“Will, you don’t have to prove anything. You took Shelton out. Your dad is going to lose his power over us. We can handle anything he tries to do to us in the next forty-eight hours while my dad and Aidan get everything set up.”
“I know that, but—”
“I’m not finished.” She shoved both hands against his chest, causing him to take a couple of steps back to keep his balance. “We can’t assume they’re going to be successful. What if the negotiations don’t work? What if none of Dad’s men agree to it and we have to go out and try to erase all their memories—if we get to them before word about vampires starts spreading? What if the Tribunal can’t get enough support? What if they see it as a threat and don’t agree to it? Then you’re stuck with your father and I couldn’t…”
He ignored her protests and tugged her against him, his arms warm, his hands rubbing her back like one would comfort a frightened child. “You couldn’t what?”
She couldn’t stand it, that’s what. She couldn’t live in Penton without him. She couldn’t stand to think of Matthias touching him, belittling him, maybe rebreaking the pieces of his heart he’d finally started mending.
“I couldn’t stand breaking in a new partner.” The hard words cleared her mind. What was she doing, acting like a helpless little woman begging her soldier not to go to war? Her heart settled back into its normal vampire rhythm, and she knew she’d never let him go into this alone. He’d once knocked her out to keep her from following him on a job. This time she’d play it differently.
“You’d manage. Besides, you’re not getting rid of me that easily.” He cupped her face in his hands and leaned down to kiss her, his tongue mimicking the rhythm of what they didn’t have time for. He was pressed hard against her, and she slipped her hand down to stroke him.
He groaned. “I can’t believe you’re sending me off to meet my father with a hard-on.”
She squeezed him hard enough to hurt and got a satisfying oof in response. “That’s to remind you what you’re leaving behind.”
“Just for a while. Promise.” He kissed her again, then leaned over and picked up his leather bag. He looked back at her as he opened the door into the hallway. “Stay safe.”
“You too.” She’d see him again before he imagined it, but first, she had some more good-byes.
After Will disappeared up the ladder of the Omega exit, Randa walked down the hallway to the common room, where a dozen people, vampire and human, sat scattered around the chairs, watching Hannah play with the bloodhound.
She looked up when Randa approached. “Thank you for bringing Barnabas to me.” The child vampire had never looked more human—and hadn’t looked this happy in a while. In fact, Randa realized, as she glanced around the common room, almost everyone wore a smile, even Cage.
“I can’t believe we never thought about getting a dog.” She settled into the chair next to him and watched for a while, wondering if he was house-trained. Too late to worry about that now. “Why Barnabas?”
Cage grinned. “She’s been watching Dark Shadows DVDs on Will’s laptop.”
The Penton people’s endless fascination with pop culture’s interpretations of vampires had always amused her. Before Matthias had ruined everything, the Twilight movies had been playing back-to-back for over a month at the little walk-in theater downtown. She’d gone a couple of times and laughed as people quoted lines of dialogue with the movie and howled at the glittering vampires. It was like the vampire version of humans doing Saturday midnight viewings of The Rocky Horror Picture Show.
The thought of Matthias, however, reminded her of why she was here. “Cage, I have to tell you something, but you can’t breathe a word to Aidan or Mirren or my dad. I’ll be having this same conversation with Robbie.”
He settled moss-green eyes on her, such an unusual color, almost like a dark jade. “When are you going?”
How had he known? “Going where?”
“Don’t be coy, and don’t look so surprised. I figured once you got used to the idea of Will turning himself in to distract his father, you wouldn’t stop him—you’d follow him.”
Hmph. Sometimes Cage was too damn smart. “You won’t tell?”
“Nope. It’s a good idea.” He watched Hannah holding up Barnabas’s long, floppy ears like they were pigtails. “But be careful and don’t underestimate Will. He’s proven that he’s a survivor.”
“I’m not underestimating Will. I just don’t want to underestimate Matthias.” Randa looked at her watch. “Will can scent me following him if I go too soon. I’ll see the others off, then try to find what Matthias has done with him before dawn. I might have to spend daysleep somewhere else, though.”
She took a deep breath and asked the question no one had verbalized. “Do you think Matthias will kill him?” She thought he might, if Will provoked him enough. Not fast, though. He’d try to break him first. He’d try to break him again.
“I don’t think so, unless Will’s mouth gets the better of him and he pushes too hard. My guess is that Matthias will lock him in the suite beneath the clinic where he had Melissa.” Cage lowered his voice as Mirren and Aidan walked past, deep in conversation.
“I’d try to access it from Aidan’s greenhouse. There was a cave-in, but the exit room is clear, and you might be able to tunnel through it. You could even spend your daysleep in the exit room there. Just be careful. Matthias is staying across the street, and they know about that tunnel. But you’d never be able to get at Will from the clinic side. Why don’t you take Robbie with you?”
“You’re going to need him here.” Randa had thought about taking Robbie, but she didn’t know if the guys on the future Omega Force, whoever they were, would accept the existence of vampires, much less training with Cage. Robbie needed to be there to smooth the way.
This had to be a solo mission for her.
“Anything else I need to know?”
Cage watched Hannah a few minutes without responding, but finally answered. “I think when I’m not working with your brother and his team, I’ll get a crew to start excavating a path through the exit room under the church. I don’t think they’re watching it anymore. If you guys can’t get away through the greenhouse, go there.”
He thought a few minutes longer. “One more thing.”
Randa saw her father and brother heading toward them and knew it had to be quick. “What?”
“Look for a human kid named Evan who’s locked in the clinic if you get a chance—Shelton’s latest victim. And if you get a chance to take Matthias out without risking yourself or Will, do it.”
Matthias poured a glass of scotch and set it atop the clinic office desk, rubbed his temples, and focused again on contacting Shelton mentally. The lazy sod was either out of range or ignoring him, and neither of those was going to win him his little boy back.
Maybe he’d gone too far with the beatings, but Shelton had been getting obsessed with his little blood-junkie feeder and unfocused on his business—namely, doing whatever Matthias wanted.
Shelton’s last fuckup had been dropping the ball on the dog situation, and Matthias couldn’t let it pass unpunished. All he’d been asked to do was make sure Billy Joe Mickler and his bloodhound arrived, direct them to the area where one of his patrollers had scented Cage Reynolds, and then return to Penton. Instead, he’d never come back, and after making some phone calls, Matthias learned Mickler and his dog were both missing. Had Shelton been killed?
Matthias pushed up the sleeves of his sweater and rubbed his eyes. He’d never paid much attention to his blood bonds with his people, but he couldn’t sense the bond with Shelton. Had it recently disappeared? Or had it never been strong enough to detect? No answers, but if he found out the weasel was ignoring him, a beating would be the least of his worries.
There was one good piece of news, though. Those two fanged morons he’d put on patrol duty near the poisoned spring had run into some of Murphy’s scathe. One of them had been killed, but the other had made it b
ack to Matthias.
William was one of the vampires, plus a woman and two humans. When Will had shown up, the dog had found a bloody patch of ground and what was probably the missing Billy Joe Mickler’s bloodhound.
He finished the scotch, pulled his pistol out of the desk drawer, and headed out of the clinic. It looked as if the only way things would get done around this fucking place was if he did everything himself. If he saw Shelton, he’d shoot him.
What a godforsaken shithole this whole town had turned out to be. A fine, cold mist wet his face as he walked to his car, and he pulled his jacket around him more tightly. Buying this little mill town had been a genius move on Murphy’s part. No vampire in his right mind would want to live here. Yet they had, hadn’t they? And some of them were still loyal enough to Murphy to follow him into some underground pit.
Including William.
Matthias tried to figure out where he’d misjudged his son, at what point he’d miscalculated what it would take to break him without driving him away. Maybe it was the summer he’d sent the boy to live with Shelton. After he’d let William return to New York, he’d been docile, even skittish. He’d followed orders, kept his smart mouth shut, and seemed to be becoming exactly the follower Matthias had needed him to be. A month later, with no warning, he’d disappeared and had proven very adept at eluding his father.
Will had dropped off the map for more than two decades before showing up as one of Murphy’s acolytes.
Yes, Matthias was almost sure the summer with Shelton had been the thing that pushed William over the edge, again proving what a shortsighted, weak man his own son had become. Well, he’d find him again, and he’d break him once and for all. And if he couldn’t break William, he’d kill him. This game between them had gone on long enough.
He pulled two more projectile grenades and slipped them into his pocket. First, he had to find the hole and figure out a way to extract William. Then he’d blast the whole thing shut and cut off their water supply altogether. Murphy and his friends could live under there until they drained their humans and the humans died of dehydration. Then Murphy and all his pals would starve into dried husks, neither alive nor dead—all together forever in their little hole with their dead fams.
Long live Penton.
Matthias cranked his car and drove out of town, heading east. He watched the odometer until he’d reached eight miles out, then parked and exited the car. This spot was near the Alabama-Georgia state line, and there was an automotive plant not far from here. So he began walking a pattern of circles, back and forth, using the full moon—dim due to the heavy mist—as a guidepost.
He stilled at the sound of footsteps in the leaves a few hundred yards ahead of him. He scented the air. Humans? Two of them, if he was reading the situation right. Why the hell would humans be traipsing around in the woods at midnight in this weather?
He had the sensory advantage on them. To himself—and only himself—he’d admit he wasn’t the strongest master vampire. He’d never honed the skills to scent the way some masters could, nor was he strong at mental communication. But he was a master, nonetheless. He could roll human minds and wipe memories easily enough.
Which might or might not be necessary. Matthias slipped behind the trunk of a massive oak and watched the humans approach. Two men—one middle-aged, the other younger. Both had that erect, purposeful walk that hinted at a military background. Maybe some military unit was on maneuvers nearby, or one of those crazy survivalist groups Matthias had heard about. The last thing he wanted to deal with on this cold, wet, miserable night was a horde of walking human testosterone.
He stayed in his spot and was relieved to see the men continue eastward in the direction of the automotive factory. He waited to see if any more arrived. When they didn’t, he moved on toward the clearing they’d passed through.
The smell of blood was strong here, but it was vampire blood, not human. Matthias knelt and scanned the carpet of wet leaves.
A sound to his south caught his attention, and he rose to follow it. Deeper into the woods, under a tree canopy so dense the mist didn’t reach him, he saw a flash of color through the trees and scented vampire.
And it wasn’t one bonded to him. Had his luck finally changed?
Moving with stealth, Matthias edged from pine to oak to pine, keeping a tree trunk between him and his prey.
The sense of movement stopped, and he knew the vampire had scented him as well. He stepped into the open and cocked his pistol.
“Whoever’s there, show yourself.”
A flash of light clothing moved among the dense brush. Matthias’s heart stopped at the sight of his only son stepping into the clearing.
Aidan tossed his cell phone on the dining room table of the small safe house he maintained in an unassuming subdivision an hour north of Atlanta. He’d finally gotten a call from Rob, with a mixed bag of news.
The good: After a few hours of disbelief and posturing, the human members of their team had finally accepted that not only did vampires exist, but they had a lot of advantages over humans and might help them do their jobs better. “It was Hannah who convinced them,” Rob had said. “She sat there playing with that freaking bloodhound, looked up at Max Jeffries—the biggest guy I ever saw until I met Mirren Kincaid—and asked if she could feed from him. He’d never had the vaccine and still didn’t believe, so he told her to knock herself out. So she did, and he was convinced.”
The bad: No one had heard from Will. Forty-eight hours had passed since he walked into the woods with the plan of turning himself over to Matthias. On the positive side, there had been no other sign of Matthias around the Omega entrance. Whatever was happening with Will, he’d been able to keep Matthias occupied.
The ugly, and Rob was not happy about it: Randa had followed Will, and nobody had heard from her, either.
“What happened?” Krys settled next to Aidan on the sofa and wrapped an arm around his shoulders. As guilty as it made him feel, sitting here in a normal house with his mate felt nice. Omega was as comfortable as they could make it, but it was still a steel-lined hole in the ground. It was a bloody miracle no one had gone stir-crazy yet.
“Everything’s going well with the new team, but there’s been no word from Will. And Randa went after him.”
“Aw, fuck.” Mirren walked in from the kitchen with a glass of whiskey. Glory was lying down on a second sofa next to Melissa, still half-sick from the water contamination and tired from having to feed four vampires, even though they’d fed sparingly. They hadn’t wanted to risk bringing anyone else out of Omega in case the Tribunal meeting about to take place turned ugly and the new Omega Force had to fight Matthias, after all. That was the whole point of training them before the Tribunal had agreed to it.
After talking to Meg Lindstrom and Edward Simmons, they’d insisted on coming to Atlanta to meet with the Penton foursome in person and were bringing with them the Tribunal members from Canada, Australia, and Mexico, as well as Tribunal director Frank Greisser.
It was risky. Mirren had argued against it, but Aidan was out of options. They had to make a stand now and try to reach an agreement, or they had to fight Matthias, break up the scathe, and scatter—if it wasn’t already too late.
“They’re here, in a fucking limousine. That’s a great way not to draw attention to yourself.” Mirren stood at the window, looking out on the street.
Aidan kissed Krys, nodded at Glory and Melissa, and went to the door. “Mirren, I swear to God if you do anything to piss them off, I will use that bloody sword of yours on some body part Glory would really miss.”
Mirren grumbled something Aidan couldn’t make out, but he figured it could be shortened into two one-syllable words. His point had been made, however. Mirren walked to the far wall and propped against it in his favorite stance, arms crossed over his chest. Glory moved to sit beside Krys and Melissa.
Aidan opened the door and stepped aside as the six vampires—half of the Tribunal and the most powerful
members—filed in. They took all the available seats and fidgeted in the awkward silence.
Edward Simmons stood up, a tall, thin man with straw-colored hair cropped short, an accent straight out of London’s toniest suburbs, and an air of restless energy. “I insisted on this meeting, so I’ll get it underway, shall I?” He didn’t wait for an answer.
“We have two issues at play here. First is the future of the Penton scathe that is pledged to Aidan Murphy, the charges against him and Mirren Kincaid, and the allegations they’re bringing against Matthias Ludlam.”
Frank Greisser shoved a shock of blond curls off his forehead. “Edward, I think—”
“Please, may I finish?”
Frank pressed his lips together and gave a nod. Every vampire in the room felt his flare of disapproving energy, and Aidan wondered, not for the first time, exactly how old he was.
Edward ignored it. “The second issue is a proposal Aidan Murphy has brought forth on behalf of his scathe and an American private security firm that does highly classified military missions for the government. It has the potential to help the Tribunal solidify its position among our vampires and provide a means of weathering the postpandemic crisis.”
Meg Lindstrom had been a middle-aged college professor when she was turned vampire by a colleague. Her hair was the color of iron, and her backbone was just as strong. “I believe we need to settle the first matter before moving to the second.”
She turned to Frank. “As this is our first chance to hear Aidan Murphy’s side of the story, I propose we do that.”
The Austrian had long been an ally of Matthias’s, and Aidan could see him trying to figure out a way around this while still looking objective.
“We have processes in place to try criminals, and I believe we should use them.” His German accent clipped off the words, but his English was perfect. “I see no reason to have this farce of a meeting and now regret that Edward talked me into it.”
Aidan looked at Edward—should he go ahead and speak? But the Englishman shook his head slightly.
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