A Royal Apocalypse (Lady Slayalot Book 1) Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Blurb

  Copyright

  Dedication

  PART ONE

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  PART TWO

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  PART THREE

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  This Is Where The Author Shamelessly Begs You To Leave a Review…

  Chelsea’s adventures continue in…

  About the Author

  Blurb and Excerpt — VENGEANCE BE MINE

  A ROYAL

  APOCALYPSE

  LADY SLAYALOT BOOK 1

  Louisa Lo

  Blurb

  In an alternate universe where America never declared independence, one young woman finds herself unwittingly becoming the de facto Commander-in-Chief for most of the free world in the aftermath of an apocalypse…

  Tabloid darling Lady Chelsea Spence lives the extravagant life of the idle rich, coasting through university without a care. She’s only, like, one-hundred-and-fifteenth in the line of succession to the British throne, thank God. It’ll take an extinction level event before she’s ever called to duty.

  Then a group of strange monsters with a taste—literally—for designer items wipe out all the royals in line before Chelsea. Since America never declared independence, suddenly Chelsea doesn’t just become the new Queen of Great Britain, but also the Commander-in-Chief for America and the rest of the Commonwealth.

  Now a power-hungry general wants to use her as his puppet, the civilians want to sacrifice her to their new monster overlords, and her hot new bodyguard thinks she’s a complete joke. Worse, Chelsea is developing abilities that are as dangerous as they are supernatural.

  Below layers of manicures, diamond studded watches, and self-doubts, a true queen is about to emerge.

  Copyright

  Copyright © 2017, Louisa Lo

  Published by Tin Can Press

  All Rights Reserved. This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, or otherwise, without express written permission from the author.

  Cover Design: Jacqueline Sweet

  Interior Design: Tin Can Press

  Content Editing: Sandra Nguyen

  Military Consulting:

  Brian Richard, former United States Navy SEAL

  Rick Schad, former Sergeant First Class, 7th Special Forces Group

  Beta (general): Larry Gates

  Beta (military): Daniel L. Cox, Paul Bolton, Lindalee Ming, Nicole Bires, Brandi Shaffer

  Proofreading: Amanda Peters, Jeanne L. Clark

  A Royal Apocalypse/Louisa Lo—1st edition

  ISBN: 978-1-988625-03-4

  Dedication

  To the wonderful staff at the Blue Cross Animal Hospital, especially Dr. Yuill and Cheryl, who helped us say goodbye to our beloved boy.

  PART ONE

  PLASTIC ROYALTY

  Chapter One

  I Just Hit A What?

  “Hey Judith, can I call you right back? I think I just hit something.”

  Lady Chelsea Georgiana Spence stopped her pink Bentley with a loud tire screech and got out of the car. Tentacles of a low-hanging mist, which had come out soon after sundown, curled around her spiky Manolo Blahnik pumps as she ran onto the middle of the deserted highway.

  What is it this time? Since she passed her driver’s exam last summer—fourth time was the charm—she’d managed to hit one trashcan, two mailboxes, and even an ex-boyfriend. Despite what they claimed in the press, she’d felt bad about every single incident. Well, maybe not about the whole knocking-her-ex’s-cheating-ass-to-the-ground thing.

  Whatever she’d hit tonight went flying a good ten meters from the hood of her car. Please let it be a spare tire. An inanimate piece of junk would do just nicely right now.

  It wasn’t a spare tire. It was a human body—a male, spread-eagle on the pavement.

  Daddy’s going to kill me.

  The man, who looked to be in his mid-thirties, stirred. His hair, caked with dirt, had flopped over his forehead as he began to move his limbs feebly.

  Okay, he’s not dead. Maybe I’ll just get cut off for a year if I can get him to a hospital ASAP.

  “Sir, are you alright?” She addressed him formally out of habit, but the fact was the man didn’t exactly look like he was fit for polite company. He was dressed in a sweatshirt that was a little on the light side for an evening stroll in mid-October, and jeans that had seen far better days. Tattered and greasy, the outfit made Chelsea wonder if he was some sort of a hobo. Paparazzi were one thing, but she had absolutely no experience with hobos. But it wasn’t like she had a say in the matter—she had just run the poor guy over, after all.

  She leaned down and tentatively put a hand on the man’s shoulder, ignoring the screams of horror from her inner germaphobe.

  The guy responded to her touch with a twitch and a moan. Then he sat up so fast that Chelsea took an involuntary step back.

  “Hey, be careful. You don’t want to pull something. Are you alright?” she repeated her earlier question.

  The guy ignored her words. He looked around him with a jerky neck movement and sniffed. Really sniffed. There was something feral about the way his nostrils flared, like a hound scenting blood or something.

  He seems pretty alive. Maybe I’ll just get a stern lecture.

  The man stopped sniffing, and focused on her.

  Since she was standing up and he was still sitting on the ground, it was rather creepy the way he just stared at the hip of her designer jeans, then slowly licked his lips. In the headlight beams from the Bentley, Chelsea could’ve sworn that his eyes shone. She was suddenly aware that she was alone with him, on an isolated stretch of highway between her university town and the outskirts of the suburbs surrounding Bloomington, Minnesota, and it was after dark.

  “Pretty, pretty watch.” he breathed.

  Chelsea glanced down and realized that the man was focusing on her Cartier watch, not her bottom. It had an 18K white gold case set, with over four carats’ worth of diamonds imbedded in it. Hobo or not, the guy knew quality when he saw it.

  She let out a sigh of relief. Maybe the guy was looking for a bribe, not a grope. That she had experience with. It was how she had managed to keep the picture of her hitting a second ex out of the press. She was not vengeful. Really. Just a clumsy driver with a penchant for questionable beaus who happened to be at the wrong place as she drove off in a huff after their relationships imploded.

  She took off her watch and dangled it in front of her would-be blackmailer. His reaction was immediate. He tried to lunge toward her. She jumped back. Way back. Dazedly, she realized th
at one of his ankles was sticking out at a weird angle, making his movement awkward.

  “Pretty watch. I want. I want.” He only had eyes for the object, his entire attention riveted around the diamond-encrusted jewelry, totally ignoring his own injuries.

  “Sir, if I give you the watch, are we even?” She wanted to make sure they were on the same page.

  But wait, what was she doing? The guy was hurt. She should have been getting him medical help, not negotiating with him, whether or not he was giving his own wellbeing priority.

  “Err, my car is right over there, let me help you get in.”

  She pushed down her misgiving about his intensity over her personal possession—not to mention the thought of having his dirty body on the white leather interior of her car—and prepared to approach him again. With his ankle either strained or broken, it wasn’t like he could really hurt her, right?

  To her amazement, he bounced right up with his one functioning leg, and hopped toward her with a purposeful glint in his eyes, quickly eating up the distance she had put between them.

  “Watch. Now.” he growled.

  “What are you doin—” Chelsea’s voice trailed off in confusion as the guy dove toward her and snatched the watch from her hand. The momentum caused him to lose his balance on his good leg, and he dropped to the ground like a sack of potatoes. That couldn’t have been good for his body, even if he hadn’t just been knocked over by a car. But he didn’t seem to care. With an animalistic war cry, he tore into the watch with his teeth, chewing it apart. The crunching sound of sharp teeth meeting even sharper diamonds ensued. An assortment of watch parts went flying as he chewed.

  “I really think you should go to the hospital,” Chelsea mumbled, not entirely sure what was happening or what to say. She seemed to have ceased to exist in the guy’s universe once he had her watch. Did he have, like, a fetish for mechanical parts, or was he just a little off in the head?

  Then, suddenly, they weren’t alone anymore. Two people came out of nowhere, as if attracted by the sound of the watch-chewing. They were a middle-aged woman and a teenage boy. The boy leapt onto the first guy’s back, trying to pry the watch, or what was left of it, out of his mouth. The woman was perfectly happy with the parts already lying on the ground, and got busy stuffing her face with them. It reminded Chelsea of a nature documentary she was forced to sit through during biology class once, with a den of lions dividing up an antelope. Except instead of an animal carcass, it was a mechanical invention everybody wanted a piece of.

  Alright, one person acting in this strange manner was scary enough, but three?

  Chelsea didn’t even remember quietly backing away from those weirdos, but suddenly there was a thud and her back hit her car door. That was when the first guy glanced up and their eyes met. Then his gaze shifted to her car and he grinned like he had just hit the jackpot.

  His two new friends looked up as well, and together they did a gleeful singsong. “Pretty, pretty, pink car. Pretty, pretty, pink…”

  Chelsea didn’t wait to hear the rest of the chorus. She yanked open the car door and jumped in. The sounds outside became muffled right away. She had no idea how anyone could move so fast, but the three strangers were standing next to the car mere seconds after she closed the door.

  Luckily, her protective dad had set her car door to lock automatically once the sensor registered her presence inside the vehicle. His lack of trust in her ability to remember to do so was saving her now.

  “I want car. So pretty.” Middle-Aged Woman ran her hand all over the car door, her fingernails scratching at the metal with a screeching sound that made Chelsea feel like there was something clawing under her skin.

  “So pretty. So pink!” Original Hobo agreed, salivating all over the window.

  “Pretty, pretty pink.” Teenage Boy started gnawing on the side view mirror.

  Chelsea knew that she had to get out of there, and since the ignition was never turned off—she’d been in too much of a hurry to get out of the car earlier—her freedom was only a step on the gas pedal away. But for a long moment, like a deer caught in headlights, she simply stared at the creature looming just centimeters away from her, only the car’s protective glass between them. It was the first close-up she had had of them.

  Yes, she had used the word creatures, and felt it was appropriate.

  They all had teeth that were badly cracked or missing, and she had a feeling most of them were like that before they encountered her watch. Blood was gushing from their gums, but no one was crying out in pain. They seemed far more interested in getting a piece of her car—literally.

  Being only this short distance away, she could see that what she had mistaken as dirt and grime on Original Hobo was in fact dried blood all over his body and clothes. It was the same thing with the other two, to varying degrees. Their fingernails were either missing—torn off, really—or, in the Middle-Aged Woman’s case, hung onto her skin for dear life. It was as if the creatures had been trying to pry open something hard and metallic with their bare hands, and their nails had paid for it.

  Something hard and metallic, huh? Could it be, say, the roof of a car or the tire rim, which were exactly what the Middle-Aged Woman and Teenage Boy were trying to take apart right now?

  Chelsea stomped on the gas pedal with only one thought in her mind.

  She, first heir to the 11th Earl Spence of Darham in the County of Kent, and more importantly, venerated prom princess of years past, was not going to get stuck on this misty road in the middle of nowhere with these freaks. She was not going to stay frozen in shock like some blonde bimbo who died in the first scene of a B-rated movie. The blonde part she could live with—it was her natural hair color. The bimbo part she didn’t mind—she’d been called worse in the press. The dying part, though, she had a huge problem with.

  At her press on the gas pedal, the Bentley’s engine purred like a dream. Out of habit, she experienced a slight pang of guilt, knowing that this fine piece of machinery deserved an owner who was a much better driver than herself.

  Yet all the things that had made her fail her driver’s exam repeatedly were aiding her escape now.

  Sudden acceleration from zero to sixty in under four seconds? It was a great way to ensure that the Teenage Boy, currently in the middle of a victory dance with one of her tire rims in hand, didn’t have a chance to drop his trophy and grab onto her car as she sped away.

  Mistaking the brakes for the gas pedal every so often? Better to shake Middle-Aged Woman and Original Hobo off the car with.

  Tunnel vision? With a dozen or so would-be attackers jumping out all along the highway, chasing after her car like it was a siren’s call, it was great to not get distracted, or she might have just totally freaked out and hit a tree.

  Lack of turn signals? Whoever said stuff of nightmares deserved prior warning before she knocked them aside?

  The inability to drive in a straight line? Her natural tendency to zigzag had driven her driving instructor to the bottle, but now, it was making sure that no new monsters were able to cling onto her car.

  Take that, multiple auto insurance hikes.

  Chapter Two

  The Mall of Britannia

  Chelsea drove until nothing had crossed her path for three kilometers. And then she drove some more.

  Her original plan for the evening, before the whole crazy incident, was to meet up with her friend Judith at the Mall of Britannia for a girl’s night out. After a long week of classes, Chelsea was looking forward to some shopping therapy and a late dinner at a new Italian restaurant nearby.

  Judith, with only morning classes today, was already at the Mall, thanks to a ride with another classmate. She was the only friend Chelsea had been able to make during her entire freshman year. That was what happened when Chelsea decided to go to a university in North America rather than the one in London, England, where all the other minor nobility went. People who had already heard about her through the media tended not to warm up to
her in person. Not to mention, over two hundred years after an Independence that almost happened, there had been renewed chatter about whether or not the AC, or the American Commonwealth, should still be a part of the British Empire. Chelsea, with her title and all the tabloid attention that came with it, had become an easy person to hate amongst all that sentiment, not to mention being the poster child of why the peer system was so passé.

  And to think she had initially come to this continent in order to get away from her latest scandal involving the running over of the aforementioned ex, who just happened to be the son of the current British prime minister. She had basically jumped from the proverbial frying pan into the fire.

  Since Minnesota was still within the Commonwealth and she was legally an adult, it wasn’t like her protective father could protest about the move. So that was how Chelsea had come to enjoy her newfound freedom without a single bodyguard tagging along. She was something like one-hundred-and-fifteenth in the line of succession to the British throne. Though an unwilling tabloid darling, she wasn’t exactly a top security concern.

  After what happened tonight, though, having a few guards around would have been quite welcome.

  Forcing herself to relax her death grip on the steering wheel, Chelsea realized that she had unconsciously pointed her car toward her original destination. Might as well keep going, then. Being surrounded by other human beings sounded divine right about now.

  She glanced at the clock, and was surprised to find that it was only around seven. The encounter with whatever the heck those creatures were felt like it had lasted an eternity.