Omega (5 page)

W
ill crouched beneath the stained glass window depicting a shepherd tending a flock of sheep on a green hillside and waited until he heard Randa’s shots, followed by the footsteps of that sorry SOB Shelton racing toward the municipal building ruins to check out the noise.

Matthias was still inside the old redbrick church—something Will’s suddenly enhanced sense of smell told him without looking.

If he could scent the old bastard, did that mean Matthias could scent him as well, or would he just assume Will had been in that building at some point?

He didn’t plan to hang around any longer than necessary. He wanted to see what the old man was doing and then go back to Omega and charge his laptop, maybe feed before dawn. Nothing more entertaining, though. Liv was rooming with Randa, of all people, and that killed his libido as far as Liv was concerned, for reasons he didn’t want to think about too deeply.

Getting a hard-on courtesy of Randa tonight had shaken him. Talk about dangerous liaisons. His ego couldn’t deal with both his father and a woman with bigger balls than him. A man had to have limits.

As soon as he was sure Shelton was well gone, Will risked a peek through the window, squinting between the legs of a particularly corpulent sheep. Matthias seemed too occupied to scent him, so Will stood upright and pressed closer to the glass.

His father paced around the church sanctuary, pausing every few steps and cocking his head as if listening for something, then scanning the floor around him. A chill stole across Will’s shoulder blades. Was Matthias looking for a hatch? Had he found out about Omega?

Surely not. He might have pieced enough of it together to figure out they’d escaped underground, though. Matthias was smart, as he’d certainly told Will often enough. It was usually followed by a diatribe about Will’s stupidity.

Matthias would have realized all the Penton people had disappeared too fast, and he could easily have unearthed at least one of the subbasement hatches while combing through the buildings. It was a logical leap to assume there was an underground escape route, and the church was the last place Matthias had seen any of the Penton scathe.

He was likely on a fishing expedition and nothing more. Will had designed the hatch to lock beneath the edge of one of the heavy old oak pews, with a lever from below to move the pew in case they needed to climb back out from below. But so far, Matthias hadn’t gone anywhere near it.

He was still too close, though. The tunnel beneath the church needed to be filled in with dirt and packed tight. With Matthias in Penton, any coming and going would have to be
done through the remote hatch into the Georgia woods. Maybe they could start tunneling a new exit in case the fail-safe was compromised, at least until they could get everybody out that wanted out.

Matthias raised his head and stared toward the window. Will froze, holding his breath as his father frowned and scanned all the windows in the outside wall. “William?”

Shit
. Will forced himself to remain still. If his father heard movement, he was as good as caught.

“Matthias, I couldn’t find anything.” Shelton pushed his way in the front door of the church, and Will took advantage of the diversion. He eased away from the church building and moved quickly from street to street, ducking in and out of shadows and avoiding other vampires, making as little noise as possible. He scented quite a few now but none from the Penton scathe.

It was only a couple of hours until dawn, so they were all coming in to find lighttight daysleep spaces. Will was tempted to hang around and try to get a head count, but he didn’t want to risk getting stuck outside Omega at daybreak.

He slipped through the woods behind the remains of his house, retrieved his computer from its hiding space, and loped back to the Omega entrance. He slowed at a familiar scent and paused at the edge of the clearing, watching Randa as she sat with her back against a pine tree, her knees propped up and her head resting on them.

If she’d been human, he would swear she was crying. But this was Randa. Ms. Army-Navy-Air Force-Marines. Armor-plated Randa, who lived duty and mission, rules and regulations. Still, she’d only been turned four or five years and had come from a big family—as least that was what he’d gathered
from Aidan. Maybe there was a human beneath the robot; she’d sure felt human lying beneath him tonight.

Oh, wait. Not going there again. Ever.

Randa never talked about anything personal. Will didn’t know where she’d grown up or how many brothers or sisters she had. They’d been so busy pushing each other away and trying to one-up each other, as hard and fast as possible, that those introductory chitchats never took place.

She finally sensed him and raised her head. No, she hadn’t been crying, but her hazel eyes were dark pools despite the brilliant lights the moon played off that amazing dark-red hair. If she’d still been human, there would have been tears.

Will stepped out of the shadows and dropped to the ground next to her, stretching out on the pine straw. It wouldn’t kill him to be nice for a change, give the woman a break—unless she started being bossy or argumentative, which was guaranteed to bring out his inner smart-ass.

The cool, damp air was weighted with the approaching dawn, and no other vampires or humans stirred nearby. Just moonlight and an unhappy partner. He pulled the card he’d bought from inside his jacket pocket and handed it to her. “You OK?”

He waited for the sarcastic answer, and she opened her mouth as if to provide it. Instead, she rattled the small paper bag and pulled out the rumpled card. When she opened it, a tinny version of “Halls of Montezuma” echoed through the forest, and she slammed it shut.

“What the hell is this?” Randa’s voice sounded strangled, and at first, Will thought she was angry—until she burst out laughing. “That’s the most awful thing I’ve ever heard.”

“Hey, I bought that especially for you, soldier.” He laughed too, and it felt good after all the stress of the last three days. Hell, the last three months.

Randa sighed and ran her fingers through her hair, letting it spill out of its loose pile. Her voice rang in the still air like fragile crystal. “Thanks. I needed to laugh. That was awfully”—she squinted at him in the dim moonlight—“thoughtful of you. What did you do with Will the Asshole?”

Will grinned. “I can get him for you if you miss him. Seriously, though. You OK?”

“It just gets to me sometimes.” Randa leaned back against the tree again. “How wrong I was about the world. How the things I thought were important really aren’t. How hard I fought to prove myself. And now here I am again, still stuck in a world I don’t fit in, still a rookie, still having to prove myself.”

She stopped raking the tangles out of her hair. “Sorry, that sounds a lot like self-pity, and I hate that. I guess somebody like you would never understand what it feels like to not fit in, but believe me, it sucks.”

It would have been easy to throw back an insult, to point out that to fit in, you had to at least try. But it wasn’t that simple, and Will knew that better than anybody. He was just better at hiding what an outsider he was.

Plus, somehow, they’d made a step in their relationship tonight—well, not their
relationship
. They didn’t have a relationship. They weren’t even friends. But maybe they could at least be civil patrol partners.

“I’ve never fit in, not when I was human and not as a vampire. At least not until Aidan found me in Atlanta and showed me…” He’d almost admitted what it was Aidan had proven to him: that he was smart, not stupid. That there was a reason
his mind worked the way it did. That the things his father had done to him as a vampire weren’t, in the long run, as damaging as what Matthias had done while they were both still human. “Aidan showed me what it meant to have a family.”

Randa winced and looked away. “But you have a family. Matthias…”

Will blinked back the rage that rose like bile whenever his father’s name was mentioned. Rage at the things he’d done, not just to Will, but to his friends. He’d kidnapped Glory and let his buddies feed on her until she had ropy scars on her neck she’d carry with her forever. He’d sent Aidan’s brother to kill him and forced Aidan to turn his mate, Krys, vampire in order to save her. He’d kidnapped Mirren, starved him, and had thrown Glory at him so he’d kill her and turn back into the Tribunal’s pet executioner.

“Matthias is nothing to me. Worse than nothing,” he said. “What you think you know about fathers and sons doesn’t apply to us.”

Randa pressed. “I know he turned you vampire, but I thought you agreed to it, wanted the everlasting life of a playboy.”

Will clenched his jaw and leaned against the same pine tree as Randa, their shoulders almost touching, but at least he didn’t have to look her in the eye. After all, what she thought of him was the image he’d intentionally handed people—for a good time call W-i-l-l. But for some reason, he wanted her to think better of him.

“I was twenty-two, and completely under my father’s influence. I was stupid.” As he said the words, snippets of memory slapped him with almost physical force. Matthias pulling him out of yet another school. Taunting him about being the slow-witted
son no man deserved. Matthias wondering what he’d done that God should punish him with an offspring who wasn’t even smart enough to pass first grade.

Will had bought into the whole sorry shit pile. But his sharing with Randa wasn’t ever going that deep.

She wouldn’t let it drop. “Most boys your age would say the same thing. My dad was a total hard-ass, especially with my brothers. Didn’t mean he didn’t love them—or me. I wish I could tell him…” She trailed off.

She was so off base; their families had nothing in common. Absolutely nothing. “Matthias turned my mother and sister and me at the same time. Did you know that? Wanted to make us a big happy vampire family, all serving him as our master.”

Randa’s intake of breath was barely audible, but he heard it. “No. Are they…”

“Dead. My mom never revived after he tried to turn her—you know it only works about half the time, anyway. Catherine, my sister, lived for three days of agony, blood seeping out the corners of her eyes, her skin withering, begging me to end it. I finally did.”

Matthias didn’t know that. Didn’t know Will had fashioned a homemade stake and pierced his eighteen-year-old sister’s heart because it was the only thing he knew to do. Matthias assumed she died naturally.

He regretted a lot of things in his life, but not that. He’d been Cathy’s big brother. It was his job to take care of her. And if he couldn’t take care of her, at least he could see her at peace.

They sat silently for a few minutes. He couldn’t believe he’d just spilled his guts like that. The stress was obviously getting to him.

Enough already. He got up and grabbed his laptop. “I’m heading down.”

She climbed to her feet beside him. “What was Matthias up to?”

They pulled the brush away from the grass-and-straw-covered hatch entrance and unlocked it, then pulled it aside and climbed down. Will closed it behind them and locked it with a loud click. “He was nosing around the church—I think he’s figured out we went underground.”

Randa frowned. “You mean he knows about Omega? Do we need to start moving people out faster?”

“Maybe. We definitely need to get the lieutenants together, see what Mirren and Aidan have to say.” They took the golf cart through the tunnel to the Omega entrance in silence, stopping it at the bend in the tunnel that led to the solid-steel entry doors.

Will knew Cage Reynolds was there before they rounded the bend. He sat in a metal folding chair tilted on its back two legs, his shitkicker-clad feet hanging in midair and a small unlit cigar dangling from his mouth. “’Bout bloody time you two dragged in.”

His chair legs hit the concrete floor with a thud, and he pulled open the heavy door into Omega, gesturing for Randa to go inside, then following her before Will could take a step. Jerk.

“You didn’t have to wait up for us.” Will followed them inside, narrowing his eyes at Cage’s hand resting on Randa’s shoulder. What did they know about this guy, anyway? He was a vampire, he’d wormed his way into Aidan’s good graces almost immediately, and Glory said all the women thought he was “hot” and liked his stick-up-the-arse British accent. Even Liv had commented on his green eyes.

Will stared down the length of the hallway into the big Omega common room, watching Cage and Randa walk away like some kind of
couple
.

He shook his head and began working the combination lock on the heavy door to secure them all inside for the day. It had to be near dawn, and he had to be hungry if he was concerned about who freaking Randa thought was hot.

C
age walked Randa to the conference room, answering her questions about whether smoking was as satisfying to him as a vampire as it had been in his human life—the answer was no, but habits were no easier to break as a vampire than as a human. At least he didn’t have to worry about lung cancer.

He turned to ask Will if he smoked and realized the young lieutenant was still back at the Omega door, working with the lock.