by Anna Abner
“Carly?” she inquired. Had she killed the vampire? It had seemed a knife’s edge, at the time, between clearing the infected cells from her body and simply stopping her heart. Roz wasn’t certain which she hoped for.
“The vampire is taken care of.”
Frowning, Roz said, “I’m going to need a little more information than that.” It was her magic after all.
She started to pull away from Lukas, but his arms tightened imperceptibly. “Stay,” he pleaded. “After touching that creature, I need someone pure and kind in my arms.” His voice dropped. “Just for a little while.”
Roz relaxed against him, burrowing her head further against his throat and exhaling one long breath.
“You did it, my sweet girl,” he murmured. “Ali arrived and tested Carly’s blood. She was negative for the infection. Then, Ali inoculated her with the doc’s drug so she’ll never be able to re-infect herself.”
“Is Carly still here?” Roz asked.
“I found her van parked near where I first spotted her,” he said. “I left her in the back of it, and then I made an anonymous call to the Las Vegas Police Department. I hung around until they picked her up in an ambulance. Later, I’ll make a statement that she’s the same woman who murdered my family. Surely, she left DNA behind when she slaughtered them.”
“You thought of everything.”
Carly wouldn’t know what hit her when she woke up handcuffed to a hospital bed—cured, immunized, and arrested. And she probably wouldn’t remember a thing after that wrought iron bench came crashing through the wall. Roz almost felt sorry for her. Almost.
Lukas had tied up his little mission with a bow.
It struck her, then, that he had nothing keeping him in the States any longer. He’d go home and try to weave the pieces of his life back together.
His life in Stockholm without her.
She shoved off him. “Let me up,” she snapped. “I need some air.”
“Of course.” He helped her stand, but she quickly swatted his hands away.
“When are you leaving?” she asked, her eyes on the coffee maker across the room.
Thankfully, he didn’t pretend not to know what she meant. Heaving a sigh, he rose beside her. “I’m not.”
Of all the words she’d considered him saying, those were two she hadn’t anticipated. It took her a second to wade through her confusion. “What?”
“I’m not going anywhere,” he said, facing her. “I love you. And I want to stay wherever you are.”
Her mouth opened, and then closed. Illogically, her eyes misted over. “What are you saying?”
He smiled down at her as if her befuddlement was adorable. “You made me rethink everything I’ve ever believed in. I came here like an idiot, knowing nothing. Two weeks with you, and I’m a different man. A better man. And there’s no way in the world I’m leaving your side. As you like to say, I’m in this. A hundred percent.”
She laughed through a veil of tears. “You just realized all this right now?” Because she’d been thinking the same thing for days.
“Yes, actually.” He chuckled. “I was sitting there holding you, our breathing syncing up, and thinking, I’m supposed to leave. But I couldn’t force my hands to release you. I couldn’t even consider finding my phone and booking a flight.” He shrugged as if it were beyond his control. “I just couldn’t.”
Without warning, he slid an arm under her bottom and lifted her up against his chest, bringing them eye-to-eye.
“Oh,” she gasped, clinging to him.
“Say you want me to stay,” he directed, a roguish gleam in his eye.
Roz contemplated teasing him, but her heart was so full of affection, she did something totally unlike her and confessed everything. “I’ve been falling in love with you since I first stood over your drugged body covered in bruises and hexes. From the first moment I saw your bear shift, I wanted to know more about you. But it’s not just that you’re a shifter,” she assured. “I love you because you’re kind and loyal and a monster in bed.”
He chuckled low. “Speak for yourself, häxa.” His warm, tender mouth found hers. Losing herself instantly in his scent and taste, Roz locked her heels behind his back, settling in for a long lingering kiss.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Sunday morning, Roz sorted notes on the Coven while Lukas entertained the alpha’s son Markus in the living room with first-person shooter games on Ali’s Xbox.
Roz listened to their genial ribbing with half an ear. For the past day, since Lukas’ mission of revenge was over, she’d become more and more obsessed with her New Zealand friends’ last known communications. This morning, she’d gotten an alert that Anton and Natasha were missing from their home and hadn’t contacted family or friends since September 7, two weeks ago.
On a hunch, Roz cast a locator spell. This time, it went without a hitch, though her magic continued to be hit-or-miss when it really counted. But after purging the infection from Carly’s body, she knew she probably had no limits to the magic she could create.
Which scared her.
She hadn’t attempted anything as powerful as that spell since, and she had no plans to in the future.
Cutting the locator spell short, she gathered her things and spread them on the dining room table.
“I’ve been going over Natasha’s final posts,” Roz announced. “She was talking about a surprise. For a long time, I thought she meant her disappearing act, but then I cast a locator spell. She’s at the military base where we found Olek and Volk.”
“Who’s Natasha?” Markus asked, eyes on the flat screen television.
“A friend,” Roz answered simply.
Connor wandered in from the living room, his sketchbook tucked under one arm. “That doesn’t make any sense. Why would Natasha go there? Alone?”
“She’s not alone,” Roz confirmed. “Anton’s with her. But here’s the weird part.”
“That’s not the weird part?”
Roz tapped on her tablet’s screen. “I went through satellite photos of the base. There hasn’t been any activity there since September 7, the day they disappeared, but look at this.” She zoomed in on the grainy black and white image. “The pit’s open.”
“The pit?” Connor’s eyes widened. “Not the pit where the military buried all the vampires?”
Markus finally looked up from the game. “There’s a pit full of vampires?”
Ignoring him, Roz answered Connor, “Yep. Wide open.” She pointed at a sandy crater. “It must be where the Four Sons climbed out.”
“Fuck.” He ruffled his hair, back and forth, angrily. “What does the pit have to do with Natasha and Anton?”
“I’m not sure yet,” she admitted, “but I don’t have a good feeling. Why would Natasha come to Nevada and not tell us? Why has she been at the military base for thirteen days?”
Yawning loudly, Lukas sat back from his game. “We should go check this out.”
“I’m in,” Markus agreed. “I want to see a pit full of vamps.”
Roz wasn’t certain of the good in bringing Markus along, but there was no doubt he was good in a fight. He’d already been hunting with them, more than proving his mettle. Lukas didn’t hesitate to include him, so Roz swallowed any hesitancy.
“Let’s gear up and head out,” Connor said. “It’s only an hour away. Ali, you coming?”
“Of course.”
They gathered supplies and drove south out the city in two vehicles. The military installation that had housed the world’s most dangerous vampires was an off-the-books compound surrounded by barbed wire fencing. The actual facility was a series of low-slung buildings connected by concrete walkways—the prison, the barracks, a lab, a commissary, and everything else a secret vampire testing facility would need.
After Olek’s escape, the Destroyer ate his way through the military personnel stationed there and in response, the US Army shut the base down and scrubbed all records—sparse though they were—that it ev
er existed. Roz had seen a recent reference to the location as an abandoned weather research station, which was patently ridiculous. The only thing the scientists there had researched was how to torture vampires.
Roz drove off the main road and parked on a dirt patch they’d been to once before, the night they’d unintentionally released Oleksander and Volk.
“This place is creepy,” Lukas observed, hopping out of the back of the truck.
“It was a torture chamber and mass vampire grave,” Roz explained, “so that makes sense.”
“Are we gonna have to deal with soldiers?” Markus asked.
“It’s abandoned,” she assured.
The fence they’d cut the first time around had never been repaired, and they easily slipped through. They spotted the open pit, a sandy scar in the otherwise flat desert ground, long before they saw the carnage surrounding it.
“Oh, my God,” Roz exclaimed, rushing for the first pile of bloody rags that had once been a human being. “Oh, no.”
It was Natasha, her friend. She’d been dead for days, probably from the exact time she’d stopped answering Roz’s calls. The Four Sons had chewed her up—there were vicious bite marks covering her body—and drained her dry. Despite being left in the desert sun for two weeks, she wasn’t decomposed beyond stiff, yellowed flesh and missing eyes.
“Anton’s over here,” Connor called, sounding as horrified as Roz felt. “But he’s in pieces.”
Standing and rubbing at her face, Roz asked, “How could we not have known?” Her friends had been murdered right under her nose, and she’d had no idea.
“They didn’t tell us they were flying here,” Connor said, one hand to his mouth and nose, muffling his voice. “How were we supposed to know they were in the country?”
“I don’t know,” Roz snapped, “but we should have!”
Lukas’ deep voice cut through their arguing. “There are more here.”
Roz turned to see what he meant, and Connor jogged over. “What is it?”
Markus blanched. “There are bodies buried in the sand.”
“The Four Sons were buried here,” Roz said, approaching the lip of the crater. “They dug their way out. Natasha and Anton came here like a couple of tourists, and they died for their stupidity.”
“There are others still buried.” Connor jumped into the pit and started digging with his hands.
“Connor, wait, we don’t know—”
He looked up at her with a kind of grief she’d rarely seen on him. “Can you imagine being buried alive? They desiccated, wasted away while still conscious. We might be able to revive them.”
“Nothing short of decapitation,” she murmured in reply. “Okay, I’ll help,” she said and fell into the pit beside him.
Lukas jumped in after her, scooping great mounds of earth and gravel and tossing it over the lip.
“Most of them,” Roz said, beginning to sweat, “were already dug up by the Four Sons.”
“No,” Connor said, excavating with frenzied motions, “I can smell them. There are still people here.”
“You sure you’re not just smelling the rot left behind?” Lukas asked, unburying a severed leg and tossing it over his shoulder.
“I have to be certain,” Connor said with grim determination.
Slowly, far beneath the severed pieces, whole bodies became visible. Connor unearthed a mummified woman, her clothes dry rags, and carried her gently out of the pit. Lukas discovered a man in the same condition, pulling him free. Soon, seven desiccated corpses lay in a row upon the sand like brittle pieces of firewood—three females and four males.
Roz climbed, sweating and out of breath, from the pit. “They could be violent murderers. They could be mindless after so long in the ground.”
“Or they could be like me,” Connor said, breaking her heart. “They might be good people trapped and tortured, by no mistake of their own.”
Markus knelt beside a mummy with yellowed wisps of hair on her head. “She clawed her fingers to the bone,” he marveled.
“Maybe it’s part of the desiccation process?” Roz asked, peering over his shoulder. All ten of the blonde’s fingers were bereft of flesh below the final joint.
“None of the others look like this. She fought to escape to the very last.”
Roz blinked as Markus gently held one of the dried, twisted hands. It was the first time she’d seen him willingly touch another human being.
The woman’s hair was brittle and the same color as the sand coating her stiff body. Her skin had dried and shrunk to her bones so she was barely larger than a skeleton. Her clothes had long ago dried out and broken apart.
“She could’ve been down there for twenty years,” Roz observed.
“Let’s get them into town,” Connor said. “I’ll pick up a box to hide them and some blood bags on the way.”
“We should call the doc,” Roz said, straightening. “This is going to take more than a couple cartons of cows’ blood.”
“Okay. Good idea.” Connor and Lukas carried the vampires one at a time to the truck. Markus, though, wouldn’t let anyone else touch the blonde. He lifted her into his arms like a precious artifact and laid her across the back seat of his SUV.
But Roz hadn’t forgotten about her New Zealand friends, and she definitely wasn’t leaving them lying in the sun.
“They deserve better than this,” Roz lamented, eyeing the remains.
“We’ll bury them in the pit,” Connor said, nodding at the gaping wound in the earth. “We’ll close it up for good.”
“Help me,” Roz said to no one in particular as she returned to Natasha’s side.
Lukas bent and lifted the corpse in his strong arms. “It’s okay,” he assured Roz. “I’ve got her.” When Roz turned to find Anton, Connor was already putting the poor boy back together at the base of the pit.
“I found these,” Lukas said quietly, passing Roz a pair of dust-coated cell phones, one with a bedazzled case and one inside a leather folio. Roz held them tightly to her chest.
“I was a shitty friend,” Connor said, sniffing over Anton’s body. “I wasn’t here to protect him. I should have been here.”
“It’s not your fault—” Roz started to say, but Connor shouted over her.
“It is my fault.” He catapulted out of the pit. “They hired me to protect innocent people from vampires, and when they needed me, I wasn’t there.”
“Don’t act like a martyr with me,” Roz shouted right back. “They were my friends too, but they snuck out here all alone and got eaten. Like Lukas’ family. Like countless families.”
Connor gave her a seething look, but he didn’t say anything else, just turned his back and scooped dirt into the pit and over their friends’ bodies. Lukas joined in, and within a few minutes, the grave was filled, packed flat, and as close to invisible as there was to be.
Still clutching the phones, Roz stumbled into Lukas’s big, warm arms and was relieved when he enfolded her. “The Four Sons did this,” she cried. “I want to find them and kill them all.”
“I promise, my love,” he said, holding her tight. “We will put an end to Sergei, Ivan, and Ilya’s reign of terror.”
Epilogue
Connor Beckett wiggled deeper into the couch in his suite at the Le Sort Hotel and carefully added shading to his latest sketch of the Four Sons, double-checking the only known photos of the brothers on his phone for accuracy. Since the death of Oleksander and the rise of his three younger siblings, Connor had lost his creative muse. His ideas for several graphic novels were stagnating. All he could seem to draw were these four bastards.
“Yummm,” a voice hummed in his ear. “Is it weird that I find them sexy even though most of them are psychotic killers?”
Connor leapt to his feet, his pulse thundering. “Holy hell,” he swore. “I hate it when you do that.”
Caitlyn preened as if he’d complimented her. “Gee, thanks.”
And then her words finally registered. “Most
of them are psychos?” he asked, staring at the pencil drawing in his hands. “Not all?”
But Caitlyn wasn’t really hearing anything he said. “There’s a girl—what time is it? I really think you should meet her. She has yellow eyes.”
“Fine.” Connor gave up trying to make sense of the Oracle and tossed his sketchbook onto the sofa. “I’ll meet her. What’s her name?”
“Do me a favor. In two days, she’ll be in need of saving. 2:01pm. Corner of East Harmon and Lamar Circle. And take Volk with you. It’ll be fun.”
“Caitlyn, you’re not making any sense. Maksim Volk and I aren’t exactly buddies.”
“Two days. 2:01pm. Harmon and Lamar. Don’t be late.” She scanned the wall and then the ceiling. “No, you won’t be.”
The Beasts of Vegas series continues in Blooddrinker’s Prophecy: Maks and Violet’s story. Available summer 2018.
Praise for the Dark Caster Series by Anna Abner
“A sizzling and sweet paranormal romance.” 5 out of 5 stars.
--Christine Rains, author of the 13th Floor Series
“A wonderful, suspenseful love story.” 5 out of 5 stars.
--Coffee Time Romance
“A great paranormal adventure with many twists and turns.” 5 out of 5 stars.
--Community Bookstop
“This book kept me on the edge of my seat.” 4 out of 5 stars.
--The Reading Café
Praise for the Red Plague Series by Anna Abner
“If you’re a fan of zombie books, I would recommend Elixir in a heartbeat.”
--Kristin Noel at Pretty Little Pages
“Kudos to Abner for penning such a gripping book! I literally sat in front of my computer, glued to the monitor as I scrolled through the pages as fast as possible.”
--Book Landers
