by SM Reine
16
Dana halfway expected to find that the LVMPD was waiting to arrest her at Achlys’s tower. If Charmaine wanted to use the law to shut Dana down, there were a million minor infractions over the years that would have given her enough cause. Hell, Charmaine could come up with reasons to arrest Dana from the last week alone.
When she rolled up in her hot-pink pickup, all she found was Anthony sitting against the wall of the parking garage. He wore a white tee and Chinos, which was his uniform for every single day of his life. Dana had seen his closet. He seriously didn’t have anything else.
Most of Anthony’s closet space was dedicated to his arsenal. And half of it was strapped to his body that night.
“Hey gorgeous.” Anthony tossed the hydraulic staking machine at Dana. Buffy was usually too heavy for Dana to consider carrying on long raids, but now it felt like hefting nothing.
She’d spent her day resting in a crypt while Brianna’s magic finished stitching her together. Dana felt good for a dead bitch. Not as good as she’d have felt with a couple pints of blood down the hatch, but decent. The strength seemed to suggest that her preternatural powers were starting to boot up.
Dana surveyed Anthony with her new eyes. The dimly lit parking garage looked brighter than it should have, so she could make out Anthony’s sweat stains and gray hairs popping out in his ten o’clock shadow. She especially saw the veins running underneath the surface of his throat. His heartbeat danced two inches under his left earlobe. Anthony’s living pulse looked much more palatable than an entire bathtub of Harold Hopkins’s chilled blood.
For the first time—for a very brief time—she thought about biting him.
It would have been hard not to think about it. Vampires couldn’t help but think about murdering mortals, just like anyone who went to a strip club would think about fucking. It wasn’t possible to have something that delicious paraded in front of you without contemplating what you’d do with it.
Dana didn’t care for strip clubs either.
“You look like shit,” she said, swinging Buffy around to rest at her back.
“I was about to say the same thing to you, Nosferatu.”
“I prefer Count Chocula. Are you the only person who came to back me up?”
“On the ground.” Anthony tapped his ear. “I’ve got Brianna back at the Hunting Lodge, casting shit all over the tower. And Penny’s hacked into their security.”
Now that was a surprise. Dana had expected to be persona non grata with her wife after abruptly exiting the forge.
He handed Dana an earpiece to match his, and she turned it on. “Hey guys,” Dana said into the mic as they strolled across the parking garage. She got a couple grunts of recognition from the ladies back home. “How’s our path looking?”
The response from Penny took a moment. “It’s…clear. Weirdly empty. Is that right?” She mumbled under her breath as she worked.
It was easy for Dana to imagine what Penny would look like. She would be curled up in the big wingback chair at the shared workstations at the Hunting Lodge, keyboard pulled across her thighs, tongue poking out of the corner of her mouth. The tongue was always fucking adorable. Bright pink against the darker green of her lips. Sometimes, if she were getting intense enough about her work, she’d wear the sweatband at the computer too.
“Oh my gosh, Brianna, look at this,” Penny said. “Do you see this security camera zone?”
“Huh. It doesn’t match anything on the casino’s published plans.” Brianna hummed quietly for a moment, and Dana heard her fingers tapping against the keyboard. “There’s a secret room in the basement of the tower. We might have found another daytime roost for the vampires.”
“You’ve got camera footage?” Dana asked, pressing the elevator button. It didn’t light up. It had no power.
“I’ll see what I can do. Just a second.”
Dana and Anthony headed to the opposite corner to take the stairs. They were only halfway there when she heard the gasps.
“It’s not a daytime roost,” Penny said. “It’s an…underground club? The sign inside says the Bunker. It doesn’t look public.”
Brianna’s voice got louder, like she was leaning toward her mic. “You guys, I have footage of humans held captive in chains. In a secret room in Achlys’s casino. You know what that means?”
She couldn’t have gotten Dana more excited if she’d claimed to have footage proving that there were aliens in Area 51.
“Send it to Charmaine,” Dana said. “I want a warrant to kill Achlys by the time my stake’s in her heart.”
“Already on it,” Brianna said.
Penny was typing too. “There’s only one vampire in the lobby. Your path to Achlys is as clear as you’re going to get it.”
“One vampire,” Anthony said. “Not too bad.”
“But why is it only one vampire?” Penny wondered.
“Don’t perform expensive orthodontics on horses who give you presents.”
“What if those gift horses have bombs in their mouths?”
“Then we’ll shoot them in the face,” Anthony said, drawing a second gun.
Dana kicked the door at the top of the stairs open, revealing the lobby for Achlys’s hotel on the other side. There were check-in desks along the rear wall. None of the computers were staffed, and nobody queued within the velvet rope. The fountains had been turned off too.
As Brianna had promised, one vampire stood in the lobby.
He was a tall guy. Looked kind of like an ancient emperor who’d been beaten in the nose with a rock. He had a face so calm that Dana knew, instantly, that he was a murderer.
“Mohinder,” Anthony said. Dana was surprised to connect the name of the politically ambitious vampire to this obvious psychopath standing in front of her. She’d have expected the Paradisos to pick out someone safer to run against Mayor Hekekia, not someone who’d make voters pee in fear.
The vampire lifted his gaze at the sound of his name. “Anthony Morales. Dana McIntyre.” Mohinder recognized the Hunting Club’s members. No shock there. If Hell froze over and let Mohinder become the first vampire mayor, they’d have to work closely with him.
Dana hefted Buffy. “Let us through.”
“Why?” he asked.
Well, shit. Let’s try honesty just for fun. “Achlys has a cure for vampirism and I’ve got a grudge. I’m going to kill her to get the cure.”
For a moment, nobody moved, nobody spoke.
Dana’s finger was the weight of a hair follicle away from getting Buffy pumping.
But then Mohinder stepped aside, sweeping his hand toward the elevator. “She’s on the topmost floor. A sidhe named Shawn Wyn has dismissed the security detail, so if you hurry, you might catch him before he destroys Achlys, Hopkins’s lab, and the cure.”
“Um, he’s not joking.” Penny’s tiny voice piped into Dana’s ear. “I rolled back the security footage, and…yeah. Building’s been cleared out.”
Like Anthony had said, there was no good reason for performing horse orthodontics, or something like that.
The path to the lab was clear. The fact that it was clear because of a coup didn’t matter. Just meant Dana had to get upstairs that much faster, and she wouldn’t have to fight more vampires on the way.
“Shawn doesn’t have authority to send away Achlys’s security,” Anthony said. “But you do.”
Mohinder’s face was blank.
Whatever became of that exchange, Dana didn’t care.
She’d heard Mohinder.
The path to the cure is clear.
I’m going, Penny.
“It’s embarrassing, you know,” Shawn said, jerking his magical blades out of Tormid’s body. The shifter hit the floor. “I literally got caught with my pants down by the Hunting Club.”
Achlys started to move with super-speed—a blur of motion toward Tormid.
Shawn flung out a hand. The floor heaved underneath their feet. Spiked blades slammed into the wall a cent
imeter in front of Achlys’s face, severing several locks of her wig. Fake hair tumbled to the floor.
Nissa didn’t try to move.
She watched. She waited.
Achlys was pissed off now that her pet had been slaughtered. Was Nissa going to get to see the scary side of the master vampire who’d conquered Las Vegas? Or would grief tear her down? Nissa couldn’t begin to imagine, and she couldn’t wait to see.
“You’re a whore, Nissa,” Shawn said. “That’s what you are.”
She frowned. “Really?” She’d died a virgin and was fine with that. Nissa hadn’t been eager to see how much lube it would take to get her corpse functional, and she wasn’t attracted to necrophiliacs, so her status hadn’t changed.
“I put myself out there for you,” he said. “I offered myself to you. And you turned me down, you whore!”
Everything clicked. He was really being literal about offering himself to her. He’d killed Harold Hopkins as some kind of seduction, hoping that Nissa would support him in his new sidhe court in Vegas. And the Hunting Club really had caught him with his pants down.
If she hadn’t been so wracked with anxiety, she’d have thought it was hilarious.
“Wouldn’t being a whore mean that I put out, not that I rejected you?” Nissa mused.
“Cut the attitude, bitch,” Shawn said. “We could be together. You don’t even realize how good you could have it. I mean, look at me!” He spread his arms wide, inviting her to look upon his body. He was very shiny.
She wanted nothing he had.
“You’ve called me a bitch and a whore in the last five minutes alone. That language isn’t going to change my mind.”
Achlys’s arm snaked around Nissa’s shoulder, pulling her close. The vampire master wasn’t very brave now that her shifter boyfriend was bleeding out on the floor and Shawn had obliterated her security. There was nothing left except the two of them.
Crimson tears welled along the edges of Achlys’s eyelids.
It seemed she was likelier to be torn down than she was to go vicious.
Disappointing.
“So you’re trying to usurp me, Shawn,” Achlys said. “You’re stupider than you look. Killing me won’t get you anything except a destabilized Las Vegas.”
“Au contraire.” He whipped a sheaf of papers out of his jacket pocket. He wasn’t wearing a shirt underneath. His nipples looked like angry blue diamonds. “Killing you will get me everything you own, once you sign these papers.”
Achlys’s hand tightened on Nissa’s shoulder. “My signature alone doesn’t do much.”
“With a witness signing and speaking on your behalf?” Shawn grinned with dangerous promise at Nissa.
At least dry humping and communal murder wasn’t the only thing he wanted out of her.
She considered his demand. What would a Las Vegas sidhe court look like? Nissa guessed that it would have very little to offer a blood virgin with crippling empath abilities. On the other hand, if Achlys died without signing those papers, everything would go to Mohinder. Nissa’s sire. There was clear advantage to that situation.
Achlys dropped Nissa’s shoulder. “Are you going to be his witness?” the master asked, sounding so wounded.
“No,” Nissa said. “I would never do anything like that.” She decided to put on her best pathetic face, ensuring that her shoulders shook the same way they did when she was very anxious.
The master didn’t yet look relieved. “Did you really hold Beelzebub captive?”
“Yes,” she said.
“Why?”
“It’s hard being the only vampire who can’t kill people,” Nissa said. “I don’t want to exist like this.”
Achlys’s reservations melted quickly into sympathy, which was a wholly different beast than empathy. She assumed that Nissa was expressing regret over being a vampire.
The master rested her hand atop Nissa’s again, pressing the vial between them.
“I know,” Achlys whispered. “I know.”
She turned to Shawn with renewed resolve. She pulled the illusion of her master vampire powers around her protectively, like an armor.
“I won’t sign those papers,” Achlys said. “You have nothing.”
Shawn unfurled his fingers, letting deadly magic blossom from the tips. “Wanna bet you’ll change your tune after a few hours?”
Achlys scoffed. “I’ve stood up to longer torture than that.”
“But has Nissa?” he asked.
He pointed his magic at her.
Before it could be unleashed, the elevator chimed. The sound resonated throughout the entire floor.
Nobody moved.
Who would be up here at this time? Nissa had assumed that Shawn killed everyone between him and Achlys’s penthouse.
The elevator doors slid open.
There was nobody inside.
Shawn stared for a moment, then turned his attention back to Achlys with a shrug. “Grab a pen,” he said, slapping the contract onto the table.
“No,” Achlys said.
His magic lashed out. Cold tentacles locked around Nissa’s midsection, squeezing her tightly, lifting her onto her toes. Her lungs emptied with a gusting groan. Her ribs creaked.
She tried to push the magic off, but she couldn’t seem to touch it. Nissa was as helpless as Mrs. Robinson in Henderson.
Shawn lifted her higher. Her kicking feet came off the ground completely. “I need to keep Nissa mostly whole,” he said, shaking her for emphasis. “But our little blood virgin here’s an empath, which means that I don’t really have to lay a finger on her pretty head to torture her.”
“You’ve already taken Tormid from me,” Achlys said. “If you break Nissa, I’ll have nothing left to lose.” Her dark energy was growing to push back against the swirl of sidhe power. “You don’t want to know what happens when I—what’s that?”
She interrupted herself so abruptly, Nissa almost thought it was a diversion. But even Achlys couldn’t feign looking that surprised by something.
Nissa twisted within the grip of Shawn’s magic to follow Achlys’s gaze.
Two people were swinging outside of the window. They were hanging from ropes that were connected somehow to the roof of the tower. One of these people was a muscle-packed brick wall of a man. The other was a wild-haired tank of a woman whose bloodless skin was the color of gypsum.
The Hunting Club had arrived.
They slammed into the window, planting their boots flat against the glass. Dana McIntyre was holding some kind of chunky rocket launcher with a stake jutting from the end, and a motor slammed that stake into the window once, twice. It opened a hole with a snap so loud that Nissa’s ears throbbed.
“You two again,” Shawn groaned. “Biggest fucking cockblocks since—”
Anthony Morales slapped a metal disc next to the hole in the window. “Be right back,” he shouted through the cracks, and then he and Dana were scrambling up the ropes.
Shawn flung his other hand toward the window. “No!”
Ice encased the damaged glass. Magic bowed the universe around Shawn’s frost and sucked all the moisture from the air—what little there was in such a dry climate. Had he been somewhere more humid, he might have been able to build ice quickly enough to keep the window from blasting open. But they were not somewhere more humid.
Anthony’s charge went off.
It turned Shawn’s magical ice into a million knives exploding in every direction.
The invisible hand released Nissa. She smashed into the floor as blades peppered the tile, shattering into tiny razors. They flecked her skin, stuck to her hair. Her hands were sliced a thousand times as she struggled behind the couch.
Achlys leaped to join her. The master hadn’t moved fast enough; a massive gash tore open her face from temple to teeth, exposing dry white skull underneath.
Her fingers flew to the wound.
“Fuck!”
Ropes whizzed, boots thudded, glass crunched under rubber.
The Hunting Club was in the penthouse.
17
Dana had never been one for Batmanning her way into vampire dens. She’d trained on the harnesses so that she could if she wanted, but it wasn’t her style. She was someone who tracked suspects to bars and shattered tequila bottles on their skulls. She wasn’t the type to use the top of an elevator to climb secretly onto a roof and then rappel down to shoot her way into a battle, no matter how cool it made her look.
The reasons for this were twofold. First of all, because Dana’s fat ass hated those gods-damned harnesses, and she wasn’t going to sign up for chafing unless it was the fucking apocalypse.
Second of all, once you’d expended the element of surprise, you were stranded in enemy territory with only what you could carry on the aforementioned harness.
The advantage was lean at best. Very lean.
Facing down a psychopathic unseelie sidhe who looked like a pretty anime boy made Dana think that the lean advantage wasn’t going to be enough.
“But we looked cool, right?” Anthony muttered out of the corner of his mouth, keeping his Browning aimed at the vampires behind the couch.
Dana swung Buffy to her back and drew her Glock. “So fucking cool.”
Her earpiece pinged.
“Charmaine got the paperwork to go through,” Penny said. “You’ve got your warrant.”
And that meant that everyone in this room was about to die.
Maybe Dana’s night was going to be a good one after all.
“We don’t have to fight,” said Shawn Wyn. His words were the wail of an out-of-tune cello, and the floor was a roiling sea underneath him. “I’m about to take control of the Paradisos. There’s no reason for us to start off on the wrong foot. I’d love to coexist with the Hunting Club.”
“I’m listening,” Dana said, because the longer he talked, the longer it took him to attack.
“Achlys has troubled you guys for years,” Shawn said. “When I have the Paradisos, you won’t have to deal with vampires anymore, McIntyre. Rumor has it that there’s nothing you want more than that.”