Cashing Out
Page 18
The ductwork above Anthony tore free.
It wrenched away from the wall and slammed down with all the force of a meteor hitting the ground.
The walkway vanished.
So did Anthony.
“No!” Dana roared.
There was no way he could have survived that. He was only human. A mortal made of flesh and bone and tacky mustache and Mohinder had just dropped a car-sized air-conditioning unit on him.
Dana didn’t think.
She swung Buffy.
There was no need for a hydraulic assist. Not when she was this pissed off.
The stake snapped through Mohinder’s spine, and it hit the black heart of the Fremont Slasher, pulverizing it.
His face blanked.
Nissa’s hands clapped to either side of her head. “No!” Her cry was pitched almost identically to Dana’s, an echo of her exact grief.
Dana stared down at Mohinder. She was rendered as immobile as when Nissa held her, but now there was no vampiric presence in Dana’s mind. For fuck’s sake, Dana wasn’t even in Dana’s mind. There was nothing but yawning emptiness. The visual of a falling air-conditioning unit, a broken walkway, a subtle spray of blood.
Mohinder shriveled on the end of the stake. His mouth opened in a silent gasp.
Gods, that should have been so much more satisfying.
Dana kicked Mohinder’s body off of Buffy. She dropped the hydraulic gun and stepped back, giving Nissa room to drop to his side, gather him in her arms. Mohinder lifted a hand to touch Nissa’s face. His fingers were crumbling to ash.
“No,” Nissa panted. She was hyperventilating, too. A vampire hyperventilating—funny. Except nothing was funny. Nothing could ever be funny again.
Dana had intended to savor the death of the Fremont Slasher. She’d hoped to drag it out, in fact, holding him for weeks until he starved. But now she couldn’t even stop to watch him turn to ash.
She rushed to the rubble of the walkway, and Nissa’s sobbing was soundtrack to tossing aside pieces of bent conduit, metal shards, insulation. It tore into her hands. She kicked a few big pieces away, and then she saw it.
The leg.
Dana gripped the body of the air-conditioning unit like she was going to deadlift it, and she gritted her teeth, throwing all her strength into straightening her legs.
Come on. Get off of him. Come…on…
It groaned, whined. Dust puffed out from underneath it.
Dana lost her grip, and it fell out of her torn hands.
“Fuck!”
She grabbed it again, pulled harder. Her back ached. Her muscles screamed. Her head throbbed. But she couldn’t lift it more than an inch. If she’d still been a vampire with preternatural strength…
Dana swung around to look at Nissa, kneeling on the floor next to a pile of ash.
“Help me!” Dana shouted. Nissa didn’t move. Red tears streaked her cheeks. “Damn it, you stupid fucking vampire…!” Dana braced her hands and shoulder against the unit. She dug her feet in and shoved.
It finally shifted. Not a lot, but enough that gravity took over, shifting its mass until it tumbled down a ramp of corrugated metal torn free of the roof.
His body was underneath.
There was no question in Dana’s mind that Anthony was dead. It wasn’t possible to dump that much brain out of a hole in his skull that big and walk away from it.
Dana sank to her knees, hitting the shards of railing next to Anthony. His face hadn’t been crushed. That awful mustache was still there, curved into a shape almost like a smile, white from the sprinkling concrete dust.
He still owed her fifteen dollars.
“Guess you don’t have to pay now,” she told his limp face. Heat tracked down her cheek.
“Turn around,” Nissa said, her voice dead. The command reached right into Dana’s mind, just as before, so Dana turned around. She shook from the effort it took to fight Nissa’s command. It didn’t help. Nothing helped.
Nissa had smeared bloody tears all over her face trying to scrub her cheeks clean. She looked like she’d painted herself in it.
She was trembling with black fury.
“Die,” Nissa whispered. “Die.”
Dana felt the order deep inside.
Then she felt nothing except pain.
It was like someone had just dropped an air-conditioning unit on Dana’s head, but when her hands flew to her scalp, she felt no injury. Her brain was tearing apart by the neuron, her vision was red with white stars, her heart pounded—but there was no injury.
She was dying.
The footsteps echoing up the hallway erupted into the room.
Metal rang out as doors slammed open. Voices shouted. Leather rubbed against nylon. “Get on the ground, face down! Hands behind your head!”
Gunshots fired.
The pain suddenly vanished, and Dana collapsed. The OPA agents swarmed her. They rolled her over so that she was facedown on the ground the way they’d commanded. One of them practically stood on top of her.
It took five to hold down Nissa, even though she now had three large holes in her body from the various gunshots. One of them from Anthony.
They stabbed a charm at the back of Nissa’s neck and she finally went limp. But her eyes remained opened. They were fixed on Dana.
Mohinder! Nissa’s voice wailed within Dana’s mind.
He’d deserved so much worse than death.
Anthony had deserved so much better.
Polished black shoes stepped between them, cutting off Dana’s view of the vampire. She twisted to look up. It was Cèsar Hawke, and he looked somewhere between annoyed and sad. “Nissa Royal, Dana McIntyre,” he said, “do I even need to tell you guys that you’re both under arrest? Because you’re under arrest. And neither of you are seeing the sky for a long, long time.”
20
An hour later, Clark County Wastewater Treatment Plant was still a mess and Charmaine Villanueva felt like shit.
She’d expected that Anthony would be angry that Charmaine called the OPA. He’d understand, sure, but he’d be pissed.
Now it wasn’t anger Charmaine faced, but an open body bag with Anthony broken inside of it. His head was tipped back weirdly because of the missing portions.
“Yes,” Charmaine said, “that’s Anthony Morales. Registered vigilante license is…uh…” She had it memorized because she wrote it down on so much paperwork. Now she couldn’t remember. “It’s slipped my mind. You’ll need to look it up.”
Officer Wilson nodded, tapping out a message to the coroner on her tablet before setting it on the edge of the gurney. She moved to zip the body bag.
“Wait,” Charmaine said. “I’ll do that.”
Officer Wilson knew a dismissal when she heard one. She turned on her heel to leave, and Charmaine was alone with Anthony’s body. As alone as she could be at a crime scene teeming with OPA agents.
It had started with two-dozen men, maybe, but then the choppers had come in, and the trucks. There were countless people in black suits now sweeping the area for every grain of dust that could have belonged to a vampire. Most of the staff was detaining shapeshifters who’d been caught outside in their animal forms, dismembering vampires left and right. It wasn’t easy cuffing shapeshifters as humans. As animals, it took a veritable army.
By the grace of Undersecretary Hawke, Charmaine was permitted to observe the proceedings. She’d thought it was a gesture of good grace from Cèsar. Now she thought that witnessing this was a punishment.
Charmaine hadn’t felt this terrible since the first time she shapeshifted into a coyote after Genesis.
Her fingers touched Anthony’s forehead, the bridge of his nose. She remembered how he’d said smoking reminded him of old friends. “I hope you’re with old friends now,” she whispered.
She’d just closed the zipper when Undersecretary Hawke returned to her side. “You should be aware that I’m revoking the vigilantes’ licenses because of this,” he said.
/> Charmaine could still make out the shape of Anthony’s profile through the crinkly black bag. “You shouldn’t blame the Hunting Club.”
“Their repeated dismissal of the law is dangerous to everyone, chief. Look at the result.” He gestured to the body bag as a pair of techs loaded it into the coroner’s van.
“Yes, look at the results.” She gestured toward the crates that had been seized. They were filled with the silver and iron that had been stolen over the last few months. The plant itself had been shut down, ensuring that no tainted water could make it into the system. “If the Hunting Club hadn’t gotten here in time, we would only have empty barrels and a city filled with silver-maddened shifters.”
“The OPA would have interceded before that, if you’d been open with information,” Cèsar said.
A trio of sidhe agents walked Dana out of the building. Charmaine stopped to watch the hunter limping toward an OPA vehicle. Dana wasn’t fighting, so she didn’t need to be held by that many sidhe, but they weren’t taking any chances with a McIntyre.
Dana caught Charmaine looking from across the parking lot. For a fleeting instant, there was understanding between them—the sharing of their loss.
And then Dana climbed gingerly into the truck. She was handcuffed.
Before the doors closed, Charmaine saw a black bag tugged over Dana’s head and cinched at the neck.
“You’re arresting her?” Charmaine asked.
“She broke a lot of laws,” Cèsar said. “I’ll make sure she doesn’t disappear into the system. She’ll get a trial. But she does need to go on trial. I’ve seen a few similar cases, so I can tell you that Dana McIntyre will probably be out of prison in a couple of years—sooner if she’s cooperative.”
Cooperative. The last word that Charmaine would associate with Dana.
Charmaine’s hands clenched into fists at her sides. “McIntyre and Morales were the de facto leaders of the Hunting Club. They were the only ones here tonight. Now one’s in your custody and the other is…” She swallowed. “The Hunting Club has many other associates whose expertise is beneficial to Las Vegas. They should keep going.”
Now Nissa Royal was walked out of the building. She had a guard of a dozen sidhe, while two others half-carried her. She looked to be made of jelly. She’d been sedated.
“All right,” Cèsar said after a moment. “I’ll spare the club’s license. You have an opinion about the daylight bombing? I want to be really fucking sure there isn’t a single vampire left in Las Vegas after this.”
Nissa got into yet another van. One that would take her to prison when she deserved to be in a body bag like Anthony.
“No,” Charmaine said. “Light the city up.”
Nissa let them take her out of Las Vegas.
She felt too hollow to fight back. She may as well have been bathed in Garlic Shots for all the sensation she had in her body.
When Nissa’s sedatives wore off, she was in the back of a van with a black bag over her head, and as far as she cared, she could stay like that for the rest of eternity.
She had almost killed Dana.
That made a thrill climb her spine.
But as soon as she remembered Dana falling under the crush of Nissa’s powers, she also remembered Mohinder dissolving to ash in her arms. The thrill grew hot enough to melt her intestines with fury.
Some part of Nissa’s mind was still back with Penny McIntyre. Not in Mohinder’s basement, in one of those glass boxes, but in the forge where Penny created swords. Nissa had connected with Penny well enough that she could summon the tactile memory of heat on her skin, hammer in her hands, shoulders flexing.
It was hot enough to wake her up. And Nissa used that heat to forge a different kind of weapon.
She reached out with her mind to the driver of the van. She wiggled her way into his brain and took hold of his senses. The driver was a man named Ralph. Ralph needed to pee really badly. He found the smell of witchy charms in the van to be overwhelming, and he couldn’t wait until they arrived at the jail.
Where are we?
Through Ralph’s eyes, she saw a sparser desert than the one outside Las Vegas. They were somewhere in Arizona. The OPA must have had a facility in this area. Some hole where they could hide her until the vivisection.
Stop the van.
The driver stopped so fast that Nissa lurched against the wall.
Nissa hadn’t realized there was a convoy until Ralph watched them stopping through the windshield. They weren’t surprised that their charms and drugs had worn off midway through the ride, and they’d be prepared to sedate her again.
The doors opened. Nissa could hear the rattling through the black hood, but couldn’t see them, since Ralph was still in the driver’s compartment. She didn’t need visual information to reach out to the minds of the people who were approaching her. The OPA didn’t face enough master vampires to have tactics for deflecting them.
Nissa seized their minds.
Shoot each other.
Gunfire rang out. It deafened her.
Hearing was another sense Nissa didn’t need as she slithered out of the van. She stretched her mind out more and more and more until every single OPA agent within a kilometer radius was caught in her web.
Nissa killed most of them with a thought.
Die.
Arteries burst. Hearts stopped. Lungs collapsed.
With the next thought, she said, The rest of you serve me now.
And they did.
Ralph took her hood off. She blinked into the blazing moonlight, so much brighter with her vampire eyes. Nissa surveyed the people around her. There were four left alive: three of them shifters, one of them sidhe. Had she been any other vampire, they’d have been capable of containing her.
“We need to go back to Las Vegas,” Nissa said.
“Why?” asked the sidhe agent. It was like he was speaking to her through the fog of a dream.
Nissa swallowed hard. Her tongue felt enormous in her mouth. “Dana McIntyre killed Mohinder. Dana McIntyre must die.”
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About the Author
Hi! I’m Sara, a super-prolific author who publishes as SM Reine. I’ve put out over fifty titles, most of which are urban fantasy, and all of which serve as evidence of my nonexistent social life.
I’m a proud Nevadan, an enthusiastic mom-nerd, and animal hoarder in possession of cats, dogs, chickens, bees, toads, and little boys. I write gratuitous violence to balance out my real-life chill. I like kissing books and science fiction movies.
If you occasionally think “Hey! I wish I could see a million pictures of some random author’s dogs and children!” then you should follow me on Instagram. I also say stupid things on Twitter a lot. The best way to find out when I have new books is to join my list for new release email alerts, though. Allons-y!
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Did you love Cashing Out? Then you should read Suicide Queen by SM Reine!
Dana McIntyre won one battle, but a greater enemy looms. Someone who knows her well enough to inflict a pain than any she's known before. The gloves are off, the suicide queen's been dealt, and the end is nigh.
Read more at SM Reine’s site.
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