by Anna Abner
“I wouldn’t do anything differently,” Connor said.
Roz sighed, long and loudly. “Fine, but killing infecteds to draw Olek out of hiding isn’t working. He’s not coming. We can stay here, kill vampires the rest of our short lives, but it won’t get us any closer to the Destroyer.”
“Luring him out is the only option.”
“Then think of a new carrot. What we’re doing obviously isn’t tempting him. At all. He wasn’t there this morning for us. I’m starting to think he was there for her.”
More rustling. “Let’s talk about it in the morning.”
“Sure. Good-night.”
Before he left, Ali called, “Um, Connor?”
He grunted from the doorway.
“Tomorrow, can we drive by my uncle’s house to collect my purse?”
Silence. “Didn’t we already get your purse out of the bus?”
“Yeah, well, there was a lot of stuff going on. I left it in Paradise. Not on purpose,” she rushed to add. “But it’s there.”
Roz made a lot of unnecessary noise pulling out a pair of pajama bottoms.
“Okay,” he finally answered. “It’s on the way. Sort of.”
“Thanks.”
“K. I’m going. Lock this door. And remember what I said.”
She patted her bulging pocket. He nodded and left.
Roz locked the door, and then barricaded it with the wooden wedge.
Ali took off her shoes, socks, and borrowed shorts. The gun went in one of the shoes in the corner.
Rolling onto her back, Ali stared at the ceiling. She would not cry. So what if she was scared and jumpy and achingly alone? So what if Connor was infected and might try to break their necks at any moment? So what if she was stranded in a foreign country with no money, no passport, and no phone? She was a big girl, and she would not cry. Not in front of the witch.
#
If Maks didn’t collect Anya himself, if one of these other two animals carried her to Olek first, he might as well not return to the Destroyer’s lair at all. The penalty was death. No trial. No community service. Just dead. Which really pissed him off. No one had any idea how hard he’d worked to gain Olek’s trust and his begrudging respect, such as it was.
Maks had been there when Oleksander murdered the other eleven lieutenants, could remember it like it was yesterday. Olek’s plan to overrun the world with his three brothers and twelve ravenous warriors at his side had gone up in flames. Because he’d infected men randomly. There had been no calculated acquisitions.
Oleksander was a Big Picture thinker, not a details man. After one year of disappointment, he cut eleven of the twelve into pieces and pissed on their remains. Maks had watched them die, his eleven brothers, having no idea until the very end that he’d survive. That, for some reason, the Destroyer favored him.
Maks had been petting and preening the Destroyer ever since, knowing deep down that, as of that day, his life was on loan.
Those had been easier times, strangely enough. After the culling, he became everything the Destroyer wanted and needed, a professional Olek pleaser. But after twenty plus years of wallowing in grief for his great, failed dream and suffering untold agony at the hands of American soldiers, Olek had become bitter on top of psychopathic.
This little game of cat and mouse over Anya felt worse than all the other games Olek had put Maks through. A sane man might tell him to take the opportunity and escape to Canada or Mexico or home to the Ukraine. A sane man would do it. But Maks’ little bird would want him to do the right thing, and he wasn’t going anywhere without Anya.
So, he drove on. Paradise was his first stop, since he’d already lost sight of his two competitors. Outside the hospital, the tow truck had careened southwest at an indecently high rate of speed. The other vehicle, a gray van, had headed southeast. Maks followed the van.
His Jeep couldn’t keep up, but it was okay. He didn’t need to keep up. He just had to get to Anya first.
Paradise was slowly waking up as he drove through. Human perseverance always surprised him. Vampires had ransacked a home here, tore up the family inside, and feasted like pigs at the trough. But instead of packing up and moving on, most people stayed put. Though they might increase the size and caliber of their arsenals.
The home in question came into view, nothing left but a foundation and charred beams rising from the earth like rotten teeth. Someone had burned it to the ground. Perhaps the neighbors. Or that boy, the over-confident pup who’d chased them down yesterday like a one-man battalion. Perhaps he’d cleaned up after them.
Ahh. His luck was turning. The gray van sat on the other side of the house. Maks parked the Jeep and slid out, drawing his only weapon, a six-inch steel blade with an engraved handle.
The other infected approached cautiously, eyeing him up and down, from his seventeen-year-old face to his stiff right arm to the limp he tried to hide. He didn’t have the muscle mass of most men, hadn’t been given enough time to grow into his body before Oleksander infected him. He wasn’t as tough as the other man, so he had to be smarter. Should be simple.
Maks knew the guy on sight, knew every vampire in Oleksander’s horde. It was part of his job to know. Freddie was one of the vampires Olek had dug out of the earth beneath the army base. Volk hadn’t sired Freddie, but he was a grandson, in a way. He couldn’t add more than two numbers together, and he shuffled his feet when he walked, but he was vicious in a fight. He wasn’t the brightest bulb, but smart enough to arrive in Paradise first, which made him dangerous.
“Sorry, brother,” Maks called, tightening his hold on the blade. “But you’re in my way.”
Freddie bared his fangs before slamming into him. They hit the ground and rolled, Maks ending up flat on his back. He had to hurt the kid quickly or he wouldn’t last. His hand-to-hand skills were hellishly rusty. And he was weak from getting shot after the bus crash and the Destroyer’s recent punishment.
Maks slashed with his knife, cutting into everything within reach. Blood splashed between them, warm and slick. Freddie roared and slammed his forehead into Maks’ nose. A crack and a new rush of blood. Maks saw stars, and then the little shit did it again, harder. His skull splintered all around his eyes. And speaking of his eyes, they were fuzzy, doing stuff eyes had no business doing, like seeing triple and spurting fluid.
Maks jabbed upward, stabbing his knife under Freddie’s chin, skewering his face like an olive. Howling, Freddie plucked the knife right from his fingers. Poof. It was gone. Well, not really gone. It’s blade entered and re-entered Maks’ chest and abdomen like a miniature jackhammer, stabbing him over and over with a dull smacking sound.
Maks squirmed. All the kid had to do was nick his heart and he’d be out cold for a while. Plenty of time to gut him, cut his throat, or strip him to bones if Freddie had the inclination.
Maks fisted Freddie’s lapels and pulled. He sank his teeth into the tender flesh of the other man’s throat, bit deep, and then jerked his head back and to the side, tearing out the majority of Freddie’s throat. A wave of blood hit him in the face. Freddie rolled and crawled away a few feet before collapsing. If he were human, he’d be dead. But he was a vampire. Maks would have to finish him off.
In a sec.
He lay on his back, silently savoring the victory for a moment. Freddie was a tough son of a bitch. It was why Olek favored him.
Maks took a breath and pain flashed across his chest, plinking from knife wound to knife wound like a macabre dot-to-dot. And his face didn’t feel so hot, either. He messed with his nose, popping it back into shape or it would heal like a smashed mushroom. No, thank you.
He had more holes in him than a sieve, but he’d live. He sat up slowly, having bled all over the ground. Or maybe it was Freddie’s. Hard to tell. He inhaled again. The pain lessened, and his eyesight improved. Yeah, passable.
He hadn’t suffered so many injuries in so short a time before, but the torture and experimentation the army had put him through ha
d hardened him to pain. He could survive all this and more.
From the back of the Jeep, Maks pulled a jug of lighter fluid and a box of matches. Always handy for cleaning up messes. He sprinkled the accelerant on poor old Freddie and lit him like a Yule log.
While Freddie burned to ash and bone, Maks had a quick look around. There wasn’t much to see. Someone had definitely cleaned up. It could have been the guy in the red truck. What a funny little fucker he’d been, attacking them all by himself like that. He must have more than amused the Destroyer because Maks had seen the blade tipped with Olek’s blood right before he’d punctured the kid’s lung. It wasn’t a lot of blood, but a little bit made a big difference. Which meant, if he was a vampire, he was a second generation like Maks. One of only two still breathing. After the twelve lieutenants fiasco, Olek didn’t infect people anymore. He left that to Volk and Volk’s infecteds.
So, why had Olek stabbed the kid? He could have broken his neck, cut his heart from his chest, even pulled his arms and legs off. Why had he stabbed him with a knife tipped in his own blood? Another sign that Maks’ position was slipping, and he didn’t enjoy it.
He made a mental note to keep an eye out for a red pickup, but first he had another priority: Anya. And there was now only one tow-truck-driving vampire between him and his prize.
He crossed the yard, taking a last look at Freddie’s remains, and caught sight of a handbag in the grass. Odd. He picked through it. Wallet, sunglasses, three lipsticks, a change purse, and a cell phone. He opened the folded leather wallet. The photo ID card belonged to a smiling Alina Rusenko. He couldn’t believe his luck. Maks grinned as he put the handbag back together.
Chapter Ten
Connor’s thoughts were not his own. Neither were his senses, nor even his body. The world was changed.
He didn’t want to scare the girls, but the infection had affected him more than he let on. For one thing, he couldn’t sit still. It was like he’d chugged a six-pack of Red Bull and chased it with a pound of M&Ms. He felt like he could hop out of the truck, start running, and never stop. He felt like he could bench press a baby elephant.
The blood issue baffled him. A dull hunger nagged at his insides, and though it was distracting, it wasn’t overwhelming. Yet.
He’d arrived in Las Vegas with the assumption that an infected’s craving for blood surpassed any other thought or desire in their heads. So, he anxiously waited for the bottom to drop out and the hunger to overtake him.
He was an infected. A real, live vampire. Connor’s empty stomach soured, dumping acid into his veins. Or maybe it was the infection, the evil mess inside him burrowing further and further into his muscles, bones, and arteries. Into every cell.
“How much longer?” Ali asked, bouncing in the front seat between him and Roz.
“Twenty minutes or so.” Connor wedged the barrel of his shotgun down between his knees. The vampires who’d slaughtered her family could still be in the area. To distract himself from the idea of fighting other infecteds for the first time as one of them, he asked Ali, “What did your father tell you about your birth?”
It was a little too much for his newly infected brain to process that Anya from Nadvirna sat in his truck. At some point in the future, she would stand with the Destroyer during his final battle, either the fight that ultimately destroys the Destroyer or his final push to infect the entire world. Because once every human being was a vampire, no more battles. Either way, the chick wasn’t moving out of his sight until Olek was dead. She may think she was on her way home, but there was no way in hell. That argument, however, could wait.
“Um, not much.” Ali tilted her head back, exposing her throat. A heartbeat pulsed under the surface. Thump-thump. “I was born in Odessa—”
“Nadvirna,” Roz corrected.
“Odessa,” she repeated. “My mother died during childbirth, and my father immigrated to Britain. He didn’t talk about the past.”
“Convenient,” Roz grumbled.
“I suppose you know every detail of your parents’ lives,” Ali snapped.
The tension between the two girls pulsed like a dirty storm, polluting the air. Connor cleared his throat, drawing Ali’s attention away from Roz. “Growing up, did anyone ever call you Anya?”
“No.” Her breath fanned his face, and his eyelids fluttered like a flirty little girl’s.
Connor saw, heard, and felt everything. The color of her skin—pale, creamy goodness. The tone of her voice. And her freckles. No joke. Light and beautiful, they dotted the bridge of her nose and scattered across her cheekbones.
He had never been this intensely aware of anyone in his life. Everything about Ali mesmerized him, but her scent, above all the rest, drove him mad. Or, more precisely, her combination of smells. Other odors rushed at him through the open window, and he picked up a whiff of body lotion blowing off Roz, but it hardly made a dent in his consciousness. Ali’s scent, clean and sweet like a washed peach, overrode all of it.
“Is there anyone in your family we can contact?” he asked.
“Everyone’s dead.”
Roz sighed. “You’re a regular font of information, aren’t you, princess?”
Ali got huffy. “Yeah, well, you kill people.” She turned and speared him with her gaze. “So do you.”
Didn’t she know it wasn’t smart to poke a hungry bear? “No, I kill vampires.”
“What’s the difference?”
Connor swallowed bile, not sure himself anymore. I am a vampire. He flattened against the bench seat as the previously delicious scents swirling around him turned toxic, threatening to choke him. I am infected.
She lowered her eyes, her tiny pale hand fluttering onto his knee. “Are you feeling all right?”
He didn’t answer. Couldn’t. I am infected. She withdrew her delicate touch.
Connor didn’t notice the passing landscape or when they rolled through Paradise. All he cared about was his first drink of blood. Would it be as revolting as he expected? Or ecstasy? He’d seen infecteds feed, seen their faces and their expressions mirror need not pleasure. Would he be any different? He ignored his hunger, but at some point, he’d have to give in to it.
Roz pulled the truck onto the side of the road and shifted into neutral. “Make it fast.”
Right, the elusive handbag. He climbed out of the truck, tilting his head and listening for the slightest sounds. At least two people resided in the identical house next door. He heard the domestic noises and smelled sausage cooking. But they were making breakfast, not planning an ambush. He picked up lots of animal rustlings, but ignored those. The most confusing signals he received were from a recent fire in the yard, even more recent than the fire Roz had set.
After a quick look around, he was confident no bad guys remained. He gestured for Ali to have at it, and she wandered around the charred remains of her family’s house.
Roz’s phone vibrated in her back pocket. She only got texts from two people—Anton or Natasha, their New Zealand benefactors. After a few moments, she joined him beside the truck and leaned casually against the tailgate.
“It’s Anton.”
Connor stopped listening to the three children playing checkers in a house down the street and turned his full attention on Roz. This couldn’t be good. Anton hardly ever texted with good news.
“Who’s Anton?” Ali asked, rounding the house and heading toward the garage.
“Our investors,” Connor explained.
Roz jerked to her full height. “They found them. The horde is hiding in the abandoned St. Peter’s Hospital outside Vegas. They popped up on satellites.”
“Finally.” He’d trap Oleksander in his hovel like a rat in a hole.
Roz continued, “Anton worked backwards from the bus crash and tracked their vehicles. He says three left the hospital this morning, moving fast.” She typed into her phone. “Let me find the satellite photos.” She opened Anton’s secure website and clicked on a link. After a moment, she showed Connor
a fuzzy black and white satellite image of a Jeep, a van, and a tow truck driving out of a concrete parking structure.
“We can go right now.” He was halfway in the truck before Roz’s voice reached him.
“We don’t have to chase them,” she said. “They’re chasing us.” She showed him a hazy photo on her phone. “The Jeep was parked right where we’re standing three hours ago. They’re tracking us.”
Even better. All he had to do was stand still.
“We could hang out here,” Roz said as if reading his mind, “or we could do what we said we’d do and figure out why they want her so badly.” She looked sideways at the last place Ali had been.
Frustration tangled inside him. “They’re so close.” He didn’t know if he could walk away.
“But they’re not going anywhere,” she said. “You already tried a head-on attack. Let’s try being smarter this time.”
Ali joined them, empty-handed, her mouth drawn tight. “It’s not here.”
Seeing her anxious irritated him. He didn’t like that, either.
Roz turned her back on them, still clicking onto links.
“Connor.” Ali nudged his boot with the toe of her sneaker, forcing his attention back on her. “It’s not here,” she repeated, nodding toward Roz and her phone. “What’s happening?”
“Vampires are on the move,” he answered. “We should go. Did you look everywhere?”
“It wasn’t hidden or anything.” She chewed her bottom lip, and his thoughts foundered. She had a nice mouth, and when she nibbled at it like that, it flushed a deeper shade of red. “Maybe one of the neighbors or the police picked it up?”
“We don’t have time to find out,” Roz announced, pocketing her phone. “I’d feel better if we weren’t standing around being obvious.”
Connor placed his hand, feather light, on the small of Ali’s back. To help her into the truck. It wasn’t to enjoy the softness of her skin. He was practicing good manners, that’s all.
“But my purse,” she said, her voice rising. “I can’t get home without it.”
He didn’t know what to say, since he couldn’t let her leave either way. “We’ll come back.” Maybe.
