by Anna Abner
“Roz did it,” Lukas answered, not glancing up from his ball.
Sara swiveled wide eyes in Roz’s direction. “No kidding? You healed him?” At Roz’s nod, she added, “Wow. Marta said you were powerful, but I never realized you could juice up like that.” She abruptly shrugged off her surprise and grinned. “Now, we can have some real fun. So, where to?”
“I know a place,” Lukas said, pocketing his ball. “Do you have a map?”
Roz gathered her tablet and opened the map covered in red waypoints.
“Hold on.” Lukas seized her tablet and began manipulating the map, turning it and zooming in. “This is where I woke up.” He created a new dot to the southeast of Vegas, basically in the center of the most densely populated points.
Roz nodded, accepting the tablet back. “I figured.”
“Great.” Connor headed for the dining room. “I’ll grab some gear, and we’ll go.”
Roz wavered over whether to change, or not. She didn’t want Lukas to think she cared what he thought of her outfit, but when she caught sight of the spilled soup stain, she decided it was a necessity.
“I’ll change,” she announced and dove into her bedroom. Quickly, she grabbed the nearest pieces of hunting attire, purposefully not stopping to wonder if the jean cut-offs and the tiny tee would please the beast in the next room. They were comfortable and weather appropriate. She pretended that’s all that mattered.
#
Lukas climbed into the bed of Roz’s pickup, still a little amazed at how normal his broken leg felt. The absence of pain was like a euphoric high. He’d suffered so long with the hex, he’d almost forgotten what normal felt like.
Until Roz had gone mega häxa and fixed him right up. What a conundrum she’d become. At first sight, she’d been his obvious enemy. Cut and dry. But then she’d helped with the pain and eventually healed him back to full health. Nothing about her was simple. A witch with unlimited power, she lacked confidence in her abilities. A woman beautiful beyond compare, she warned everyone in hearing distance to stay away with her razor sharp tongue. She was smarter, kinder, and funnier than he’d expected. The weirdest part about the whole situation was his irrational desire to know her better.
Rolling down the drivers’ side window, Roz shouted at Lukas. “Which way?” Even her voice gave him shivers of pleasure.
“Drive south out of the city on I-95, then turn east on Highway 165,” Lukas called back. “I’ll guide you in from there.”
At the correct turn-off, Roz pulled over. Lukas didn’t wait until the truck stopped rolling before he leapt out of the bed.
“Follow me,” he said, taking off at a run down a dirt road toward low hills in the distance. The pickup trailed him all the way to the foothills, the truck tires crunching over sagebrush and brittle grass.
At the entrance to a cave, Lukas hesitated, sniffing the air and sending out feelers for sound or movement.
Would it ever get easier standing in the place that still stank of his family’s blood? The place where he’d woken to a living nightmare?
Distracted with the mining complex branching down into the earth, Roz snuck up on him. He didn’t realize she was beside him until she spoke, and he startled.
“Is this where the horde left your family?” she asked quietly.
He nodded once, his pulse pounding in his head.
“Are they buried near here?” Roz tentatively asked.
“No,” he said. “They’re buried at home in Sweden.” Finally, he met her gaze, but he didn’t feel stable. If he had to guess, his eyes glowed yellow. “No one would do anything to help me. The city police said it was out of their jurisdiction. The county sheriff said the cave was on federal lands. Not even the FBI returned my calls. No one seems to care. And no one wants to talk about them being attacked by vampires.”
“Not everyone knows infecteds are here,” Roz said. “The military lost them, but they don’t advertise it.”
As a group, they trudged toward the shadowy mine entrance.
“How did the military ‘lose them’ again?” Lukas asked pointedly.
Pulling a face, Roz answered, “Connor and I accidentally let them out.”
Fucking witches and their boy toys, he thought. Just like the night they’d tripped into his life, they’d bumbled their way to releasing two of the most dangerous creatures on the planet.
“This is it.”
“It’s small,” Roz fretted.
“I don’t like this,” Connor said, frowning. “It could be infested with vampires.”
“Can you hear or smell anything?” Roz asked Lukas. “With your freak senses?” she added in a teasing voice.
But Lukas wasn’t in a playful mood. He scowled at her before hunching down and entering the narrow mine opening only half as high as an average door. Roz ducked in right after.
Twenty feet down a sloping tunnel, it widened into a natural cave the size of a school gymnasium with half a dozen tunnels splitting off and leading deeper into the mountain. Along the wall dried out human remains lay in a heap of torn clothes.
“It’s this way.” Lukas pointed at one of the tunnels. Under his breath, he added, “I can still smell their blood.”
The second passage was tall and wide enough for them both to walk normally. Deep inside the mountain, under tons of rock, he stopped suddenly at the lip of a vertical shaft. As he peered down into a pit dug thirty feet into the ground, Roz joined him. It was presently empty, but in his mind, he pictured the broken bodies of his family tossed at the bottom like so much refuse.
“I’m sorry this happened to you,” she whispered. Her hand brushed his, and he clasped it, his larger hand dwarfing hers.
“They didn’t deserve what happened,” he lamented, his unfocused eyes on the pit. “They were good people. Oskar had so much potential.” At twelve, Lukas’ little brother had loved sports and science fiction books. Lukas missed his pale, freckled face every single day.
Connor and Sara caught up. “This is no horde stronghold,” Connor announced. “They were here once, but it’s been awhile.”
“It’s been empty since I was dumped here,” Lukas agreed. He’d been checking up on the property every couple days.
Lukas’ chin snapped up, and his hand clenched Roz’s a moment before releasing her. “There’s someone here.” He pushed past Connor and sprinted back down the tunnels. Something or someone big was blundering about the rocks outside the cave.
The moment Lukas crossed the mine’s threshold, he shifted, tossing his clothes aside and becoming a giant brown bear. With a roar of outrage, he bounded across the desert sands, kicking up dirt, and closing in fast on a terrified vampire. The creature scrambled up an outcropping of rock in a vain attempt to escape, but Lukas leaped from his hind legs and snatched the vampire in his massive jaws. A single bite and the infected lost his head.
#
Roz stumbled a step nearer to the mine entrance, one hand to her throat as Lukas ripped the vampire into bloody strips of flesh and bone.
“I’ve never seen a real shapeshifter,” Sara gasped as if in awe. “He’s a monster.” She turned her head in Roz’s direction. “Right?”
Roz curled her upper lip in annoyance and slowly approached the horror going on in front of her.
Finished ripping up the vampire, Lukas’ bear loped back toward their group.
“Stay behind me,” Connor ordered, taking point and holding his .44 in both hands. “He’s not himself. Girls, maybe you could whip up a sleeping spell?”
But an instinct reared to life within Roz. Connor was way off target. Lukas was in there, somewhere, and she had no intention of forcing magic on him. Not after everything he’d suffered at the hands of witches.
“Everyone ease off,” she said, rounding Connor and approaching the beast with slow, even steps.
“Roz,” Connor warned.
“He’s not going to hurt me.” She didn’t know how she knew. She just did.
Connor rolled cur
ses off his tongue, but Roz ignored him and moved within a yard of Lukas’ beast.
“You’re not going to hurt me, are you?” she purred.
Lukas’ muzzle was coated in blood, but his eyes were honey brown pools of intelligence. Lukas was still in the driver’s seat, she swore it.
“You’re a beauty,” she added, reaching out a hand to feel for herself. The bear watched her hand near him and at the last moment, he ducked his head so she landed between his ears. She ran her fingers through his soft fur, and he snuffled a breathy, happy noise through his mouth.
Smiling, she explored more of him—his silken ears, the rougher hair along his shoulder, and finally the down under his chin. Lukas leaned farther and farther into her petting until his bowed head rested against her breasts and she was close to wrapping her arms around him.
With no warning, he whipped his head to the left, knocking her off balance. Roaring so loud it rattled her to the bone, he bounded after a second, fleeing vampire.
“Follow him,” Connor shouted. “I hear it, too. We’re not alone.”
Roz ran after Lukas, calling her magic as she stumbled over progressively more rocky earth on their way up the side of the mountain.
A group of infecteds, maybe fifteen in all, tumbled toward them. Too many for them to take, whether they had a pissed off shapeshifter on their team, or not. These vampires were angry, too, smelling the blood of their fallen comrade.
Lukas bounded into the fray, biting and clawing what he could reach, but he was quickly swamped with vampires. Sara was still calling her power. Which meant Roz was the only team member left to do anything.
“Anyone value their life more than the horde?” Connor bellowed. “Abandon the horde and no one will hurt you.”
He didn’t receive very friendly responses.
One or two vampires, they could overpower and capture. Fifteen? It was every human being for themselves.
As Connor unsheathed a knife and sprinted for Lukas, Roz said, “Give Connor strength. Give Lukas strength,” over and over, boosting their natural powers, supplying them with vigor to spare.
It seemed to be working as Connor cut his way to Lukas, but then Sara finally got her power up and running.
“Vampires, go to sleep,” she ordered from within an invisible whirlwind of magical energy. “Vampires, sleep.”
“No,” Roz screamed, running for Sara. The stupid witch would put Connor to sleep too. What would Lukas do to Connor if he discovered he was infected? “Stop!”
But Sara didn’t stop.
One by one, the infecteds dropped to their knees and collapsed. Connor was the last to fall.
Roz reached Sara two seconds too late, shoving her to break her concentration. “I said, stop,” she shouted.
The witch stared past Roz to Connor, curled on the dirt. “I knew it! I knew he was infected. It was the only explanation.”
Lukas sat on his haunches, howled a roar, and shifted into human form. Nude and bloodied, he crossed to Connor. “Are you fucking kidding me?”
Chapter Eleven
Roz had never been so scared. Lukas and Sara stared down at Connor’s unconscious form with either glee or rage, and she couldn’t predict which was more dangerous for her best friend. Finally, Roz put herself between the magically concussed Connor and a very tall, very nude, very pissed off Lukas.
“He’s not like the others,” Roz stated, her voice hardly wobbling at all.
But Lukas’ wounded eyes were for Roz alone. “You let me sleep under the same roof as a vampire? Knowing how I feel about them? Knowing what they did to me?”
Connor, please wake up now. “I can explain,” she began lamely. “He was infected over the summer, but he controls the hunger. He wants to be better than the rest.”
“Vampires killed my family,” Lukas howled, vibrating with rage. His eyes turned yellow. “You know that!”
“You’re going to shift again,” she said, trying to keep him calm. Behind Lukas, the remaining vampires stirred. “Please just talk to me.”
“No.” He growled, low in his throat. “I don’t want to hear anything you have to say.” Turning away from her, Lukas retrieved Connor’s discarded handgun and shot the final vampires. Without looking back, Lukas shifted into his bear form and bounded into the desert.
Connor groaned at her feet, and Roz crouched to help him sit.
“Fuck,” he swore. “That was a wallop.” He glanced guiltily at Roz and then Sara.
“I knew you couldn’t be human,” Sara said with a self-satisfied smile.
“I’m very much human,” Connor replied, pushing to his feet. “Just a bit enhanced.”
“That’s one way of saying it.”
Roz gazed out at the darkening horizon and the last place she’d seen Lukas. “He acted betrayed,” she said.
“Who?” Connor asked. “Bear boy?”
“He looked at me like I’d stabbed him in the back,” she murmured. Like he’d never speak to her again.
And it hurt. Roz hadn’t expected to care what the shifter thought of her, but she found herself aching inside at the thought of him hating her.
She should have told him about Connor sooner. She’d had enough chances. Since Lukas had been betrayed by both witches and vampires in Las Vegas, he’d probably never be able to forgive her for putting him in the same painful situation all over again.
She wished she could talk to him, but he wasn’t carrying a phone. And he was probably never coming back.
“Good riddance, then,” Connor decided as he investigated the fallen vampires.
Sara pulled Roz into a hard side-hug. “You can always talk to him later,” she assured. “But more importantly, we have the chance with these vamps to test the infection.”
Roz wiggled out of the embrace and studied Sara’s profile. She wanted to trust the woman, but it had been a long year in the desert. Was Sara really suggesting they play mad scientists and experiment on a couple half-dead infecteds?
“What are you talking about?” Connor asked.
“They’re out cold. Not dead,” Sara observed. “If we take them somewhere secure, I can try to reverse the infection.”
It wasn’t so out of the realm of possibility. After all, Ali possessed a plan with the same ends. After discovering, through dumb luck, Ali was immune to vampirism thanks to an infusion of Maksim Volk’s blood into her system while she was in utero, Ali wanted desperately to use her antibodies to protect other people. So far, no one had been able to figure out how to replicate them.
Without thinking, Roz rocked forward to tell Sara all about it. “Weird,” she gasped. “Ali has been—”
Connor stepped on her toes, cutting off any further outpouring of information. As if he hadn’t done a thing, he asked Sara, “You want to cure them?”
Roz glanced at Connor. Was it her he didn’t trust? Or Sara? She wouldn’t have exposed Ali’s parentage, if that’s what he was worried about.
Sara added, “Yeah. And afterwards, you can talk to them. Decide if they’re decent or not.”
He considered it, and Roz knew before he said a word that he’d agree. He wanted so desperately not to be alone.
“There’s a house,” Connor said. “It’s secure. We’ll take them there, if you really think you can cure them.”
“It would be fun to try, don’t you think?” She winked at Roz.
“I don’t know how much fun it’ll be,” he said, “but I’d like to see what you can do.”
Leaving them, Connor made a funeral pyre out of the dead infecteds and loaded the four still-breathing vampires into the bed of the Ford.
“Have you ever practiced a spell like this?” Roz asked Sara.
“Of course not.” A laugh bubbled up. “Admit it, you’re excited.”
Hardly. She couldn’t stop worrying about Lukas out there on his own—feeling betrayed and alone. She honestly couldn’t care about vampires at the moment. Somewhere Lukas was dealing with Connor’s infection on his own, and s
he really wished she could explain things. She pulled out her cellphone and, though she knew he wasn’t carrying his, she texted him. Can we talk? She hit send and tucked the phone back in her pocket.
Once all three climbed back inside the truck and headed into the desert, Sara prattled on. “Obviously, the Coven is interested in every bit of scientific data they can get their hands on, but I’m curious to see how my magic affects them.”
Roz shifted on the wide bouncy seat, putting thoughts of Lukas aside. “Why is the Coven so interested in vampires?” Did Sara and her sudden obsession with vampirism have to do with the cease-and-desist letter? Prophecy number one thousand eight?
“They don’t like ‘em,” Sara said. “But who does? They’re killers. They feed on the innocent.” She glanced at Connor. “No offense.”
“What are they doing about it?” Roz asked, ignoring the comment.
“Whatever it takes,” Sara said, “but I’m nobody special. It’s not like the higher-ups talk to me, or anything.”
“What exactly does it take?” Roz pressed.
Sara blinked. “Their extinction.”
Silence descended on the truck cab as Roz deciphered the ramifications of Sara’s comment. The Coven was destroying vampires. But if the witches wanted to be top dogs, they had to eradicate their closest competition. Standard coup protocol.
“We’re here,” Connor announced.
She nearly missed the turn onto a long dirt road leading to a well-guarded cabin surrounded by hundreds of miles of barren desert, but corrected in time.
At the gate, Roz climbed out and studied the walled-in yard. Nothing had changed since the last time she’d stayed at Natasha’s off-the-grid, self-sustaining cabin with Connor and Ali on the eve of Oleksander’s final battle. The one-bedroom home, surrounded by a high security fence, was the perfect hideaway. Roz half expected the gate to remain sealed when she punched in the code, but the numbers worked the way they always had and the gate rolled open, allowing Connor to drive through in the Ford.
Maybe, finally, Natasha would notice they were poking around her private property and answer Roz’s texts. She doubted it, though. It had been days since her so-called friend had said a word to her. This probably wouldn’t catch her attention either.