Shopgirl’s Prophecy
Beasts of Vegas #1
by Anna Abner
Chapter One
“Get down,” Roz
hissed, yanking on Connor’s black jacket. A spotlight swept over their heads,
and he tasted dry earth as he flattened onto the sand.
“That was too
close,” Roz complained.
They skittered
like cockroaches across the ground, avoiding a parked Humvee, and staying out
of the guards’ eye line. The things they couldn’t avoid at the secret army
facility in The-Middle-of-Nowhere, Nevada were surveillance cameras on every
wall and post. Hence, the need for speed and an electro-magnetic pulse device
the size of a suitcase strapped to Connor’s back. If they were caught breaking
into Oleksander the Destroyer’s cell, they’d never see daylight again. Sort of
the way Oleksander had been in the dark of an army prison for the past twenty
years.
Connor Beckett
hadn’t known six months ago—a lackluster engineering student at the University
of Chicago—that the Seer Ilvane would write down his name and forever link him
with the end of the human race.
Connor from
Cleveland will release the Destroyer and bring about the apocalypse.
There wasn’t any
way to fix the prophecy and save the world except to kill the vampire lord.
“Push the
button,” Connor said, nodding at the EMP. Thank the fates for Anton and
Natasha, their very generous benefactors from New Zealand and their high-tech
toys.
“Pushing the
button.” Roz activated the device, and every electric light on the base,
hopefully the cameras and security doors too, blinked off. “Now,” she ordered.
“Move.”
Nimble on the
balls of his feet, Connor ran for building 2A, which he knew from poring over
satellite photos of the installation, was where the army kept the vampires. He
hunched over the card reader controlling the prison’s heavy-duty outer door,
sweat rolling down the back of his neck. “Please,” he breathed. A single second
delay while they stood like a couple of sore thumbs at the gateway to a
vampire’s cell on a secret military base could ruin everything.
He hoped for the
best and yanked. The immense door swung open on soundless hinges.
“I was only
fifty percent sure the EMP was going to work,” Roz admitted as she followed him
inside and sealed the door.
There wasn’t
supposed to be a guard on duty at two-thirty in the morning. Except there was.
“What the hell?”
complained the unlucky soldier.
Engineering
classes hadn’t prepared Connor for this situation. He’d psyched himself up for
killing the Destroyer, not innocent bystanders. The soldier glaring at him
carried a gun on his hip, and he probably knew how to use it better than Connor
could operate the high-tech gear his New Zealand backers had sent.
“Both of you get
on the floor. Now.” The man pulled his weapon, but he didn’t call for back up.
Connor needed it to stay that way.
“Whoa,” Connor
exclaimed, his mind coming back online. He stepped in front of Roz as she
followed his lead and held up both hands. “I just want to see the vampires.
Don’t shoot me. Jesus!” He cracked a goofy smile.
“Yeah,” Roz
parroted. “This idiot promised me we wouldn’t get in trouble.”
“Stay where you
are.” The soldier wasn’t buying it. “I’m calling my sergeant.”
Plan C. Or was
it D? “Sleep spell?” Connor whispered to Roz out of the corner of his mouth.
“Blessed is my
power. I call upon thee.” Roz produced a tiny windstorm that pushed and pulled
at her dark clothes. “Sleep, sleep, sleep…”
The guard
blinked at Connor in bewilderment before his knees buckled and he crashed to
the floor, fast asleep.
“Oh, crap.” Roz
said, picking up the soldier’s fallen handgun. “I was only about twenty percent
sure I could do that.”
“That’s twice as
confident as I was,” Connor admitted, relieved he didn’t have to hurt anyone
human. With no magic or supernatural abilities of his own, having a witch as a
friend had its perks.
Her windstorm
died down. “We gotta hurry. My spell won’t last more than a few minutes.”
Satisfied the
guard was out cold, Connor turned his full attention on the pair of cell doors
at the far side of the room. Each one had a monitor above it, and under each
monitor was a name plaque. The first read: Maksim Volk, vampire lieutenant. The
second read: Oleksander the Destroyer, vampire lord. But someone had scratched
out lord and written douchebag in permanent marker.
“Grenade,”
Connor said, holding out one hand. His voice didn’t even waiver, which was
weird considering how terrified he was on the inside.
A cold,
egg-shaped bomb landed in his palm. Connor opened the sliding hatch in the cell
meant for exchanging food and correspondence and peered inside. Volk lay on a
cot with his back to the door wearing an unadorned orange jumpsuit. Connor
pulled the pin from the grenade and tossed it into the cell. He watched through
the slit as the grenade went off, so loud Connor jumped back from the door. Through
the smoke, Volk was suddenly under the cot instead of on it.
“Volk’s down,”
Connor announced. He swallowed thickly and gestured shakily for the second
grenade.
Roz passed it to
him, and Connor opened Oleksander’s mail slot. He’d fantasized about killing
the Destroyer so many times he wanted to savor it, to take his time and be
certain the vampire was dead. But Oleksander wasn’t visible through the small
opening.
He’d never
murdered anyone before.
Connor’s skin
prickled. Was the vampire in there skulking in a corner? Or had the army moved
him in the six hours since Roz had sweet-talked a drunken, off-duty soldier for
info at Applebee’s?
The poor sot had
admitted nobody guarded the vampires anymore because after twenty years of
incarceration, torture, and experimentation both were as docile as a pair of
kittens. If the army was stupid enough to believe that, fine. Connor assumed
Olek and Volk were every inch the cold-blooded psychopaths they’d been before
their bloody capture.
Visible or not,
Connor tossed the grenade at Olek and waited. There was a gong as the bomb was
thrown back, and it exploded against the door, warping it outward and filling
the entire room with white smoke.
The door
remained closed, but it was badly disfigured.
There was a
moment, staring wide-eyed at the twisted metal, Connor considered backing out.
Nothing catastrophic had happened yet. No one was hurt. So what if a few
cameras were sizzled? He could pull his friend out of there and go home.
But he didn’t
leave. This was Connor’s best chance to kill the Destroyer and negate his
prophecy. He had to kill the vampire.
Connor plucked
the third and final grenade from Roz’s vest and rolled it through the wasted
door of Olek’s cell. Almost immediately, the grenade skidded right back out
again.
Connor launched
himself at Roz, and the grenade went off before they hit the ground, blowing
them horizontally against a wall.
“Oh, shit,” he
said, a ringing in his ears and blood in his mouth.
He wasn’t ready
to die for a stupid prophecy. To be honest, he hadn’t totally believed the
Destroyer would even be in this cell let alone that he had a chance in hell of
slaying the vampire.
Connor was a
failure. He was unprepared. He should have stayed home.
He rolled,
taking weight off a gnarly wound on his left hip and shook Roz’s arm. “Are you
okay?”
No answer.
A very
aggressive alarm sounded. So much for the EMP. The base had come back to life.
Soon, there’d be soldiers everywhere, and Connor didn’t have a good reason for
blowing up their super secret vampire prison or a desire to spend time in a
matching cell.
Through the
haze, a large orange shape appeared carrying a body over one shoulder.
Oleksander the
Destroyer.
Looking as spry
and psychotic as ever in a prison jumpsuit.
Unable to tear
his gaze from the Destroyer’s nearly black eyes and heavily Slavic features,
Connor shielded Roz and prepared to be consumed.
“Thank you,”
Olek said and then carried a bloody and unconscious Maksim Volk out of the
building.
Chills skittered
up and down Connor’s battered and bloody limbs. The Destroyer was much more
terrifying in person than he’d been in photographs. He was a monster, a
devourer of children. And he seemed to think Connor had just done him a favor.
“Roz,” Connor
groaned, the world tilting dizzily. “We have to get out of here.” Olek might
realize his mistake and double back to kill them both.
“Connor?” Roz
sat up, wincing as she took in the warped cell door through a haze of white
smoke. “He’s free?”
“Can you run?”
he asked rather than admit the truth.
“If I have to.”
They hobbled,
Connor gritting his teeth every time his burned leg touched the earth, toward
the back fence as scream after tortured scream reached them. Olek was finally
free and obviously enjoying himself.
“Halt,” a
commanding voice ordered. More soldiers.
“Smoke bomb?”
Conner questioned Roz. They had debated whether it was necessary, but he
couldn’t remember if she’d packed it.
She pulled a
canister from her waistband, tossed the pin, and threw the explosive over her
shoulder. Immediately, they were engulfed in a thick, red cloud. Shots were
fired, but nothing found a human target.
Like half-dead
rabbits escaping the hunt, they slid through a hole in the chain link, and
limped across an expanse of sand dotted with sagebrush.
“Get in, and
start the engine,” Connor ordered, ripping a camouflage tarp off his baby, a
1973 Ford F-350 pickup. “They might have helicopters.”
The truck roared
to life, and he leaped through the passenger door, hanging on for dear life as
Roz raced over desert roads toward the lights of the Las Vegas skyline.
No choppers took
flight. No Humvees chased them. No further shots were fired. It was like the
base had been swallowed up. Olek was making up for lost time and wiping the
secret military installation off the map with nothing but his hands and a pair
of fangs.
“What happened?”
she demanded.
Connor grimaced
at the black smudges on her face, the ashes in her hair, and the blood
splattered across her top.
The worst thing
possible. “I fulfilled my prophecy.”
Shopgirl’s Prophecy
Beasts of Vegas
Beasts of Vegas
Book One
Anna Abner
Genre: paranormal romance
Publisher: Mild Red Books
Date of Publication: 2016
ISBN: 978-0-9914031-5-8
ASIN: B01GR9HXLQ
Number of pages: 300
Word Count: 80K
Cover Artist: Anna Abner
Tagline: Powerful witches, tortured vampires, and sexy shifters fight the evil horde on the Vegas Strip.
Book Description:
Ali Rusenko has dangerous secrets she can never reveal. When her father dies suddenly, the shy British shopgirl discovers he has even more secrets than she does. In search of the truth in Las Vegas, Nevada, Ali is attacked by the horde and stranded in the desert. If it weren’t for sexy vampire hunter Connor Beckett and his sidekick Roz Carrera, she’d be vampire food.
Connor and Roz rescue Ali, but a string of vampires chase her across the Nevada desert as if she's vampire catnip. Unfortunately, Connor knows exactly how they feel. The beautiful stray sets his blood to boiling. But if Connor's going to have a real chance to defeat the horde leader, Oleksander the Destroyer, he can’t allow Ali leave the country without discovering the one secret she refuses to reveal.
Book Trailer: https://youtu.be/yUtrQhTzosU
About the Author:
Anna Abner lived in a haunted house for three years and grew up talking to imaginary friends. In her professional life, she has been a Realtor, a childcare provider, and a teacher. Now, she writes edge-of-your-seat paranormal romances and blogs from her home in sunny southern California about ghosts and magic.
You can connect with her online at www.AnnaAbner.com
Twitter: @AnnaAbner
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/anna.abner/
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