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

  Anyway, it hadn’t ended well. Lucinde had kept in touch with Dana afterward because, as Lucinde said, “I got custody of all our cool friends in the split.” When Dana’s contacts had told her whom Penny had hired for representation, there was only one divorce lawyer Dana wanted to deal with.

  Petty? Maybe. But Mala still looked like she could smell dog shit on Dana’s corset and it was hilarious.

  “The mediator’s time is limited, so let’s get started,” Mala said stiffly.

  They had reserved a large meeting room—large enough for much of Dana and Penny’s remaining joint assets. Most of it was armor and weapons. They’d managed to separate out their books without a mediator, but by the end of that argument, Dana and Penny hadn’t been able to bring themselves to agree on the color of the sky, much less how to split equipment.

  Hence the mediator, who was now standing in the midst of tables scattered with enchanted armor and looking really uncomfortable.

  “Hello,” he said, shaking hands with the new arrivals. His lidded eyes said that he wasn’t used to being awake this late. Dana wondered if vampire/orc divorce was new to him.

  “You must be the mediator, Mark Antic,” Mala said. “Thank you for coming here so late.”

  “Late? It’s practically the butt-crack of dawn for the night dwellers,” Lucinde said. She wasn’t normally quite that vulgar, but she seemed to be enjoying Mala’s reaction as much as Dana was.

  “Right,” Mark said slowly. “Well, let’s get to work on this. We agreed in advance that each party would deliver a prioritized list of their preferred division of assets, so let me take a look.”

  Lucinde and Mala both handed him papers. Dana’s demands were on one sheet; Penny’s took a whole binder.

  “This is so unnecessary,” Penny grumbled, taking a chair between tables.

  “That’s right, it is,” Dana said. “This should be real easy.”

  Mark Antic blinked down at the lists like he didn’t understand them.

  “Problem?” Dana asked.

  “Is this the page you intended to give me, Miss Ramirez?” He turned it around to show them. Dana’s list of demands was one word: “Everything.”

  “That’s what we meant to turn in. Basically we think you can’t have shit,” Lucinde said cheerfully.

  “Miss Ramirez!” The mediator looked even more shocked by the curse than by the simple page of demands. Apparently he didn’t spend much time with interesting people. Too many Malas, not enough Lucindes.

  “I didn’t have time to make an actual list.” Dana shrugged. “That’s what you’re here for, right? Mediation? Get to the mediating.”

  “We only have an hour,” he said, “and over a hundred items in contention.”

  Penny pushed her sleeves above her elbows. If Dana wasn’t mistaken, she thought that her soon-to-be ex was trying not to smile. She always thought it was funny when Dana was a jackass. It was one of many reasons Dana had hoped she would spend the rest of her life with this woman.

  “Why don’t we just get through this as fast as possible?” Penny asked. “So I’m thinking…” She shuffled a few things around on the tables, dividing weapons from armor. “The weapons I made for you should be yours. Given all the time that I put into them, you have to relinquish something in exchange.”

  Dana folded her arms. “What else do you think I ‘should’ get?”

  “Wardbreaker, specifically. Wardbreaker is definitely yours. I finished it.” Dana patted a large case on the table. It was longer than it was wide, and its locks made Dana’s thumb ring glow. “No exchange for this one, since it’s extra special.”

  Extra special was right. Dana itched to open the protective case. Penny had been working on Wardbreaker for months to get it just right—blessed swords were not easy to make—and knowing that she was about to get it gave Dana that Christmas feeling. Except that she was going to get this one at the cost of her wife.

  “Have you added up the total value?” Dana asked.

  Mala checked a ledger. “Market value comes out close enough to two million dollars that it’s not worth getting more specific.”

  The poor mediator looked baffled by the conversation at hand.

  “I’m not paying you two million dollars,” Dana said. “Plus, when I asked you for all this shit the other night, you told me to go stuff myself like a Thanksgiving turkey.”

  “Those weren’t the exact words I used,” Penny said, blushing adorably. “Since then, Mala helped me realize how much I have at stake. I’m still not willing to give these to you for free—”

  “Even though they already fucking belong to me,” Dana said.

  “All assets in a marriage are joint assets unless otherwise specified,” Mala said, taking a seat with her briefcase to write down notes.

  “Pretty sure it was specified when Penny was like, ‘Here, this shit’s for you,’” Lucinde said.

  “I never said that either,” Penny said. “What I’m getting at is that, considering the value of the assets I put into this marriage…” She took a deep breath and steeled herself. “I should get the penthouse, and Dana gets the entire contents of the armory.”

  So everything hadn’t been brought down to the courthouse to be sorted between them. This was the equivalent of Penny showing up with a shoebox of things that Dana had left behind in the bathroom.

  “I want it in writing,” Dana said. “Every single item inventoried and marked as mine. I want you to sign saying all of them belong to me.”

  “In exchange for the penthouse?” Penny asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “Great.” She gestured to Mala, who gave a long-suffering glance at the many items that would need to be inventoried.

  “I’ll have my assistant take care of this tomorrow,” Mala said.

  “Sorry, can’t do,” Dana said. “I need everything right now. I could be dead tomorrow, you know.”

  “If you’re dead, then it all belongs to Penny anyway.”

  “I know. That’s why it needs to happen right now. So it can be passed to my preferred next of kin.”

  Penny looked horrified. “Do you think that I’d keep stuff you want your sister to have? I would never.”

  “Please. Marion wouldn’t even want it.” Dana said. Her sister Marion was a half-angel mage who could create anything she wanted out of nothing. “But we’ve gotta get shit in order if you really want to be divorced before I’m dead. So hurry up. My undeath is wasting.”

  The others got up to work on things, but Penny took Dana aside.

  “This is a grudge, isn’t it?” Penny whispered. “You’re just angry at me for trying to protect myself.”

  “Protect yourself? How the hell does divorcing me before I die protect you?”

  “Because you don’t have to die, Dana! You could just drink blood, finish the transformation, and stay a vampire. It’s not that bad. You’ll even be able to do a lot of the work you’ve always done.”

  “I’m never drinking human blood,” Dana said. “Human or orc or anything.”

  Penny’s fists clenched. It really made the muscles in her forearms pop out, which was why she was so sexy when she got angry. “It’s been weeks since Achlys got you. You’re insisting that you’re going to kill yourself, but here you are, still alive.”

  “Undead,” she corrected.

  “It makes me think that you don’t have a problem being a vampire,” Penny said without missing a beat. “You just don’t want to spend your life with me anymore.”

  That accusation was more offensive than anything else Penny had said in the heat of divorce. She could have called Dana a thousand wretched names without inflicting so much pain.

  But the idea that Dana didn’t love Penny enough…

  Dana had to step back and take a few deep breaths to calm herself. It didn’t seem to help. Nothing settled a vampire’s dead nerves. “First of all, I would never ask you to wake up next to a vampire every night after what happened to you,” Dana hissed out from
between her teeth.

  “You’re not like the Fremont Slasher.”

  “Secondly, my mission’s not done. I haven’t dismantled the Paradisos.”

  “Are you even trying?” Penny asked. “You were at RKO Pantages with a former lieutenant of Achlys’s last night. It didn’t look like you were trying to stop her.”

  “You were spying on me?”

  “People saw you around, and they talked about it. You’re not the only one with connections, Dana. I do know some of the people in our city too.” Penny shook her head, stepping back. “No, no, no. I can’t do this with you anymore. I can’t constantly doubt if you’re telling me the truth, and whether you’re really happy with me. I don’t think you have been for a long time.”

  How could Penny think that she was anything but a beam of sunshine radiating into the dark corners of Dana’s mind? Even now, standing in the same courthouse where they’d once gotten their marriage license, Dana felt happier than she had at any other point since Achlys bit her. Just because she was with Penny. Because even when they were fighting, life with Penny was better than life without.

  But Dana didn’t have a life anymore.

  “I was just going to give you the penthouse,” Dana said.

  Penny stopped edging away. “You were?”

  “I can’t keep it anyway. Too bright. And it’s not like I need to sell it for money.”

  “Then why fight with me over this? Do you want to make me this miserable?”

  “I just like hanging out with you,” Dana said.

  Penny’s brows met in the center, knitted with something that could have been sympathy or concern or heartache or gods only knew what else. “Dana,” she sighed.

  Dana never found out what else she was about to say. Mark Antic had started screaming. One of the items had flared up while they were trying to sort the inventory, and now his expensive suit had caught. Too many artificial fibers, probably.

  “I’ve got this!” Lucinde said cheerfully, wrenching the fire extinguisher off of the wall. “Hold still!”

  Mala was less cheerful. “Stop, drop, and roll!”

  Mark Antic decided to split their advice by dropping to the floor and continuing to scream. It was fine; rolling would only spread this magical fire anyway.

  “That was the breastplate, wasn’t it?” Penny asked.

  “Yep,” Dana said. “Probably should have warned them about that.”

  Lucinde blasted clouds of fire retardant on the mediator. He continued to burn.

  “That won’t work!” Penny cried.

  “Well, darn,” Lucinde said. She kept spraying anyway. She started to whistle a song from Hello, Dolly.

  Dana leaped across the room, swiped her hands across the locks protecting Wardbreaker, and whipped the new sword out. It was even more beautiful than Dana had ever imagined. It was a Carolingian-style sword made of metal folded into thick geometric lines. Aside from the solidness of its hilt, Wardbreaker had almost no mass. Yet its lines were chunky, its hilt broad, its blade as harsh and graceless as Dana could want.

  Dana stood over Mark Antic, lifted the sword above her head, and swung.

  Mala had enough time to shrill, “What are you doing?”

  And then the blade sliced right through the mediator.

  More specifically, it sliced through the magic drenching him. The blade was incorporeal despite its solid appearance, so it couldn’t cut flesh.

  Dana twisted the sword within Mark.

  The flame vanished.

  The mediator scrambled away from her, giving a strangled cry as though he were still burning. “Augh!”

  “Chill,” Dana said, tugging the sword free. Its magical blade now burned with the fire spell she’d shattered. “You’re okay.”

  The mediator patted himself down, gazing in horror at his ruined suit. His skin was caked in soot and his hair curled at the ends where it had burned, but he didn’t look injured.

  “That was witchfire made specifically for killing vampires who attack the breastplate’s wearer,” Penny said. “It shouldn’t have burned your suit. The spells must be acting funny as they get old.” She turned the breastplate gently over in her hands, peering closely at the place where the leather straps were bolted to the metal. “I’ll set it aside for Marion to look at it next time she visits.” Dana’s sister enchanted all of her armor.

  Mark scrambled to his feet. He gawked between the four of them, announced, “You’re all insane,” and ran out the doors.

  “Another mediator down,” Lucinde sighed. “At this rate nobody in Vegas will want to work with me.”

  Mala glared, arms folded over her chest. “I can’t imagine why.”

  “I’ll just have all this moved to my new place,” Dana said, waving at the tables of crap. “Penthouse is yours, Penny. Hope you do something fun with the space I vacated. You can find someone who loves you the way you want to be loved, since apparently giving my entire fucking soul to you wasn’t enough.” Her phone rang, and she pulled it out of her pocket. It was Charmaine Villanueva’s work number. “Night, ladies.”

  “We’re not done here!” Mala yelled after her, but Dana was already out the doors.

  Annoying Penny by dragging out divorce proceedings was fun, but it still came second to Dana’s real work. Which was taking down the Paradisos and protecting Vegas from its vampire population.

  Dana answered her phone. “McIntyre.”

  “We’ve got another murder scene,” Charmaine said. “You busy?”

  She glanced over her shoulder. Penny was gazing at her through the glass courthouse doors, looking totally wrecked. “Nope. Not busy at all.”

  10

  Getting out to the murder scene was a longer drive than Dana would have liked. She had to fill up her pink-and-lime pickup at a gas station before she could make it out to the truck stop south of Vegas. By the time she got there, the whole parking lot was lit by blazing floodlights, and cops crawled over everything.

  Officer Jeffreys directed Dana to park near the tape, then let her inside.

  “It’s the same as last time,” he said, stroking his forefinger and thumb over his bushy mustache. “Lots of thin cuts. We’ll have to have the lab techs make sure, but I think it was another valkyrie feather.”

  “Bullshit,” she said.

  The heat in her voice made his eyes go round. “It looks the same. I swear it.”

  Dana waved him off. He didn’t know that the valkyrie blade had been locked up in the catacombs underneath the Holy Nights Cathedral. “All right. I hear you. When did this victim die?”

  “Coroner’s office estimates three hours,” Officer Jeffreys said.

  “Damn,” Dana said.

  “What?”

  She glanced around to find Charmaine doing that severe coyote grimace over by a floodlight. The body was covered in a sheet, but that didn’t seem to stop the chief from brooding over it. “I encountered draugr last night with a similar weapon. They’re gone. They couldn’t have killed this guy.”

  “Draugr? What are draugr?”

  “Fancy vampire breed,” she said, quickening her pace. Officer Jeffreys’s equipment jangled as he hurried to keep up with her. “More like ghosts than the bloodless you see around here.”

  “So they haunt people?” Officer Jeffreys asked, his face going as pale as though he was a ghost himself.

  “These ones didn’t. They wore tacky snakeskin, though. Much worse crime than haunting.”

  Charmaine had heard them talking. She turned on Dana, arms folded, a storm darkening her features. “Are you certain that these draugr aren’t responsible?”

  “Dead certain,” Dana said. “They were responsible for other murders, though. I’ve identified the victims. The draugr were killed by an accident totally unrelated to my direct action, so you should notify the victims’ families that justice has been served.” She handed the blood analysis to Charmaine. Dana had contemplated being more subtle about her tip-off, but fuck it. She was gonna be gone
soon anyway.

  The police chief studied her for a moment, face cut into hemispheres of shadow and harsh white-blue light. She was graying a little around the hairline. Developing jowls, too. Those were new since her promotion. The stress wasn’t doing her any favors, and Dana certainly wasn’t helping with that.

  Charmaine took a moment to read the lab results and victim profiles. Mixed emotions crawled over her face. It was always a mixed experience, confirming that missing people were dead. It offered closure to families, but that was about it. A bitter victory.

  The chief said, “Thanks.” She must have known Dana had killed the draugr, but she was going to let it go.

  They approached the body.

  “This is a trucker by the name of Carlitos Oborsky. Freelance. He’s the owner of those five drones.” Charmaine pointed at a row of parked semis. They were automated and driverless, but law said that they had to have a driver nearby in case of emergencies, so one had a spacious cab. “He was found dead two hours ago by another trucker. The scene was held for us exactly the way he found it.”

  Dana flicked the blanket aside. Carlitos Oborsky was a stringy man who looked like he’d have had fun stories to tell when he’d been alive. The thick eyebrows still looked like they were tilted in laughter, even now that he was dead.

  And boy, was the guy dead. He’d been gutted.

  Now that Dana had handled a valkyrie blade, she had no trouble matching its shape to the wounds. She’d cut similar wounds into the draugr and watched Nissa do the same. Dana only needed to kill once to know the curves of a weapon the way most people knew a lover’s body.

  There must have been two incredibly rare valkyrie blades around.

  “Did you check his inventory?” Dana asked, resting her elbows on her knees.

  “Nothing’s missing,” Charmaine said. “The trailers are full except for the one he was driving. That one is only eighty percent full.”

  “But its contents match his shipping ledgers?”