Omega (6 page)

“Your chum William is an interesting guy.”

“He’s not my chum,” Randa said quickly—too quickly, Cage thought. “We’re just patrol partners—Aidan’s doing.”

Cage nodded. Definitely on the defensive. “He designed this place, didn’t he? It’s rather amazing.”

They passed through the Omega common room, which was filled with sofas and chairs and gaming tables. The room was like the body of an octopus, with corridors for tentacles that branched out in five directions. The whole thing had been carved out of red Georgia clay and lined with steel panels that
held sleeping quarters, a large kitchen, and restrooms for the humans. One wing was utilitarian—rooms holding systems for waste treatment, water filtration, and air treatment. A room for generators. For food and other supplies. And at the far end of the back corridor sat a silver-lined locked room in case a vampire misbehaved and needed to be contained. Next to it, another locked steel door led into the tunnel beneath the Baptist church.

“Yeah, Will designed it,” Randa said. “He’s brilliant. Just ask him.”

Cage raised an eyebrow. “Harsh.”

She shrugged. “I don’t…I think…Will’s OK.”

Poor girl. She liked the bastard and didn’t know what to do with it. Cage pegged her as a classic guardian personality type. Driven to succeed. Liked to be in charge. Straightforward and horrified by messy emotions. He’d met hundreds like her since the Second World War, when he’d been turned vampire while assigned as a psychiatrist to the British army.

Turned by one of his own fucking patients. How was that for a laugh?

He’d become a bit of a professional shrink-turned-soldier in the years since, from the Falklands to Iraq. He liked to fight and he liked to analyze people. Perfect scenario.

“Remember one thing,” he told Randa. “People who seem arrogant are often hiding major insecurities. Your partner, Will? I’m guessing he’s got some serious issues, given who his bastard of a father is.”

Randa glared at him. “Who do you think you are—Dr. Phil?”

Who?
Cage was prevented from inquiring about Dr. Phil by the arrival of Mirren and Aidan in the hallway outside the small conference room. Everyone filed inside, and Cage wasn’t
surprised to see young Hannah already there. He left the others and went to sit next to her.

As a doctor, he found Hannah fascinating. The daughter of a Creek shaman, she had inherited psychic powers. As a child, almost two centuries ago, she’d been turned vampire before really learning how to control her visions. Aidan had killed her maker and kept her with him ever since. If they all survived this current maelstrom, Cage hoped to work with her. He’d been reading books and scientific journal articles on psychics to learn as much as he could.

Mirren’s mate, Glory, also had a special power—telekinesis—but she’d learned to control it. Hannah hadn’t grown old enough to have the emotional maturity Glory did, so it was harder for her, despite her vampire age. In many ways, she was like an old soul trapped in a young body, but in others, she was still very much a child and probably always would be.

Will arrived last, taking the seat on the other side of Cage and pulling a laptop computer from a metal box. Cage had been watching Will Ludlam for a while as well—it was an occupational hazard for a psychiatrist. The man had some demons he covered up with a bounty of jokes and flirtations.

“OK, we’ve only got time for a quick talk before daysleep.” Aidan propped his elbows on the table and leaned forward. Cage was struck, as he often was, at the man’s calm demeanor. A natural leader, Aidan picked his people carefully and let them do their jobs. But he didn’t tolerate disloyalty or carelessness. He was the only one here who knew what Cage was and that he’d come to Penton on behalf of the British Tribunal leader, who was secretly contemplating a similar string of vampire-human communities in the UK.

Cage wasn’t convinced Penton could be replicated. Each community would need the kind of person in charge who
attracted and held people’s trust and loyalty the way Aidan did. Such people weren’t common, especially among vampires, and especially during the current state of panic that gripped the vampire world over dwindling humans from which to feed.

“I think Matthias has figured out that we got out of town by going through some kind of underground exit,” Will was saying. “And he’s snooping around the church. He hasn’t found the hatch, but I think we should fill in that tunnel so, even if he finds it, he can’t find us.”

“Fuck me. That would leave us only one way out. I don’t like it—we need to find another way out before we close it up.” Mirren’s voice was a deep rumble from the side of the room, where he stood propped against the wall. Now,
there
was someone whose psyche Cage would like to dissect, but he suspected he might not live through the experience. The man carried a goddamned
sword
, and rumor had it he owned an honest-to-God battle-ax.

Aidan leaned back in his chair, fingers steepled in front of him. “Can we dig another tunnel that branches off the back so we aren’t left with a single exit?”

Will opened his computer and clicked through screen after screen. Schematics, diagrams, and pages of drawings filtered past. Finally, he paused on a computerized map.

Cage leaned forward. “Is that the Omega site from satellite?” He thought the large rectangle at the top of the screen might be the bulk of the automotive plant.

Will nodded and shifted the screen to give Cage a better view. “I wanted to see if there were any dead spots that might give us a good place for another exit. Although, we have to think about a lot of other issues—soil moisture, where the displaced
dirt would go, even oxygen. Humans doing manual labor suck up a lot more air than humans at rest.”

“But the labor would be good for them—for us too,” Cage said, and he felt the room go still. He was the new guy and, as such, tended to keep his mouth shut. He could feel the chill of Mirren Kincaid’s suspicious gaze from across the room.

“Explain,” Aidan said.

Bloody hell. He’d opened his piehole, so he might as well continue. “We’ve only been here three days, and already people are getting restless, especially the humans. At least the vampires can leave at night as long as we’re careful, but they’re stuck here twenty-four/seven. The ice cream Will bought tonight was brilliant.” He nodded at Will, who returned the gesture. “It cheered them up, broke up their tendency to think too much about all the bad stuff that might happen.”

Mirren snorted, but shut up at a glare from Aidan. “So we need to come up with things for people to do, to keep them occupied? Randa, what does the army do for soldiers who are in close quarters?”

Randa shifted in her seat, and Cage thought if she were human, her fair skin would have blushed a similar color to her hair. “Well, when we go on lockdown, there are jobs for everybody to do, to keep them busy. Also, games. You know, those handheld computer games, board games, cards. And quiet space where you can go to get away from people, even if it’s just a corner of a tent. Someplace to get a little privacy.”

“That should be easy enough to do.” Aidan turned back to Cage. “You think that sounds about right from your military and other experience?”

Aidan’s question drew all eyes back to him again. Terrific.

“And you’re asking him, why?” Mirren shifted positions to the wall nearer Cage. If it was meant to intimidate him, it was working. Mirren Kincaid was kind of like a half-tame grizzly when he was with his mate, Glory, but she wasn’t anywhere to be seen right now, and yeah, he freaked Cage out a little. The guy was a bloody giant.

Aidan simply raised his eyebrows at Cage.

“You fix people’s minds,” Hannah said. “You’re going to help me learn how to use my visions better!” Her black eyes lit up, and then just as quickly, the light faded from them. “But not until whatever happens, happens. And I can’t see what that is.”

“Fix people’s minds how?” Randa frowned at him, probably thinking back to his comments about arrogance and secrets.

He let out a breath. “OK, you guys know I came to the States two months ago from London. I’m a psychiatrist, first with the British army and then for private security outfits after I was turned, only taking night missions. I didn’t want anyone besides Aidan to know because it makes people uncomfortable, although he wanted me to tell you from the outset.” People always thought he was assessing them. With good reason.

Cage had always thought that bit about silence being deafening was stupid—until now. It was.

Will cleared his throat. “Well, I, for one, think having a shrink here is a good thing. He’s right—people are already getting antsy. Our fams are starting to look like trapped animals, and God knows Mark needs all the help we can give him. We need to either come up with a plan to start getting people out of here faster—which means getting us out as well, since we’ll freakin’ starve if all our fams leave—or else we need to come
up with a way to take Matthias down without pissing off the Tribunal.”

Aidan nodded. “Agreed. We’ll get back together first thing after rising to talk more. Randa, you and Hannah talk to Cage, make a list of things we can do to keep people’s minds off our situation, and we’ll buy what we need. Will, after daysleep, do some logistics on starting a new exit. Mirren, work with Will on how to make it happen and how to disable the hatch into the church.”

“What about Mark?” Mirren’s question brought a hush to the room, where everyone had been rustling, getting ready to leave.

Aidan ran his fingers through his hair, and Cage wondered how he was handling the tension. Losing his fam, losing his town, feeling responsible for endangering those who had pledged loyalty to him. Cage wouldn’t want the responsibility.

“Krys says he has a concussion, and he’s in and out. We finally told him about…” He paused, and everyone looked away, down, anywhere but at Aidan. “We told him about Melissa tonight. He’s a wreck. Although, on some level, I think he already knew. Otherwise, she’d have been there when he regained consciousness.”

Aidan pushed his chair back. “In fact, I want to see him before daysleep. Anything else we need to talk about?”

Cage cleared his throat. “Just this. I think one way to bring Matthias down without major casualties is to infiltrate his organization. We need to get someone inside who can get word back to Omega so we know what’s going on and can make the best decisions, maybe gather more evidence to present to the Tribunal. As we’ve said before, we can’t just go into Penton and kill the bastard—the Tribunal would see it as a declaration of war.”

Silence. Well, that idea had been well met.

“Who the fuck would we send that wouldn’t end up at the end of a stake before the night was out?” Mirren said. “He knows all of us.”

Cage shook his head. “Wrong. He doesn’t know me.”

“A
idan, wait.”

Randa paused until everyone else had left the conference room. Will shot a curious look over his shoulder but was deep in conversation with Cage. Listening as everyone warmed up to the idea of infiltrating Matthias’s organization had made her itch to get more involved.

“What’s up?” Aidan made her nervous. As always when he turned his attention solely to her, she felt his light-blue eyes laser through every layer of defense she’d built up around herself, exposing her as weak.

“I don’t want…” She didn’t want him thinking this was about Will, because it wasn’t. And she didn’t want to sound like a defensive woman who wanted to prove herself, because that’s exactly what she was, damn it. “I need something more useful to do. Let me start taking some of the humans and scathe members out of here. Will can’t take all of those runs if he’s planning a new exit.”

Shit
. She’d brought Will into it anyway.

A small smile played at the corners of Aidan’s mouth. “I thought you and Will were getting along better.”

God help her, they were getting along too well if tonight was any indicator. “It’s not that. I just need to be more—”

“Look,” Aidan cut her off, “I know you can do a lot more than what we’ve given you. You handled yourself really well last month when Tanner died.”

“This has nothing to do with Tanner.” Randa looked at the floor, tracing the outline of a ceramic flooring tile with the toe of her boot. She and another new lieutenant, a guy named Tanner James, had gone to Virginia to try to take Matthias out before they realized how effectively he’d turned the Tribunal against Penton. Instead, they’d been caught. She’d been able to fight her way free, but not before Tanner and his heart had parted company. Cage had taken his spot among the lieutenants.

This wasn’t about Tanner, but his death was one more reason Randa needed to prove herself.

Aidan rolled his head from side to side, tendons popping. God, he had so much on him Randa felt like a whiny jerk for bringing up something just to stroke her own ego. That’s all this was, and she’d been raised better. “Sorry, I shouldn’t have—”

“I’m glad you did. I know you’re frustrated. But there’s a couple of reasons I’ve had you paired with Will.” Aidan ran his hands through his hair and nodded at his mate, Krys, who stood in the hall beyond, waiting for him. She was tall, almost lanky, with dark-auburn hair and intelligent dark-brown eyes. Her heart-shaped face gave her a sweet look, but Randa knew she was smart and strong willed, with an offbeat sense of humor. She could actually make Aidan laugh. The two of them completed each other, much like Glory and Mirren did. Randa liked to watch them together.