The Shopgirl's Prophecy (Beasts of Vegas Book 1) (28 page)

“Bite me,” she begged.

Connor sank his fangs into her throat, and a delicious fission zinged through her, fanned by the friction bursting between her legs. He thrust into her again, and then again, synchronizing the motion of his hips with the pressure of his mouth and lengthening each stroke until she couldn’t contain the pressure a second longer.

She screamed as she came, the orgasm bursting inside her and rearranging every single one of her molecules.

#

Not much could have woken Connor from the sweet, post-sex coma he was enjoying. But eventually consciousness returned and he realized the female calling his name wasn’t part of his dream. His skull buzzed as if a witch spoke spells over him, but it wasn’t Roz. He opened his eyes and though it was dark, he saw her beside the bed. Ilvane. The Oracle herself.

“What the hell?” he hissed.

“See, you’re not the only one who can order a spellspeaker around. Don’t forget I have the Coven on speed dial.” The adolescent seer flipped her hair and smiled, all girlish exuberance and sparkly eye shadow. “So, what’s new?”

Connor’s arms tightened instinctively around Ali where she slept across his chest, her cheek on his shoulder. A fierce protectiveness expanded within him like nothing he’d ever felt. He’d kill to keep her safe. He’d die for her. Oracle, or no Oracle.

“Ilvane,” he greeted in a barely audible snarl.

The Oracle sighed dramatically. “Call me Caitlyn.”

This obviously wasn’t a quick pop-in. Ever so gently, he slid out from under Ali’s warm little body and yanked on a pair of pants. Before he left the room, he threw a quilt over Ali’s bare back.

He gestured for Caitlyn to meet him outside, and he made it past the garage without waking either girl inside the house. Far enough away not to be overheard, he spun on his guest.

“Caitlyn, what have you seen?”

“You’re so cute.” She scrunched her nose. “If you weren’t infected, and I wasn’t a psychic projection…” She quirked her eyebrow. “No? Oh, well. Back to business.”

“What. Happened.”

“You, silly.”

He frowned. “Please make sense.”

“Why are you playing house in the desert with Anya from Nadvirna when the infecteds are prepping an invasion?”

“I’m not,” he grumbled. “That’s not what I’m doing.”

“You cannot take a vacation right now.” Caitlyn looked him up and down. “No matter how much you want to.”

His insides churned, and an angry shame swamped him. Why not? Why did he have to be Connor from Cleveland? “Look, her being here at this particular time cannot be a coincidence. What does it all mean?”

“Cryptic, oracle stuff. But you can bet the farm Olek knows exactly who and what she is. You cannot let him take Anya.”

“I won’t.”

“No matter what.”

Connor stilled, seeing past her pink streaked hair and exposed, bony shoulders sprinkled with glitter to the all-powerful seer she was. “How bad is it going to get?”

“Bad.” Caitlyn sucked in a breath. “If Olek takes her to St. Peter’s Hospital, it will stir his army into a frenzy. They will invade Las Vegas.”

“Never gonna happen. There are too many people in Las Vegas. They have weapons, and they know how to use them. The army captured Olek’s horde once. It shouldn’t be too tough to do it again.”

“I’m telling you what I see. Olek believes Anya’s return is a good omen for him. He believes she’s his queen bee. With her at his side, he’ll overtake Vegas, and then he’ll have an army of over half a million infecteds at his beck and call. From there, he can infect the world. Half the population is vampires. The other half is blood donors. And then it’s game over. There won’t be enough of a resistance to fight back.”

“Is this the apocalypse?” he asked, his voice wobbling the tiniest bit. Was this the end that he’d brought about by freeing Oleksander?

“Still unclear.”

He groaned low in his throat, disliking very much her non-answers. “At least tell me how to stop it.”

“I can’t,” Caitlyn said. “It’s part of my contract with The Powers That Be. But if you can keep her away from Olek, then drinks are on me. If you can’t, we’re all screwed. And by we, I mean the human race. You cannot lose her. One of the most important jobs in the world right now is protecting that girl, and you’re screwing it up.”

“You told me to stay away from her.” Connor distinctly recalled lots of screaming and head holding.

“That’s old news. Things change.”

He thought prophecy was prophecy. It never changed. “Should I send her back to London? Would that stall him?”

“Sure. But just because you get her out of the country doesn’t mean she can’t come back. Or be brought back,” Caitlyn reminded him.

“So, where does that leave me?”

“I still can’t see yet whether you fight for the white hats or the vampires. So, go easy. You have no idea how all these little decisions push you in a single direction. If you go dark side, would she follow you?”

“I don’t—” Was the seer hinting he would go bad? Become Dark Connor?

“Forget it,” Caitlyn said, “just listen for a sec. This is a critical time. Big stakes. The biggest. I don’t care what you have to do, but do something. Because he’s chomping at the bit for the power inside her.”

“I saw it.”

“Then you know, if she loses control it gets bad for a lot of people.”

“It didn’t look that dangerous,” he said.

“Don’t let the cutesy color fool you. There is powerful mojo brewing inside her.”

Here she went again on the Anya Is Dangerous train. Roz would love this. But it did Connor no good. He was well on his way to falling in love with the girl. Ditching her was out of the question. He wasn’t even going to contemplate holding her out as bait. All he could do was protect her. But how?

“Then help me. What am I supposed to do?”

“I said what I came to say.” She backed away, as if she might fade into the desert.

“I have to go to the hospital,” he called after her. “And kill him. That would end everything. Right?” No reaction. “But what do I do with Ali? Where’s the safest place for her right now? With me? In London? Somewhere else?”

She mimed locking her lips and throwing away the key.

“Goddamn it, Caitlyn,” he roared. “You can’t tell me half a prophecy! Help me.”

Her psychic projection flickered like she was about to disappear, but at the last second she jogged forward several steps and reached out a ghostly hand. “Connor,” she called, “I had to write your prophecy in such a way to get your attention, that’s all. You’re not a fuck up. You never were.”

The portal closed, and she vanished.

Chapter Twenty

Ali woke to kisses on her cheek and in her hair. “Good morning.”

“You’re beautiful when you sleep,” Connor said, his voice low and throaty.

“Mmmmm.” She snuggled deeper into a warm, hand-sewn quilt as sunlight streamed through the window. “What time is it?”

“I don’t know. Nine-ish.”

“How long have you been up?”

“I’ve already been for a run.”

She clutched the quilt tighter to her bare breasts and fingered the spot on her neck where he’d suckled. It didn’t feel different, maybe a little tender. On the other side, her stitches still itched, though the wound was closing.

“It’s healing fast,” he said. “Thank goodness.”

She laid her hand on his bare arm. “Last night was…I liked it. It was…” She didn’t have the words for how much she’d liked it. The memory of his bite raised goose bumps along her arms.

Connor stared at the cotton sheet near her feet as if not really seeing it. Ali squeezed his arm, and he startled. “I’m sorry. What?”

“You okay?”

“Fine,” he said, stretching out beside her and cramming a pillow behind his head.

But she knew something was bothering him. The lines on his brow and the tense shape of his shoulders told her as much.

“What’s on the agenda for today?” she asked.

“Today’s a free day,” he said, his gaze returning to the rumpled sheets. “A day off. What do you want to do?”

Straddle you
. But that wasn’t going to happen. Not with Roz in the front room gearing up for battle. Well, Ali knew what she
didn’t
want to do.

“I don’t want to think about vampires today.”

“That might be kind of tough,” he said, the corners of his mouth turning up, “since you’re sleeping with one.” Despite the teasing, Connor seemed distracted, and she didn’t enjoy witnessing the shadow of fear, hunger, or whatever it was crossing his face. His handsome, kissable face. Ali lay down, dismissing her messy hair and giant hicky, and slid her hand over his smooth abdomen, pressing her cheek into his shoulder.

“You know what I mean.”

He rolled toward her, and their lips met in a slow, lingering kiss. He nibbled at her lower lip, and she opened to him, groaning as their tongues made first contact.

He ended the kiss with a noise of frustration.

“You’re so addictive,” he said, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. “Okay, no shop talk. What would you rather do?”

“Let’s go for a hike,” Ali suggested, scrutinizing his expression, trying to figure out why worry lines had appeared around his mouth.

He met her gaze, finally. “Actually, there’s something we should cover today. I’ll let you get dressed.”

“Okay.”

Yep, something was definitely wrong.

Ali watched him go, and then stood, already regretting leaving the bed. Life had seemed better from between their wrinkled sheets. Reluctantly, she dug through backpacks, ending up with a short jean skirt and a soft printed tee.

Half an hour later, Ali emerged from the bathroom, clean and slightly damp under her new clothing.

Leftover oatmeal and coffee sat cooling on the kitchen counter. She wolfed down the cereal, which tasted like wallpaper paste, but savored the coffee, adding four packets of real sugar from the pantry.

Connor found her inhaling fragrant steam from her mug. “Time to test the limits of your fancy glow.” He paused, his eyes unreadable.

She glanced through the doorway at Roz, lounging on the recliner with her smart phone on one thigh and a pistol on the other. No help there. Either Roz hadn’t noticed Connor’s new attitude or she didn’t care.

Ali was tempted to admit she’d never tested anything about her issue before, that the opposite was true. She’d spent twenty-two years forcing it to lie dormant. Ali didn’t know the first thing about setting it free.

But Connor seemed anxious, and she didn’t want to add to his worries. “Sure.”

On the way outside, he swung a shotgun onto his back and grabbed a pack from beside the front door. The sun climbed the eastern sky, heating the air and the earth past temperatures she was used to. Almost immediately, sweat rose between her shoulder blades and across her brow.

They trudged over warm sand toward the low, rocky hills behind the cabin. Finding a spot he found acceptable, Connor paused to inspect the area, swiveling his head. She wondered what he sensed that she’d never be able to.

“Show me how you access your power,” Connor said.

Ali tripped in a hidden burrow. “What?” Very real panic hit her. The idea of Connor knowing she glowed was terrifying enough, but glowing in front of him? “No. That’s ridiculous. Besides, I don’t have any power.”

“Let’s find out.” By the way he crossed his arms over his chest and stared, she knew he wasn’t giving up easily.

Begrudgingly, she allowed herself to feel strong emotion. At the moment, that emotion was annoyance and a bit of anger. In answer to her call, her skin flushed and she glowed a faint pinkish hue from her head to her toes.

“Get upset,” Connor goaded. “Get really pissed. What happens then?”

Feeling anger wasn’t an issue because she did not want to do this. Didn’t he understand shifting into first gear after a lifetime of living in reverse wasn’t simple or easy?

Her color intensified. “Nothing happens.” Or, if it did, she’d never found out about it. “I just grow pinker.”

“But it feels like power,” he argued. “Come on, wake it up.”

“Enough.” She swallowed the color deep down inside herself where it was safest. “I don’t want to do this.”

“Hey.” He crossed the expanse between them and lifted her chin, forcing her to meet his gaze. “Best case—you’ll never be near another infected the rest of your life and I’m wasting my time. But if Olek or Volk or anyone else comes after you, I want you to know how to stop them.”

“If I could control the light within me,” she said, “I agree it could act as a weapon.” She thought of the uncomfortable sensations associated with her power. “But I don’t have any control over it, and I don’t want to accidentally hurt you or anyone else.”

“You don’t sense any control?”

She shook her head. “Not so far.”

“We’ll work on it.” With a last, reassuring squeeze, Connor stepped back. “Now, show me how bright you can really get.”

“Is this really necessary?” She wiped a layer of sweat from the back of her neck.

“If something happens, the more comfortable you are with your power, the quicker your reflexes. It could save your life.”

“You think it’s going to get bad?”

“Yeah. I’m working out a plan, but things are gonna be intense. I need you to promise me, no matter what goes down, you’ll survive and get away. No matter what,” Connor said.

“I wish you wouldn’t joke.” Ali toed the area around the burrow, testing the ground. “I can’t watch you die again. You have no idea how awful it was.”

“I’ll do what I can. But if getting my ass kicked distracts the bad guys from touching you, it’s worth it.” He smiled at his own joke, making her tingle all up and down her legs. A sensation that had nothing to do with her glow.

“There you are!” Roz hurried over, her phone in her hand, and an unhappy expression on her face. “Natasha just texted,” the witch announced, not the least bit concerned with their sudden desire to test the limits of Ali’s mutation. “They lost Volk.”

“What?” Connor asked, scowling.

“He was in our hotel, but in all the crowds and traffic, they lost sight of him and his Jeep. They haven’t seen him on satellite or CCTV for nearly twenty-four hours.”