Absolution (36 page)

G
lory fought her way blindly through choking black smoke, seeking fresh air. The community center had become an inferno, filled with screams and pushing, shoving people. What had happened to Krys? Mark and Melissa?

As she struggled in the direction of what she thought was the nearest exit, she called to Mirren inside her head. Mates of master vampires were supposed to be able to do this, Krys said, but Glory still wasn’t clear on what a master vampire was. Things had been moving too fast for her to learn what being mated meant.

All she knew was who’d caused this disaster. Matthias Ludlam had appeared at the front of the filled community center banquet hall a few minutes ago, preaching like he was the messenger of God Himself, telling people if they’d leave Penton now, they’d be safe. Insisting that Aidan and Mirren were common criminals who were going to be executed. Saying that, vampire and human, their only hope of survival was to make their escape before the Tribunal learned their identities.

Glory had been trying to build her power while he talked, hoping to hit him with the big amplifiers set up in the back of the stage. She didn’t think he’d seen her. But before she could get the amps moving, Matthias ducked out a back exit. Around her, people had begun milling and murmuring, trying to decide what to do. Then the world had exploded around them. She’d been caught in the stampede at first, carried along with her feet off the floor. Then she got pushed aside as people clamored for the back exit that led to Penton’s main street.

Feeling ahead of her into the smoke, she stumbled over someone on the ground, a man covered in ash and blood. Squinting, she recognized the wavy blond hair before she made out his features.

“Mark!” She knelt next to him and tried to yell and slap him into consciousness, but he was out. Was he breathing? Maybe, but she wasn’t sure. Damn it, she couldn’t leave him. “Help me!” She grabbed the arm of a man stumbling past. At first, she thought he was going to shove her away, but he finally turned, and she saw it was Jeff, her boss at the superette. A jagged cut slashed across his forehead, and blood ran down his face.

He blinked at her in recognition. “Glory?”

“It’s Mark—can you help me get him out?” Glory shouted to be heard, then hit the ground as another explosion rocked the building, sending a storm of debris down on their heads. She crawled on top of Mark and sheltered his face as much as she could.

The rain of ash and concrete subsided, and Glory raised her head, searching the area around her for Jeff. She finally spotted him. He was struggling to sit up, but when he did, he crawled toward her. “Let’s get him out of here!”

Each of them managed to get one of Mark’s arms draped across their shoulders, and together, they got him up and dragged him, head lolling, toward the exit. Glory smelled the door before she saw it; the smoke burned her lungs less, the gasping of air eased. And, finally, cool night air.

They stumbled onto the sidewalk to the side of the community center building, which had been a squat, ugly rectangle before the explosions. People still stumbled and fell out of its entrance, unrecognizable in their coats of ash. All that was left of the building now was a pile of brick and ash, with occasional jets of fame still licking the sky.

They gently lowered Mark onto the grass near the sidewalk, and Glory dropped to her knees beside him, her heart threatening to explode just like the building behind them. In some warped way, she could understand Matthias and his vendetta—it was all about power, and for some men, power and control were everything.

But all these people had done nothing, and she didn’t think she’d ever felt such fury or such impotence. Even when her family had treated her like crap, she’d been able to stand up, take charge of her life, and walk away.

Glory—can you hear me?

Startled, Glory fell to her butt on the damp grass. She closed her eyes and concentrated.
Mirren?

We’re almost there. Where are you?

She glanced around to try to figure out where she’d ended up.
Corner of the community center, nearest the clinic. It’s Matthias.
The concentration required to clearly send thoughts, combined with the smoke, made her head feel as if it were about to split into pieces, but at least she knew Mirren was coming and he was OK.

Who’s with you?
His voice was faint, but she could understand him—not so much hear him, exactly, but sense the meaning more than the words themselves.

Mark. He’s hurt. No one else.
Jeff had stumbled off in search of his own family.

Stay where you are.

Then he was gone, almost as if part of her had dissolved. The smoke was dissipating, and around her, Glory could see others sitting or lying on the ground, dazed. And there, in the center of Main Street, at the crossroads that led to the mill in one direction, the clinic in another, she saw Matthias.

Glory stretched out on the ground beside Mark, using his body as a shield and raising her head just enough to peer across his chest. Matthias stood astride the centerline of the intersection, flanked on either side by a half-dozen men. The one next to him held Melissa in a firm grip with a knife at her throat. She was struggling, but the guy didn’t budge—vampire, then. He was too strong to be human.

Mirren.
She had to warn him.

I hear you.

Matthias is in the main intersection with an army. He has Melissa.
Oh, God. She saw another struggle going on behind Matthias.
And he has Krys.
Krys was fighting as best she could, but the two vampires who had her were more amused than truly fighting back. They were playing with her, shoving her back and forth between them, putting their hands in places where, if he got the chance, Aidan would dismember them for it. Glory might help him.

Maybe she could create enough of a diversion to give Aidan and Mirren and the others a chance. But she couldn’t do it from here, hiding on the ground behind Mark. She had to get closer but still stay out of Matthias’s sight. He knew what she could do now.

I’m going to make a mess
, she warned Mirren.

No! Stay where you are. We’re at the clinic. Almost there.
Who knew the man could yell that loud inside her head?

Gonna buy you some time. Expect flying objects.

Glory ignored the growling, sputtering voice inside her head and studied the space between her and Matthias. Maybe thirty yards. The evil SOB hadn’t even broken a sweat, and not a feck of ash seemed to have marred his pristine white shirt. Well, she could remedy that.

Matthias had his right side to her as he watched the road leading from the clinic. Aidan’s house was also in that direction, and Glory saw more fames faring upward from that way. Matthias was burning the town, and Glory felt the onset of tears sting the back of her eyes.
Damn him
.

She couldn’t tell what was on fire—the clinic, from which Mirren and the others would be coming, or Aidan’s neighborhood. She hoped it was the neighborhood. Houses could be rebuilt. Towns could be rebuilt. It was the people who mattered, and the one who mattered most to her was in a tunnel beneath the clinic.

Crawling on her hands and knees, occasionally dropping to her belly when Matthias’s head turned her way, Glory was thankful for the stretchy sweater. It didn’t make her look her thinnest, but it did give her plenty of fexibility in her movements. She angled her progress to place her behind Matthias and finally came to a stop behind a fire hydrant. It would give her a bit of cover so she could close her eyes and concentrate.

She hunkered behind the hydrant and tried to shut out the shouting, burning, crying. She imagined the things, placing them in her mind. She was aware of another explosion, a lot of shouting…and then silence. Utter silence. Confused, she opened her eyes and peeped over the top of the fire hydrant.

Holy cannoli.
Aidan and Randa walked side by side down the middle of Main Street, coming to a stop in front of Matthias. But it was the two men behind them on whom Glory’s eyes were riveted—and Matthias’s eyes too, she guessed. It was Mirren, holding Will Ludlam in a headlock, that bigass gun of his pressed against Will’s temple. Even a vampire couldn’t survive a direct shot to the brain, Mirren had once told her.

Check and mate.

CHAPTER 36

T
he more Mirren considered the idea of using Will as a pawn, the more he thought it might work. Will might prove to be the flipping genius he claimed to be. They’d argued about it all the way through the earthen tunnel from Aidan’s house to the clinic, then resumed the discussion after they’d discovered the clinic in fames and had taken another of the secret exit tunnels into town.

Thanks to Aidan’s foresight and Will’s blueprints, they’d spent the last few years digging tunnels through the hills of Chambers County like ground squirrels. There were many, many ways in and out.

“My father won’t let you kill me,” Will had insisted. “He wants me back licking his boots too badly.”

“You overestimate your value,” Randa had snapped at him, but Aidan shut her down.

“This is no time for you two to start. Mirren, what do you think?”

He thought they were badly outnumbered, their people were scattered in all directions, and God only knew how many were even left to fight, if they were willing. He thought any idea was better than none, however, and he didn’t want Glory right in the middle of it. That stubborn woman had shut him off like a bad radio station.

“Will’s right.” They finally reached the end of the tunnel and Mirren climbed up to the opening first, using the rope ladder hanging from a hidden mechanism at the top. Shoving aside the grass-and-pine-straw-covered hatch lid, he shushed them, scented the air, and listened. Nothing nearby but wildlife of the nonvampire variety.

Once they’d all exited and the hatch cover replaced, he pulled the .45 from his waistband. “Will’s right. This might be the only thing that will buy us time to get people into Omega. Hannah, when we get to the edge of town, circle around to the church—I think we can assume the community center entrance to Omega is unusable. Start herding people down to Omega using the church entrance.”

“Move the pew right in the dead center of the sanctuary,” Will said. “The hatch is below it. There’s a little notch dug into the outside arm of the pew so you’ll know which one it is.”

“You might need me to fight.” Hannah actually stomped her foot, which made her look even more like a pink-hoodied eleven-year-old.

Hannah was vampire strong but still a child, and Mirren didn’t want her in the middle of this fight. Mirren gave Aidan a raised eyebrow.

“Hannah, listen to me,” Aidan said. “In order to get people to go into Omega, we need someone at the entrance they’ll listen to. They all know you. They know you were one of my first lieutenants. Randa hasn’t been here long enough for people to follow her lead, and the rest of us have to deal with Matthias. We need you to do this.”

The kid wasn’t happy about it, but she nodded.

“One question,” Randa said. “What if people don’t want to go into Omega? What if they’ve decided, after tonight, they want out of the whole deal?”

“Is that what you want, Verandah?” Will had been walking ahead of them, but circled back to face her.

“Shut it.” Mirren jerked Will beside him and sped up. He didn’t know what was going on with those two, but it seriously had to stop. “Hannah, if anyone says they want out, tell them we’ll get them out. But they need to go into Omega for tonight, just till things settle down.”

Will pulled out of Mirren’s grasp but kept pace. They crested the hill that sloped down to where Main and Cotton Streets intersected, and Mirren eyed the setup. Matthias stood in the center of a group of people, vampire and human, by the looks of it. As Glory had indicated, Melissa and Krys were both being held. He scanned the rest of the canvas. Some people milled around, confused. Others were slipping onto side streets, putting distance between them and the action. A few of their scathe members were forming into small clusters. Too many forms lay on the ground, unmoving.

Mirren pointed toward the church, which sat three doors from the intersection. “Hannah, start pulling people off the side streets and take them in the back side of the church, away from Matthias. We want the church off his radar as long as possible.”