Redemption (The Penton Vampire Legacy)

by Susannah Sandlin

  Except, other images were there, too, igniting her skin. Did he take advantage of you, or did you practically attack the man? She remembered pulling his body against hers, kissing him, urging him to take her, ripping off that stupid red T-shirt. She’d practically begged him, except—damn it—she didn’t do stuff like that. She was the one who stayed home on off-rotation nights because she knew she’d never fit in with the other med students or residents. The one whose daddy complex was so screwed up that she’d never enjoyed sex. The one whose idea of a club was a book club, for God’s sake.

  She wasn’t sexy enough for the likes of Aidan Murphy, and she’d never have done the things she was remembering. She might want to, but she’d never have the guts.

  Scalp-crawling tinges of panic overcame Krys for the first time since she’d left home at eighteen, when the bellow of her father’s voice from across the house would bring on the shakes. Her breathing came in short bursts, lack of oxygen making the room spin. Think, Krys.

  One of the first things she’d learned after leaving home was how to relax into the panic. She took in a lungful of air, released it slowly, repeated the process. So what if she’d thrown herself at a man she barely knew and couldn’t quite remember the details? Fainting from hyperventilation wouldn’t help.

  What would help was a plan. And a quick trip back to Americus—no way Aidan Murphy would want to hire her now. She could never look him in the eye again.

  First, clothes. Nobody could think straight sitting naked in a strange room. She’d get dressed and get out of here, go to the LaFayette motel and get her stuff, and then try to piece together what had happened once she got the hell out of Penton, assuming that’s where she was.

  Krys wrapped the quilt around her like a big, overly padded towel, and looked around the room for her suit—and her purse and briefcase.

  And where was her car?

  She set aside the alarming idea that the Dinosaur might still be sitting in that Quikmart parking lot. Clothes first.

  She spotted the dark brown suit skirt and white blouse thrown across an armchair in the corner of the room. The bedroom alone was the size of her entire apartment in Americus. Not to mention nicer, with better furnishings. Besides the cherry four-poster bed with its carved headboard, there was a matching nightstand, a dresser with a mirror, and two armchairs. There were three cherrywood doors in two of the walls. A flat-screen TV hung over an unlit fireplace filled with gas logs. A sofa, chair, and coffee table faced the fireplace, forming a small sitting area. It looked like the fancy boutique hotel she’d stayed in at her one and only medical conference—when her med school had footed the bill. If Penton had this kind of lodging, why had they stuck her more than ten miles away at the dumpy LaFayette Motor Inn?

  Still practicing her deep breathing, Krys spotted her purse on the dresser and her shoes underneath the armchair. She was in business.

  Bra. Skirt. Blouse. She felt better with her clothes on, wrinkles and all. She picked the pantyhose up, considering. No, those she’d ripped all by herself. She’d just have to go bare-legged and hope it wasn’t too cold.

  The wooden door next to the chair didn’t have a notice on it like hotel rooms were required to post, so this must be a private guesthouse. She grasped the ornate brass knob and pulled, planning to poke her head out and see if she recognized anything. The door wouldn’t budge. She squatted, looking for a thumb-latch or keycard slot. Weird. She pulled on the door again, but it was solid and heavy. And locked from the outside with a deadbolt, from the looks of it.

  Half-panicked, half-annoyed, Krys rattled the knob a few times and then pounded on a door so solid it absorbed her fist-falls.

  “Hello? Anyone? I’m locked in here!” She kicked at what looked like some kind of hinged slot in the bottom of the door, but all that earned her was a throbbing, stubbed toe.

  “Damn it.” She looked around at the two other doors. Maybe she’d been trying to open one of those adjoining room doors that locked from the other side.

  The door on the far side opened into a bathroom, all marble surfaces and antiqued fittings, a walk-in shower and a built-in Jacuzzi in opposite corners. A sharp pain stabbed through Krys’s head and she closed her eyes. She remembered this room, getting undressed, finding the red T-shirt and putting it on. And walking out to find Aidan.

  Her image in the mirror looked no different than usual. She ran her fingers through her hair and stopped, frowning. Turning to the side, she studied her neck. Just under her right ear, there was a freakin’ hickey. What was this, high school? Except, the image that came to her as she ran her fingers over the small bruise was no teen flashback. Aidan’s teeth biting, mouth roving over her. God, it really had happened. Dreams didn’t leave love bites.

  Everything in the bathroom looked new, even smelled new, with underlying odors of fresh concrete and stone and glue. Wrapped toiletries occupied a corner of the vanity—toothbrush, toothpaste, soap, shampoo, lotion.

  A sense of unreality settled over Krys as she walked back into the bedroom and opened the third door. A small closet, with clothes hanging in it. Her breath caught when she saw the cream-colored sweater hanging next to her suede jacket. That sweater had been in the hotel room in LaFayette. She slid the hangers to expose the other clothes hanging beside the jacket. She always packed too much, even for an overnight trip. And the evidence was on display right in front of her.

  Hands trembling, she jerked the jacket off its hanger and dug in the pocket for her pistol, but she found only a stick of gum. The bright green wrapper teetered on her shaking palm a moment before toppling off. She retrieved it, wrapping her fingers around its familiar shape, a tiny piece of normal. Then she saw her suitcase on the closet floor.

  Her suitcase from the hotel. Someone had definitely gone into her room at the LaFayette Motor Inn and brought all her things here, wherever here might be. Who did stuff like that? Kidnappers. But who’d kidnap a doctor from a poor family with over two hundred grand in college debts? Somebody delusional.

  Think, Krys. Phone. She scanned the room again, checking the nightstand and the dresser and the small writing desk. No phone. She grabbed her purse, digging in it, finally dumping the contents on the bed. Fast-food receipts, makeup, pens, and half a Hershey bar wrapped in foil—but no cell phone. Even her iPod was gone.

  They’d gone through her purse, too. No point in denial. They existed. Had Aidan done this? Halfway seduced her, knocked her out, stolen her stuff, and locked her in? The man obviously had money—look at the car he drove, the way he dressed, the salary the clinic offered. Why would he do this?

  Fighting a prickly, panicky feeling, she returned to the closet and fell to her knees in front of the suitcase, unzipping the front compartment where she kept her laptop. She could tell it was empty from the heft of it, but she looked anyway, opening every compartment, the teeth of the zipper ripping through the oppressive silence. It held nothing but her stupid book of crossword puzzles.

  She collapsed onto the floor with a thump and drew her knees to her chest, wrapping her arms around them. A bandage on her left forearm caught her eye. Just a Band-Aid, flesh-colored plastic, right over the cephalic vein.

  She flicked a fingernail under the edge and peeled it off, unveiling a tiny round bruise. A needle mark. Someone had given her an injection. Had Aidan drugged her? That would certainly explain her uncharacteristic (slutty) behavior. But no, she sort of remembered him taking blood, not injecting her. Maybe he wasn’t the Godfather. Maybe he was Frankenstein.

  Panic faded to numbness. This was rural Alabama, for God’s sake, not exactly a hotbed of freaky abductions. Crime here most often involved domestic abuse fueled by a lot of alcohol.

  There had to be a rational explanation. Krys stood and pulled a pair of jeans and a sweater from the hangers, then looked around the room, trying to inject a smidgen of logic. She crossed to the dresser, opened the top drawer, and found the rest of her clothes, the neatly folded panties and socks. Great. Someone had hand
led her underwear.

  She changed her clothes in the small bathroom after looking around for video cameras. The idea of cameras was no crazier than waking up in a strange bed, locked up after a night of hot almost-sex with a stranger who’d probably drugged her and left her in this room that was...underground, maybe? No windows, and it had a cool, muffled feel. Now that she thought about it, when she’d shouted and pounded on the door, there had been no echo or vibration. Her voice had been absorbed into the room. Definitely a basement.

  Running shoes and clean clothes dulled the fear and made way for anger. It seeped into her muscles like liquid fire, energizing them. Who the hell did Aidan Murphy think he was, anyway? Maybe he was a freakin’ mob boss. God knew that monster-size Mirren Kincaid would be a good enforcer. She should have run over Aidan last night and kept driving.

  Or at least she thought it had been last night. She looked around and spotted her watch on the bedside table. Two p.m. She’d lost almost twelve hours.

  Krys paced, trying to turn the anger into something she could use. She walked the edges of the room, looking for vents. Heroines in suspense movies always climbed through vents to escape their kidnappers. But the only vents she could find were the size of a prescription pad and located in the ceiling.

  That damned son of a bitch, with his blue freaking eyes and silky, dark hair. She’d like to snatch every strand of it out of his head. And inflict some pain a little lower, too.

  While her mind ranted, she kept her hands busy. Put her dirty clothes and dress heels in the empty suitcase. Threw the torn pantyhose in the trash can. (Make that the ornate, expensive-looking trash can.) Stuffed the contents of her purse back into the shoulder bag and hung it off the edge of a chair. Brushed her teeth. Brushed her hair.

  Finally, her restless gaze fell on the TV. She punched buttons on the front but nothing happened, so she jerked open the nightstand drawer.

  Bingo. No Gideon Bible, but there was a remote.

  She aimed it at the TV and flipped channels. Not a big selection. Ellen DeGeneres held court on one channel; a TV judge chastised moronic criminals on another; a soap opera ran on a third. She recognized the show as General Hospital, which her coworkers liked to watch in the break room. The main character was a mob boss named Sonny, and he had dark hair and dimples. Krys hoped somebody would shoot him.

  Running on the fourth and final channel was what appeared to be local-access footage filmed with someone’s flip-cam, complete with bad lighting and uneven sound. The fuzzy picture showed a large room filled with people, all sitting in folding chairs turned toward a dais. Facing them from behind a long table on the raised platform sat three figures.

  Krys frowned and moved closer to the screen as she recognized Mirren Kincaid sitting on the left and Aidan in the middle. A striking, black-haired woman sat to Aidan’s right.

  A man in the audience asked a question, and Krys strained to catch it. She raised the volume as Aidan spoke into a microphone.

  “Jerry, I can’t tell you how many there are.” His voice was deep and masculine, and the sound of it sent a shiver through Krys, the memories of last night replaying—as if she could forget.

  Shaking aside the memory, she focused on the video. “My brother Owen or the members of his scathe are the ones who killed Doc,” Aidan was saying. “I don’t know how many of them there are. They can’t feed from you because you’re all bonded to one of us, but they’re still dangerous. We don’t want to start a full-scale war without knowing if Owen’s acting alone or if there’s someone more powerful backing him. In the meantime, we’re setting up security patrols and asking you to not go out alone at night.”

  Krys frowned, trying to make sense of it. What was a scathe? Feeding, bonding, precautions, war. And Aidan had told her the former doctor, if that’s who “Doc” was, died in a hunting accident. She felt like a tourist lost in a foreign country where everyone was chattering in a language she couldn’t understand.

  The town hall meeting, or at least that’s what Krys decided it was, lasted about an hour, then the screen went blank and it started over. Must be playing in a loop, making sure the good people of Penton were warned about...something. She watched it again, but the combination of poor sound quality and unfamiliar subject matter made it impossible to follow.

  She turned the volume down but left the set on while she did another futile round of beating on the door. Her throat ached from yelling, and her stomach rumbled from hunger. What the hell was she going to do?

  She noticed a brown bag sitting on the floor next to the coffee table and picked it up hesitantly. It didn’t tick or explode, so she opened it and found a box of vanilla wafers, a can of nuts, and a six-pack of bottled water. There was also a note, written on a plain square of paper in a small, looping script: Someone will bring more food soon, and I will be there tonight to explain. I am sorry. —Aidan

  Yeah, he’d think sorry once she got her hands on him. Except the thought made her remember where her hands had already been on him. Good God in heaven.

  She took the nuts and a bottle of water and checked to make sure they hadn’t been opened. Who knew—poison wasn’t out of the question. Tonight, he’d written. Guess a kidnapped doctor wasn’t important enough to take up time during his busy workday.

  The nuts were too salty, but Krys forced down a handful while she flipped through the TV channels again. Was the reason Aidan couldn’t talk to her until tonight the same reason he couldn’t interview her during daylight hours? And some interview that had turned out to be.

  She crawled back on the bed, staring at the ceiling, trying to construct an explanation that made sense. Sometime later, a sudden rattling woke her from a half doze, and she rolled off the bed so fast that she tripped and fell hard to her knees.

  A tray came sliding through the slot at the bottom of the door, and Krys scrambled toward it, yelling. It shut with a clang and the click of a lock, and no amount of pushing would budge it.

  “Help me!” Krys scrambled to her feet and pounded on the door. “I know you’re out there. Let me out of here, damn it! You can’t lock me up like this, Aidan Murphy!”

  Nothing. Not a sound.

  Her breath came in ragged bursts as she slid to the floor, but she gritted her teeth and swiped away the one stray tear that had escaped down her cheek. She was a survivor. Her first seventeen years had been spent with a father who used ridicule and belittlement, and occasionally his fists, as weapons of control. She’d escaped and made a life for herself, and no small-town psychopath was going to take it away. She was smarter than that. Smarter than he was. She had the bully-survival technique down. She just had to stay calm and let it play out.

  He was feeding her, so he wanted her for something and it had to be more than sex. Eventually he would show his hand.

  In the meantime she was frustrated as hell and screamed as loud as she could. She hoped Aidan “Godfather” Murphy heard her.

  Aidan’s eyes flicked open at sunset, exactly 4:49 p.m., and his first thoughts were of Krys. Whether she was more frightened than angry. How much she remembered. What to make of the hunger she’d raised in him—not just hunger for sex or blood, but a bloody mating call, at least as he’d heard it described. Had to be a fluke.

  The room was cool and quiet as he rolled onto his side and reached to click on the bedside lamp. He stretched out muscles tight from too many hours without movement, and ticked through the things that he needed to do before sunrise, trying to push thoughts of Krys to the back burner. Now was no time to get distracted.

  First on the agenda: breakfast. He might have shown a little more intestinal fortitude last night if he hadn’t neglected his feeding. Instead, he’d acted like an asshole. Lesson learned.

  He picked up the cell phone on his nightstand and speed-dialed Will. His lieutenant’s clipped blue-blood accent sounded alert as he launched into a spiel before Aidan could utter a word.

  “Yes, the doctor’s apartment has been vacated. No, I haven’t delive
red her pathetic belongings to storage—it was almost dawn when I got in. That human needs a serious style makeover, by the way. And yes, I intend to finish getting her affairs in order tonight. Anything else?”

  “There’s always something else, Sir William.”

  Accent on the Sir. A standing joke between them. Where Aidan had been a dirt-poor Irish farmer, Will was a product of his highbrow Yankee upbringing. He’d been turned in his early twenties by his father, Matthias, to ensure him an eternal acolyte. Will had the expensive tastes of early New York high society, but he didn’t share his father’s taste for power and manipulation. He’d thumbed his nose at Matthias and wandered the world until finally joining up with Aidan five years ago.

  “This Irish peasant needs a donor,” Aidan said. “Got somebody you can assign me for a few days? Mark needs to heal, and I want Melissa free to take care of him.”

  Will snorted. “Please. Women will be opening their veins outside my front door when they learn the great Aidan Murphy needs sustenance. Hold on.”

  Grimacing, Aidan heard the click of computer keys and waited. The last thing he had time for was a woman with social ambitions, especially a human.

  While Will looked through the possibilities, Aidan slid out of bed and ran his hands through his hair.

  The gesture brought the image of Krys back to him, the way she’d looked at him with that mixture of vulnerability and desire. Back burner. Right.

  He realized now that her inhibitions had been lowered by the enthrallment, but it wouldn’t have changed her basic personality. She was both fiery and vulnerable, a combination that intrigued him and brought back memories that he hadn’t indulged in for a long time. Since Abby died all those years ago, he’d kept his relationships simple: blood from humans, friendship from his fams and lieutenants, and sex that scratched an itch—vampires only. Love was a distraction that ended up hurting everyone.