As much as Will wanted to be a smart-ass—and he wanted it so badly he practically had to stick a fang in his tongue to shut himself up—he had to play it smart.
“You’re right.” He assumed what he hoped was a contrite expression. “Here’s the deal. I had hoped if I came back into your organization willingly, you’d agree to leave the rest of them alone. Let Aidan and the others get on with their lives, and I’ll do whatever you want.”
He looked down at his hands so his father wouldn’t see the lie in his eyes.
“I don’t understand how that stupid Irish farmer inspires such devotion.” Matthias poured himself a glass of scotch from the decanter on the desk and took a sip.
A knock on the door made Will jump. OK, so maybe he wasn’t as calm as he pretended.
“What is it? Damned fools.” Matthias stood as another vampire came into the room; Will had never seen this one. How many did he have? This was the third one here at the clinic, and he was sure there were still patrols being done.
“Sir, I thought you’d want to know we found the remains of a human and a vampire near that spring in the woods. It’s hard to tell because, well, some animals got to them. But I think the vampire was Shelton.”
Matthias looked genuinely surprised. Once the messenger had gone, he resumed his seat. “Shelton had been with my organization for a long time, but I recently realized that I made an error in judgment when I sent you to him the summer after you were turned.”
Will had been picking at the hem on the cuff of the baggy cargo pants they’d given him, but those words froze his movements. “An error in judgment?”
Matthias took a sip of his drink. “Shelton had a cruel streak, and I wanted him to bring you to heel.”
Like a fucking dog. He’d been brought to heel, all right. Did Matthias regret his actions? Would it matter to Will if he did?
“Obviously, you weren’t able to handle his authority. You never did handle authority well. I’m surprised you’ve lasted even with someone like Murphy for this long. Maybe I should ask him his secret for keeping you under control.”
Nope, he didn’t regret a thing, except that it hadn’t completely broken him. Will raised his eyes to meet his father’s, and Matthias saw the truth. “You hate me that much? Should I just kill you, then, instead of trying to make you see reason? You could have everything if you came back into my organization, but I won’t promise to let criminals like Murphy and Kincaid run free. Frankly, you’re not worth it.”
So much for a father-son bonding moment. “Don’t you want to know what happened to good old Shelton?” He was past caring what day it was or whether the Omega Force or the whole fucking US Army was on its way. “I killed him. I shoved a knife into Shelton’s heart so many times I practically bathed in his blood. Funny thing is, he died trying to sell you out. Looks like you don’t inspire such devotion.”
A flash of rage crossed Matthias’s face before he got it under control and replaced it with his usual maddening stone face. His cigar had gone out, and he relit it with steady hands. He didn’t give a crap about Shelton, or about anyone but himself. Will knew that, but it was a nice reminder lest he think Matthias wouldn’t kill him.
An interesting truth hit Will with a sudden, harsh surety. “Shelton had been bonded to you for a long time.” He reasoned it out as he went. “You should have known if he was in trouble. If he was dead, you should have felt that bond disappear.”
Matthias stared at him. “Aidan Murphy and Mirren Kincaid have been telling you tall tales about master-vampire skills?”
Will smiled and struck at his father with his mind. They weren’t blood-bonded, but his father was his maker and therefore had genetic ties. It might work, and it might not. You are afraid of me, you little weasel. You’re afraid of me, and you’ll do whatever I tell you.
Matthias’s face grew slack, his eyes glazed. He gripped the scotch glass so tightly that it crushed beneath his fingers, the clear shards cutting into his skin and drawing bright welts of blood. The pain of it was enough to snap him out of his trance, and his eyes grew wide.
“How did you…You can’t be a master vampire. You can’t even read a fucking menu.”
“I can do better than that.” Will smiled, feeling weightless enough to float as the burden of decades of feeling inferior lifted. “I can read you, Dad.”
Another knock on the door broke the strained quiet that followed. “What?” Matthias’s voice revealed his rage. He was not a happy man. How would finding out his son was a stronger vampire than him change his plans?
Will suspected he’d just gone from potential acolyte to enemy number one.
“We just found this one poking around that greenhouse up on the circle.” The same messenger from before shoved a woman into the room, and Will didn’t need to see her face to recognize her. The red hair was enough.
The stakes had just been raised.
At least Randa had taken two of them out before the third one wrapped a silver chain around her neck and cut off her ability to breathe.
She’d taken Cage’s advice, using the exit room beneath Aidan’s greenhouse for her daysleeps and spending the rest of the time trying to tunnel through the rubble into the subbasement hallway.
Nice idea, but Cage had greatly underestimated how thick that wall of debris was. If Randa dug for a month, she wasn’t sure she’d be able to get through it. So she’d finally given up and decided to scout around town. When she climbed the stairs and stuck her head out into the greenhouse, three vampires on patrol were waiting.
Now here she was on the floor, and she’d bet the shiny pair of lace-ups visible underneath the desk belonged to Matthias himself.
Randa struggled to her feet, and her world dropped away at the sight of Will in a pair of loose black cargo pants, small healing marks all over his body, horror in his expression. Not exactly the dramatic rescue she’d envisioned.
“How interesting.” Matthias stood and walked around the desk.
He wasn’t that much taller than Randa, maybe five nine, several inches shorter than Will, and she looked to find some trace of Will in him, much as he said he’d done upon meeting her father. Matthias was very polished, even sophisticated. They had the same color eyes, only while Will’s were expressive—soft when he made love to her, sweet when he teased, filled with dancing fire when he was excited—his father’s were cold, hard, and calculating.
“I remember you from the day of the takeover.” Matthias circled her, and she flinched as he slid his fingers around her throat and pulled her toward him. He buried his face in her hair and inhaled. “And you have my son’s scent all over you.”
From her periphery, Randa saw that Will was already halfway out of his chair. She shook her head slightly. The last thing she wanted was for him to get himself killed trying to save her. Damn it. She couldn’t believe she’d let herself be taken. They’d stripped her of her gun and two of her knives. The one strapped to her ankle? That one, she still had.
“What’s your name, girl?”
One thing the army taught its people was the protocols if taken captive. The first rule was to survive. “Randa Thomas.”
“You’re a Pentonite.” Jeez, the guy said it like it was a four-letter word. “I remember you standing alongside Aidan Murphy that day. One of his lieutenants, perhaps? Another vampire blood-bonded to him, I imagine. I can tell you’re bonded to someone.”
Would that information help, hurt, or make no difference? She decided it was irrelevant. “Actually, I’m bonded to Mirren Kincaid.” Of course, since Mirren was bonded to Aidan, it was virtually the same thing.
Will had remained on the edge of his chair, but she saw his posture relax as Matthias returned to his seat behind the desk and motioned her into a chair. She wanted to study Will, make sure he was OK, reassure herself that he was whole and that Matthias hadn’t screwed with his head too much, but she didn’t dare. The less Matthias suspected about their relationship, the better. Their feelings for each
other would be an exploitable weakness.
“Well, this brings up an interesting situation.” Matthias smiled at her, the shape of his mouth so similar to Will’s and yet his smile so utterly different. “William tells me he’s willing to come back to my household if I leave his Penton friends alone. But I assume that doesn’t include the ones who are out snooping around places that don’t concern them anymore.”
He turned to Will. “So if I agree to let the rest of them go, will you kill this one? I’d consider it a show of good faith on your part.”
Will’s face was expressionless. “If that’s your price, yes. I’ll kill her. What’s one life taken against many saved?”
Randa shifted in her chair. She wished she and Will had become mates so they could share thoughts, because she’d really like to know what he was thinking. He wouldn’t kill her. Of that, she was sure. But what did he plan to do?
A chill passed through her, and it took Randa a second to realize it was coming from Will, who exuded some kind of raw power as he stared at his father. Matthias froze as if caught in the glare of an oncoming train, powerless to move away as it barreled toward him. Only Will didn’t barrel—not physically, anyway.
He was trying to enthrall his father, and doing a pretty damned good job of it.
Apparently, the hired muscle still standing in the doorway must have thought so as well. “Mr. Ludlam, are you all right?”
Matthias blinked, awareness seeping back into his eyes.
Damn it, he was coming out of it. Randa moved slowly so neither the guard nor Matthias would notice, reaching down to scratch her calf. Sliding her fingers lower, she slipped them under the hem of her jeans, unsnapping the safety on the scabbard and sliding the knife out.
“Take out Matthias if you can,” Cage had told her, and this might be her only shot.
Randa reached him in three fast steps, hoping to slice the silver knife across his throat to slow him down before lowering it to his chest. It would have given her an extra second or two to fix the awkward angle of her knife to the heart, but she realized before the knife scored more than two inches across his throat that she’d underestimated his awareness and his reflexes.
Matthias grabbed her arm and snapped it like a twig, sending Randa into an ocean of pain. The knife bounced off the hardwood floor and slid under the desk.
The room blurred around her. Will screaming as he flew at Matthias. A gunshot. A guard on the ground in front of her, his brains spilling out onto an area rug three inches in front of her eyes. More gunshots.
Will falling.
Silence.
Will blinked at the ceiling. As many meetings as the Penton lieutenants had held in this office, how had he never noticed the elaborate crown molding before? Dentil, that was the pattern. He sure had spent a lot of the last couple of weeks lying on his back, staring at ceilings.
The rest of the room came into focus, and he shook away the cobwebs. He had to see about Randa. She was hurt.
Climbing to his feet, he was distracted by the bullet wound in his chest. His father had freaking shot him. Since Will was standing here, Matthias must’ve missed the heart, but it hurt like a son of a bitch. He’d bet his next Robin Hood stash the bullet was silver.
Trying to press the wound closed with his fingers, Will finally raised his head to a sight so bizarre he had to be hallucinating. Maybe the bullet had hit his brain.
Matthias stood behind the big wooden desk, Randa sat against a potted plant cradling her arm and smiling, and in the doorway stood at least five guys in fatigues, holding rifles and looking as serious as death itself. Four of them were human; the fifth was Cage Reynolds.
In front of them was the strangest sight of all: Frank fucking Greisser, who Will knew only because he’d seen a photo of the guy shaking hands with his father. Now he was in the office of the Penton clinic, standing shoulder to shoulder with Colonel Rick Thomas.
They’d done it. They’d fucking done it. If he hadn’t feared something would fall out of his chest, Will would have done a celebration dance.
If Matthias thought the sight strange, his face didn’t show it. “Frank, not that I’m not pleased to see you, of course, but what’s going on? What are you doing with human soldiers as your bodyguards? And Mr. Reynolds, of course.”
Greisser stepped around the desk and stood next to Matthias, his voice low, hard, and probably unintelligible to the humans. Will could hear him just fine. “You arrogant bastard. You didn’t even try to cover your tracks. There’s nothing more I can do for you.”
Matthias still hadn’t gotten it, but understanding began to dawn when Aidan and Mirren eased through the line of soldiers, both wearing shoulder holsters with those big-ass Smith & Wessons they liked so much.
“Frank, I demand to know what’s happening. These men should be disarmed and put under arrest.” Matthias blustered and puffed out his chest in indignation, but his eyes darted from Aidan to Mirren and back to Frank.
Greisser unfolded a paper and began reading. It was a formal piece of bureaucratic tripe, but it was the nicest bit of tripe Will had ever heard.
“Matthias, I have been charged by majority vote of the Vampire Tribunal to strip you of your seat on the Tribunal as chief counsel and head of the Justice Council. I’m also to inform you that you’re to be taken into immediate custody and will be duly judged in Tribunal court within thirty days. This is witnessed by both myself, representing the Tribunal, and Colonel Richard Thomas, representing a new human-Tribunal partnership known as Omega Force.”
“You fools. You’ve brought humans into our business?” Matthias reached for the spot at the edge of the desk where his pistol had fallen, but Mirren was too fast. He crossed the room in two strides, grabbed Matthias’s wrist, and twisted it behind his back. The click of silver cuffs was like a choir of angels.
“What am I being charged with? This is preposterous! William, you’re behind this, you ingrate, you stupid…Do you know my brilliant son can’t even read a comic book? A dullard and his farmer friend and a professional murderer—these are the people you’re listening to, Frank?”
“May I?” Will held out his hand to Frank Greisser, who raised an eyebrow and handed him the paper.
He could read this just fine. “You are hereby charged with kidnapping, murder by contract, and abuse of office, with additional charges pending.” Will tossed the sheet of paper on the desk and crossed the room to where Randa had gotten to her feet. He had nothing else to say.
Together, they walked toward the door, Randa holding her broken arm and Will with blood running down his chest and pooling at the waist of his pants.
Colonel Thomas gave him a solemn nod as they passed.
With an hour to spare before dawn, Will and Randa lay squeezed against each other in their twin bed in Omega. Krys had treated Will at the clinic, removing the silver bullet and packing the wound to hold it until daysleep. She’d offered him a bison-sized dose of morphine, but this time he’d passed. Randa’s arm was a clean break, so Krys had set it and put it in a cast.
“Think my dad’s enjoying his locked suite in the clinic subbasement?” Will nudged her with his shoulder.
She grinned. “With Mirren sitting outside his door, daring him to try and escape? Oh yeah, I bet he’s enjoying it plenty.”
Will didn’t know how long it would take them to rebuild Penton, but he’d already envisioned the training facility he’d design at the site of the old community center. A state-of-the-art place for Omega Force to work. He’d build a restaurant for Glory and replace the damaged clinic with a new one for Krys to work in.
Randa nudged his shoulder this time. “Will, let me ask you something.”
“Yes, I’ll buy you some new granny panties.”
“Stop it. I’m serious.”
He sighed. He was so damned tired of serious. He just wanted a daysleep where rats wouldn’t gnaw on him. “OK, spill it.”
“I was thinking tonight how it would have been nice if we could c
ommunicate mentally. You know, so we could talk to each other in tight spots. It would be really helpful to us when we’re working with Omega Force.”
Krys had ordered him to stay on his back, but he rolled over and groaned as he propped on one elbow and tried to keep from slipping off the narrow bed. “To do that, we’d need to be mated.”
She flicked a glance his way, then returned her gaze to the ceiling. “I know.”
He tried to keep the smile off his face, but his mouth just kept going there. “We’d have to have a blood exchange.”
She waved her arm in its cast. “Yeah, we’d have to do that.”
“And we’d have to have sex at the same time.”
Randa sighed, but her smile kept trying to break out too. “I think I could make the sacrifice. Just to make us more effective in Omega Force, of course.”
Will leaned over and took a nip at her earlobe. “Of course. Kind of like a business deal.”
“Exactly.”
“When would you like to do this business deal?” He figured they had thirty minutes left, max.
“Tomorrow, I think. Since you’re injured, you know. I wouldn’t want to worry about your stamina.”
He leaned over and kissed her, long and hard, ignoring the throbbing pain in his chest and the fact she’d accidentally beaned him in the head with her cast.
He rolled onto his back and nudged her shoulder again. “Yeah, tomorrow. And I’ll show you stamina.”
As always, thanks to editor Eleni Caminis and the Montlake team for letting the Penton crew find life on the printed page. To Marlene Stringer, simply the Best Agent Ever. To editor Melody Guy, for smoothing out the wrinkles. To Dianne, for being my alpha reader even though she really doesn’t read this genre—really. To Debbie, for being alpha-deux, even though she has horribly miscast Mirren. And to the rest of my Sisterhood of the Traveling Snark (Stella, Lauri, Amanda, and Lora) and the Auburn Writers Circle (Larry, Pete, Julia, Mike, Shawn, and Robin) for your unending support and encouragement.
Omega Page 26