The Shopgirl's Prophecy (Beasts of Vegas Book 1) (7 page)

“What?”

His eyelids fluttered. “Your father tried to protect you. We all tried…”

Ali heard Roz and Connor talking behind her, a tense, rapid back and forth.

“Did he say Oleksander himself?” Connor. “We missed him. Goddamnit!”

“We’ve got to get to a better defensive position. There could be others.” Roz.

“Fuck that. This may be my best chance.”

“
No
.”

He made a beeline for his rust-colored truck, leaving Roz standing in the yard.

It was such a quick look, tracking Connor’s exit. Up, down. But when Ali glanced back, her uncle had stopped breathing. In the moment they’d distracted her, she’d missed Sully’s final breaths. He was dead.

“Please.” Ali shook her uncle, and his head wobbled.

Ali heard Roz and Connor’s quick footsteps round the house and head for the road, and then the truck door slammed, but she refused to look away from her uncle again. They could kill each other for all she cared.

“Stop!” Roz shouted at her friend.

“I have to do this!” Connor shouted back.

“Don’t be a stupid ass.” Roz must have kicked the truck, or hit it with something hard.

“Keep your eye on her. Don’t go home. Take her to the abandoned gas station we stayed in that time. I’ll meet up with you later.”

“You can’t fight him alone!”

He sped off, sand and gravel pelting the side of the house.

Swearing under her breath, Roz marched across the yard, halting six inches from Ali’s hip. “Do you have a working vehicle?”

“In the garage,” she answered, keeping her eyes on her uncle. She wouldn’t look away again. “Keys are in the kitchen.”

“Good, let’s go.”

“I’m staying here.” There was so much to do. Overwhelming things. Search for survivors. Alert the police. Bury her family.

Roz grabbed her upper arm in a death grip and yanked Ali to her feet. “No. You’re not.”

“Let me go,” Ali hissed, tears threatening. She was a hair’s breadth from breaking down completely. The pain inside her, the cube of emotion she kept bolted down behind her ribcage, threatened to crack open. She would burst with it, be consumed by it.

She inhaled deeply, and then held that breath, locking her emotions away. It worked, for the moment, but her control was spotty today.

“Leave me alone.” Her voice shook.

“I don’t have time to stand here arguing with you! You’re coming with me because Connor’s trying to kill himself, and I can’t do everything by myself. So suck it up, and let’s go. Now.”

When a massive and unexpected coronary event had taken her father’s life six weeks earlier, Ali had missed it. She’d been at work in the jewelry shop and gotten a call that her dad was gone. Not sick, not in danger. Gone.

One moment she was part of a family, and the next she was alone.

Ali dug in her heels and yanked her arm free, sending Roz off balance. “I’m not going anywhere.” There was no way in hell she’d run off with this bitch and leave her family to rot. Not gonna happen. “Thanks for the ride, but good-bye.”

Roz glared at her, both fists clenched. For a second, it looked like she was going to hit her. And Ali didn’t care. She’d been hit before and by bigger fists. Besides, she didn’t think she could differentiate one pain from another anymore. Because pain was all she felt.

Roz exhaled one long breath. “Fine. But if I help you, do you swear you’ll come with me?” Not waiting for an answer, she stowed her gun. “Give me a hand.” Bending, she lifted Uncle Sully by the arms.

“Don’t,” Ali pleaded, taking a step toward them.

“It’s either this, or we let him swell in the sun.”

“My family…”

“Is dead.” Roz dragged him away, his heels bouncing over the threshold before disappearing inside the house.

Ali couldn’t watch. Reality had morphed into a waking nightmare. That morning she’d been so bored she’d actually agreed to tour the Hoover Dam. Just to have something to do. How warped her life had become in one afternoon.

Her lunch threatened to make a reappearance, and she stumbled into the front yard, trying to draw enough air. Breathing seemed impossible.

“Not so fast,” Roz said, emerging from the house smelling of gasoline. “Connor said to watch you, so don’t wander off.”

Ali doubled over. So much for keeping her food down. She threw up in the grass, again and again, until she was aching and empty.

“Anything in here you want to keep?” Roz called from the kitchen doorway.

Ali covered her face with both hands, unable to grasp the girl’s words or form a coherent response. English had become a second language.

“My clothes,” she stuttered. “My luggage is in there. My plane tickets.”

This morning her aunt had promised to make a fresh pot of beans for her. Had Natalie started it yet? Were veggies cut and laid out on the kitchen counter? Were the beans already soaking in the crock?

Someone nudged her, and she looked up, confused.

“Your stuff is gone,” Roz said without any sympathy at all. “I found the guest bedroom, but it’s been ransacked. Whoever did this took your things.”

Why
, was all she could ask herself. Why would anyone do this to her or her family?

Her pretty mouth a thin line, Roz handed Ali a book of matches. “Be quick.”

What did she expect her to do with those?

“Come on.” Roz pulled her to her feet. “We’re almost done.”

“I can’t,” she stuttered, but she took the matches.

Roz guided her toward the house. “Don’t wuss out on me. It’s your family, your responsibility.” She gave her a final nudge.

“We can’t burn them!” She tried to push the grotesque imagery from her thoughts, but all she saw were pools of blood and body parts. “We have to call the police.”

“Can you dig a mass grave?” Roz asked sarcastically.

Ali blanched. “Of course not.”

“Listen, princess. We’ve done this before. A funeral pyre is always your best bet. Bodies burn to ash, and you leave no doubt about a new vampire waking up and coming after you.”

Ali turned away, but she didn’t want to see inside the house. She’d need lithium and a straitjacket after that. What if the vampires had ripped her family apart? What if they’d abused her aunt? What if Roz had decapitated them in case they’d been infected? She imagined the cruelest most deranged acts one person could commit against another.

“Ali!”

She jumped.

Roz was right. She was the only Rusenko left. She lit a match, and it sputtered out. The front door, now empty of her cousin’s body, seemed a million miles away. She shuffled closer and lit another.

At the threshold she hesitated, terrified to raise her gaze. But she couldn’t
not
look. She caught sight of the remains of her family. She recognized fingers, strands of hair, and bare toes, but everything else was covered neatly by the paisley comforter that had once lain on her aunt and uncle’s bed. Roz had covered them, for her, and Ali would never be able to hate the girl the same way again.

The match scalded her fingers, and she blew it out. She lit another. She could do this. They deserved this.

“Be at peace,” she told them, flicking the match toward the quilt. A wave of heat and stinky accelerant blasted her in the face. For a split second, she considered throwing herself on top of the quilt, on top of Natalie, Sully, and Ron, and being done with the grief.

One big belly flop…

Roz grasped her by the wrist and led her away. “Do you have any weapons? Guns?”

She was numb, inside and out. She couldn’t focus.

Roz shoved her into the driver seat of a tiny, sky blue Volkswagen Bug before rooting around in the garage for weapons and ammo. “Get the car running. We don’t have time to stare into space.”

Her hands shaking, Ali fumbled the keys. Twice.

“We’re going to a gas station?” She’d never slept inside a gas station before. She didn’t want to. But she needed time to breathe and form a plan. She had to get herself together or fall apart completely.

“No. We’re going to stop Connor before he gets himself killed.” Roz rolled down the window. “And you owe me.”

Yeah, she did. And Connor, too. They’d both been kind to her when they didn’t have to be. She’d do this, and then she’d say good-bye to the States, to them, to the worst week of her life—for good.

On the third try, the car sputtered to life, spewing black smoke from the exhaust. Roz hopped in, and they eased onto the eerily quiet road.

Connor must have driven off at top speed because there was no sign of him.

“How are we supposed to find him?” Ali asked. In a city of over half a million, it would be impossible locating one hot-headed vampire hunter. With no idea where to go, she slowly headed toward the skyline of Vegas.

“The Ford has a GPS tracker installed.” She tapped on her phone. “Turn right at the next corner.” Then, under her breath, she hissed, “God, he’s driving fast.”

Ali followed her directions, turning here and there.

“Keep your eyes open,” Roz barked. With one eye on the tracker app, she balanced her phone on her knee and loaded weapons, clicking ammo into their slots, but Ali caught the quiver in both her hands. Maybe the lady wasn’t as tough as she pretended to be.

She was guessing Roz didn’t have much of a family back home or she wouldn’t be in the Southwest battling vampires with Connor. So, how did a seemingly normal girl hook up with a guy like Connor? He had an obsession, but what was her deal?

Weapons loaded, Roz made a quick phone call. “Natasha? It’s me. Connor went after Olek alone in the Ford. Text me the minute anything pops up.” She murmured something incoherent and then disconnected.

Ali swallowed, her voice returning, along with coherent thought. “Connor wants to challenge Oleksander? By himself?”

Roz nodded, keeping busy with her guns, checking all their mechanisms twice.

“How does he expect to survive?”

Roz looked up. “Doesn’t this thing go any faster? We’re kind of in a hurry.”

Chapter Five

Connor eased off the accelerator, his breath stalling in his chest. Olek, his right hand man Maksim Volk, and two women stood beside a shitty, yellow Jeep parked on an access road behind a grocery store. They watched him, their gazes chewing up the hundred feet between them, waiting for him.

Oleksander the Destroyer, the first vampire, patient zero, stood within striking distance.
Again
.

Connor’s blood sang in his veins. Three months of regret, of searching, of killing the vampire’s henchmen, and now was his time. He didn’t know how he’d kill him, but for starters, he’d shoot the son-of-a-bitch. A .44 with a full clip, a loaded rifle, two .38s, and a grenade ought to get things started.

Connor turned off the truck and hopped out shooting. No sense wasting his tiny advantage. Three rounds ground through Olek’s torso. They didn’t kill him, though. Didn’t even faze him. Connor widened his aim, and one of the females went down hard in a spray of blood. Three to go.

He zeroed in on Olek’s pet. Volk, oddly elegant in dark slacks and a well-made V-neck, leaned casually against the side of the Jeep, totally unperturbed by the gunfire. The only signs he’d come close to having his head blown off by Connor’s rifle was a dried blood stain covering the entire right side of his shirt from collar to hem.

Barely seventeen when he’d been infected, he’d look like a pretty, half-man the rest of his unnatural life. A forty-year-old soul in a teenager’s body. And no matter how nice his clothes were or how suave he behaved, he’d always be a gangly kid, a little tall for his age, who got carded at bars.

Volk smiled. The little fucker actually smiled. Connor wanted to blow a hole in his smug face. That split second hesitation gave the remaining female the drop on him.

She sprinted, and then leapt like a cat onto a scratching post, fingers and toes digging in. Connor stumbled, but didn’t fall, thank God. He wouldn’t last a minute on his back. She ripped the pistol from his hand and sent it sailing through the air.

Fuck,
fuck
.

Connor was gonna die before he got his second chance at the Destroyer.

No room to raise the shotgun. Connor’s .38s sat on the seat behind him. He stretched, but the infected wouldn’t allow him enough leeway to reach it.

The vamp chewed into his neck and sucked like some juiced up Hoover. His stomach threatened to heave.

Moments. He had only moments left.

Connor dropped the shotgun and drew his only grenade, pulled the pin, and lobbed it in Olek’s direction. He heard a lovely boom, but it sounded very far away. He slid a knife from his ankle holster, his up-close-and-personal weapon of last resort, and then forgot what to do with it. He lost all sense of time and space. The blade dangled from his right hand as his pulse stuttered.

The infected slammed him against the driver’s side door, closing it. His knees buckled.

A low rumble broke through the fog. “My liberator.” It was a warlord’s voice, icy and deep. “Are you the one keeping Anya from me?”

Anya. He should know that name. He’d heard it before. It meant something.

“How inconsiderate.” Derisive chuckle. Volk. Must be.

His vision failed as the infected’s sucking mouth came wetly away. She passed him, like a glass of warm milk, into Olek’s hands.

If Connor didn’t focus, he was going to black out. Blindly, he thrust the knife blade toward his enemy. It stabbed through flesh and cartilage but near the vampire’s collarbone, not his heart.

He’d failed.

Olek freed the knife from its fleshy sheath, and slowly—inch by inch—slid it under Connor’s ribcage and up into his chest. Flames of pain swept through him. He coughed and tasted blood.

The Destroyer released him, and Connor dropped to his knees. He coughed again, spastically, the blood crawling up his throat and choking him. He crumpled onto the road and lay there stunned, unable to move, unable to even breathe.

#

Alina was alone. Completely, utterly, terrifyingly alone.

How was she going to get home? Her ID, passport, and credit cards—

“My purse!” It was still lying in her uncle’s front yard. Swearing under her breath, she lifted her foot from the gas.