Redemption (The Penton Vampire Legacy) (41 page)

Move to the wall
, he told Krys, and she heard him. In the periphery, he saw her dragging herself away from them, towing Owen’s shotgun with her. Smart girl. He didn’t know if she could use a shotgun, or even if she was able to hold it with a broken arm, but at least she was getting it out of Owen’s reach.

The sound of the shotgun barrel scraping on the floor distracted Owen briefly, and Aidan pulled the knife he’d been fingering in its sheath and sank it to the hilt in Owen’s midsection. Forcing the blade inward and up toward the heart, he shut down the voice in his head that said “brother” and listened to the one that said “mate.” This was for Krys.

But he’d hesitated an instant too long, and Owen shoved him away, leaving the knife embedded. He looked down at it for a moment, then grasped the hilt and pulled it out with a sticky, wet sound. “You should use the kukri blade, Brother. Works better.” His voice was raspy, his breathing uneven.

Owen staggered toward the corner where Krys had wedged herself, holding the shotgun in her right hand and cradling her left in her lap. “Krystal and I were having a talk, weren’t we, love? I was telling her all about how lovely Abigail was, and how you let her die. Of course, she already knows what a selfish, self-righteous bastard you are.” He kicked her in the shoulder above her broken arm, and she shrieked as she toppled to her side, but still managed to hold onto the shotgun.

Rage blackened Aidan’s vision, but Krys’s voice eased through him like cool water.
Don’t listen to him. Stay focused.

She was right. Owen was trying to push his buttons, get him angry enough to make a mistake, and it had almost worked. He
sent a thought back to her:
Slide the shotgun to me when I get in front of you
. He moved slowly to his right, two small steps, and as he hit the ground, she shoved the gun toward him.

By the time Owen reacted, Aidan had it aimed.

Owen backed up and held up his hands. “You’re no killer, Áodhán. You couldn’t kill me in Kinsale, and you can’t do it now.” He circled the room slowly, away from Krys, edging toward the door.

Aidan’s hand was steady. The barrel of the shotgun tracked Owen’s progress.

They both stilled at the sound of footsteps on the stairs. Aidan grinned. “Friend or foe,
Eógan
?” he said. “You assumed I cut the bonds to my people again, but are you willing to bet your life on it?”

Owen hissed and bared his fangs, charging as Aidan pulled the trigger. The shot tore through Owen’s shoulder and upper chest, splattering blood on the wall but not stopping his forward motion. Too late, Aidan saw the syringe in Owen’s hand and heard Krys scream.

The needle entered his belly, and Aidan’s thoughts blurred with pain as he hit the concrete floor with Owen’s unconscious weight on top of him. He didn’t have the strength to move Owen off him, but he squeezed his hand between them to fumble for the syringe. His fingers finally closed on the cylinder and pulled it out, empty but for a coating of red inside. Vaccinated blood. He’d forgotten about the damned blood. How much had he gotten?

Enough that he already felt like someone had doused his guts with gasoline and lit a match.

His mental link to Krys had gone black, and he struggled to push Owen off him.

He’d never been so glad to hear Mirren’s gravelly voice. “I got him, A.” Then Owen’s weight disappeared, and Aidan turned his head in time to see Mirren’s big hands clamped on either side of Owen’s head. His brother’s neck broke with a dull snap.

Aidan tried to sit up. “Krys—gotta check.”

Mirren pressed his shoulders to the floor and stuck his face an inch from Aidan’s. “I’ll check on her, but don’t you freaking move, got me?”

Aidan nodded, and Mirren left his field of vision. If anything had happened to her, he couldn’t survive it. He didn’t want to.

“She’s alive.” Mirren pulled out his cell phone and punched in a number. “You keep getting in so much trouble, even I have Mark on speed dial now.”

Aidan closed his eyes as Mirren barked instructions. Then he opened them again as the big man peeled off his jacket, sat on the floor next to him, and pulled up the sleeve of his own sweater. He jerked a knife from his boot and made a neat incision on his forearm. “Emergency rations,” he said, and lifted Aidan’s head to help him drink. “Go slow. Then we’re going to have a repeat of the drain-and-fill routine you did on me. Payback’s a bitch.”

Warmth spread through Aidan’s system as Mirren’s blood revived him a little, and he relaxed, slumping back to the floor. “Nasty stuff. How bad is she hurt?”

A groan from Owen got their attention.

“Shit.” Mirren went to stand over Owen while Aidan struggled to his feet, holding onto the wall until the room quit spinning. When his brother had fallen, his head rested at a decidedly odd angle. Now it was beginning to straighten.

“He’s healing.” Mirren looked at Aidan. “What do you want to do with him?”

Aidan looked at his brother for a few seconds before leaning over to pick up the knife he’d lost earlier in the fight. He dropped to his knees beside him, closing his eyes till another wave of dizziness passed. Owen’s face was softer in unconsciousness, more like the carefree boy he’d once been. They’d loved each other then, and Aidan wasn’t sure when things had changed, how they’d ended up so far apart. It had started long before Abby. Damned thing was, he’d finally realized tonight that Owen wasn’t the only one he hadn’t forgiven for Abby’s death. He hadn’t forgiven himself.

But this wasn’t the brother he’d loved. That brother had died in the woods north of Kinsale. “Good-bye,
Eógan
,” he whispered. “Be at peace.”

Aidan lowered the knife and pierced his brother’s heart. Owen never woke.

M
irren couldn’t believe Aidan had done it—just cut the damned heart out and laid it carefully on the floor, then toppled over in a dead faint.

He looked around at the mess. Aidan unconscious, Krys unconscious. Blood all over the room. Owen dead next to his own lump of a heart. What a freaking train wreck.

Where the hell was Will? He heard a noise at the door, but it was Hannah.

She stopped and stared at Aidan for a moment, then walked to Krys and knelt beside her, touching her arm. “Her future is uncertain.” The girl frowned. “There are two paths, one that leads into light and one into darkness, and I can’t see which one she takes. It will depend on Aidan.”

Damn. They were mated, so he could be draining energy from her. Mirren had to get him into a drain-and-feed. He was turning a nasty shade of yellow. There was a reason Mirren didn’t want his own scathe, and he was looking around at it. Responsibility.

“Bloody hell. Literally.” Will breezed in and stood over Owen. “Please tell me that’s the son of a bitch’s heart on the floor.”

“I’m tellin’ you. But he didn’t die before he shot Aidan full of vaccinated blood. Get him over to the clinic while we figure out what to do with Krys.”

“You called Mark and Mel for the feed?”

Mirren nodded. “Yeah, they’ll meet you there. I’ll come as soon as I can.”

“What’s the deal with her?” Will stood over Krys, watching Hannah hold her hand and croon to her in an unintelligible chant.

“Hannah can’t tell. We need to get her to a hospital and—”

“Negative.” Will grabbed Hannah’s shoulders and moved her out of the way, leaned over, and picked up Krys. “No hospitals. No humans involved in this bollocks. I’m taking her to the clinic—you bring Aidan. If she makes it, terrific. If not, so be it.”

Mirren had never seen Will look so fierce. Fact was, he’d always wondered what Aidan had seen in the man. Good at organizational shit, but never kept the same fam for very long, never formed any close ties. Didn’t seem to like humans for much besides feeding and sex. But Aidan trusted him, and that had always been enough.

“It won’t matter if he moves her,” Hannah said. “Her future paths remain the same.”

Will snorted and left, his boots echoing in the stairwell as he took Krys away.

“Holy mother of God.” Mirren looked at Hannah. “Can you tell anything else?”

She shook her head. “Jerry told you something, though?”

Mirren had broken a few strategic bones when he finally caught Jerry Caden outside the mill, but the bastard had spilled it before he died. He didn’t know a lot about Owen’s backers, but he did remember the name Ludlam: Will’s daddy and Mirren’s greatest nemesis on the Tribunal. Taking on Matthias Ludlam promised that some major shit was going to fly.

He didn’t say it aloud, but Hannah looked at him with those creepy black eyes and said, “Yes, it is.”

“Can you do this?” Mirren watched as Melissa pulled the portable IV unit into the sub-suite where they’d done his drain-and-feed earlier. He’d laid Aidan out on the bed. The man was still in coma-land, but Mirren had secured his arms and legs with silver chain just in case and had tied him down at the waist as well.

Melissa’s hands shook as she set up the IV bag, and she sniffled. “I can’t believe we’re having to do this.”

“Hold it together, darlin’.” He watched her tie off Aidan’s arm and insert the needle, watching the pale blood race through the tube and into the bag. “How’s Krys?”

Melissa sat beside Aidan and stroked his hair, looking up as Mark arrived. “She’s in and out. Wants Aidan. Wants to get up. Talks to her father. Really hates her father.”

Hell. Sounded as fruit-loopy as Lucy. She was still restrained in one of the secured suites under city hall, behind silver bars, next door to Owen Murphy’s teenage vamp. They were feeding Lucy at knifepoint to keep her from killing the donors, who were scared shitless. They were going to have to put her down eventually, so maybe he should go ahead and just do it while Krys couldn’t lay a guilt trip on them about it.

“I think he’s coming around.” Mark sat on the bed on the other side of Aidan while Melissa switched IV bags. Aidan had begun straining against the chains, although he hadn’t opened his eyes. “Where’s Will?”

“Playing lookout,” Mirren said. “Trying to track down the rest of Owen’s wandering scathe members.”

Melissa looked up. “Is Hannah still with Krys?”

“Won’t leave her.” Mirren couldn’t believe the way she’d latched on to that human. Maybe because Krys didn’t seem nearly as creeped out by Hannah’s skills as the rest of them were.

“Uh-oh, showtime.” Mark took a step away from the bed. Aidan’s eyes popped open, silvery white, and he struggled against the chains. He bared his fangs and jerked toward Melissa, who calmly moved out of reach.

“Suck it up, A.” Mirren moved to the foot of the bed where Aidan could see him, and the chains stilled. “I know you can understand me, ’cause Jenn talked my ear off while I was at this party and I heard every word she said. Here’s the deal, in case you’re fuzzy on the details. Owen’s dead. Will’s rounding up any of his people who might be hanging around and convincing them it’s not in their best interest to stay. You got some vaccinated blood and we’re getting it out.”

Aidan’s voice rasped. “Krys?”

Mirren had hoped he wouldn’t ask. She was barely hanging on. “She’s across the hall. Hannah’s taking care of her.”

Aidan closed his eyes, and Mirren was glad he hadn’t asked for specifics. On some level, because of their mating bond, A probably knew how bad off Krys was. But he hoped that awareness would stay cloudy a while longer.

“He’s getting weaker.” Melissa watched the heart monitor, drawing signals from the sensors that she’d stuck on his neck
and chest, beeping more slowly. “Mark, you go first so I can keep an eye on him. Remember from when we did this with Mirren—he doesn’t know to anesthetize and go slow. It’s gonna hurt. I have some bandages over there for afterward.”

Mark pulled a small knife from his pocket, scoring his forearm. He stretched out on the bed and held his arm so the blood would drop on Aidan’s lips. Aidan stirred and opened eyes that were almost white.

Aidan had better pull through this. Mirren had suspected how unsuited he was to lead a scathe but he hadn’t really known till tonight. Aidan could have it. Too many decisions—who got medical care, who was responsible for what job, everybody wanting a piece of you. He’d always known that Aidan was one tough SOB in his own moody way; he had to be, just to hold the same scathe together for so long. Tonight Mirren had had to deal with just a fraction of the focus it must take to keep up with everybody’s crap. No thanks.