The Shopgirl's Prophecy (Beasts of Vegas Book 1) Page 4

  Such a thrill meeting fans. “If we’re gonna do this, let’s get a move on,” Connor said. “Only a few hours of daylight left.”

  Not that vampires attacked by the light of the moon. They killed and fed, not necessarily in that order, whenever the urge struck. They weren’t allergic to sunlight or garlic either for that matter, but they possessed better than average eyesight and Connor didn’t. So, he kept a low profile at night.

  “Thank you.” Ali quivered in pure gratitude.

  Jesus. If he looked past the blood and grime, she was the epitome of the American cheerleader. Long blonde hair? Check. Blue eyes? Yep. Hot little body? Oh, yeah. Her clipped English accent only added cool points. But he’d chosen his life’s mission a while ago and pretty girls weren’t part of it.

  “Twenty minutes to pack up.” He got the hell out of there, exchanging Ali’s thank-yous for the balcony’s late afternoon heat. He expected Roz to follow, and she didn’t disappoint.

  “Did you get kicked in the goddamned head?” she demanded, closing the French doors behind her.

  He loved Roz, and he needed her brutal honesty right then. That was part of the reason they made such a great team. Why he adored her. When he required a reality check, she booted him in the ass. When she needed some good, old-fashioned validation, he supplied it in spades. Theirs was the perfect, platonic relationship.

  “She was hurt.” Connor shrugged, tapping out a Mentos and popping it into his mouth. He sucked in a slow, deep breath and exhaled. “I felt like helping.”

  He’d shuffle the girl off to her family, maybe fantasize about her for a bit, but nothing more. Distraction resolved.

  Roz settled beside the potted palm in the corner. They both knew she wasn’t pissed at him, not really. “A quick road trip, but that’s it, right?”

  He chewed another mint. “We’ll drop her off, scope out the vampire situation and maybe find a lead on the horde.” Yep, time to re-focus on his primary objective—kicking ass and luring Oleksander from his unknown hidey-hole. “I’d love to know why Volk crashed her bus.”

  For three months, Connor and Roz had been making up for their colossal screw-up by taking newly infected vampires out of their misery, but they hadn’t laid eyes on the Big Man since his release. Today was the first time Volk had shown his face.

  But why? Why a tour bus on its way to Hoover Dam? Why a British girl with no ties to vampirism? Connor was itching to return to the bus and search for answers.

  “Mmmm-hm. Is that all you want?” She gave him The Look—knowing smirk, lifted eyebrow. So, she’d noticed his reaction to the girl. Roz always could read him like a book. “You’re into her, though.”

  It didn’t matter. Connor’s mission took priority over everything else. He showed her his back and scanned the street far below. Tourists no bigger than mice swarmed the casinos and bars. “I can’t afford to like anybody.” She knew better. “Besides, you’re all the woman I need.”

  Roz snorted, straightening away from him. “You wish.”

  He didn’t, of course. It wasn’t like that.

  “I’ll box up some gear.” She left him lounging in the sun.

  Before Roz stepped through the delicate French doors, there Alina Rusenko was, in all her smudgy, messy-haired, blood-stained glory. Thank God Ali hadn’t turned. Because if she had, he’d have been duty bound to decapitate her. No other option. And killing her would have bothered him, more than all the rest.

  Vampires were monsters and murderers. Connor destroyed them to protect the innocent tourists down there on the Strip. Every vampire he killed was one less soldier in the coming war. The apocalypse was coming because he’d brought it. Best to be prepared.

  “I don’t have anything to pack,” Ali said, leaning against the exterior wall.

  Connor didn’t usually give a crap what his hair looked like or whether his clothes were clean, but suddenly he did. He forced himself not to run his fingers through his hair.

  “Right.” Connor pocketed the mints.

  Speaking of dirty, Ali’s clothes were rather disgusting. Dried blood merged with the soot to create a macabre impressionist work of art.

  He had a flash of her borrowing his clothes and wearing his T-shirt. And nothing else.

  “You can borrow clothes from Roz,” he told her abruptly.

  She plucked at a dried bloodstain. “I’ll be alright until I get to my uncle’s.”

  “Unacceptable.” He nodded his head toward the suite. “Pick out whatever you need.”

  “Thanks.” She scratched at a blood droplet on the hem of her blouse, as if she could remove it. Not a chance. “My purse is still on the bus. Can we stop on the way?”

  “Sure.” He studied her glassy eyes, her snowy complexion, and the way she wavered slightly on her feet. She looked like she’d been through the wringer. Twice. “You need to sit down.”

  “It feels good to stand.”

  “Okay.” Connor leaned against the railing, trying to be cool. He flexed and opened his left hand, unconsciously testing its strength. An old habit. A month ago, he’d caught a knife swing with his palm, and now he couldn’t make a complete fist. Open. Close. Open. Close. His muscles stretched and warmed, but it didn’t improve anything.

  “So, you’re the Connor that let Oleksander out.”

  “Guilty.” He hunched over the railing, frustration twisting his guts even after living with what he’d done for the past twelve weeks.

  “But why stay?” Ali asked.

  There was no nice way to say it. “I kill vampires because they’re monsters.” In every sense of the word.

  The Western media called them infecteds, and bleeding heart types studied them—from a distance—and called them ill. Sick, yes, but human. Except those researchers didn’t have the first fucking clue what was going on in the trenches around Las Vegas, in the little desert towns, on a daily basis. He did.

  “Why?” she pressed. “Isn’t there an army better suited? Or at least the police?”

  Connor swallowed, wishing for a mint. Screw it. He shook out another one and chewed before he answered. “There’s no one else.”

  “But vampires are people, too.”

  Same old bullshit. She’d obviously read more than a few tree-hugging, let’s-all-hold-hands editorials from soft-hearted citizens no where near Vegas. “They kill, and they feed. They’re no different than cannibalistic serial killers or man-eating predators.”

  Ali paled even further, her face losing any remnants of the color it had gained in the last six hours, or so. “You’re here killing people? Because a prophecy didn’t go your way?”

  It all came back to Ilvane the Oracle’s prophecy. It always did. Fixing it haunted him on a daily basis. Not the vampires he’d killed, or the victims he’d saved. No. Those seer’s words were what kept him awake most nights.

  He quoted from memory. “‘Connor from Cleveland will release Oleksander the Destroyer and trigger the apocalypse.’ Cute, huh?” She didn’t answer. “Can you imagine reading that when you’re twenty-two and in college, a dumb kid getting wasted every night and flunking midterms?”

  “I’m twenty-two right now,” she said. And then, “You’re sure it’s about you?”

  Lots and lots of people had asked him the same question. It wasn’t important that they believe. He believed enough for all of them.

  “I let him out.”

  “How long have you been doing this?”

  “Three months.” Give or take.

  “How long are you going to stay?”

  “Until I kill Oleksander.” Crystal clear. Why it surprised other people, he didn’t know. Connor may have set Olek free, but he didn’t intend on leaving him free.

  “You think if you kill him, then releasing him won’t matter?”

  She was good. That’s exactly what he thought. And if Connor could get his hands around the Destroyer’s throat, even if he died doing it, then he wouldn’t be such a disappointment anymore. The world could sleep easier,
thanks to him. Apocalypse, or not.

  “Killing him is more important than anything else,” Connor said. “See, I know what he does. He has to die. And I’m the only person willing to do it.”

  Ali looked at him the same way his mom had when he’d told her about the prophecy and what he intended to do about it. Like he was crazy with a dash of stupid. “It’s not about you,” Mom had assured. “You’re staying at home where it’s safe. You’re talking nonsense.”

  But Connor had left her, along with his entire life, to fly to cowboy country with a witch he barely knew. No one understood why he couldn’t sit still and wait for the end of normal with those damning words hanging over his head. He had to do something. The way people at school looked at him—grade A, world-class loser with a capital L. He couldn’t let that be his legacy. He couldn’t sit by while Olek ran wild.

  “I gotta help Roz.” With a last look over the railing, he split.

  #

  A vampire hunter. Ali had been rescued and patched up by a vampire hunter and his bitchy sidekick. She had to get out of there. Everything was ass backwards…freaking mythological. She needed the reality of her busy shop and London’s familiar gray skies. This place was so not for her.

  “I’m packing the truck,” Connor announced. “Change your clothes. Roz’s room is on the right.”

  While Connor carried duffels and cases full of what she assumed was heavy artillery downstairs, and Roz twiddled around in the suite’s kitchen, Ali crept down a short hallway flanked by identical doors. The door on the right was closed, but the second door hung open. She peered at a rumpled bed with a leather-bound book lying carelessly on the corner.

  Perhaps the blood loss made her brave because Ali did something she rarely ever did—she snooped. Connor’s bedroom was spacious with a balcony off the western wall, lavish cabinets, and an enormous bed. The closer she got to the bed the more she smelled Connor’s clean yet exotic scent.

  Ali checked to make sure Connor and Roz were still occupied, and then opened the book. It wasn’t a journal. It was a sketchbook. She turned the first few pages and found it was set up like a comic book—square and rectangular patches adding up to a single scene.

  Footsteps in the foyer. She snapped the book closed and dropped it onto the bed.

  Roz swept into the room, casting Ali a very suspicious look. “Can I help you?”

  “I, uh…” She jerked to her full height. “Connor said I could borrow a clean shirt.”

  “This is Connor’s room.” Roz’s mouth tightened as she crossed the hall and from a replica antique dresser she dug out a white blouse with buttons down the front. A cap-sleeved blouse. Roz tossed it at her on her way into the living room.

  She hesitated to change clothes, the need to cover her body so ingrained she didn’t even want to try. But her clothes were ruined, and Connor had been adamant.

  Disposing of her stained top, Ali slid into the borrowed blouse. It felt strange. She brushed her hands up and down her bare arms. Back home, in her regular life, she never wore short sleeves. She wasn’t allowed.

  “Do you have one with long sleeves?” Ali asked.

  “No,” Roz called from the other room.

  When Connor returned, he and Roz gathered another load of gear, and the three of them rode the lift into the parking garage. In the shadowy concrete subbasement, Connor and Roz sorted boxes and bundles into the back of an F-350 pickup from the age of the dinosaurs, a classic, metallic behemoth.

  And Ali let them. She didn’t know what to say to people like them. How did a couple of twenty-something college kids convince themselves to drop everything and move to cactus country to kill people? Sick people? It didn’t make sense. They looked like rational, logical beings. But they were obsessed, at least Connor was. It must be some kind of twisted, co-dependency thing, where they fed off each other’s psychoses. A modern day Bonnie and Clyde. Except crazier.

  The temperature slowly dropped under tons of cold concrete, and Ali hugged her ribs. For the first time in her life, she wasn’t bound up in long sleeves and pants, and the sensation was unnerving.

  Shivering slightly, she wandered over to the truck and waited. The vehicle was old, but well cared for. Dual exhaust. Rear window on a hinge for easy access. Fog lights. Lift kit.

  Roz and Connor bent over the truck bed, so close their shoulders brushed. Ali couldn’t help the trajectory of her thoughts.

  “So,” she asked, her voice echoing in the cavernous structure, “it’s just the two of you?” She wanted to ask, Then you’re together together? But she was too much of a chicken.

  Roz stowed her weapons and spoke first. “We tried working as a threesome once. We hooked up with an older guy two months ago. Ex-military,” she said. “A real asset in a fight. But after a few days he snapped, broke Connor’s leg and a couple of his ribs with a two by four. Took off with our money, our weapons, even our food. Afterwards we made a pact—no more strays.” She sneered. “But here you are.”

  So, that’s how he’d gotten the limp.

  Ali swallowed down a surge of bile at the thought of anyone hurting Connor. She hated thinking of people in pain, or scared for their lives. Like her hulking cousin Stefan when the vampire took hold of him.

  Connor needed to take better care of himself. Perhaps find a couple more men to watch his back. Big ones. Shifters, maybe. Shapeshifters were hard to catch and even harder to kill. The problem was finding one. Maybe, if he had backup, he wouldn’t get worked over with a piece of lumber.

  And then Ali couldn’t keep it down any longer. She turned her back on the truck and threw up all the water she’d just drank.

  Connor followed her, his fingers brushing across the back of her neck. “You okay?”

  Her head spun. No. “Yeah. Had a flashback. I saw Volk cut my cousin’s throat before you got to the bus crash.” It didn’t feel real. The more time passed, the more the memory took on the characteristics of a slasher flick. She couldn’t possibly have seen what she thought she’d seen.

  Connor’s hand remained on her back, guiding her toward the truck. Opening the passenger door, he helped her inside the cab.

  She scooted dead center on the wide, bouncy bench seat of their pickup, her feet tangling in a nest of car chargers on the floorboards. Everything from phone to GPS to who knew what.

  Roz climbed behind the wheel, and Connor, carrying his impossibly large handgun and a rifle, hopped into the passenger seat. The truck roared to life like a jet plane, growling and shuddering from the tires on up.

  A menagerie of Vegas resorts passed by, each more colorful and archetypal than the last, but before long the scenery quieted to wide open sand dunes and scrub brush as far as her eyes could see in every direction.

  Safely outside the city, Connor rolled the window down and stuck the business end of his rifle through the opening. Ali had never taken a hunting trip. She didn’t come from a family of gun enthusiasts. She wasn’t comfortable around so many loaded weapons, especially knowing they were used for killing human beings.

  “You don’t have anything to fear from these people,” she said. That one vampire, notwithstanding. “The infecteds are all in hiding, right? They’re not in the cities.”

  He shook his head. “The newer vampires take a lot of field trips to recruit. The kind where people die.”

  Roz stomped on the gas, and they shot down the lane like a rocket ship.

  “Holy Moses.” Ali grabbed the dashboard for balance. The truck was way faster than it looked. Despite it being a rust bucket, this baby had the engine of a racecar.

  Roz shifted into second, jerking the gearshift between Ali’s knees. She jumped. Third gear gave her a moment to cross her legs to the right. But she was dangerously close to rolling into Connor’s lap. It was a sure thing if Roz kept taking turns at warp speed. So, Ali planted herself as solidly on the seat as possible and hoped for the best.

  “You know a lot about engines?” she asked over the roar in her ears. Someone had
transformed an old farm truck into a street racer.

  “Some,” Connor admitted. “But this beauty,” he patted the dash, “was a gift from friends.”

  The truck zipped over rutted dirt roads and blew through off-the-grid tent and trailer communities at light speed. They made it to the bus crash site in what must have been record time.

  They rolled through the scattered remains of the tour bus, most of it now a charred, smoking shell of its former self. County emergency services had already come and gone, but a tow truck big enough to carry it away hadn’t arrived yet, so it remained on the side of the road. Ali didn’t look too closely, afraid of what she’d see.

  That morning she’d been a passenger, grumbling about Stefan and rolling her eyes at the couple in front of her noisily making out. She’d smacked her cousin’s hand when he’d tried to steal a couple grapes from her lunch sack. And now he was dead. Murdered. His blood everywhere. Oh God, the fear in his eyes… How was she going to explain it to his parents?

  Roz stopped fast in the middle of the road, and Connor hopped down carrying his rifle with him. She tried to follow, but he held up his hand. “Stay put. You’re still in shock. What does your purse look like?”

  “Vintage Coach.”

  “I don’t know what that means.”

  Smiling, she explained, “Whiskey brown leather, long strap, about this big.” She held her hands apart, approximating her bag’s size.

  “I’m going to look around a bit too.” He sauntered up to the overturned bus and climbed the exposed axle and other machinery to drop into the bus through the front door.

  An uncomfortably long fifteen minutes passed in silence before Connor rounded the rear of the bus and returned with her purse in his hand. He tossed the bag through the passenger window, and she caught it.

  “Alright.” He grabbed a knapsack from the truck bed. “Here,” he said as he climbed back in a split second before Roz hit the gas. “You need to eat.”

  Ali may never eat again. She opened her mouth to protest.

  “You look like a corpse. Eat so you don’t fall over.” He won their brief staring contest.