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

by SM Reine

The car paused, disengaging from its track to let people get off. Nissa couldn’t seem to figure out how to cross over the centimeters-wide gap. She was so wobbly.

  Dana grabbed her elbow, pulling her across. It was the kind of thing she reflexively did with Penny when they hit on some point of anxiety for the orc. Penny was a brave woman, a smart woman, but she did things in her time. Dana’s impatience meant she pulled her wife around a lot. And she grabbed Nissa just like that, too.

  When they got onto the dock, Nissa didn’t pull away. Her eyes were fixed on Dana’s fingers resting upon her arm.

  Touching another vampire was weird. Neither of them had a temperature so Nissa felt normal to her. Not like they were both dead—but more like they were both alive.

  Dana let go.

  In the half-hour since they’d boarded the Big Blind, it had started raining. It was barely a drizzle. Enough that the smell of damp sagebrush floated on the wind, but not enough for Dana to need an umbrella. Good thing too. She didn’t own a single umbrella.

  She watched the Gergich Room empty out. It looked like it would have been safe for them to have stayed in there; literally everybody stepped off, including the most obnoxious of the drunks, who were looking for somewhere new to be irritating.

  Nobody carried bags, boxes, or anything else that could contain any quantity of metals.

  “I need to figure out what I missed tonight,” Dana said as the car breezed back into motion behind them.

  Nissa looked at Dana blankly. The scrolling neon lights lit her pallid flesh like one of the ghostly advertisements the Strip. Briefly, her skin was luminous green. Her big colorless irises absorbed most of the light like they were brown. The only thing she was missing were tusks sticking out over her upper lip.

  Someone had seen this girl walking around on Fremont Street and thought, I should torture her over the span of weeks and then murder her brutally.

  Gods, Dana missed Penny.

  “Where do we go from here?” Nissa asked.

  Dana didn’t like how easily Nissa referred to them as a team, with that stupid “we” word, but the truth was that she did need Nissa. More specifically, she needed a peek at the Paradisos’s calendar. See if there was anything happening concurrently that Mohinder wanted to trick Dana into missing because she was trying to hunt down iron. “I want to see your murder’s schedule.”

  “We can go to my office,” Nissa said.

  “It’s a start,” Dana said. And once she had what she needed, she could give Nissa the slip to search Judex for valkyrie feather swords. A murder weapon. Something that would provide enough evidence for Dana to get a warrant for Mohinder’s skull.

  She might have said something else—something about how she wanted access to the rest of the Paradisos’s computer system from the inside too—but she caught sight of a couple men at the top of the escalator. Two broad-shouldered, golden-eyed men. They had a rolling suitcase between them. And they’d just gotten off of the car that had come before Dana’s.

  Dana cursed loudly. “We were in the wrong car!”

  She launched into motion, taking the escalator three steps at a time so she could catch up with the men before they vanished. She was still too late; when she reached the top, there was no sign of them.

  There was no sign of anyone else, either. There were no tourists. No bartenders.

  It was an empty room aside from the enormous raven perched on the bar itself.

  He had talons like silver blades. They dug into the wooden bar top, splintering it. His wingspan was enormous, wide as a school bus, and his glistening eyes were an unsettling shade of gold that were too bright against the glossy charcoal of his feathers.

  Tormid.

  “Fuck,” Dana said.

  She’d found who was behind this purchase. And he had seen Dana with Nissa, which meant they were no longer tenuous allies.

  “Oh no,” said a tiny voice from behind Dana. Nissa had chased her up the escalator too.

  Dana tried to shove her downstairs. “Run!”

  But it was too late. The raven exploded into the air with a flurry of feathers, his leathery feet slammed into Dana, and she was unconscious before she hit the ground.

  13

  Dana woke up in a sewer. She was tied up like a piggy waiting to get roasted, ankles to hands, her cheek in runoff that was slimy with mildew. A body pressed alongside hers. Nissa was tied up too. Her eyes were still closed, so it looked unlikely that she was awake yet.

  Feet splashed in front of Dana. She twisted to track her gaze up the broad chest of Tormid, now in his human form. Shifters couldn’t keep their clothes when they bounced between forms, so he was naked.

  “Put on a fucking pair of pants,” Dana said. Opening her mouth let some of the filthy water down her throat. Good thing she was already dead, or she’d probably contract dysentery.

  Tormid kicked her in the face.

  She was dazed by it, but not as dazed as she would have been if she were still human. Dana wasn’t even hurting by the time he bent down to flip her over, fists gripping her by the shirt.

  Tormid lifted her effortlessly, even though Dana wasn’t a small lady and she was too hogtied to help. He kept lifting until her eyes were level with his.

  “You fucking asshole,” he said matter-of-factly.

  “That’s not nice,” Dana said. “I thought we were friends.”

  “Allies, yes. Friends, no. Now we’re neither.”

  He threw her.

  Dana hit somewhere by a boiler. Her skull bounced off metal.

  It took her a moment to realize that she heard hooting laughter throughout the sewer, seeing as how her head was ringing. The pack was watching. They liked seeing the most famous Hunting Club associate getting banged up.

  “You’re a sadistic bunch of shits and I’ll kill you all,” Dana said, hoping that she looked properly intimidating even though she felt like a calf at a rodeo.

  “You said you’d kill Nissa,” Tormid said.

  “And I meant it too. Turns out she’s useful to me.”

  Tormid grabbed Nissa by the ropes. She woke when he lifted her. She was shaking immediately, her frightened eyes gone wide. “Our alliance showed potential,” Tormid said to Dana. “Now I see how loyal you are.”

  “I’m not sorry. I can now connect you to the murders of two humans transporting iron through the area,” she said. “Makes me wonder how many people you’ve killed that I don’t know about.”

  “It was silver,” he said.

  “What?”

  “We intercepted silver,” Tormid said, “not iron. We caught vamps importing silver into the region. They were selling it to vampires on the Big Blind. Whatever other sales you’re talking about, whoever’s died over this shit—we had nothing to do with that. We don’t care about iron.”

  Dana rolled over so that she could stare at him, try to tell if he was lying. He looked sincere, but he was also hauling around Nissa like she was luggage, and it made him look kind of like a douchebag. “Silver,” she repeated.

  “That’s right. Silver.” Tormid shook Nissa hard enough that her head snapped on her shoulders, and she cried out. “Wanna tell me why the Paradisos tried to import silver?”

  “I don’t know anything about that!” Nissa’s voice was shrill, panicked.

  Dana twisted her wrists within the bindings. She’d been cinched tight by the shifters. Whoever did the knots must have been a Boy Scout because it was snug, too. But she’d been tied up a couple three times and knew exactly how to loosen the best knots. It helped that she had reduced physical sensation. When she pulled hard, she thought she could probably break her wrist and get out.

  “How long were you planning this?” Tormid asked, flinging Nissa to the floor. “Killing Achlys, collecting silver to kill my pack—”

  “I never planned to hurt you! Either of you!” Nissa’s face was all screwed up like she wanted to cry, but there were no more tears in her body than there was blood.

  Dana twisted
her wrists again.

  “I know for a fact that you ordered this silver,” Tormid said. “I still have access to the Paradisos’ system. I saw your emails with Syzdek. I saw when you asked how much silver he could deliver, and how quickly!”

  “I never sent emails like that. I don’t hurt people—you know that!”

  Tormid stepped a foot on her chest. His wrist flicked, and a switchblade appeared in his hand. The handle was sharpened to a stake. “Achlys only ever wanted to save you, and yet you poisoned her at the first opportunity.”

  Nissa’s eyes squeezed shut. “She killed people, Tormid. Humans. She killed them all the time.”

  “She was a vampire, and those people wronged her. She. Loved. You.”

  “If I hadn’t killed Achlys, she’d have killed Dana!” Nissa said. Dana wished that Nissa hadn’t chosen that moment to say her name; she’d been getting close to wiggling the knot free. Tormid swung around to glare at her and Dana had to freeze so he wouldn’t see her attempts to escape. “That doesn’t mean I have anything to do with the silver or the iron. I have no idea what’s going on.”

  “If that’s the story you’re going to stick with, then I don’t need you around anymore,” Tormid said, returning his attention to Nissa.

  His switchblade flashed.

  Nissa cried out.

  Tormid’s shifting weight prevented Dana from seeing the moment that the blade cut into Nissa’s face. It was as though another mouth had simply opened on the side of her head, running from temple to jaw, except that the lips had no color and there was skull instead of a tongue inside.

  Another flash of knife, and Nissa’s shirt was ripped down the shoulder, across the breast.

  Enough of that.

  Dana yanked on her arms. Her wrist bone popped, then snapped.

  She was free.

  One of the pack members lurking on the edges of Tormid’s boiler room saw it happen. He shouted, “Fuck! She’s free!” That was the last thing he got out because then Dana was on his back, using the ropes as a garrote, squeezing so tightly that he couldn’t breathe.

  Shifters were the opposite of vampires in many ways. They were sturdy, strong, damn near impossible to kill. It took a blow from silver to finish them off. But shifters were also living entities, in need of things like food and water and air. Dana couldn’t overpower the shifter. She didn’t have silver either. But she could deprive him of something he needed for consciousness.

  All she had to do was hold on tight, knees squeezing his ribcage, and ride him like a fucking bronco.

  Dana was done being a calf. Now she was the cowboy.

  The shifter woulda passed out in time. But Dana didn’t get time. Another shifter grabbed her, slammed her into the wall. She delivered a high kick right to his face.

  As a vampire, Dana had the raw strength to break his spine with the blow. It was rewarding to see his head turn a little too far to the right. Even more rewarding to watch his body collapse.

  A lot less rewarding to feel a surge of thirst.

  The shifter was prone. Easy prey.

  Dana could drink him dry before his spine healed enough to fight back.

  Tormid swung around to attack Dana, offering suitable distraction for her shameful cravings. He was blisteringly fast. Not fast enough, though. She grabbed his wrist, pushing it aside so that the switchblade missed her gut by centimeters.

  Dana bent his elbow backwards over a pipe. The force of it made the metal snap. Steam gushed into the sewers. It hit Tormid in the face, and he reeled back with a cry of pain.

  He dropped the switchblade.

  She threw herself underneath the steam, rolling to Nissa’s side and sweeping the knife off the floor on the way. The blade went through Nissa’s ropes like they were no more than a strand of hair.

  “Move, Nissa!”

  Dana shoved her out the end of the room. The shifters were regrouping to leap over the protective jet of steam, so they only had moments to escape.

  Nissa vanished in a blur of movement. It was so fast that even Dana was shocked.

  “Move a little slower!” Dana growled. Damn it, she couldn’t keep up with someone who’d been a vampire for years! She’d spent all that time with Lincoln trying to unlock vampire powers to no avail, and the only conclusion she could reach was that she had no powers.

  By the time Dana reached the turn in the hallway, Nissa was a blur vanishing around the corner too.

  Fuck. Fuckety fuck-fuck.

  The first of the shifters managed to leap over the steam. He burned his shin and staggered.

  Dana’s opportunity was gone.

  Whether or not she could run fast, she needed to if she wanted to survive.

  Move, dammit! Move!

  She cast aside her self-hatred, the vamp-hatred, everything. She embraced the urge to survive. To keep moving even though she was undead. To use vampire powers for good instead of evil.

  And the world slowed down.

  Dana glanced over her shoulder. The billows of steam were floating gracefully instead of blasting. Werewolves lifted their knees and spread their arms out as they leaped, and their open shirts flapped behind them like capes, hair ruffling slowly.

  While the world moved at the speed of smell, Dana moved normally. Faster, in fact. Before the shifters hit the ground, she was already around the corner, down the sewer tunnel. Nissa was only a few meters ahead.

  Normal time struck as abruptly as though her ears popped and hearing returned. She stumbled into a wall, tripping over her feet. Nissa steadied her.

  “How?” Dana gasped out. She didn’t feel out of breath, exactly. But she felt…drained.

  “We can only do it for short bursts,” she said. “We’ll talk later. They won’t take long to catch up.”

  Nissa hauled Dana around another corner. There was more machinery here, not far from the boiler room where Tormid’s pack liked to meet, but these looked more like filtered water tanks. Dana wouldn’t have even looked twice at them if walking nearby hadn’t made the gemstone on her thumb ring light up.

  Dana stopped mid-step. She stared at the pumps.

  They were brand new, without a hint of rust. The screws were bright and the caulking was fresh. There wasn’t a single crack in any of the rubber rings.

  Someone had just installed these pumps.

  “Why’d you stop?” Nissa asked.

  “My ring detects magic,” Dana said.

  “So?”

  “These tanks are enchanted,” she said.

  And when she leaned closer, she saw that the labels had a familiar logo on them. It was the same campfire-in-a-jar logo that had been on the gas tanks outside the mine where Anthony almost died. Except that this logo was accompanied by the name of a company.

  Gaslight Corp.

  That was the company that Hardwick Research claimed might have cheap unobtainium.

  What are they doing with enchanted machinery underneath Las Vegas?

  Dana stared up at the arching cement ceiling overhead. It was impossible to tell what casino they were underneath. Sewers ran under the entire Strip, and Tormid had dragged her there while unconscious, so she had no orientation to location.

  Gaslight Corp seemed likely to own major property in Paradise.

  Dana was certain that it was all connected, and equally certain that she would have known why if she’d had the space to think about it for six seconds. But right now, she could hear the movements of the pack echoing up the sewer, and she knew they were close, and she didn’t have six heartbeats much less six seconds to think about anything but survival.

  She raced past the pumps, her thumb ring blazing like a beacon in the shadowy sewers.

  “Come on!” she roared to Nissa. “We’ve gotta go fast!”

  Faster than shifters.

  It wasn’t possible.

  But Dana managed to summon another blast of strength. She grabbed Nissa by the wrist and she ran like she’d never once run as a human.

  The blinking of her
thumb ring slowed. Light and shadow played over the walls with the grace of leaves ruffled in wind. Her feet fell into the puddles, and they splashed slowly, glittering grime-diamonds splattering to the concrete.

  The running shifters behind them rounded the corner, and Dana saw muscles flex, release, twist. Faces contorted. Raven wings flapped. Tormid had shapeshifted, and he was fixing to kill the escaping vampires.

  Dana couldn’t outrun him for long.

  She needed to take this fight public.

  In the slow-blink of her ring, a ladder against the wall was illuminated. It led to a manhole.

  Dana climbed the ladder as swiftly as she had been running. Stranger still, she had no trouble hauling Nissa behind her. The girl was light enough that Dana probably could have done it before she’d become a vampire, but now she needed no help. Nissa didn’t even need to get her footing on the rungs.

  She hesitated with a hand on the manhole. It was warm. That meant it was daytime. If Dana opened it, she’d be awash in UV…unless the rainstorm from the night before had lingered. A thick layer of clouds might protect her.

  Dana shoved the manhole cover an inch.

  Daylight spilled onto the ladder and Dana’s knuckles. Blisters lifted like mountains, searing her to the core. “No!” Nissa cried.

  Dana jerked her hand out with a hiss.

  She couldn’t see the shifters now, but she could still hear them. They were coming.

  And their only escape was through daylight.

  “We can do it,” Dana said. “Blood virgins blister, but don’t catch fire. We just have to run. Can you do it?”

  Nissa clutched the ladder now, gazing at Dana in horror.

  Dana’s heart would have skipped a beat if it had still been functioning. “You’re still a blood virgin, right?”

  Every one of her feelings about Nissa was based upon the assumption that she was like Dana. Someone who hadn’t been drinking human blood. Someone who was still redeemable in the eyes of the gods.

  If she wasn’t…

  Damn.

  But Nissa said, “I can do it.”

  There was no more time for self-doubt. Dana shoved the manhole cover hard, flipping it off of the hole. Her face was bathed in sunlight. Pure, shiny daylight, which Dana used to enjoy.