The Shopgirl's Prophecy (Beasts of Vegas Book 1) (12 page)

She sidestepped away from Connor and crossed her arms tight. “Okay.”

“Let’s do this,” he said.

Roz spoke in a low, rapid hiss. “Blessed is my power. I call upon thee.” The atmosphere in the room electrified. Magic ruffled the witch’s hair and clothes, as if an invisible dust devil had planted itself at her feet. “She will speak the truth or be scarred. She will speak the truth or be scarred…”

“What is your name?” he asked.

Startled, Ali glanced up at Connor, who didn’t seem intimidated at all by the display of raw, magical power. She swallowed. God, her mouth was so dry.

If she didn’t answer, then she wouldn’t get any warts and she wouldn’t be killed. Yes, she’d clamp her teeth together and refuse to play along.

“Speak, or I’ll assume the worst. And then we’re done here.”

Crap. So much for that plan. “Alina Rusenko.” She paused, waiting to feel something pop. But nothing happened. She searched her face for blemishes.

Connor scowled. “Are you telling the truth, or not?”

“Yes.” She nodded in the witch’s direction. “But I don’t trust her.”

Roz narrowed her eyes, but didn’t falter in her spell.

“No mean comebacks?” Ali questioned her.

“She can’t stop casting,” Connor reminded her. “The spell only works while she’s speaking it.”

“Oh, right.”

Clenching his jaw briefly, Connor asked, “Where were you born?”

The words flowed easier now. “Odessa, Ukraine.” Nothing, no warts. Thank God.

“Are you now, or have you ever, worked for, or with, Oleksander the Destroyer?”

“No.”

“Have you ever met him?”

“No.”

“Why were you on that bus?”

“I was on a trip to the Hoover Dam.”

The interrogation went on for ten minutes, sometimes covering the same ground over and over. Connor didn’t trust her, obviously, and searched for a crack in her facade, but he asked all the wrong questions. Ali’s secret had nothing to do with vampires.

“Are you here to hurt us?”

“No.” Though the option was growing on her.

“Have you told either of us any lies since we met you?”

She bowed her head, tracing her memories. Her secret didn’t count. But had there been actual lies?

“Answer me.”

“I’m thinking,” she mumbled. Sitting on the couch playing PlayStation. The trip to Sully’s. The hours she’d spent in the clinic. Had she said anything at all that wasn’t one hundred percent honest?

She wasn’t going to screw up now and get a freaking wart on her nose over some silly white lie.

Nothing sprang to mind. “I don’t lie.”

“Answer the question.”

And then it came to her. “Okay,” Ali ground out. “I remembered what my uncle called me, but I told you I didn’t. I just wanted to forget it.” She exhaled, feeling like she’d shed one thousand pounds. “Sorry.”

“That’s it?” Connor’s eyebrows rose by degrees.

“Yes.” She ran the pads of her fingers over every inch of her face. Nothing. No blemishes.

“Cut it,” he said to Roz. “Is she for real?”

Roz ceased speaking her spells, and the magic quotient in the air dropped considerably. “She’s telling the truth.”

He pressed his forehead against the wall and groaned. “How is it possible that everyone knows who you are, except you? This would be so much easier if you were evil.”

Roz moved into Ali’s line of vision. “Your dad took you from the Ukraine to the UK when you were little?”

“After I was born,” she stuttered.

“He’s dead now?”

“He died six weeks ago.”

“He kept it from her.” Roz spoke to Connor’s back. “She really doesn’t know.”

“So what am I supposed to do?” He pushed off the wall.

“We need more information,” Roz said.

He perked up. “The two of you could do research. Together.”

Roz blanched, her eyes darting over his face. “The three of us.”

“We need to talk,” Connor said gently. “Outside.” He turned to Ali. “Stay here.”

As he passed her, she got the strangest feeling that he smelled her on the way out.

Chapter Nine

Ali hung back in the doorway, watching, wondering what the hell they were up to in the alley behind the medical clinic. Connor stood to the side of a broken-down Dodge hatchback with no tires. He’d collected one of his gargantuan handguns and checked the chamber. Roz emerged from a narrow shed dragging an axe.

Was this some kind of ritual? Did Ali even want to know?

Roz ducked her head. “Don’t make me do this.” Her words were so quiet, Ali barely caught them.

“Don’t think about it. Just be quick.” He inhaled, drawing his shoulders back, the weapon gripped in his right hand.

Run. Find his keys, steal the Ford, and leave a dust trail from here to Los Angeles. Grab my purse on the way. They won’t even notice.

But lately, Ali wasn’t big on doing the smart thing. She didn’t make a run for it. Instead, she stepped into the yard. “What is going on?”

Connor’s gaze snapped up. “Go back inside.”

She hesitated. “What are you—”

“I’m infected.”

The whole world ground to a sudden, momentary halt.

“It’s the only thing that makes sense. Roz’s magic is only hit or miss, but Olek’s blood was on the knife before he stabbed me with it.”

It hadn’t been Roz, after all. Ali had wanted it to be the witch’s power that had fixed him because the alternative sucked so badly. He was infected. Of course. And yet, he couldn’t be. Because she knew what that meant.

“Connor.” The word rushed out of her on a gust of breath.

“You don’t want to watch this.”

She couldn’t move. Infected? “Tell me you’re kidding.”

“Unless you’re going to help, get the hell out of here.”

Why wouldn’t her feet move? “Help you do what?” Ali’s eyes flickered from the gun to the axe.

“I don’t think I can do this,” Roz mumbled.

Connor turned to her. “Be brave, Rozlyn.”

The witch looked sick to her stomach as she held the axe like it was a sleeping rattlesnake.

“It won’t take long.” He raised the pistol.

“I can’t do this!” Roz threw the axe at his feet and ran toward the clinic, shoving Ali out of the way to get inside.

Connor didn’t watch her leave. His gaze fixed on the axe.

Ali quivered like a bunny, afraid to shift in either direction, afraid to make a noise. She was alone with him. And he couldn’t be more unpredictable or less trustworthy.

Infected. Vampire. Monster.

“I need your help,” he said quietly. His shoulders dropped slightly, as if he was overtaken with exhaustion.

“This can’t be happening,” she breathed.

“I can’t do it by myself, or I would.”

She was afraid to ask. She had to ask. “Do what?”

“I can shoot myself in the head, but I’ll heal. Eventually.” Connor played with the pistol, transferring it from one hand to the other. “I need you to separate my head from my body and burn me to ashes.”

This is my fault. If he hadn’t saved her life on the side of the road, he wouldn’t have been almost killed today. He wouldn’t be infected.
I did this
.

Ali’s mouth dried out. “No. No.” She was back to repeating herself like Roz, but she couldn’t form any other coherent thought. An image flashed in her mind of him sprawled in the dirt, bleeding, and her swinging the axe. Ugh. Never gonna happen.

Connor glanced up at her, and then away. But his stare wasn’t wild and bloodthirsty. He wasn’t tensing to leap on her. Nothing about him screamed monster. More like wounded animal.

She ran her gaze up and down his frame. There might have been a new intensity behind his eyes, but otherwise, he was Connor. The same guy who’d saved her life, the same guy she’d resuscitated with her own hands not five hours ago.

“I—” Ali’s voice squeaked. She swallowed, and then tried again. “But you’re not like them. You’re—”

“You saw Maksim Volk. You know better than most.” He gripped the pistol so hard the muscles in his arm bunched. “Infecteds are mindless murdering fiends. It’s only a matter of time. Minutes, maybe. And I won’t be able to control it.”

This couldn’t be happening. “But you’re not trying to hurt me.”

“It’s only been a few hours. The change isn’t complete. Can we not argue about this? I don’t know how long I have and I can’t,” Connor scowled, his brow furrowing, “hurt either one of you. It cannot happen.” He picked up the axe and offered it to her.

Ali refused to come any closer. “I’m not doing anything until I’m convinced.”

“Convinced?” Something in him snapped. He pivoted and catapulted the axe, sending it spinning end over end a dozen yards through the air. It eventually crashed into a block wall, chipping a wedge of concrete from the structure. “I’m infected.” His voice broke. “I’m—” He stalked toward the trashed Dodge faster than humanly possible. “I can’t be—” He slammed his fist into the boxy hatchback, crumpling it. “That dumb kid lied to me!” He punched the rusted metal over and over again.
Bam
! “It’s not supposed to turn out this way!”
Bam
!

His knuckles split and, with his next swing, blood arced up and behind him. “It’s not supposed to be like this.” He staggered back a step. “It’s all supposed to be different.” His knees buckled, and he sat down, hard, in the dirt.

His hand pulsed blood, the bones misshapen. He’d broken it, possibly all the way up his forearm. Ali rushed forward to help, but thought twice. His blood was infected. Connor was infected.

“I can’t be like them,” he said quietly. “I can’t hurt anyone. I can’t hurt you.”

“You won’t.”

“Did you really not know you’re Anya from Nadvirna?” he whispered. “Tell me the truth.”

She shook her head. She still didn’t believe any of that prophecy business, but her destiny was a problem for another day. Right then, Connor needed her to be strong. Something Ali was really, really good at.

“I’m not a bad guy,” she assured. Then, quieter, “You can trust me.”

His hand stopped bleeding. The bones, though, remained fractured and crooked under his skin. It would be hours before they healed. The mutated cells taking over his body would fix each digit to keep him strong enough to feed it blood. Lots and lots of blood.

“I know.” He bobbed his head, his eyes on the ground. “I know you’re not a double agent or whatever Roz thinks. You’re too nice.”

Connor’s words fanned something achy inside her, something akin to hope. It wasn’t fair that millions, maybe billions, of infected cells were wrecking him from the inside out, annihilating everything human about him. But he wasn’t trying to hurt her, and he didn’t stare at her like filet mignon on legs, the way Volk had.

“Maybe,” she ventured, “you won’t become like the others.”

“I will. It’s only a matter of time.”

She lifted her gaze from his injury and was stunned by the heat in his expression. Roz may have thought he looked at her a certain way, but he’d never,
ever
, looked at her like this. Like he was seeing into her. Like he was working out the mechanics of the cosmos in her eyes.

She blinked first. “But, uh, but it’s already affected you. Maybe—”

“No.” Connor shook his head. “The infection corrodes your brain, eats away at conscience, at reason.”

“But Oleksander isn’t mindless,” she said, a crazy idea taking root, “is he?”

Connor didn’t answer, just stared at her.

She ignored the tingles and searched her brain for anything she’d read or heard about the Destroyer. “He plans stuff. He leads people. He drives a car. He wrote a manifesto and e-mailed it to the press, for God’s sake. He has higher level thinking.”

“She’s right.”

They both glanced up as Roz approached, her hair in disarray as if she’d been speaking some wickedly strong spells. She carried a wad of papers in her hands and several colored folders stuffed under one arm.

“I have a new theory,” Roz said, slightly out of breath. “If you didn’t know any better, you’d think Olek and his three brothers are just a bunch of assholes. Volk, and all the lieutenants, as far as we know, were normal after being infected.”

“What lieutenants?” Ali asked. She was so unprepared. Why couldn’t she have been obsessed with vampires like every other girl at her school? She might have memorized this stuff already.

Connor wiped blood onto his jeans before answering. “Twenty-five years ago the Destroyer took the lead over his younger brothers and infected twelve men to be his army of destruction, his lieutenants.”

Roz sifted through her papers, smoothing some of the wrinkles. “A year later he murdered his army, except for his three brothers and Maksim Volk, his pride and joy.”

“Why?” Ali asked.

“They were a colossal disappointment,” he said.

“So I started asking myself,” Roz continued, “what would so disappoint him that he’d kill them all?”

Ali glanced at Connor. “Maybe because they weren’t war-hungry maniacs. Maybe they were regular people.”

“But you’re forgetting—”

“There aren’t enough facts,” Roz exclaimed. “It’s mostly urban legends and rumors. Who said the infected were mindless murderers? The army that captured them for study?”

For the first time, Connor’s expression registered a flicker of doubt.

“You’re not a killing machine,” Ali said. “You’re Olek’s child.”

“One of only two in existence, since Olek killed the others,” Roz said. “I want to go to the library at UNLV and do some research in their supernatural collections room.”

“I’m not finished here.” He rose in a single, smooth movement and reached out his clean left hand for Ali. She hesitated to touch him, but he grabbed her hand with his much larger one and lifted her to her feet. He didn’t release her right away, but squeezed her fingers, sending little lightning bolts up her arm. He was so warm.

Roz cocked one hip. “No one here is going to assist your suicide. You don’t have a choice. We’re going to town. Together.” She stressed the last word, giving him a look.

Okay. Right. They were off on some new adventure. This was Ali’s signal to back out gracefully before she got any deeper into their drama. Connor was up and walking around. She could leave with her secret intact and not feel guilty.