by Anna Abner
Spellspeaker’s Prophecy
(Beasts of Vegas Series #2)
Written by Anna Abner
Copyright 2018 by Anna Abner
Praise for the Dark Caster Series by Anna Abner
“A sizzling and sweet paranormal romance.” 5 out of 5 stars.
--Christine Rains, author of the 13th Floor Series
“A wonderful, suspenseful love story.” 5 out of 5 stars.
--Coffee Time Romance
“A great paranormal adventure with many twists and turns.” 5 out of 5 stars.
--Community Bookstop
“This book kept me on the edge of my seat.” 4 out of 5 stars.
--The Reading Café
Praise for the Red Plague Series by Anna Abner
“If you’re a fan of zombie books, I would recommend Elixir in a heartbeat.”
--Kristin Noel at Pretty Little Pages
“Kudos to Abner for penning such a gripping book! I literally sat in front of my computer, glued to the monitor as I scrolled through the pages as fast as possible.”
--Book Landers
“Elixir is one of the very best books about zombies that I have read in a long time. … I loved it and I can’t wait for the next book in the series.”
--Avid Reader
“This will be a series I’ll read more than once.”
--Victoria’s Reviews
Chapter One
Ilvane’s Prophecy #1008: A witch from Miami will bring about a new age of magic in the Coven.
Roz Carrera calculated the chances that the bonfire in the distance was a positive occurrence. Considering the number of vampires in the area, the lateness of the hour, and the height of the flames, the odds weren’t great it was anything other than a clusterfuck.
Connor Beckett leaned forward in the passenger seat. “Trouble ahead,” he said softly, his voice nearly fading under the roar of their modified F-350’s engine. “Ease up, Roz.”
She decelerated slowly. In the darkness, the orange and red flames shone like napalm. Shapes and shadowy figures danced around the fire. When she cranked down her window, an animal—a big one—roared in some cross between rage and pain.
“Vampires?” she questioned, catching Connor’s eye across the bouncy truck seat while his girlfriend, Ali Rusenko, fidgeted between them.
“I can only hope.” He gave Roz a look that said—keep your guard up. It’d been days since they’d even seen another infected. Too long, considering their mission’s sole objective was to find and capture them.
Signs of modern civilization were sparse this far out in rural Nevada. The bonfire was the only light for miles. The only village for miles. Nothing but acres and acres of desert, rocky hills, and sagebrush. And anybody who lived anywhere within sight appeared to be circling the flames.
“Let’s move real slow on this one,” Connor said. Once Roz parked the truck one hundred feet from the fire, Connor cracked open his door. “Roz, keep everyone calm until we figure out what’s going on.” He shoved a .44 down the waistband of his jeans and handed a smaller .38 Ruger to Ali. “If anyone breaks away and comes at you—shoot. Don’t hesitate.”
“I’m not shooting anyone.” Ali didn’t even glance at the weapon.
“Just in case.” He forced it into her hands.
Dismissing the dramatic twosome, Roz stepped out of the truck in form-hugging leggings, flip flops, and a crop top. Connor tossed her a handgun over the hood and she caught it, checked the clip, and flipped the safety off. She rolled her shoulders. Ready.
They approached the fire together.
“The poor thing,” Ali whispered.
To the east of the fire, a full-grown bear writhed on a set of chains, strung between two mobile homes. Roz wasn’t great with species—black, brown, polar, grizzly—but she recognized a bear when she saw one.
Roz said, “Connor, flex your muscles. If one of those freaks makes a run for it, I expect you to throw a car at him.”
“Ha, ha. Now get to the magic.”
Except Roz was a witch on the fritz and had been for weeks. The thought of calling her power already had her pulse picking up and her blood pressure spiking. She was so tired of failing, and yet she couldn’t figure out how to succeed. Not since their nightmare-inducing showdown with Oleksander the Destroyer had she been able to power up with ease.
“I don’t want to leave the bear here to be tortured and killed.” Ali laid a hand on Connor’s sleeve. Though Roz couldn’t see her, she figured the girl was giving Connor her big, sparkly blue eyes. Fucking bleeding hearts. What were they gonna do with a super pissed off bear? They lived in a hotel for crying out loud.
“This isn’t our business,” Roz reminded them both. “I vote for backing out of here. We’re supposed to be hunting vampires, remember? This is local stuff.”
“She’s right,” Connor said, flicking his gaze from the crowd to Ali. “Let’s go.”
“We can’t leave it here to be tortured,” Ali hissed. “You know what they’ll do to it.”
“It’s none of our business,” he hissed back. “Vampires, remember? Not bears.”
“We could put it in the back of the truck,” Ali continued, still staring with moon eyes at Connor. “We’ll set it free in the mountains. It’s the right thing to do.”
If Connor wanted to leave, then suddenly Roz felt like staying. “Not that you asked,” she said, shouldering her way between them. “But I say we rescue the bear.”
“Fine,” he snapped. “We’ll rescue the bear.”
Connor sighed as if this was a huge imposition, but Roz caught the sparkle in his dark eyes. He loved the hunt, whatever the prey. He was itching for a fight. They all were. The last vampire they’d encountered had fought so hard against being captured, they’d killed it by accident. Strange. Cause back in the day, they’d have killed it on purpose. But since Ali arrived and changed everything, they’d adopted a no-killing policy when it came to the infected.
“Let’s do this quick,” Connor said. “No blood shed. Especially ours.”
“Deal,” Ali said.
A small group of fire enthusiasts broke away from the group and ambled nearer to the pickup.
Roz inhaled a deep, calming breath and centered her thoughts. “Blessed is my power,” she whispered, breathing in through her nose. “I call upon thee.”
Nothing sparked. No invisible wind, no whirling particles, no zing under her skin.
A barrel-chested older man raised a can of beer and burped hello. “You all tourists?” he asked in the same tone she’d ask a person, You all child molesters?
Connor may have been impersonating a Roman statue, but Roz knew inside he was a jumpy mess. He was calculating. Using his senses. Running plays. Only rarely did anyone get the upper hand on her best friend. He was a freaking warrior.
“Not exactly,” Roz answered. “What’s with the animal?”
“Last night, three people were torn apart in their trailer.” He slurped beer, and then shrugged. “We put out bear traps, and lookie what stepped in one. Must’a escaped from the zoo.”
Under her breath, Roz called her power again. A whisper of magic tickled the tips of her fingers. There was something there in reserves, and she teased it out.
“What are you going to do with it?” Ali asked the man.
“Can’t you see the BBQ we set up?” He guffawed as the bonfire flared over his shoulder. The beast’s hide, missing patches of fur, shone with blood in the warm light.
Right on cue, the animal in question roared an inhuman scream of pure rage with an underlying note of pain. Roz may play the tough girl on a regular basis, but the sound plucked a heartstring. They were going to do horrible things to the bear because it had chosen the
wrong food source.
“Join us,” the man said. “There’s plenty for everyone.”
Roz couldn’t imagine how these drunk idiots had wrapped a chain tight around the bear’s throat and trapped it between two mobile homes, but she guessed the steel bear trap eating its left hind leg had something to do with it. Another heartstring twanged.
She disliked frontier justice.
Gathering both women into a huddle a few feet away, Connor said, “Roz, when I signal you, put the bear to sleep. And, Ali, for God’s sake, keep your hand on your weapon.”
They turned back toward the mob circling the fire. “We can take care of your bear problem,” Connor said. “We’ll buy it off you and haul it away.”
This announcement was met with general irritation from the crowd.
Sensing her magic would make or break their rescue mission, Roz pushed her power up and out. “Stay calm,” she hissed, over and over, a never-ending stream of words. So long as she kept speaking, her spell would hold. Perspiration beaded between her breasts and under her arms, but she refused to ease off.
Knowing in a few minutes, she’d have to throw up a sleeping spell on the bear on top of the calming spell she was currently sweating through didn’t lessen her anxiety. Not that Connor ever considered her power’s parameters. He thought it was a piece of cake speaking complex emotional spells, making people do things they didn’t want to do. She wasn’t a machine, goddamn it. She was barely a witch at all, let alone a first class spellspeaker with the ability to alter the world.
“You have enough to do, burying your dead. Let us pay you for the bear.” Under his breath, Connor said, “Roz, get out the money. Hundreds should do it. And put the bear to sleep.”
Sure, sure. Keep the crowd calm, force an enraged animal to close its little peepers, convince a grown man scraps of paper were hundred dollar bills, and anything else that came to mind. No problem.
“Calm, calm, stay calm, go to sleep.” Her fingers tingled with the power swimming through her as she repeated the spell, her lips working in fast-forward. Her breath hissed between her teeth, the words all running together. Without stuttering a syllable, she pulled three hundred dollars from her pocket. Connor didn’t need to know it was real cash, not magicked money. There was only so much she could do.
When she could actually juice up her magic to perform the spell, Roz didn’t enjoy passing off newspaper as bills. Those were the places she could never go back to. She was giving witches a bad reputation.
Not that she cared what the Coven thought of her. Those prissy, holier-than-thou bitches could all roast.
In the distance, the bear quieted. Roz pushed harder, speaking faster, focusing all her energy on the sleep spell. The beast roared once and sat down, its head, shoulders and chest hanging from the chains. If they weren’t careful, the animal would choke to death before they rescued it. She refocused on the trailer park crowd.
“Holy...”
Roz’s head snapped up. What? Which spell had faded? Who were they coming after first?
She froze.
“No way,” she breathed, her spells forgotten.
The bear wasn’t a bear at all. He was a shifter. A supernatural freak, just like her. And asleep, his conscious mind had given up control and he’d shifted back to his natural form.
The bear was gone, vanished, and in its place, still strung up between two rusted mobile homes with chains, was a man. A bleeding, unconscious, naked man.
Oops.
Chapter Two
“You had nightmares again.”
Maksim Volk sat up from the castoff mattress serving as his bed these days and searched out her face. His blood donor, the really annoying one, crouched against the cave wall where he’d chained her before his impromptu evening nap.
Maks was having a bad couple of months. It had begun with the discovery that the reason he existed, his heart and soul, his little bird Katya had been killed and dismembered and ended with the disappearance of the vampire lord, Oleksander the Destroyer. Normally, Olek’s dropping off the face of the earth would have been reason to throw a party, but his absence had left a vacancy at the top of the vampire heap. Lots of wretched, nasty creatures were scrambling to fill the position that should, by all rights, be Maks’.
Worst of all, he’d had to evacuate the abandoned St. Peter’s Hospital after Olek’s disappearance because the twat Connor Beckett knew where they slept. Now, they stayed in a network of caves like animals. Maks was a creature of luxury. Sleeping on dirt chafed.
Refusing to answer the ragamuffin, he stood slowly and dressed in faded jeans and a fitted, long-sleeved shirt. Still weak from having his ass kicked multiple times in too short a period of time, he couldn’t leave fast enough to avoid his donor’s continued censure.
He wanted to go to Anya. No, her name was Alina now. Ali.
So much time had passed, he felt he could look at her and not ache over the loss of her mother. He wanted to know her.
“Normally, I wouldn’t care,” the amber-eyed beauty grouched, staring daggers at him, “but I couldn’t sleep through all the screaming.”
He ducked his head and strolled from his rock-walled room into a maze of dark, abandoned mining tunnels, trying not to show how much her words cut. He prided himself on never crying. Not through Oleksander’s tirades and punishments. Not after Connor Beckett shot him. Not even through twenty years of the US Army’s experiments.
Was he truly crying in his sleep? And somehow, his blood donor listening to it quadrupled the embarrassment. She who watched him with those condescending amber eyes. As a glorified hostage, she should show more humility. But not even being held prisoner had dampened her sass. And the more Maks experienced it, oddly, the less he wanted to break her of it.
Maybe blood donors were an old-fashioned idea. Olek’s horde kept hostages. Maks’ horde would be more progressive.
“Where have you been?” Damian demanded, sauntering toward Maks’ private space despite being uninvited.
A confrontation between the two was a long time coming. The very men and women supposed to revere Maks, openly disrespected him. They’d respected Olek. Feared him, followed him, and yes worshipped him. Which always surprised Maks since Oleksander had been such a giant tool. He’d possessed no foresight, no big ideas, no personality aside from grumble, grumble, kill, grumble, grumble. But these people had exalted him as some divine father figure.
Damian just laughed.
Laughed at him. Like he was a fool.
Being a child of Oleksander used to mean something. Maks had been the only surviving second generation, until his master infected Connor Beckett when he should have ripped out his bowels and left him in bloody pieces by the side of the road. But Connor Beckett didn’t count because he wasn’t a real vampire. He thought he was a good guy. The only good thing about him was he protected Ali. But Maks could do that himself. It was on his to-do list. Right behind kick Damian’s laughing teeth in.
“You don’t question me,” Maks threatened, a growl in his usually laconic voice.
These animals required a show of brutal force. He vividly remembered when Oleksander executed his generals in the middle of camp, saving the prettiest boy for last. He’d raped him, and then cut off his head. The horde loved him for it. They would have followed him into hell, if he asked. They wouldn’t follow Maks across the street.
Everything had been so easy when he’d been pulling Olek’s strings, smirking from the shadows, making things happen without suffering any of the negative consequences of leadership. Now, he was twisting in the wind for all to see. Maybe he didn’t need to seize control. Maybe he should lay low, wait for a power player to emerge, an imbecile like Damian, and ride his coattails to fame and glory.
Would Damian let him live long enough to be forgotten again? These creatures were more of the Old World persuasion. When a king is overthrown, he loses his bowels. Or his legs. Or his head.
He knew all too well the dangers of being King o
f the Vampires. Look at what happened to his predecessor.
Political figures did not grow old around these parts. Neither would Maks. He’d have to wrench over control of the whole entity, or run and hide. Neither choice particularly appealed to him.
Damian was unaffected. “Any word from the Destroyer?”
Maks swallowed bile, his nostrils flaring in outrage. He dared question him?
The insubordination hurt. Maybe he wasn’t as good a leader as Olek. Maks was more a behind-the-scenes puppet master. He’d been masterful at persuading Olek to do anything he suggested. But now… Well, Olek was dead.
Maks took a breath to deliver a biting response worthy of the new warlord in town when an explosion at the front entrance rocked the entire cave system. The noise and the smoke brought back vivid memories of his last day in the army’s secret vampire prison when Connor Beckett—God, that prick was annoying—had nearly blown his legs off with a grenade. Fangs bared, he ran toward the noise, still recuperating or not.
This was his stronghold now, and he’d defend it to the very end. What kind of commander would he be if he allowed his home to be invaded?
As he turned the last corner, he hoped it would be Connor standing amidst the rubble. Maks would give anything to repay his debt to the little fucker.
No, it wasn’t Connor at his front door.
It was much, much worse.
Oleksander’s three brothers had come home.
#
The dangers of the bonfire forgotten for the shock of being in the direct vicinity of a shapeshifter, Roz whipped her magic up as the emotion in the crowd, the very air, energized.
Her power whirled like dust motes in a breeze. She couldn’t see it, no one could, but she felt it. A breath of wind passed through her, around her, up from her feet and spiraled around her body. Under her skin, energy surged through her veins.