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

  She used to go to the beach with her mom and sister. The three of them had seldom gotten along, but beach weekends had been the exception. Long Beach, Atlantic City, Cabo San Lucas. Something about the air and the waves and the sand had been transformative for them. Dana had slathered herself in sunblock to tan alongside her beautiful sister and known actual happiness.

  That was what Dana thought about in that first gasp of sunlight, in the instant before she began to blister. Before she had enough time to register the pain.

  She remembered the beach.

  Dana hurled Nissa into the sunlight.

  If the other vampire had ashed immediately, Dana would have felt like the biggest fool on the planet. A McIntyre, the latest generation of the best hunters known to man, and she’d let a blood-drinker survive for weeks past her expiration date.

  But when Nissa rolled to the pavement, she blistered.

  She screamed. She smoked. And she blistered.

  Still a blood virgin.

  Dana glimpsed movement underneath her, somehow. It came through the red haze of pain. Her instincts registered that predators were on her tail and that staying in the shadowy sewers was more dangerous than exposing herself to daylight.

  She leaped outside into the sun.

  14

  Las Vegas during the daytime was a busy place. Some attractions were only open when the sun was out, and families brave enough to travel in the area were likelier to take their children out when they knew there were no vampires.

  That was why Dana and Nissa were safe on the street. Tormid had been privy to all of Achlys’s encounters with the cops; he knew how tenuous the situation between preternaturals and law enforcement was.

  As soon as the vampires had witnesses, they were safe.

  Relatively speaking.

  It turned out that there were clouds. But it also turned out that clouds provided basically zero protection from UV rays. The sun peeked through the gaps and broiled Dana like a chicken at a barbecue.

  Even when Nissa dragged Dana’s thrashing body into the shelter of a Fremont Street casino’s shadow, the secondhand sunlight was still enough to develop more blisters. They were gross, those blisters. They seemed to inflate with hot air like balloons. Some of the bigger ones started popping, and the raw skin underneath sizzled.

  Needless to say, the tourists scattered.

  “Help! Fucking help!” Dana shouted.

  “I’ll call the police,” said a nearby man, breathless with shock. He was standing in full daylight. His eyes were brown. Probably a human. He didn’t realize that Dana wasn’t asking for help from officials.

  The Hunting Club was omnipresent. They couldn’t get into all Paradisos systems, nor could they legally infiltrate surveillance owned by others, but they had their ways of seeing things anyway. Brianna had webbed spells over the city years earlier. There was little that the Hunting Club was unaware of, so long as it happened on the surface of Las Vegas.

  It wasn’t the Hunting Club that responded to Dana’s cries, though.

  Stone smashed into asphalt. Clawed feet dug trenches into the road.

  A gargoyle had landed. Judging by the heavily scarred flesh, Dana knew it was Dale Junior.

  Even though Nissa was red and burned half to death—just like Dana—she still had the presence of mind to scream at the sight of the gargoyle.

  She also had the presence of mind to go limp when Dana said, “Let him take you!”

  They flew to Holy Nights Cathedral tucked against the chest of the gargoyle, a creature big enough to carry both of them mashed together in an ungainly mix of blistered limbs.

  Dale Junior slammed into the belfry of Holy Nights Cathedral. He clambered through the window, jumped onto the roosting bars, and then tore down the stairs with barely a pause.

  They didn’t see any of the triadist monks on the way down. Maybe they were sleeping, or praying, or gods only knew what else. Or maybe Dana just didn’t see them because she was smoldering even once she escaped daylight.

  “The spring!” she gasped.

  Dale Junior crashed through the catacombs and stopped dead in the room with the holy water. His arms opened. Dana and Nissa hit the floor.

  Nissa was writhing, mindless in pain. Dana was all blistered, but Nissa’s blisters had already sloughed off to expose muscle.

  Dana couldn’t help her. Not until she helped herself.

  By fingernails and toes, she clawed to the edge of the spring, hauling herself up on the stone wall that prevented the edge nearest the door from overflowing. She plunged into the water.

  It was colder than before—so much colder. Dana went from reflecting on sentimental memories of getting tanned on the beach to remembering that old movie with the Titanic, and the iceberg, and the young couple freezing to death.

  Freezing to death was basically exactly what it felt like.

  It was the sweetest pain. It hurt so much, but Dana never wanted it to end. She wanted to roll in it even as she wanted to run the fuck away. It bowed her spine and curled her toes and made her clench her teeth and scream so that bubbles erupted on the surface of the spring.

  She reached her limit within moments that could have been hours.

  Dana burst from the water. Her body slapped wetly against the shore.

  The moment that she emerged, the pain ended. No cold, no blistering, no burning. She spread her hands on the stone in front of her eyes and they looked…normal. The new gray, bloodless normal, unmarked by blisters.

  She was forgiven. Healed.

  “Thank you, you fucking asshole gods,” she groaned.

  And then she scrambled over to Nissa and tossed her into the spring as well.

  Needless to say, Nissa didn’t take it well.

  Her reaction to the holy water was like tossing a bucket of kittens into the shower. There was so much thrashing and yowling that Dana couldn’t make out what was going on.

  After a few minutes, Nissa flopped out of the water, the same way that Dana had…and she was whole.

  Dale Junior was still standing in the doorway. He was no longer explosive with movement. He looked like the statue he should have been, like he had never once shifted from his position and never would in the future. He watched Dana propping Nissa against the wall with passive expressionlessness.

  “Look at me,” Dana said, slapping Nissa’s cheeks, not gently. “Look at me!”

  Nissa’s colorless eyes focused. “Dana?”

  “Good.” Dana sat back with an exhale that she didn’t need to give.

  “What is that?” Nissa asked, lifting her elbow to look at her dripping sleeve. “The water…I’ve never seen anything like it.”

  “This is Holy Nights Cathedral. That’s holy water. One of the monks showed me that it can heal blood virgins from daylight burns.” Dana shot Nissa a serious look, with a set jaw and low brow. “As far as I know, it only heals blood virgins.”

  Nissa laughed. And then she laughed again, letting her face fall into her hands. “That’s convenient.”

  “Is it convenient if it’s the gods’ design?”

  “I don’t believe in them.”

  Dana shut her mouth, folded her arms. She wasn’t going to proselytize. She knew the truth. Nissa didn’t have to accept it. “Do you believe when Tormid said that the Paradisos were buying silver?”

  “He could be lying,” Nissa said.

  “But do you believe him?”

  After a moment, Nissa nodded. “I don’t know anyone but vampires who would buy silver around here. Still…just because it’s a Paradisos vamp doesn’t mean that it was ordered by Mohinder.”

  Dana snorted. “Right.” Because Mohinder was Nissa’s angel of mercy.

  “It makes sense that Tormid would steal silver from whoever was trying to buy it.” She folded her arms around herself, resting her chin on her knees. Nissa was shaking too. It was hard to tell if that was because she was still healing or if she was getting anxious again. Maybe both. “He has a shifter pack
that can only be killed by silver, so it’s rational to want to control the supply. Very smart. If there were a substance that could kill me, I’d want to control all of its supply too.”

  “Just wanna point out that wood kills vampires,” Dana said. “How many arboretums do you own?”

  Nissa laughed weakly.

  “I still need to get into your system,” Dana went on. “I need to figure out who is buying these illegal metals. And you seriously need to prepare yourself for the fact that it’s probably Mohinder.”

  “But he—”

  “Stop.”

  Nissa shut her mouth. Her head dropped to her knees. “I’ll let you into the system, of course. And I’ll do you one better. I’ll confront Mohinder about all these metals. He’ll prove that you’re wrong about him.”

  “Don’t,” Dana said. “If Mohinder’s behind this, he’ll kill you for catching him.”

  “He’s my sire,” Nissa said softly.

  This conversation was an exercise in relentless frustration. Dana huffed. “Whatever a vampire—not necessarily Mohinder—wants with the silver, it’s outside my area of interest. I’ll have to tell the LVMPD what Tormid’s done. They’ll make good use of the silver if they can confiscate it.”

  “Tormid will never allow that,” Nissa said.

  Dana shrugged. “I don’t know. He might. He’s good people.”

  “He would have tortured us to death!”

  “Sure.”

  “But he’s good people?”

  “We’re vampires,” Dana said, which should have been explanation enough. “And before I pissed him off, he was being helpful. Chances aren’t bad I’ll be able to get him on my side again with the right kind of apology. So yeah, good people.”

  “I don’t understand,” Nissa said.

  “You don’t gotta.” Shifters had never shown the propensity for blind violence that vampires did. They were also entirely under the control of the Alpha. Vamps and shifters were as comparable as vicious, sapient apples and oranges.

  “But…you saved me even though you find vampires irredeemable?” Nissa asked.

  “The gods saved us. To be specific, their holy water.”

  “Gods.”

  “Right,” Dana said. “Yeah. The gods, who I know for a fact do exist. They healed us because we’re not as bad as most vampires. We still have some potential for redemption as long as we repent.”

  The girl’s expression changed. “You kill vampires without guilt.”

  “They deserve it,” Dana said. Just to make sure Nissa understood her stance real fucking thoroughly.

  “Would you kill a human who deserved it?”

  Dana imagined a human who would deserve to die—an easy mental exercise to perform. “Yeah.”

  Nissa smiled. She had very straight, even teeth, although her canines were elongated. They weren’t identical to Achlys’s teeth. She’d clearly been sired by a different vampire than Dana had been. “Do you think that vampires deserve to die by design? Even if they don’t kill?”

  Dana didn’t have to think about that one. “All vampires kill eventually. You’d do it someday. I would too. We’re too dangerous to be allowed to survive.”

  “We all deserve to die,” Nissa said so softly. Her hand came up like she was going to touch Dana’s shoulder.

  Then it fell.

  “Like I said before we talked in circles about the ethics of killing dead people, we have a chance at redemption,” Dana said. “My people are working on Harold Hopkins’s cure. We might still have a chance to be human again. But if we fuck it up, if we kill people…”

  “Would it be that bad?” Nissa ran her hands through her curls, fluffing them up. She seemed to savor the feeling of smooth skin against her fingertips. Her eyes were filled with awe when she touched her cheeks. “Being vampires together, like this? As we are now?”

  Dana stared at her blankly.

  The answer felt so stupidly obvious that she didn’t want to bother saying it.

  Nissa missed the implications of Dana’s glare. She kept going, digging her grave a few centimeters deeper. “It was good today, working together,” Nissa said. “And when we fought the draugr. We’re stronger than humans. We’re faster. There is so much that we could accomplish as a team of preternatural undead.”

  “Do you think vampires are better than humans?” Dana’s hand crept toward her belt, where she often carried a wooden stake.

  Nissa said, “Some of them.”

  Dana didn’t have a stake on her.

  “I think people should be judged on individual merits rather than by species,” Nissa said. “I won’t color all shifters as psychopaths just because Tormid would have me killed.”

  And Dana let her hand fall from her belt. “You sound like my wife.”

  “You have a wife?”

  “Ex,” Dana said. “We’re separated. In the middle of our divorce.” Somehow, saying the d-word hurt worse than Las Vegas sunlight.

  Nissa smiled at that same word that burned Dana so badly. “I don’t intend to say that any group of people are good or bad. Vampires, humans… I’m nothing like any vampire I’ve ever met. You are nothing like any human I’ve ever met.”

  “I’m not human anymore.” Saying those words hurt too.

  “You’re not like any vampire either,” Nissa conceded. “We could be amazing together.”

  “No,” Dana said. “There is nothing amazing about vampires. Nothing.”

  She stood up. She walked out of the room.

  When Dana passed by Dale Junior, she said, “Get Nissa out of here.”

  She headed upstairs and didn’t look back.

  If anyone had been at the Hunting Club during the daytime, they probably would have been surprised to see Dana rushing into work with a blanket tossed over her head. But nobody was there—not even Chris the receptionist. Their earliest shifts began at three thirty in the afternoon, and it was morning.

  When Dana hit the emergency button to call folks in, she got company fast.

  “What in the world are you doing here?” Brianna had arrived clad in adult-sized footie pajamas with her hair in a Scrunchie and carrying the antique medical case that matched Edie’s.

  “We need a plan to kill Mohinder,” Dana said.

  And that was the sentence that got Anthony in the office a few minutes later, followed shortly by a disgruntled-looking Penny.

  “Look at this thing,” Dana said, pressing the center button on the remote control. The projector splashed a picture on the wall.

  “That’s a map,” Brianna said. “Looks like you took a screenshot off the internet. Nice.”

  “This map implicates Mohinder in multiple murders and the import of illegal substances into Las Vegas. Gaslight Corp is the key. This is their logo.” Dana switched to another slide, which showed the campfire-in-box image.

  “So you’re saying that Gaslight Corp tried to kill us in the mines,” Anthony said. “But how’d you connect that logo to them? They don’t have any trademarks, patents, internet presence—nothing that shows the logo.”

  “I’ll get to that. Take it for granted right now.” She pointed at the logo. “This is Gaslight Corp, they want us dead, and they can afford unobtainium. How?”

  “It’s unrefined.” Penny was curled up in a chair, feet tucked underneath her, bunny slippers on the ground beneath her chair. “Unrefined unobtainium costs a fraction of the refined stuff.”

  “A fraction of billions is still millions, bare minimum,” Dana said.

  “Anyone can have millions with generous relatives. You have millions.”

  “Yeah, and I’m not spending it on a few grains of some expensive chemical with limited commercial use. It’s not trivial to get any type of unobtainium unless you’re a massive company with massive funds at your disposal. So I dug into Gaslight Corp the moment I rolled into work this morning.”

  “How did you do that, exactly?” Anthony asked.

  “On a computer.”

  �
��No, rolling into work in the morning. It’s a bright-ass day, McIntyre. And you’re still dead.”

  Dana shrugged. It was amazing how much ground a vampire could cover when the aforementioned vampire was willing to suffer a few blisters, and when she had a whole Fiji bottle’s worth of holy water. “I was already awake. Wanted to get stuff done.”

  “Awake because you were abducted from a job Dionne failed to properly supervise last night, I see,” Anthony said, scrolling through Hunting Lodge records.

  “Don’t blame Dionne. I told her she could leave because it looked like nothing was going to happen.”

  “I’m fully capable of blaming both of you. She fucked up, but she doesn’t know better. She’s new. You? You’re not new, and you know that you don’t let your backup off until you’re out of the field.”

  “She was sleepy,” Dana said.

  “Is her need for sleep more important than your life?”

  She spread her hands wide. “What life? I’m fucking dead. Anyway, Dionne’s slip means I was abducted by Tormid’s pack, and that’s good. It meant I got a special view of the sewer system. That’s how I discovered that Gaslight Corp has recently installed machinery underneath the Strip, how I discovered their weird logo, and how I knew to research the equipment’s location on a map.”

  She pushed another button on the remote control. It zoomed in on the map to focus on the block where Dana had emerged from the sewers.

  “I found water pumps labeled with Gaslight Corp’s logo underneath the city. Right…here.” She used a laser pointer to draw a line from the manhole to the pumps. “It was hard to pin down where I saw the tanks, but I’m pretty sure it’s over here. Right under the Experience.”

  Brianna grinned crazily at Dana. “Oh my gosh, it’s all so clear. I now see how this leads to us trying to assassinate a mayoral candidate, which is such a low-profile maneuver guaranteed not to get our license revoked.”

  “The Experience is owned by Jain and Associates,” Dana said. “Jain and Associates is a shell company. Track it back through the web and you’ll find that it’s got the same shareholders as Judex. Who runs Judex? Mohinder.”