The Shopgirl's Prophecy (Beasts of Vegas Book 1)

by Anna Abner

  “Connor!” she screamed, fighting as hard as she could, which wasn’t nearly hard enough. Not even close. “Please, Connor!”

  Olek walked with purpose. With every step he took, Connor grew farther away, and he needed her. God, he was broken and bleeding. Roz finally got off her goddamned knees and went to him, but he needed her.

  “Connor!”

  Olek set Ali on her feet near the passenger side of his little car. She didn’t even see his arm move before there was a smack, and she fell to her knees, bleeding from the mouth.

  “Control yourself,” Olek snapped.

  Ali’s body pulled in a thousand different directions, and she ached with the pressure. Control? She’d spent her whole life practicing it. But all that ended here. Now. Olek was the force separating her from Connor. She would get around him, over him, through him, whatever it took.

  “You don’t get to hurt him.” She stood. “He belongs to me.” Her skin flushed pink. “You won’t take what’s mine.”

  The brighter she glowed the wider Oleksander’s amused grin grew. Her insides crackled with pain and rage. She could feel the building heat, the achy sensation in her stomach.

  She’d spent twenty-two years confining her curse. Forcing it out felt wild and unstable. It sizzled through her like electricity, like acid, like untapped, fiery power. She unlatched the dark place inside her, and light bubbled forth, flowing into her fingers and toes. Her color deepened.

  “I say what happens to me,” Ali declared. “And I say, we win.”

  She let her cursed light loose for the first time in her life. It roared through her, surging into her cells. She glowed hot pink, a woman-shaped neon sign.

  Olek stepped back, not out of fear, but to get a better look. She closed the distance, wanting every particle of her power to hit him. Whatever was building in her belly, she wanted him to take it all. If she transformed, if she burst into flames, if she called magic like a witch—he was going to eat every last bite.

  Olek creeped forward with one arm outstretched as if to grab her. Ali closed her eyes and pushed her light past any semblance of control, further than she’d ever pushed it before. It burned. She cried out.

  Her vision blurred, and then her ears buzzed so loudly she couldn’t hear what the vampire said that made him laugh. As if he wasn’t scared at all, as if he was fascinated. Well, the joke was on him. She closed her eyes and gave the lightning inside her the tiniest of nudges, and she didn’t light on fire, or morph into an animal, or call any magic.

  Like a dying star, Ali exploded.

  #

  Connor heard a sonic boom, and air ruffled his clothes. At least the clothes not stuck to him with blood. He opened his eyes.

  “Roz?” He’d planned on a bellow, but it came out more like a cough.

  She appeared at his side, still sniffling. There was no trace of magical power around her at all. The weird electrical pulse of energy hadn’t come from her.

  “He took Ali,” she whispered.

  Unacceptable. He grabbed her with his good hand. “Call your power.”

  “I can’t,” she cried. “It’s the stress. It won’t come.”

  He yanked on the collar of her shirt. “Do this for me.” He must have communicated his need to her, because her eyes widened and she wiped sweat from her upper lip.

  “Blessed is my power. I call upon thee.” Nothing. Not a shiver. She stood and spread her hands at her sides. “Blessed is my power. I call upon thee. Please. Blessed is my power. I call upon thee.” It burst forth, circling her and dancing like dust in the wind.

  Finally.

  “Now get me on my feet.” Connor had to find Ali. He had to save her.

  Roz’s magic buzzed in his ears and tingled its way down his spine. He pushed himself up onto two very unsteady legs, but he did it, and hobbled toward Olek’s beater car. Roz stayed two steps behind, speaking healing and strength spells at breakneck speed. The crackle and whirl of her magic, though, didn’t soothe him at all. Something was wrong. Something bad had happened.

  Part of the vampires’ car had vanished, and a crater lay beside it. Connor stumbled over his feet, righted himself, and then ran on borrowed power.

  Ali lay in the center of the depression, naked. A semi-circle of car had disintegrated, giving an inside glimpse of the engine block and half a tire. Olek was gone. Vanished. It was like a six-foot-wide sphere of energy had vaporized everything inside it. Metal. Flesh. Cloth. Rubber. Everything except Ali.

  Her heart was beating, and her breath was a shallow in and out. He slipped out of his shirt, despite the pain, and dressed her. The shirt, thick with blood and too big, concealed her nudity though. He lifted her up into his arms and fought a wave of dizziness, but Roz’s voice grew in volume and the wooziness faded.

  Connor carried her, one-armed against his chest, to the truck. “Roz, drive to the clinic in Henderson—fast. She needs a doctor.”

  Roz didn’t pause in her spells, but she gave him a look. The last time they’d gone to the clinic for help that crazy assistant had shot him.

  He didn’t know if he could handle another gunshot wound alongside a broken arm and a generally bruised and beaten body.

  “I know. But she can un-hate us. Ali needs help.”

  She’d lost several degrees of body heat back there, but her heart kept beating, and her chest rose and fell. Connor held her to warm her and hoped that whatever had come out of her hadn’t destroyed her too.

  He’d pressed his bleeding hand to her wounds. He’d infected her. Goddamn it. Tears burned his eyes and rolled down both cheeks. He’d messed up. Big time. He’d mixed his filthy, plague-ridden blood with hers.

  Roz kept up a steady stream of spells the whole way into town, never stalling for a second. When she pulled into the parking lot, he said, “Honk, and warn them we’re coming.” He hopped down and carried Ali through the front door, Roz right behind, hissing spells through her teeth.

  Connor stalked past the half dozen people in the waiting area toward the exam rooms down a hall. The first bed was occupied by a frail, elderly lady. Connor laid Ali upon the second bed.

  “I told you to stay away.” The doctor followed him in, waving her hands, completely agitated.

  “No one’s going to hurt you. She’s human, and she needs help.”

  “I called the police.” Dr. Burke folded her arms tight across her chest and stood to her full height, only a couple inches shorter than him. “My assistant quit because of you, you know.”

  “Please.”

  “I’m in this country to help people, not monsters.”

  “We were the ones fighting the monsters,” Connor snapped. “That’s how she got hurt.”

  The doc exhaled, deflating a little, her training taking over. “What happened?” She pressed her fingers to Ali’s wrist as if she couldn’t help herself.

  “I’m not even sure.” He touched his forehead, caught in a new wave of dizziness. “Something, uh, exploded.” Why didn’t this room have a chair to sit in? “I need to rest a tick.”

  The doc did a cursory examination. “Was she beaten? Raped? Drowned? A little background would be helpful.”

  “She, uh…” The room spun crazily, and he grabbed the sink to steady himself. His grip on the counter tightened and the screws came loose from the wall; glue and sealant split; it jumped two inches. “I…infected…”

  “She glowed,” Roz said, ceasing speaking the spells that had been keeping Connor upright to pass along information. “And then she popped.”

  Connor groaned. All the borrowed power fueling him dropped away, and he blacked out.

  #

  Maks was floating. A not unpleasant sensation after the agony of his recent ass kicking. He opened his eyes, though only one worked properly.

  No, not floating. Someone was dragging him across uneven ground. He tried to focus. Red hair. Angelic blue eyes. His little bird.

  “Katya,” he breathed. “He’s going to kill me.” She should know
what they were up against. She’d obviously sprung him from his cell, but the Destroyer would never, never, let them disappear.

  “No, he’s not.”

  She wasn’t his little bird. She wasn’t Katya. Maks blinked and red hair became matted brown. Blue eyes became amber. Not the love of his life, but one of his donors. Nice term for enslaved, walking blood bag.

  He had the urge to argue, but nothing seemed very important, not even his life, such as it was. If he’d been in control of any of his muscles, he’d have tried to stand to make it easier on her, but there was nothing. He closed his eyes, floated some more, and when he opened them again his donor—he couldn’t remember her name—rolled him into the corner at the back of his room. She was hiding him, bless her. For what purpose, he didn’t understand and didn’t care.

  She covered him with a coat that smelled of earth and rotting things, a strangely comforting scent. If he’d remained human, he might have been laid out in a snug grave somewhere. After twenty-five years of living like a monster, he belonged in the ground.

  When she returned, she’d brought a knife. For a moment, Maks believed she was going to gut him. Instead, irrationally, she drew it across her own pink wrist.

  “Come on, pretty boy,” she said, sitting and lifting his head into her lap. “Drink up.”

  If Maks could have spoken past his crushed vocal chords and swollen throat, he’d have asked her why she tried to help him.

  As if reading his mind, she said, “I want out of this hell hole, and you owe me.”

  She forced her open wound between his lips, and Maks drank.

  #

  Connor came to instantly, sitting straight up. “Ali?”

  “I’m here.” She gave his arm a reassuring squeeze. “Relax.”

  “Oleksander?”

  “He’s dead. It’s over.”

  “You killed him.” An image of Ali lying in the center of a crater flashed through his mind.

  He took a quick inventory. His right arm was back in its socket and no longer a numb hunk of flesh. Someone had stitched up the gash across his ribs. And he tasted blood, human blood, on his tongue. He took hold of her wrist, inspecting it for open wounds.

  Damn it. She’d cut herself again.

  “Stop it,” she chided, hiding her arm behind her back. “You needed blood. It was the least I could do.”

  He looked around him. Creamy plaster walls. Light streaming through balcony doors. The smell of cleanser and scented soap. She’d brought him to their suite on the Strip.

  “Where’s the doctor?”

  “At her clinic, I guess. She really doesn’t like you.”

  “Doesn’t matter. Did she help?”

  “Yes. I’m fine. I just got my circuits crossed, or something. No ill effects. In fact—” she smiled, “—the doctor gave me a blood test. I’m not infected.”

  “But.” Connor remembered placing his bloody and bleeding fingers onto her open chest wounds. Of course, she was infected. “It hasn’t been six hours yet.”

  “You’ve been unconscious for a day and a half.”

  A day and a half? “Where’s Roz? Volk?”

  “She’s out getting supplies,” Ali said. “I don’t know about Volk.”

  “But you’re not infected? How?” He sat up, and she fluffed two pillows behind him. “It’s impossible.” His blood had mixed with hers. People had been infected with far less.

  “Stay with me for a sec. I have a theory,” Ali said. “Maks infected my mother while I was still in the womb. His blood passed through me, but affected me much differently than it did her. What if I’m immune?”

  “You mean, his blood left antibodies behind?”

  “In a sense.”

  “No.” He shook himself. It was foolish and wishful thinking.

  “But what if?” She smiled again, her fingers trailing little designs across his jean-covered knee. “It’s possible.”

  “It would mean your blood could be used to create a vaccine. Your blood could end vampirism.”

  “Yes.”

  He tilted his head back on the pillows, his mind racing. “We’d have to go to L.A. or New York and find a communicable diseases expert who will take us seriously.”

  “Yes.”

  “You’ll have to undergo all kinds of tests. They’ll poke and prod you silly.”

  “But think, what if?”

  Roz walked through the front door carrying brown paper bags and stood, sort of shy, at the foot of his bed. “Anton wired get-outta-town money into my account. We can catch a plane heading east tonight if we hurry.”

  Connor stood and helped Ali to her feet. “It’s worth a shot.” He slipped his arm around her shoulders.

  Roz packed the groceries into overnight bags. “Well. I— I was thinking I would—”

  “Don’t.” He sent her a look. “Don’t even say it. We go together.”

  She opened her mouth but hesitated to speak.

  “We need you, and not because you’re a witch,” he began.

  Ali finished, “Because we’re a family.”

  Connor ducked his head, but couldn’t contain a smile. His vision blurred, and he sniffed. Being part of a family again sounded really good to him too.

  Epilogue

  One month later.

  Connor unlocked the door to their suite at the Le Sort Hotel, and then waited for Ali to enter. He ushered her into a seat while he put away their overnight bags in the bedroom.

  Of course, she didn’t stay where he put her, but wandered into the room behind him and started unpacking.

  “Sit,” he pleaded. “You need to rest.”

  “I’m not sick,” she chastised gently, but under her eyes were gray shadows. This last trip to Utah had been hard on her. The combination of tests and the stress of waiting for answers were taking their toll. “I’m fine.” She slipped his sketchbook from a backpack and idly flipped the pages, scanning his artwork with a hint of a smile.

  Slightly uneasy, he leaned against the dresser and waited for her to find his message. He knew for a fact she hadn’t looked through the book in the last month, not since the day she’d vaporized Oleksander.

  She paused on a page near the middle, frowning.

  Connor knew by heart the page she was on. In the center was a sketch of her sitting in his Ford truck, and in the corner he’d written what he thought were his last words to her.

  Ali, you made my fucked up life worth living.

  “You wrote this?” she asked hesitantly. “That night in the truck?”

  “I love you.” Conner grabbed her by the wrist and yanked her flush to his chest. “You gave my life meaning. Before you, I thought I wasn’t good for anything.”

  “Does this mean you’re okay with staying in Vegas?”

  They could have gone anywhere. Between the two of them, they had enough money to travel the world. Or settle in London. Or Cleveland. But strange as it seemed, Vegas had become home. Besides, the Nevada desert was where the real battle for the future of the human race would begin.

  “I want to stay,” he assured. “I want to keep fighting the good fight and protecting the people out here.”

  “Me too,” she said.

  He kissed the tip of her nose, and then as she ducked her chin, he inspected the gauze around the crook of her elbow. “They took too much,” he worried.

  “I’m fine,” she assured, settling more fully into him. She wiggled her taut belly against his hips, and the friction was nearly enough to distract him from the reason she was bandaged.

  “I expected them to take a vial of blood,” he complained, “not eight.”

  She rose up on tiptoe, bowing her back, and then he knew she was doing it on purpose.

  “Roz will be back any minute,” he reminded her. “And you’ve been in a doctor’s office all morning.”

  Not that the doctors in Salt Lake City had done anything productive with all those vials. It was the fourth communicable diseases specialist they’d been to in a m
onth with zero success. This latest lab had taken samples of her blood and run tests. They might even look at it someday, if someone got really bored. But they weren’t nearly as enthusiastic about Ali’s story of infection and immunity as she was. They had listened to her with expressions of skeptical incredulity.

  The best response they’d received so far was from Dr. Burke in Henderson. Natasha and Anton had sent her Ali’s blood work panels, and the doc believed she could crack her DNA to create a shield against vampirism in everyday human beings. She couldn’t do it yet, but she was very eager to try.

  “Doesn’t our bed look inviting?” She tried to distract Connor with kisses along his jaw.

  It was working.

  His arms tightened around her, lifting her off her feet. “I forgot what I was going to say,” he teased, kicking the door closed behind them.

  #

  Natasha stood beside Anton at the lip of what looked like a crater in the sizzling Nevada sand and took pics with her cell phone, turning once to take a selfie with the opened grave.

  “I can’t believe we actually made it,” she exclaimed, bouncing a little. “I almost gave up hope of actually standing in the presence of vampires and really interacting, really making a difference.”

  Anton snorted indelicately. “It was only a thirteen hour flight across the ocean and a puddle jumper into Vegas,” he reminded her sarcastically. “Not to mention driving two hours into the middle of nowhere. The time just flew by.”

  He’d been grumpy since they left New Zealand, and she couldn’t blame him. The airline had messed up his gluten-free, vegan meal and then the rental car company in Las Vegas had lost their reservation and couldn’t give them a luxury sedan.

  On top of all that, he hadn’t seen his online friend Connor Beckett in person yet. Natasha wanted to surprise him, Roz, and Ali. The trio had no idea she and her brother were in the States.

  “It’s not the middle of nowhere,” she said, playfully punching his arm and trying to change his crabby mood, “We’re standing on a mass vampire grave inside a top secret—now abandoned—military installation. Come on, this is exciting.”

  Anton smiled half a smile. “You’re right. It is exciting.”