Absolution (2 page)

The Penton community was a slap in the face to the struggles being encountered by their fellow vampires in the cities and a condemnation of the way the Vampire Tribunal had handled the situation. Not to mention his ingrate son, William, had thrown in his lot with Murphy.

He thought he’d found the solution, sending in Aidan Murphy’s brother to kill him and break up his town. Today, though, he’d gotten confirmation that Aidan’s would-be assassin was dead, along with a small scathe of vampire companions mostly bought and paid for by Matthias. Now, he had cleanup to do, making sure no one would ever link him to the fiasco.

This girl might help in some way. Until Murphy broke vampire law, Matthias couldn’t convince the Tribunal to take official action against him. But witches and psychics always proved themselves useful. If he could coerce her into it, maybe she could infiltrate the scathe, break it up from within if her powers were strong enough, or at least feed him information.

First, he might as well put out a couple of fres. Matthias slid the panel closed between the front and back seats and called his Virginia estate manager.

Shelton answered immediately. “Thank God, Matthias. I’ve been trying to reach you for hours. You’re not going to believe what I’ve had locked up in your basement since last night.”

“Spit it out.” If Shelton hadn’t been good at running Matthias’s property and holdings in the DC area, he’d have staked the man decades ago for being a drama queen.

“The Slayer.” Shelton’s voice dropped to a whisper. “We’ve got him. Caught him at one of those properties we’ve had under surveillance.”

Matthias straightened in his seat and double-checked to ensure the soundproofing panel had been fully closed. “What do you mean, you have the Slayer? Mirren Kincaid is there?” Kincaid—once the most ruthless of the Tribunal’s executioners—had disappeared for a century, then resurfaced as Aidan Murphy’s second-in-command in Penton. Matthias either wanted him dead or, preferably, on his payroll. In fact, he wanted Kincaid under his thumb almost as much as he wanted his son William back under his roof. No reason he couldn’t have both.

“Kincaid checked into a daysleep space in North Carolina yesterday—one of those places owned by Aidan Murphy that you’d told us to watch. Soon as dusk fell, I sent in a half-dozen men to take him.” Shelton sounded proud of himself. “Took all six of them to bring him down. We’ve got him wrapped in silver in the basement. He’s bellowing like a bull—glad there are no close neighbors.”

Matthias chuckled. After a miserable start, this was turning into a very, very good evening. “Keep Kincaid locked tight—no contact with anyone until I get there. Not even you. I’m on my way.”

“You don’t want us to give him a feeder?”

“We barely have enough for ourselves. Let him go hungry. He’s not used to suffering like the rest of us. Might make him more cooperative.” Since the pandemic vaccine had ruined so much of the food supply, most vampires were half starved. A thriving black market for unvaccinated humans had even sprung up, something Matthias planned to explore once he took care of the Penton problem. Aidan Murphy and his little town full of well-fed vampires and bonded humans had their own built-in banquet. It would do Mirren Kincaid good to experience how the rest of his kind had to live.

Matthias barked a few more instructions, ended the call, leaned forward, and slid open the panel. “Change of plans,” he told the driver. “Find out if there’s a red-eye to DC. For two.”

A jacked-up car, pounding out music loud enough to jar Matthias’s teeth through the closed windows, pulled into the opposite side of the Circle K lot. A young man exited and went inside. Less than a minute later, Glory Cummings came out, wearing a jacket too light for the frigid cold and carrying a shoulder bag.

The girl paused beside an old Volkswagen Beetle, the harsh light from the parking lot glinting off her dark hair in shades of blue. Spotting the sedan, she walked slowly toward it, the keys to the VW dangling in her right hand. Matthias opened his door, got out, and motioned her inside.

Silently, she slid onto the leather seat and moved to the far side to make room for him. He followed her in and slammed the door. “Take us to the airport,” he told the driver before sliding the soundproofing panel closed again.

“The airport?” The girl’s eyes widened, two fathomless pools in the dim interior of the car. An awareness seemed to bleed back into them. “Wait. Who are…what…?”

Matthias grasped her arm with one hand, smiling at the tingle of her strange energy, and used his other hand to force her face close to his. “First, my little Gloriana, you’re going to feed me. Afterward, we’re going to discover what your powers amount to and if I can use them to take down Aidan Murphy and Penton. At the very least, I can dangle you as bait for a big, soon-to-be-hungry executioner who needs to remember what he’s good at.”

CHAPTER 1

T
he persistent drip of a leaky pipe in the corner of the basement, the wet slap of water on concrete, footsteps treading overhead but never approaching the stairs—these sounds had become Mirren Kincaid’s constant companions. The leaky pipe ground on his last nerve. Final thing he heard before going into his daysleep. First thing he heard when he woke at sunset.
Drip-drip-fucking-drip
.

Hours bled into days and nights. He thought thirty day-sleeps had passed since he’d been taken, but he wasn’t sure. Could be forty. He hadn’t seen anyone since he’d been grabbed, had heard nothing different. Hadn’t fed. The dripping made his dry throat ache worse, tightened the muscles that were growing weak and stiff, and sucked the energy from him more with every wet splash.Obviously, living in Penton with Aidan’s scathe had turned him into a marshmallow. There’d been a time when no one could have gotten close enough to grab him or even would’ve had the balls to try. When Aidan’s brother had attacked Penton, one of Mirren’s fams had been killed. His friend Tim deserved better than what life handed him, so taking Tim’s wife back to North Carolina seemed like the right thing to do. He owed them that much.

Emotions equaled distraction—that was one of his cardinal rules. He lost sight of it, and now here he was, wherever that might be. Served him right.

Question was, why? Who’d spotted him? Why bother taking him, only to abandon him? Made no freaking sense unless it was political. Which meant one of those bastards on the Tribunal had to be involved. Or more than one.

Mirren forced himself to his feet, starting his regular rounds of pacing. What felt like rope binding his wrists behind his back held his physical strength to human levels and burned his skin, so it had to be silver laced. The bars of the cell were also silver coated, which kept him from being able to crash through them. But he didn’t want his leg muscles to grow any weaker than the hunger had already made them. Ten paces to the back wall, ten across the width of the cell, ten back, over and over, fifty reps at a time.

A bench in the corner served as combination bed and makeshift weight machine. Lying on the cement, as cold and damp as the earth beneath it, Mirren slid his bent legs under the bench and lifted it a few inches off the floor, then lowered it. His body weight felt like an anvil pressing on his bound arms beneath him, but nothing he could do about that. He lifted the bench again. Then again.

The more he thought about it—and what the hell else did he have to do?—the more convinced he became that the Tribunal had to be behind this whole sorry mess. Or at least one of the Tribunal members, and he had a couple of candidates.

That son of a bitch Lorenzo Caias had been overly interested in Penton when he visited last month, but Aidan had been too loyal to see it. He and Renz went way back, and Aidan always wanted to think the best of people. It made him a good leader, but it also made him vulnerable.

And Matthias Ludlam wanted his son Will back in his camp—any guy who’d turn his own son vampire just to ensure himself of an immortal funky had no conscience.

Those two were both Tribunal, both serious players. And Aidan was smarter and commanded more loyalty than all the so-called vampire leaders put together. Which made Penton a threat.

Mirren stilled at the sound of voices. Male, growing closer. He rolled to his feet and slumped on the bench, back against the wall. A key tumbled in a lock. Heavy footballs sounded on the wooden staircase his captors had thrown him down what seemed like a lifetime ago.

Mirren closed his eyes halfway, feigning indifference but with every muscle alert.

He’d been right. That SOB Matthias Ludlam descended the stairs, followed by his longtime puppet, Shelton. Matthias had gone from slim to thin. Mirren hadn’t seen him since he’d faked his own death and walked away from his work as the Slayer, the Tribunal’s own mercenary, more than a century ago. The man still flaunted his wealth, though, from the expensive suit to the shiny black shoes to the stylish cut of his salt-and-pepper hair. His brown eyes twinkled with good humor, and Mirren would like nothing better than to rip his eyeballs from their sockets or separate his well-coiffed head from his coat-hanger shoulders. That would wipe the arrogant smirk off his face.

“Mirren Kincaid. Ever the tough guy, and above the fray even now.” Matthias came to a stop just outside the bars. “A little hungry, I imagine? Hungry enough to talk some business?”

Mirren barreled toward the bars, slamming his left shoulder against the metal so fast that Matthias took three involuntary jogs backward and knocked Shelton off balance. The silver bars stung Mirren’s skin through his sweater, but the feeting whisper of panic that crossed Matthias’s face was worth it.

“Whatever you want, forget it,” Mirren said. “You don’t have big enough balls to break me.” At six foot eight, Mirren knew that, even behind bars, with hunger lightening his gray eyes to silver, at least thirty pounds dropped off his frame, and his hands tied behind his back, he was stronger than the bureaucratic peacock in front of him.

“We’ll see, won’t we?” Matthias pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his forehead, then pulled a folding chair to within a few feet of the cell bars. “Look, Kincaid, you were the best hunter the Tribunal Justice Council ever employed, and you know it. We want you back. Your talents are wasted in that Alabama backwater with Aidan Murphy. It’s only a matter of time before he goes down. You don’t have to be destroyed with him.”

Matthias wanted Mirren to tie himself to the Tribunal again? That would never happen, even if they left him here until his body dried to skin-covered dust and fangs due to lack of blood.

Mirren grinned at him, chuckling when Matthias flinched. “Sure, Matthias. Let’s talk.” He kicked the foot of the long bench, shoving it toward the front of the cell, then sat facing Matthias. “What is it you want me to do for you? I am hungry, true enough. A favor for food—isn’t that how you want to play it?”

The older man (but younger vampire) fiddled with the cuffs of his starched white shirt and tugged his suit coat sleeves down. “That’s a beginning. Tell me the size of Murphy’s organization in Penton. How to infiltrate it. Its weak links. Tell me about my son.” Matthias leaned forward in his chair. “Kill Murphy and bring William back to my own scathe, and you can have any damned thing you want.”

Well, the man didn’t ask for much, did he? “We can talk about it. Let’s start small. Give me a feeder, and I’ll answer a couple of questions.”

Matthias smiled. Pompous bastard. “You’re hardly in a position to bargain, Kincaid. Answer a couple of questions, and I’ll
consider
giving you a feeder.”

“Ask and I’ll
consider
answering.”

Matthias’s teeth would be ground into nubs if he grew much more agitated—a sight Mirren would pay to see.

“How big is the Penton scathe, and how many humans?” he repeated.

Mirren gave an exaggerated sigh, putting on the heaviest of the hybrid accent left from his childhood in Scotland and youth in Ireland. “Pity, it was. Lost most of our scathe and humans after someone sent an assassin to kill Aidan. Of course, it went the other way, so it did.”

Matthias leaned back in his chair. “Ah, yes. I heard a rumor that Aidan’s brother tried to join the scathe and was killed—heard nothing about him being an assassin, though. His name escapes me…” He turned to Shelton. “Do you remember?”