The Shopgirl's Prophecy (Beasts of Vegas Book 1) (3 page)

In a hurry, he dragged her over the seats of the overturned bus, walking right over Stefan—
No. Don’t think about that now
. She’d lose her last thread of control.

The vampire dragged her through a wall of fire, and she ducked her head, the flames singeing her hair and scorching the long sleeves of her blouse.

As if she didn’t weigh a thing, he hauled her to the bus doors, now above her head. With a single swing of momentum, he tossed her up through the doors and onto the side of the bus. The metal was scorching hot, though, and she rolled off, landing hard in the dirt.

The vampire alighted beside her.

“What do you want?” she pleaded.

Not even pretending he might answer, he forced her onto her feet. Under the scents of smoke and blood, he smelled nice. Vicious murderers weren’t supposed to smell good.

A vehicle approached, its engine roaring as it circled the bus and then stopped fast a hundred feet away. Her lucky, lucky day. Praying the pickup was chock full of police, the army even, Ali fought to free herself or at least warn them the well-dressed young man beside her was a killer without conscience.

A young man hopped out of the passenger seat with a rifle aimed at her. Or possibly aimed at the vampire, it was hard to say. Struggling against her abductor was useless. His arms were like metal bands.

The vampire pulled her more fully in front of him, clasped her fingers with his right hand and held his dirty knife near her throat with his left. Though everything about the vampire at her back screamed threat, he didn’t hurt her, didn’t cut her. Irrationally, her hand spasmed, clutching his more tightly, but the teen vampire’s full attention was on the tall, armed man in front of the truck and only marginally on her.

“Please,” she cried, her voice catching. Damn it. Stupid family mysteries. She should be at home in her little flat in Hampstead, not about to die a painful death in the middle of a road that led, literally, nowhere. The infected pointed the blade of his knife at the man with the rifle as if it were a warning before returning it to the side of her throat. Ali closed her eyes, her muscles tensing.

The rifle fired, the vampire’s body seized, and maybe without even meaning to, he cut her. A pinch of pain, and then warm blood gurgled over her collarbone. Making a sound of pain and surprise, the vampire fled.

“Oh, shit.” Ali dropped to her knees, her head spinning like a carnival ride. She slapped her fingers to the cut, but blood flowed through them, around them, down her chest. The guy across the desert had shot at her. Yeah, he’d only hit the vampire, but that wasn’t the point.

Like a crushed flower, she wilted onto her back and blinked at the blindingly bright sun above her.

Voices pinged back and forth above her head. Strange, disembodied voices. A man and a woman.

“It was Maksim Volk. Did you see him?”

“He’s gone. Let’s get out of here.”

“She needs help.”

“You saw his blood splatter. She’s got an open wound. She’s infected.”

“We need to know for sure.” The man with the rifle pressed his palm hard against Ali’s throat. An electrical charge of pain flashed.

She had tunnel vision, seeing a patch of sky, amethyst blue, and very little else.

“Help me,” Ali cried, her bloody hands tangled up in his.

“I’ve got you,” he answered.

“Oh, goodie.” The woman’s voice, dripping sarcasm. “You know how much I love strays.”

He lifted Ali off the ground, and she was flying, no floating. It was kind of nice, really, not to feel her body. She closed her eyes, and shadowy, frightening thoughts invaded, melodramas with the sound turned down.

She must have passed out because time didn’t match up right. Someone sat on her hips, trapping her arms to her sides, jerking her back into reality.

She swiveled her head, taking in crown molding, the coppery smell of blood, and a young, raven-haired woman perched on top of her. “Please stop.”

“If I don’t stitch you up and slap on a bandage, you’re going to bleed to death.”

“Leave me alone.” Ali’s vision flickered. These were the good guys, right? Not like the teenaged vampire on the bus.

The needle tore through tender flesh, and Ali writhed.

“Lie still!” The woman grabbed her by the arms and gave her a shake. “You want me to nick your carotid?”

She couldn’t calm down. She should, but she couldn’t. A wave of fear rose up.

“I got it.” The man appeared in her periphery. He pulled her head gently into his lap and took both sides of her face in his hands, holding her still without making her feel like a psych patient.

He had a nice face. Dark eyes. Deep voice. And he’d saved her. He’d killed the infected.

“What’s your name?” he asked.

“Alina Rusenko. Ali.”

“I’m Connor Beckett. She’s Roz Carrera.”

Roz jabbed her again with the needle, but Connor’s fingers ran softly across Ali’s scalp, and the pain lessened. So did the fear.

“Am I going to die?” She’d been so certain of her imminent demise when the vampire had appeared behind her. Her ears replayed the screaming, hissing, and splattering noises in perfect pitch. She closed her eyes, but that only made it worse.

“Nah,” Connor said. “You lost some blood, but he missed the important stuff.”

“Yeah.” She tried to laugh, but coughed instead. “Lucky me.”

“Just about done.” Roz growled, pulling a little tighter on the thread.

Ali groaned, her fists clenching. The last time she’d been in this much pain she’d been twelve and had broken her wrist playing soccer in the wet grass. Her father had come to the hospital and scowled from the doorway to make sure she wasn’t hysterical. If she’d lost control, he would’ve hit her until she regained control or passed out.

The broken bone had hurt more than anything she’d ever experienced, but she hadn’t cried. Not a single tear.

“I have to call my uncle.”

Connor’s fingers ran gently through her hair. “Try to relax.”

“He doesn’t know where I am.” Was she back in Paradise, Nevada? Or had they made it to the Hoover Dam?

Roz clipped the stitches and crawled off, none too gently.

Without the weight of the woman holding her down, Ali floated again, slipping away from the pain and the blood.

#

Maksim Volk didn’t have many options. Dizzy from his close shave with a rifle slug, he knew he should return to Oleksander in his current playpen in Paradise and admit failure. But he couldn’t move his legs just yet and drive his Jeep any further along Highway 93. He tilted his head against the seat and clutched the pendant around his neck.

Anya was alive. Somehow, she’d survived the past twenty years and shown herself in the Nevada desert.

He’d had his hands on her. And the strangest thing was, she smelled
exactly the same
.

And then some self-righteous gun nut had nearly blown Maks’ head off his shoulders.

He’d pay for that.

Maks’ legs spasmed, and he regained enough muscle control to turn the ignition and kick the accelerator. He drove erratically west from one highway to the next, his mind still on the bus crash. Just as Olek had predicted, Anya was on the vehicle and unprotected. His spies had known everything.

If it weren’t for that asshat with the rifle, Anya would be in the seat beside him.

Taking a quick detour for sustenance, Maks drove down the Las Vegas Strip, marveling as he always did at the people, at the lights, at the excess. Twenty years was a long time, and so much in the world had changed in two decades. He’d grown up in the Ukraine, not poor exactly, but not wealthy. So much waste shocked him, though it didn’t seem to bother the flocks of people crowding the casinos and spilling onto the streets.

A little past the hotels and bars, a few turns from tourist central, Maks parked his newly acquired yellow Jeep in an underground parking structure beneath an abandoned hospital. The derelict building had become Oleksander the Destroyer’s new compound. Thus far, no one had disturbed them. In fact, it seemed as if the U.S. Army was keeping their escape a secret, perhaps in hopes of recapturing them without the public or press knowing what had happened three months ago.

Maks had no intention of going back.

He avoided the places in the massive complex Olek’s cronies preferred to hang out in and limped straight to his private rooms in the old neo-natal unit. He whipped open the door of a former broom closet to reveal his captive blood donors. One female and two males, three random tourists who’d never come home from their holidays in Vegas.

“Touch me, pretty boy,” the female warned, “and I’ll bite you back.” She’d nearly freed herself. Small hands. Maks would have to re-tie her. But later, not now.

Her amber eyes took in his head wound. “Why are you so bloody?” she asked. “You’re covered in it.”

He ignored her and pulled the nearest male from the closet. The man squirmed, squealing in fear, and nearly broke free. Weak as Maks was, he struggled to subdue the man long enough to wrench his chin up and expose his warm, tender throat. Maks salivated in anticipation even as he searched for a spot not already bruised, bit, or broken.

Groaning in pleasure, Maks sank his fangs into the man’s throat, biting hard enough to rupture several vessels and temporarily close his windpipe. The donor struggled valiantly, but Maks was hurt and starving. He drank deeply, bubbling hot blood rushing down his throat until the human ceased struggling. Limp and barely breathing, the tourist tumbled back into the closet.

Warm and sated, Maks didn’t rush to climb off the floor, but savored the euphoria of drinking fresh human blood.

In a minute, he’d hurry back to Olek’s side like a good dog and do his bidding, but what Oleksander couldn’t comprehend was that after twenty years of torture, after losing his little bird, after having his sole reason for existing torn from his arms, Maks was walking vengeance. Nothing and no one would stand between him and revenge.

#

Alina woke slowly, taking in a myriad of uncomfortable sensations—a dull ache in her throat, patches of seared flesh on her hands, and a doozy of a headache.

Shit. Where was she?

Oh, right. Hell.

It all came back. Her stupid idea to search out answers in America, the tour bus, her cousin’s blood.

 “Ow.” She tried to sit up and investigate, but her arms didn’t cooperate, and she sank back onto a plush sofa. “What happened?” Her voice tore through her throat, scratchy and deeper than normal.

“If it isn’t Sleeping Beauty, back from the dead.”

A surge of panic. “What?”

“Feeling okay?” Connor sat on the opposite end of the sofa, a gun in his lap. Like a big one. The kind of handgun that would blow the back of your head off.

“Dizzy.” She steeled herself and shoved up, resting her head on the arm of the sofa. “What’s with the cannon?”

He’d saved her life. He’d scared off the infected who’d killed Stefan. But she’d seen enough scary movies to know that didn’t mean he was a hero. More likely, he had his own nefarious motives for carrying her off the bus.

“There’s still time for you to turn.”

Turn? As in become infected? Ali almost laughed. But Connor wasn’t kidding. In fact, his mouth didn’t even twitch.

For her to become a vampire, infected blood must have entered her bloodstream through a cut or a scratch. It wasn’t like the common cold. She remembered Roz talking about blood spraying her open wound. Any inkling to joke vanished.

“That sounds bad.”

“The infection has a six-hour window to kick in. After that, you’re not infected.”

She’d heard things about infecteds, of course. They’d been around for decades, getting the most attention about twenty years earlier when Olek published his manifesto and invaded Prague. Or, rather, failed to invade Prague. Oleksander, his three brothers, and their fifty soldiers had been beaten back fairly easily and imprisoned. But they had never seemed like monsters to her, just people no longer in control.

 “So, you’re going to watch me for six hours in case I vamp out?” Things like this didn’t happen in London. Or anywhere else in the Western world. Only in Nevada.

“I thought all the vampires were captured after Prague,” she said. “This isn’t possible.”

Two weeks in America studying family history. There’d been such excitement and anticipation in the beginning to see a new place, to meet new family, to discover new things. Once she’d settled at Uncle Sully’s desert hideaway the joy of exploring her genealogy had dwindled considerably. Though his mail was delivered to a place called Paradise, his three-bedroom home was as far from it as a person could get. Even so, she’d seen the sights, tasted the food, learned absolutely nothing, and now she wanted to go home.

Nice idea, Ali. A holiday in vampire central.

Connor passed his handgun from one hand to the other. “We’ll see.”

He was serious.

“And then what?”

“Then you’re free to go.”

What if she tried to leave before then? Would he shoot her? She studied his profile. Yes. Yes, he would.

She had to get to Paradise, to her aunt and uncle, so she could get the hell out of this country. Pronto. She needed Connor to drive her, so she’d sit through whatever trials he required if he helped her afterward. She faked bravery despite the fear kicking her in the chest.

“What are the symptoms of vampirism?” she asked.

“You’ll be able to heal through anything short of decapitation.”

Ali managed a hoarse laugh. “That would have come in handy a little while ago.”

He didn’t share her amusement. “Then there’s increased speed and strength and an overall energy boost.” His gaze travelled slowly over her body. “Any of those things going on?”

Let him see for himself how jazzed she felt. She could only imagine the blood and dirt caked on her face, but if her cheeks were as pale as her arms, she looked like death. Nothing jazzy about that.

“Six hours, huh?”

Connor was handsome, no doubt about it. But there was something off about him, and she wanted to figure it out. Was it guilt? Shame? She caught a glimpse of his eyes—sad, brown eyes. They piqued her curiosity. What did he have to be sad about?