Redemption (The Penton Vampire Legacy) (42 page)

Aidan pulled against the chains, fangs out, reaching for Mark’s wrist. “Here we go,” Mark said, and flinched as he lowered his arm and let Aidan bite.

B
efore she fell asleep at night, Krys always flew. She’d ease into some twilight half-consciousness where she could soar. She’d fly over foreign landscapes she’d never seen in real life, gliding soundlessly, watching the terrain change below her, feeling the air move out of her way as she traveled.

She felt like that now, only she was awake. And the terrain was a ceiling with crisp edges and crown molding. Her room in the sub-suites.

She was dying. She knew it in the lucid moments, recognizing the physical symptoms. Her hands and feet felt like blocks of ice, telling her the circulation was slowing. Her lungs were full of cotton. She slept most of the time. And the pain seemed distant now, only background noise.

She turned her head and saw Hannah’s black eyes on her. The girl had been here whenever she woke. Last time she’d looked, those eyes had been closed in daysleep. So it must be evening again.

Krys needed to know one thing, and she swallowed, trying to pull enough breath to ask.

“Aidan will be well. They are replacing his blood. He’ll be here soon.”

Right. This was Hannah. She didn’t have to ask, because Hannah always knew. “Tell him—”

Hannah placed a small hand over Krys’s mouth. “Don’t talk. You must make a choice, and I must ask you this before Aidan gets here.”

What was she talking about? Krys swallowed and finally gave up, just thinking the question at her:
What choice?

Tears spilled from the girl’s eyes. “You are dying.”

Krys tried to smile. “I know,” she finally croaked out, then thought:
It’s OK. Tell Aidan I wouldn’t have changed anything. Make sure he knows that.

“You could still be with him.” Hannah’s voice dropped to a whisper. “You can become one of us.”

Krys’s heart, slowing on its march toward a total stop, caught a burst of adrenaline and fluttered. Could she do that?
Would
she do that, to stay with Aidan?

“It doesn’t always work,” Hannah said. “And we don’t have much time. But decide now. If you wait, it will either be too late or the choice will fall to Aidan.”

Krys closed her eyes. She didn’t know what came after death. There were the near-death stories of white lights and peace. Once she had thought peace was all she wanted, but not anymore. Aidan hadn’t realized it, but he’d shown her how to live. And she wanted to live with him, on whatever terms it had to be.

He was so conflicted about his own nature, would he still want her if she were a vampire? Would he rather have her be like Abby and die whole and human? She started to ask Hannah
those questions, but didn’t. This wasn’t Aidan’s decision. It was hers, and she wasn’t Abby. She wanted to live.

She opened her eyes and looked at Hannah, choking a little as she swallowed again. “Do it.”

Hannah moved to the opposite side of the bed, away from Krys’s broken arm, and closed her eyes.

What was she waiting on? If she dragged it out too much, either Krys would lose her nerve or faint again, or Aidan would get here. He might or might not turn her. But he’d flogged himself for centuries over what had happened with Abby. She didn’t want him having to decide.

“What is it, darlin’?”

Krys shifted her eyes to the door, where Mirren towered. Had Hannah called him?

“She is dying, and we’re going to make her vampire.”

Krys felt the room gray and float farther away. “Do it,” she whispered. “No time.”

Mirren closed the door behind him. “Hannah, the Tribunal’s outlawed turning anybody, and last thing we need is more of their shit raining down on us.”

Krys was vaguely aware of Hannah moving away from the bed. “Do you care about the Tribunal or do you care about Aidan?”

Somebody had better move. Krys batted her hand on the bed to get their attention, and it wiped out all the strength she had left.

“Shit. Damn it all to hell.” Mirren sat on the bed where Hannah had been. “I’ll drain her. I can take more blood than you. Then you feed her.”

He turned Krys. “You ready for this, darlin’? It’s almost like the drain-and-feed, but we take it all the way. You’ll die on us,
and then we’ll bring you back. But you gotta know, it doesn’t always work. It’s about a fifty-fifty shot.”

What difference did it make? She was dying anyway. Krys blinked to show she understood. “S’OK.”

He stretched out alongside her. “I need to hit a big vein and do this fast, right?”

She blinked again, and felt his fingers probing for her carotid artery. Her heart suddenly galloping, she swallowed hard and fought the flight urge. Was she really going to do this? God, what if she came out a real monster? What if...

She gasped as his fangs hit the artery. The last thing she saw before the room faded was Aidan standing in the doorway, his face twisted in rage.

A
idan was immobile, eyes frozen on a scene that could have taken place four hundred years earlier. Owen at Abby’s neck. Mirren at Krys’s.

With a roar he flew at Mirren, whose mouth sucked hungrily at her artery, her blood streaming down her neck onto the pillow. She was the same color as the sheets.

Something tackled him halfway to the bed and he fell, trying to scramble out of the iron grip that dragged him to the floor.

Fangs bared, Aidan looked over his back at Hannah. Her arms were locked around his chest and her legs around his thighs, crippling him. She might have looked like a child, but her physical strength was vampire. He wrestled her beneath him, unwilling to hit her.

“She wants this,” Hannah gasped. “She was dying. It’s her only way to survive.”

Aidan shot an elbow back and heard an
umph
as her grip broke and she fell away from him. He stayed on the floor,
staring up at Mirren. His long body stretched beside Krys, a heavily muscled arm thrown across her waist, his mouth at her neck, jaws working. Aidan rose and gave Hannah a warning look that kept her on the floor. God help him, he didn’t know what to believe.

“Are you sure?” He swallowed his own hunger as he watched Mirren feed. “Are you sure she was dying? Are you sure this is what she wanted?”

Hannah’s voice was steady. “Yes, I saw it from the beginning—that she would have a choice between two paths. I didn’t know until today what paths they were. She could die or she could live as one of us. I asked her and she wants to try. She knows it doesn’t always work, but she wants you.”

Time was running out. She still might not make it. Or she could survive but end up like Lucy, a mad animal that had to be fed and caged. And the Tribunal would have one more reason to come after them, for turning someone during the pandemic crisis. Not to mention that she might not want him anymore afterward, might not love him the way she had as a human.

Krys gasped, and her breathing grew rapid and shallow. She quit breathing for a few seconds entirely before gasping again and falling still.

“It’s time,” Hannah said quietly. “I will feed her. You are still too weak.”

Mirren rolled away and fell heavily to the floor, his face flushed and eyes hooded as he leaned against the side of the bed.

Hannah moved to take his place, but Aidan stopped her. “No. Stay away from her.”

She clenched her little fists and stared at him, openmouthed.

Mirren staggered to his feet, blood-drunk. “Listen, A—”

“No,” Aidan repeated, his voice low. “Nobody feeds her but me. Nobody else touches her.”

He climbed onto the bed beside her, ignoring his fatigue. He heard Mirren on the phone, probably calling Will to find feeders for a new vampire while they were in their daysleep. At least he hoped it would work out that way.

The last time he’d lain beside her, they’d just made love. She’d been so careful of his injuries, had taken care of him in every way. Giving. Always giving. Now it was his turn.

“Knife,” he said, his voice hoarse. He held out his wrist. Mirren grasped his arm, and the pain of the knife’s edge drawing across his skin helped clear his mind. He trailed a finger across the cut and stuck the finger in her mouth, leaving the blood on her tongue. Repeated the action until he felt her tongue move, seeking more. It seemed to be taking hours. He was vaguely aware of Mirren and Will talking, coming, going, but someone always there to keep his cut open.

“It’s working,” Hannah finally whispered.

Aidan dropped his wrist to Krys’s mouth, and she didn’t respond at first. “Come on, drink, damn it.” He worked his wrist between her lips so his blood would reach her. Finally he felt her tongue probing at the cut, then a soft pull.

She moaned and tried to curl into a ball as the blood hit her stomach and her still-human system tried to reject it. He remembered the horrible cramps that had lasted for days as the vampire blood kept the body alive while transforming the physical systems.

Then, if she survived, the real hunger would start.

L
ife had dwindled to states of half waking and pain, with long periods of blackness between. Krys remembered the fight with Owen, but not how it had ended.

Everything hurt. Whenever her mind brought her to the surface, Aidan would be there, holding her, talking to her softly in his native Gaelic as if he knew she needed to hear his voice even if she couldn’t understand the words.

Sometimes he’d be in his daysleep but Mark or Melissa would be nearby and would talk to her in words that didn’t make any more sense. She must be dying, and wished she’d go ahead and be done with it—for all their sakes.

The last few times she’d stayed awake longer and had been able to lie quietly with her eyes closed and float away from the pain for short periods. She heard snippets of conversation. Aidan talking to Mark and Melissa about feeding schedules. Another time, Mirren talking about a trip. Something about Will’s father.

Finally she woke without pain, and its absence made her almost euphoric. She couldn’t open her eyes yet, but lay still
and thought for the first time that she might live, might
want
to live.

Voices broke through: Will shouting and Aidan shushing him. She tried to open her eyes, to speak, but she couldn’t bring herself out of the physical paralysis.

“It’s better for all of you if I leave,” Will said. “My father knows I’m here and he won’t give up just because Owen failed. He’ll kill everyone here to get to me.”

What was the deal with Will’s father? Krys couldn’t remember. Aidan’s voice was soft, yet she seemed to be able to hear everything with sharp clarity. Will’s shouting had been almost painful. She’d had a concussion—she remembered that much. Maybe it had made her hearing hypersensitive.

Aidan was arguing. “Matthias is going to come after us anyway—using Owen was just the opening round. We’re already short a lieutenant with Lucy. I need you here. Plus, if we have to fight Matthias, who knows him better than you?”

The voices faded as she drifted again, until Hannah arrived and she heard flashes of frantic talk about Mirren. He was missing? How could someone that big be missing?

Thinking of Mirren and hearing Hannah’s high, clear voice evoked odd snippets of memory. Of the child lying beside her on a bed. Of Mirren coming in to help turn her...oh my God, had they backed out? Had she lived, after all? Or had they done it?