Redemption (The Penton Vampire Legacy) (15 page)

“Of all the idiotic, screwed-up shit, this has to rank near the top.” Aidan gathered Krys in his arms after Will lowered her, unconscious, down the stairwell into the subbasement. He carried her to the suite, laying her gently on the bed and watching in dismay as she groaned and rolled onto her side.

Will came to stand beside him. “Bloody hell, how’s she coming out of it already? She should be out for hours.”

He didn’t know the half of it—Aidan hadn’t been sure he could enthrall her again after her resistance last time. “Go home. I’ll stay here with her a few more minutes and crash in one of the sub-suites.”

Staying nearby was just more expedient, given how rapidly dawn was approaching. It had nothing to do with staying near Krys as long as he could. Right.

“Whatever, man. I’m gone.” Will headed for the door. “You think Mirren will be OK?”

Aidan rubbed his eyes as the predawn lethargy began to steal over him. “Hope so. We’ll see how he is at nightfall.”

As soon as the door closed behind Will, Aidan sat on the bed next to Krys. He shouldn’t have brought her into this mess tonight. Had he really thought she could help, or did he just
want an excuse to tell her what he was; to drive away any chance that she might accept him and kill the screwed-up mating call that had kept her in his mind all day?

He brushed his fingertips across her cheek, flushed with warmth and life, and thought about Abby. She’d loved him when he was human, then rejected him as a vampire. Maybe he would have won her back eventually, but Owen had taken that chance away. Besides, anyone with the misfortune to love someone like him didn’t live too long, did she?

“You look so sad.”

Aidan had been staring into the past, unaware that Krys had awakened and was watching him. She obviously didn’t remember what had happened with Mirren—not yet anyway—and he found that he didn’t want to try erasing her memories. This might be the last chance he had to sit with her, the only chance he had to see her face holding concern for him rather than fear or contempt. Too bad she was still half-buzzed from the enthrallment. He lifted a dark curl away from her face, memorizing her features.

She fingered the tear in his sweater where Anders’s knife had gone in. “Are you OK? What happened?”

He slipped his hand around hers and lifted it to his lips, placing a soft kiss on her fingertips. “I’m OK. Just wanted to check on you before I have to leave.”

“If you’re going to keep me locked up, you should have to stay with me.” She laughed softly. “That sounds really warped, doesn’t it?”

He smiled at the thought. “I’ll be back as soon as I can.” His energy was waning with each minute that the clock ticked closer to dawn, and he heaved himself to his feet. He looked down at Krys to say good-bye, but she’d drifted to sleep, her
breathing steady and even, her heartbeat a soothing echo in his own chest. He predicted that she wouldn’t be nearly as calm the next time he saw her.

A
half hour after dusk, Mirren pulled the Bronco into a parking spot a block from the mill and killed the engine. He flexed his shoulders, the rough wool of his sweater aggravating the sore spots on his back. The wounds had healed but the skin remained tender. Last night had been a shit storm from start to finish, but at least Owen had one fewer fighter. Mirren only wished he’d been the one to make the kill.

He slipped from behind the wheel and walked toward the mill, sliding from shadow to shadow so Lucy wouldn’t know he was following her. Following
them
. Lucy and the stupid kid who’d shot him last night.

Sherry. He’d heard Owen call the girl Sherry. Her human age couldn’t be more than twelve or thirteen. A freakin’ humiliation, that’s what it was. After three quiet years in Penton, maybe he was getting soft.

He stopped at the corner and risked a quick look around the building. Lucy and the girl stood outside the mill entrance and Sherry was pointing down Cotton Street toward the village.

Lucy would know if Mirren opened his mental connection to her, so he closed his eyes to block his other senses and focused on listening.

“You have to wait here,” the girl was saying. God, she even sounded like a kid. Probably wasn’t much older than Hannah. One more reason to feed Owen Murphy his own balls.

“Just show me where Owen’s living. He’ll be glad to see me.” Mirren recognized the purr in Lucy’s voice, guaranteed to break down the willpower of any human she encountered—or a male of any species.

“Right, then,” Sherry said, her accent straight out of Dublin. “But if he’s mad, don’t you go tellin’ him I showed you. He’ll be all in my face if he found out you caught me near the mill.”

What the hell was Lucy up to? She’d always been a nut job, but since Doc died she’d been as stable as a two-legged table. And Aidan knew it, or he wouldn’t have assigned some of the junior scathe members to look for Owen’s scathe hideouts while Mirren wasted time on this little spying mission.

Once Lucy and the girl headed down Cotton Street, Mirren followed at a distance, sticking close to the houses.

They stopped just before the dead end. Had Owen been staying in the mill village, right under their noses? Mirren needed to set up a house-to-house search.

After a brief conversation, Sherry turned and headed back toward the mill, but Lucy climbed the stairs to the front porch of the last house on the block and knocked. She waited a few seconds before going inside. Mirren heard the door close behind her.

He slipped between two houses and waited for Sherry to pass, then continued to the end of the block, moving slowly. Everything was quiet.

Mirren crept around the house and saw a dim light underneath the back door. He squatted beneath the window, listening to Lucy’s laughter and Owen’s brogue as he talked and laughed with her. He strained to decipher their soft words, but the closed windows muffled too much sound.

Mirren’s palms itched. It would be easy to rush in and take him, just rip Owen’s heart out and be done with it. But Aidan suspected his brother had the backing of some of the Tribunal dickheads and wanted to play it safe till they knew Owen—and not the whole vampire nation—was their only opponent. And Lucy being in Owen’s camp wasn’t safe. Didn’t matter whether she’d flipped sides or was on some half-assed revenge mission. Mirren would have cut her out of the scathe, but Aidan had been soft on her so far.

Mirren crept away from the house and headed back toward downtown. Before he made the turn off Cotton Street, he saw Sherry sitting on the front steps of the mill, looking at the freaking stars. The kid was clueless. How anyone had been stupid enough to turn a new vampire since the pandemic floored him. With vampires starving and fighting over unvaccinated humans, why create more fangs to stress the food supply?

Speaking of little girls, maybe Hannah could tell them what Lucy was up to.

A half-block short of the Bronco, Mirren felt the world waver. He leaned against an empty storefront, waiting for the swimming sensation to level off. He’d been queasy when he rose at sunset, but he had felt better after feeding. It was worse this time. A cramp clenched at his gut, and he doubled over, gagging out a clump of blood.

Damned buckshot pellets. Krys had removed them before the tainted blood was fully absorbed, so he hadn’t gotten enough
to kill him—just enough to make him feel like shit. He hadn’t felt nausea since his human life. And he didn’t miss it.

Resuming his walk slowly, he got to the Bronco, climbed in, and tilted his head against the headrest until the dizziness passed.

“Y
ou look like hell.”

Aidan poured Mirren a whiskey and handed it to him on the way inside. The man looked strung out and pissed off, which meant he could join the club. Aidan and Will had spent two hours driving around town, looking for signs of Owen’s scathe, with no luck. If Owen was smart enough to move before dawn every day—which Aidan remembered him doing in the past—finding him would be hard. There were too many empty buildings to hide in, not to mention the woods and caves in the area. They were going to have to lure him out, or wait for him to make another overture.

Aidan’s mood hadn’t improved when he’d come home to find Melissa waiting for him. The woman kept up a running commentary about Krys while he fed: he needed to talk to her; he needed to explain everything so she’d understand why they needed her; he needed to let Melissa talk to her. As if he didn’t think about Krys enough already without Melissa’s input. He and his fam were going to have to set some boundaries.

Aidan sat heavily on the sofa. “Hope you found more than I did.”

Mirren snorted. “Yeah, I found something, all right. Did you send Lucy out tonight?”

Aidan stared at the pasty mess that was Mirren’s face. “No. You feed yet? You look even worse than usual.”

Mirren waved him off. “Little bitch who shot me last night just led our girl Lucy to a house in the mill village. Owen’s slipping in and out under our noses, and now our girl Lucy’s right there with him.”

“Shit.” Aidan kicked the edge of the coffee table, taking a perverse pleasure in watching the leg splinter. They were going to have to keep someone watching the mill village every night. It was isolated and unoccupied, which made it too easy for Owen to move around undetected. And Lucy. Damn it. “What does she think she’s doing?”

“One way to find out. Let’s bring her in.” Mirren got up to leave, but Aidan moved quickly between him and the door.

“Not without a plan. We don’t know how many people Owen has, or how much of that tainted blood. We need to get the lieutenants together and devise an offensive that won’t make the Tribunal think we’re declaring all-out war in case some of them are backing him.”

Mirren opened his mouth to argue, but Aidan held up a hand. “Look, I’m tired of sitting around waiting for Owen’s next move, too, but we don’t do anything half-assed.” He’d survived this long and built a loyal scathe this big by being careful, whether it was negotiating with the local Native American medicine men to settle in their territory, or picking the right
people to populate his scathe, or seeking out the best political allies. And Mirren knew it.

“We meet with everyone except Lucy?” Mirren’s eyes silvered with either anger or hunger, although Aidan would wager a case of his finest whiskey on anger.

“Everyone except Lucy.” She hadn’t left him any choice. “I don’t believe she’d throw in with Owen, but she’s being stupid. Not to mention jeopardizing us all.”

Aidan picked up the mangled table leg and threw it into the fireplace. He seriously needed something to hit. “Get Will to meet us at the clinic office in an hour. I’ll track down Hannah.”

Before he left, Mirren turned and squinted back at Aidan. “Guess I scared the hell out of the new doctor last night. You gonna talk to her?”

Aidan barked out a bitter laugh. “I’ll talk to her after our meeting.” He could just imagine what she’d have to say. A normal human would be petrified. He had a feeling that Krys Harris would be practicing her self-defense moves on him again.

He took a closer look at Mirren standing in the doorway. “We still don’t know how much of that shit got in your system. You look pale.”

“I’m a goddamned vampire. You expect me to have a tan?”

“Let me see your eyes.” Aidan grabbed Mirren’s arm to pull him into the light, but he jerked away.

“Let it drop, A. I just haven’t fed.”

Aidan didn’t argue, but he’d be watching Mirren during the meeting. They couldn’t afford for him to limp around half-sick, and the stubborn SOB would never admit he needed help.