC, there was an incident,” Penny said. “An attack from these triadists.” After a beat, she added, “Sorry.” She knew that Dana hated it when people attributed terroristic acts to triadists.

  Dana fingered the triadist rune she wore on her necklace. “Go on.”

  “Vidya defended their HQ alone. She deployed her wings and…gosh, I’ll never forget what a valkyrie’s wings look like.” Penny got a dreamy look in her eyes. “I couldn’t design weapons like that. She was incredible. And all of her feathers were razors—literal razors as long as my arm. They were sharp, too.”

  Penny spanned her hand over the gashes on the body. The cuts looked like they’d been made by a weapon as long as her forearm.

  Charmaine folded her arms across her chest. “You’re saying we need to call the AGC for an alibi from Vidya.”

  “It won’t be necessary. I was chatting with Deirdre Tombs last night, and she’s overseas with her valkyrie lieutenant. But I bet you anything that these wounds were inflicted by valkyrie feathers.”

  Dana frowned. “Why were you talking with the AGC?”

  “They always need more equipment.” Penny was looking at the ground, avoiding Dana’s eyes.

  Was Penny trying to get a job with an East Coast operation?

  It hadn’t occurred to Dana that Penny might divorce her and then leave the city.

  Not that it mattered.

  Divorce took time. Dana’s revenge against the Paradisos might take a little longer than that, but not by much. Unless something really fucking miraculous happened with the unobtainium, she wouldn’t outlive the end of her marriage to Penny anyway. Didn’t matter where Penny went.

  Right?

  “There’s no valkyries in the area that we know of,” Charmaine said. “I’ll verify that Vidya’s in South Africa, but if you’re certain about this cause of death, then we’ll need to figure out how, when, and why a valkyrie’s come to Vegas.”

  “To kill people, looks like,” Dana said, tossing her latex gloves in the trash.

  “No shit,” Charmaine said.

  “I’m pulling your leg. I’ve got a contact. I’ll dig around, let you know as soon as I find out anything.”

  “Thanks.” The chief looked seriously relieved. Her nose twitched as she sniffed the air, and then she turned away from the body, waving to the techs. “Let’s get the scene closed up. The manager wants to reopen ASAP.”

  “Even dead bodies don’t put Vegas to sleep, huh?” Penny wrung her hands as the coroner’s guys came over to bag the victim.

  “It’s a twenty-four-seven city. Always has been, hopefully always will be. That’s why we need a twenty-four-seven team working for us. People good at night, people good with the preternatural citizens, people with contacts who know the locals well.” She was giving Dana one of those weird looks again. The one that said she wanted to see Dana in a police uniform.

  Penny used to look at Dana like that, too. Like she was imagining Dana’s future. But now Penny wouldn’t meet her eyes. In fact, Penny looked to be packing up to leave without saying goodbye.

  Dana materialized at her side. “Hey.”

  “Don’t forget about our appointment tomorrow night at ten,” Penny said. “We’ve got a whole hour with the mediator.”

  The mediator. Dana had forgotten about the appointment. She’d also let herself forget that they were divorcing for a few minutes.

  Dana and Penny had a lot of shared assets after their years of marriage. Last time they’d tried to divide things, it had gotten ugly. Their lawyers had almost come to blows. Division of physical assets remained one of the only things stalling their paperwork, so they’d employed a mediator to clean it up.

  Her silence drew Penny’s gaze up. Those big brown eyes. “Will you be there?” Penny asked.

  Dana thought about refusing, but it had been too late for that from the moment she’d thrown away Penny’s blood bag. “Yep. See you there.”

  5

  After Achlys’s death, Tormid had moved into the same place as most non-vampire shifters in Las Vegas: the sewers.

  The surface of the city was sequined and neon, polished to Disneyland perfection for adults who liked to sin. Achlys had put a lot of work into improving Vegas in that respect. She’d dumped her profits into the casinos, the attractions, the clubs. It paid off.

  Her careful polish had also driven all the other pre
ternaturals underground.

  Literally.

  There was no room for the ugly preternaturals in Vegas, or the legitimately scary ones, or those who didn’t fit the branding of Achlys’s empire. That meant that pretty much anyone interesting was down in the tunnels, and Dana had more contacts in the area than she had enchanted swords, which said a lot.

  Dana was comfortable navigating the sewers underneath the casinos. She spent enough time in there that she had a mental map of the labyrinthine paths and which corners various people hid in.

  The mundane homeless stuck to the outer edges, nearest the streets. They were likelier to survive that way. Not just because they could exit immediately when the rare rainstorms flooded the tunnels, but because they were closer to daylight. Closer to a quick escape when demons got hungry. Closer to the Hunting Lodge, where they could find an associate happy to slaughter whomever attacked them.

  Demons occupied the murkiest and filthiest middens. Dana didn’t often go into their territory. Demons were chaotic creatures who lied for fun, so Dana always ended up killing them out of annoyance even if they weren’t up to any fuckery. Visiting demons was too messy. Not worth her time.

  The shifters dwelled somewhere in between, and they made much more reliable, informative contacts than homeless or demons. They tagged the concrete tunnels with crescents to guide each other back to the hidden pack’s enclave. It had been Tormid’s pack for at least three years, long before Achlys’s death, so Dana had visited him a few times even before their uneasy alliance.

  Dana followed the crescent-and-eyeball tag to Tormid’s territory. He was hiding under one of Achlys’s smaller properties. It was an off-Strip resort. A lot of pools, a lot of irrigation. That meant a lot of drainage. Lots of space for a growing pack.

  At the moment, the pack didn’t look to be growing.

  Tormid’s territory was in a huge room housing more equipment than Dana could shake a stake at. Scaffolding created two stories of stadium seating that was mostly empty. The room was dark enough that Dana had a tough time spotting all the shifters, but just by tracking their motions, she estimated there were barely a dozen guys in Tormid’s pack.

  The leader looked like he’d been expecting Dana. Tormid sat on a chair at the head of the room, in between two massive hissing pumps. He lounged with his knees spread, elbow on a pipe, hair a smooth line down his shoulders. “The cravings have struck,” he said without preamble.

  Dana hung back by the entrance to the room. She didn’t like having the lightless tunnel at her back, but it was better than walking into Tormid’s makeshift throne room and letting herself get surrounded. “How can you tell?”

  “You look like shit.”

  “Fuck you, I’m gorgeous,” Dana said.

  Tormid snorted. Typical. He was a traditionally attractive male specimen with all the quirks of physiology that got straight women creaming themselves. The dimpled chin, the Viking stature. Men like that felt threatened when women didn’t exist to fawn over them, so someone like Dana was an insult to his vanity. Such men had a habit of turning hostile to make up for the insecurity. Whatever. Dana didn’t need his approval.

  “So you deny the cravings?” he asked.

  “It’s just none of your fucking business,” she said.

  “I could help,” Tormid said. “Achlys and I helped a lot of fledglings through the early cravings.”

  “Does it involve eating people?”

  “You’ll have to eat people if you want to survive,” he said. “Nobody stays a blood virgin for long.”

  Nissa Royal did. But then again, she seemed to be one of a kind. “Fuck that noise.”

  “Listen, you can’t die permanently until our deal is finished. Let me help you survive. Even if you decide not to finish the transition, I can still orient you to your developing powers, teach you how to resist cravings.” Tormid glowered at her. “Better me than a vampire, don’t you think?”

  He had a point there. “We can talk later, maybe. At the moment, I need more information.”

  “That’s what I figured when you texted me. Come here. We’ll talk.” He beckoned her to come closer.

  Dana folded her arms. She was wearing her gauntlet again, and while it was tucked under her armpit, she squeezed the wrist. Its magic began to charge, just in case. “I’m good talking from here. You didn’t tell me there was iron in the suitcase.”

  Tormid frowned. “I didn’t know what was in there. I just know how much the Paradisos withdrew from their accounts to pay for it, so I figured it had to be good.” He rubbed his chin thoughtfully. He was growing a blond beard, like he hadn’t shaved since Achlys’s death. “Iron, huh?”

  “Pure iron. Unenchanted.”

  “That’s bizarre.” Tormid leaned on an elbow, letting his long hair fall into his golden eyes. “Come over here so I don’t have to shout.”

  “If you don’t want to shout, then you should come to me.”

  “I need my pack to search your person,” he said. “We don’t talk until you’ve been searched.”

  “Even if I tell you that I’m looking for Nissa?” Dana asked.

  Nissa had been Achlys’s travel assistant. She’d handled visas for preternaturals visiting Paradisos territory and when the murder’s vampires had visited other territories. If there were a valkyrie in the area, Nissa would have handled the paperwork.

  She was also the woman who had killed Achlys.

  Dana remembered the moment vividly. Nissa had gotten her hands on a Garlic Shot; as a blood virgin, she could have used it to cure herself. Instead, Nissa had turned the needle on Achlys. And Dana still didn’t understand why.

  Nissa had probably been turned into a vampire when she was twenty, twenty-one years old. Just a baby. Talk among Dana’s contacts suggested that she’d been taken under Achlys’s wing shortly after her transformation, and they’d become fast friends.

  So why had Nissa chosen to kill Achlys rather than cure herself?

  The why of it didn’t matter to Tormid. He hated the woman who had killed his vampire girlfriend. “I’ll still have to have you searched for my safety,” Tormid said. “But we won’t take anything from you. Deal?”

  “Olfactory search only.” Shifters were better than vamps, but it still made her skin crawl to be handled by people with strength that far surpassed her own.

  “Olfactory and magical.”

  “Deal.”

  She stepped into the pump room.

  There were pipes all along the walls, and shifters lurked behind them, clinging to the shadows. These weren’t people who lived full-time in the sewers. Most of them were probably casino employees who came down to the sewers to report for pack duty.

  A few had rougher looks to them. Some shifters didn’t bother trying to live with the rest of the world, and they showed it by walking around without clothes, ready to shapeshift into their animal forms at any moment. They let their hair grow long. They got muddy and didn’t bathe. They were pack, barely more than animals, and Dana was walking between them to approach Tormid.

  If they attacked, it’d be one hell of a fight.

  Nostrils flared as she passed. They sniffed her, inventorying her weapons. Presumably there was a witch among the golden-eyed shifters because her thumb ring lit up when it detected a magical sweep of her body.

  She reached Tormid in his chair without being attacked. He might have dated a scumbag, but as far as Dana’s contacts went, he was far from the worst.

  “I don’t think they like me,” Dana said, glaring at his pack. They hadn’t been at previous meetings.

  “Forget about them. They don’t get why I’d be dealing with another vampire after everything that’s gone down. They understood when I was fucking Achlys—everyone gets sex appeal—but they don’t know what you’ve got for me.” He glared at her with open hatred. Tormid wasn’t dealing with her because he wanted Dana to love him. He was willing to cut deals because he wanted revenge too.

  Who cared if his pack understoo
d him? Dana understood him.

  “Nissa Royal,” she said. “I know she’s alive. I want to know where she spends her days and nights.”

  “I can’t help you with her daytime roost,” Tormid said, head cocked to the side so he could study Dana sideways. It was a suspicious look he gave her. Almost angry. “She sleeps with her master, Mohinder.”

  “Damn.” Nobody knew where Mohinder rode out daytime. He was much too important to allow anyone near him in his vulnerable daylight hours.

  “But she works for Mohinder at night, too,” Tormid said. “She’s the operations manager at Judex. As in, all operations—casino, restaurants, hotel.”

  That was a high position. Nissa hadn’t looked nearly that interesting. “So she’s smart.”

  “Smart, quiet, sensitive. Strange for a vampire, I know. Achlys loved her for how strange she was. Nissa Royal’s still a blood virgin because her vampiric powers of empathy make it too unpleasant to kill people. She can’t bear to be around humans who are being preyed upon.”

  “And Achlys liked that.”

  “Loved it.” Grief twitched across his face, and it took visible effort to calm himself. “Achlys was made a vampire in Genesis. She didn’t choose this life.” He waved around at the sewers. Achlys had lived among trappings nicer than the dripping pumps and echoing tunnels, but it was still the same thing in the end. Undeath as a vampire was a constant trudge through shit. “I wager you’ll find Nissa at Judex. It was the only thing that she had in life outside of Achlys, and now…”

  Achlys was gone, so Nissa had nothing but work.

  “Good.” Dana turned to leave, but Tormid spoke again.

  “What will you do to her?”

  “We’re gonna start by talking. I need information about preternaturals passing through the region.” She wasn’t going to tell Tormid about the valkyrie-feather death. The fewer people who knew details, the easier it’d be to find the perpetrators.

  “Nissa killed Achlys,” Tormid said. “I’ve been working with you only to make sure that Nissa dies too.”