Chapter 1
"Incoming!"
Inside the high rise condo, the entire party went eerily silent. There was a bright stab of light outside the condo window and a scream of explosives tearing through the clear blue Las Vegas sky.
The man next to Mindy took a flying dive at her, caught her across the chest and managed to get one breast per hand as he drove her down to the carpet.
Three seconds later, whatever it was detonated with a thunderous roar that rocked the condo.
Holy shit! For the first time that day, it wasn't fireworks somebody was setting off.
Mindy sat up and rubbed her head where she'd banged it on the thinly padded arm of one of the sofas on her way down. The businessman picking himself up off her gave her a toothy you're welcome grin.
Yeah, thanks, dude.
At least it had been a real bomb. The End of the World party had been going on for three months and there were still idiots who believed the old rules still applied and you had to have a reason for grabbing a girl's boobs.
Though come to think of it, that was all right. Seriously, she wasn't going to complain if there were some sort of controls on the behavior of the guys at the party.
Before the Vampyren had come, filling the skies around the world with their huge horizon-blocking ships, there'd been a #MeToo movement and feminists on the rise and being an escort – not a sex worker, unless the guy wanted to pay a whole hell of a lot more, but an escort – in Las Vegas meant You Can Look, but You Better Not Touch.
So men at parties where Mindy was attending as part of the ambience, the animate décor, found reasons to touch.
Unexplained lint on her dress.
Oh, I'm sorry! I thought that was a spider!
That's a beautiful necklace, may I take a look?
And so on.
Now that there was nowhere to go, being an escort was a minute to minute anxiety attack because when the guy had something else on his mind, when alien invaders rather than sex made a guy frown, he might just tell her to run along now.
There had been, so far, no shortage of food, even if normal supply lines in the city were damaged.
But Mindy wasn't under the misapprehension that when the goods got scarce, her welcome at the continual party would be worn out.
Run along now, honey.
Only there was nowhere left to run along to.
The End of the World party started as a high priced business affair, the art of the deal in action, visitors to the city trying to buy and sell and the party was meant to last a weekend.
Excess as incentive to prove to whomever was buying from whomever was selling just how much there was to be had.
There'd be girls, booze, girls, cocaine, more girls, more cocaine, and a lot of money changing hands.
They'd been here three months and Mindy still had no idea what they'd been buying and selling or whether they'd managed to buy or sell any of it before the skies darkened at dawn and everybody who could still walk went to the terraces to stand gaping up at the big blue Southern Nevada sky where it was blotted out by the ships.
There was nothing dramatic about it. It wasn't like the movies with lots of dread and warnings from geeky scientists who were later proven to be hot and have 6-packs under their short sleeve button downs.
The ships were just there. Like waking up to find tanks parked on the lawn.
Except that what came out of the ships? Not human.
They looked like humans, bigger, more beautiful, more amazing humans.
But it took less than an hour for the humans to note the chief difference between their race and the race of invaders.
The invaders were vampires.
She shuddered and rubbed her arms. Amazing as it seemed, for the three months the party had been going on, there were still men who found the salacious impact of a scantily clad female distracting enough they were willing to let her stay.
Getting to stay meant having food, water, working bathrooms, clothes, and a level of safety that a lot of people in the city didn't enjoy anymore.
"Are you cold, darling?"
Oh, give it a rest, she thought at the Asian businessman. Three months and she knew his name. She just didn't care.
"I'm fine."
Next instant telling herself not to snap at him.
The rules had changed. Once upon a time she worked for Accelerate!
, an idiotically named escort agency in Las Vegas that supplied arm candy for unreasonable prices and sex workers for really exorbitantly absurd prices and let her make up her mind on those times she didn't want to sleep with the clients except for those events that were just too important.
If there was too much money changing hands, Monkey Mike insisted.
She'd never known why they called him that.
He'd been okay. Hadn't insisted on taking the merchandise for a test drive when she started. Didn't insist on sex work. Didn't nickel and dime her.
And had disappeared six weeks ago when things were already changing. He'd told her to stay where she was and she'd listened. It was safer. No way the fat white guys were putting their asses on the line. That meant if her ass was in the vicinity of theirs, she was safe.
Safer.
Relatively safe.
There really wasn't safe in the world anymore.
A plate of cocaine came her way and she almost sent it away untouched.
Before Earth fell she didn't touch the stuff.
She was getting her MFA at the University of Las Vegas, Nevada, and working her way through the cost of tuition by the fact that she was five-nine, Cherokee descent, with high cheekbones and a pouty mouth and big blue eyes that came from some Irish ancestor, big boobs (surgically enhanced, it certainly didn't hurt) and slim hips and long legs.
Take your advantages where you find them.
One by one the girls had been whittled down. First there'd been a fear of food running out, or water, or bathroom facilities because the local news, announced nightly by more and more frazzled looking reporters, said those things were running out in the city.
Then it turned out the invaders – Vampyren, they called themselves and Space Vampires someone had christened them and it stuck, at least as far as the partygoers were concerned – were putting some parts of the cities they'd attacked back together. Just enough that people could live.
No. Just enough that the people the Vampyren chose could live. She was going to be among those.
So when the other girls started complaining about being groped and pointing out they were there under the look but don't touch clause, Mindy watched them get thrown out on their asses, one of them literally thrown out, hoisted out the window by a big guy who let her go. Eighteen stories straight down.
Mindy decided a little unpaid sex work wasn't the worst thing possible.
"Come on, honey. Be a little sweet. Make me forget."
Mindy turned, already wanting to say that a good rap on the head with a table lamp would make him forget, but the fat businessman from Duluth wasn't talking to her for a change. He was talking to Candy, her best friend, little blond elf girl in a green mini.
Who just rolled her eyes and reached out one hand, caressing the thick chest under the open shirt, one lingering touch before she flattened her hand and shoved.
Larry from Duluth went over backward and stayed down.
Mindy nibbled her lipstick, studiously not smiling. Larry wouldn't remember but somebody else in the crowd might. She met Candy's eye and gave her a subtle That was stupid.
Candy shrugged. It had been three months they'd been stuck in the condo, long enough an enterprising group of junior executives who still just sported beer bellies had gotten together and knocked down a wall separating two units.
What had happened to the owners of the next door unit nobody knew or cared. They had more space now.
They were still stuck. Long enough a feeling of unreality was stealing over most of them, that what was going on outside the building couldn't possibly be what was really going on outside the building.
Two days ago that delusion had caused a small number of German businessmen who'd been visiting for god knew what Southern Nevada convention to head out the door in a show of bravery and booze.
Bravery, booze and screaming. Because they went out after dark and after dark, the Vampyren weren't the same as they were during the daylight.
By day they were deadly, seven and eight feet tall and made of muscle and disconcertingly smoldering good looks, with nearly black eyes, chiseled features, most of them with beards and even those that didn't have beards had the beginnings of them after a few hours.
They had blue-black hair and movie star looks and bodybuilder physiques and Dracula tendencies.
By day they were deadly, blood suckers, apt to drain a human for no other reason than it was a form of punishment and punishment for so damned many things was death and there was no point wasting food, right? Their own laws stopped the random attacks.
By day.
At night, something happened, something hormonal or chemical or in their ancient DNA if they had DNA. By night they became killing machines.
The German businessmen, maybe suffering cabin fever, went out at night. He didn't even seem to know it was night. His buddies who went with him, it made no difference if it was a kind of cabin fever, buddy solidarity or blind stupidity. The result was the same.
Mindy shivered. His screams had echoed up from the ground outside.
She'd been very polite to Larry from Duluth that night but it was Sean from San Francisco who claimed her.
So there were worse things than an overcrowded double condo full of businessmen and some gropey hands.
She turned to Candy to ask if she wanted to go out on the terrace, maybe take a five-minute break from being beautiful and charming that had to be allowed after three months, right?
But past Candy she saw the door leading into the condo from the hallway start to bulge. Not open, but bend, as if something had gotten past the security building's defenses and inside and whatever it was, it was strong enough to bow inward the security door to the unit.
She screamed, her voice cutting across the party, joined by Candy who turned to see what Mindy was staring at, by all the women and half the men.
Because the party wasn't the worst thing in the world.
The worst thing in the world had just burst through the door.