NOT DEAD YET: A Lucy Hart, DEATHDEALER Novel (Book Two) (19 page)

Of course she added to that stab wound approximately twenty more stab wounds.  All kept to the same six inch area of his chest.  She’d turned the shifter’s heart into hamburger.  It had been poetic—since she’d used her father’s callous engagement present to murder the thing pretending to be him.  But moreover, it had been therapeutic.  Stabbing someone to death who had come to kill her had been just what the doctor ordered; that the assassin had been wearing her father’s face, gravy.        

She entered the house and started up the stairs to her room

Three figures in dark, form fitting clothes appeared silently from around the house.  A fourth was moving inhumanly fast down the stairs.  “Where have you been?” the tall redhaired werewolf growled.  He didn’t seem to appreciate her ducking out on her security detail. 

Wasn’t her fault they had gotten sidetracked by the lemon torte bundt cake Gram had made just that morning.

“There’s a dead shifter in the graveyard directly behind this house,” she said blandly.  She stopped and let her words sink into the copper top werewolf’s head.  “I stabbed him to death with a silver dagger.”  She looked hard into the werewolf’s eyes.  “You’ll need to dispose of the body, and the dagger.”

And just like that she walked up to and past him, and kept on going until she was in her bedroom.

She needed to shower and change her clothes before she headed off with the Double Mint Twins to the engagement party.  She’d need to really clean under her nails.  There was a lot of blood under them.

For the second time that day Lucy’s hair was wet, and her skin damp.  She sat on her bed, silently counting down the seconds, the minutes, until Sophie and Olivia arrived and escorted her to the bridal shower.  At least it would be a distraction.  What had loomed as something she wanted to avoid, but couldn’t, now seemed like the best way to spend her evening.  Maybe she would have fun.  Maybe the whole thing would go off as planned and she’d enjoy the whole experience. 

Maybe a squadron of highly skilled assassins would crash the party and she’d get to kill one or two.

Either way, she’d get to wear a pretty dress, get her hair and nails done—she looked at her nails: she’d cleaned the blood from out from under them, but two were broken—and there would be presents.

All of which she was sure would be nicer than the present her worthless father had sent her.  Maybe not as immediately useful, but nicer.

She heard Olivia’s cultured alto first, telling the guard they were here to pick up the bride-to-be.

Sophie’s voice was higher, but silky smooth.  “She is ready, correct?  We have appointments with Jobert and his people within the hour.”

Lucy recognized the hairstylist’s name.  He was flamboyant and snooty, and the most in demand hairdresser in Sacramento.  He’d insult her, of course, and then he’d charm and dazzle her with his expertise.  That’s how his type worked.  She’d look like a knock out when he was finished.

Lucy sighed, got up off her bed and removed the garment bag that held her dress for the evening from her closet, and her heels.  She would change at the salon, after they’d finished primping her, and then they’d be off to the shower.

She jogged down the stairs, plastering an acceptable smile on her face.  She tried to let Olivia and Sophie know that she really did appreciate all they were doing for her.  When they laid eyes on her they both gave exasperated gasps of dismay. 

“We need to get you to the salon, ASAP!” Sophie said.

Olivia plucked the garment bag off Lucy’s shoulder, slid the zipper down, and peeked inside.  “Oh, this is lovely!”  She glanced at the peach Gucci heels Lucy had in her hand.  “Paired with those heels, you’re going to knock them dead.”

That sounded good.  Even though she’d just brutally murdered someone who had been hired to kill her, she was still angry as hell, and itching for another fight... another kill.  Killing things made her feel better.  She needed very much not to give into those feelings.

It was bad enough she was surrounded by monsters, she didn’t need to become one herself.

The sisters ushered Lucy out the front door and into a shell pink Escalade.  Sophie drove, and though Lucy started for the back seat, Olivia tried to insisted she take the shotgun position.  But Lucy just got in the back.  She had her seat belt on before she realized that they didn’t have any guards with them.  Not that it wasn’t a relief, but it was odd, taking in to account all the attempts on her life.

“So no bodyguards?”

Sophie looked to her via the rear view mirror and tsked at Lucy.  “We’ve both been training for battle since we were six years old.  I think we can insure you make it to one little bridal shower.”

Olivia chuckled and turned back to smile at Lucy.  “Besides, slaughtering some mangy poachers would be a nice change of pace.  We haven’t had a good fight, or even a decent hunt.”

“Yeah,” Sophie said, glancing at her sister.  “Let them bring it on.  We’ll murder them!”

“Speaking of which,” Olivia gave Lucy a most conspiratorial smile,  “we heard from a little birdie that you took out an assassin all by your lonesome today.”

“And it was a shape shifter, too.  Very nice.”

“Thanks,” Lucy said, feeling a little strange about getting kudos for killing something bloodily.  Of course, the Enoch family was not your usual, normal billionaire family.

Olivia looked up into the rearview mirror again and gave Lucy a wink, and then slid the Escalade in through a clog of traffic.  “We’ve been trying to find the perfect gift for today.  Since this is kind of an engagement/bridal party, we wanted it to be perfect… something
special
.”

“And nothing seems to have fit just right.” 

Lucy shook her head.  What on earth were they talking about?  It almost seemed as if they were talking about bridal shower gifts, but not quite.

“We’ve been perplexed out of our minds.  I really thought that last one would have been a perfect match.  After all—” Olivia’s smile was like a winter breeze—cold and so very sharp.  “His impersonation of your convict father was absolutely flawless.”

Lucy looked to Olivia, her stomach sinking.  She heard a click, and something zinged through the air of the Escalade.  Before she could turn her head to look at Sophie, three sharp leads sunk into the flesh of her chest, and an electrical charge smashed into her.  Her head snapped back and the last thing she saw was the ceiling of the Escalade, before it faded, replaced by a harsh, white light.

~*~

April Lyons daydreamed in her tiny cubicle in the accounting department at Enoch Industries headquarters.  She couldn’t help it.  Last night had been the greatest night of her life.  Her live-in-boyfriend of the last two years, Christopher, had met her at the door to their tiny apartment and ushered her down three blocks to see
The Avengers
at the Cartwright Theater.  It was one of those old style theaters that had closed down a decade or more ago, had been bought and  restored, and now not only had a full bar, a candy/refreshment counter you’d go rabid for, but also had the most comfortable plush padded seats imaginable.

They were both huge Joss Whedon fans. 
Buffy, Angel, Firefly,
Serenity
... she’d even read all the X-men comics he’d written a few years back.  But between her work and Christopher’s they hadn’t had a chance to go see the biggest movie of the century.

Secretly she wanted the movie to do gangbusters simply to grease the wheels for a
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
movie—with the original cast!

The Avengers
had been fantastic, and they’d stopped off and gotten take out Taco Bell—three beef burritos supremes for Christopher, and a Nacho Bell Grande (no beans, double the meat) for her.  Christopher went to the kitchen to fetch Pepsis while April pulled
X-Men 2
out of their DVD collection.  Two hours of superhero fun had only whetted their appetites.

When Bob, their plump, black and brown wiener dog trotted out of the kitchen, he flung his substantial self up onto the couch and lunged in to lick April’s face.  She petted him and hit the play button on the remote control in her hand.

“The movie’s starting!”

Silence.

“Have you taken a look at Bob?” Christopher called from the other room.

Look at Bob?
  There was something suspicious in Christopher’s voice.  April looked down and saw Bob’s usual pink-camo collar had been switched with a red ribbon and bow.  And on cue Bob raised his head. Hanging, glittering from his chubby throat, was the most beautiful diamond ring she’d ever seen. 

She hadn’t heard him come in or approach, which was quite a feat for a six foot three were-Kodiak bear, but he was a shape-shifter, and stealth was a given.  She looked up from her vantage on the couch and watched as he lowered himself down to one knee.  He had a pair of scissors, liberated Bob of the red bow, and took the ring in his big, strong fingers.  He held it up to the light, just as the movie’s music chimed in: Night Crawler took out most of the President’s men during his penetration of the White House.

“April Lyons...” he said, his voice a hoarse, sexy growl, “will you marry me?”

April flung herself at him, tackled him, and proceeded to make crazy naked monkey sex with him.  At some point, between the first time and the second, she finally said “yes,” and promptly melted into tears.  But before you could say Jack Robinson, she had his big, bad furriness pinned on his back, and trying to get her to repeat her answer—because she hadn’t just said yes, it had been a hyper-drive monologue in a tone of voice that probably set every dog in six square blocks to barking. 

Christopher called it going chipmunk. 

He may have been bigger and stronger, but she was a were too—a were-fox to be exact (her father had been a were-lion, who had been seduced and had his heart captured by a sly were-fox:  her mother.)  Not to mention she hadn’t just spent her life studying math and quantum physics and chemistry and computers.  No, she’d been in training since she was little to be able to take care of herself, if not downright murder all comers who thought they would pick a fight with Mr. Lyons’ little girl.

So she held him down as she ravished him, refusing to repeat her answer, even as he begged and pleaded for her to do so.  And just as she was about to—

April’s laptop made a low-key chime, interrupting the rest of her reverie of the night before.  It had found something.

She pushed her lascivious memories aside and attacked the data her search had dug up.  She could multi-task with the best of them, but since she was doing this one behind her supervisor’s back, she decided it warranted her full attention.

She respected her boss, Gwendolyn Tate, very much.  Even though the woman seemed to loath her, having banished her to the corner cubical by the broom closet, and only giving her the most mind-numbingly boring assignments for the last year and a half she’d worked there.  But she was the first boss she’d had she didn’t need to explain her reports to.  Gwendolyn had a sharp mind, and wasn’t afraid to use it to get her own way.  That’s why she was head of the accounting department.  That, and her warrior form were-rat was possibly the most frightening thing you could imagine. 

Either way, she was the boss, and April had followed her every edict to the letter... until yesterday.  That’s when Dante Enoch had come down to personally give Gwendolyn an assignment of great importance.  April had just been coming out of the copier room when her preternaturally good ears heard Dante tell her supervisor that he needed an in house search done of all Enoch Industries related accounts—both business and personal—to look for any large asset transaction.

As an aside he’d said, “It has direct implications to the attacks on Gabriel’s fiancée. So I want you to spare no manpower or resources on this.  Do you understand?”

“Yes, Mr. Enoch,” her supervisor had said with enthusiasm.

After Dante Enoch left, April waited for Gwendolyn to call in some of her staff to start on the assignment.  She was certain, that even with her outstanding qualifications, that she would not be chosen.  But she did have a good guess as to who in the department would be able to run through the search of accounts with the most speed and efficiency.

But no calls came.  No mention of it circulated through the grapevine.  It seemed that Gwendolyn had decided to carry out the search herself.

Which was the first red flag. 

And when April had come into work today and there still wasn’t a peep on the grapevine, or an assignment registered to anyone, April decided that she needed to side step her boss and do the search herself.

That’s why she was using her laptop instead of the company desktop.            

She scanned the data.  There was a transfer of fifty thousand dollars to the University of California.  It was earmarked for Lucy Hart’s education.  And there were distributions here and there to rent out a posh restaurant that very night.  That had to be for the bridal shower.  Both had been drawn off one of the corporate accounts—Gabriel Enoch’s account to be specific.