He parked the car in an alley between a closed-down feed store and the old Greyhound station, and they sat for a few seconds, listening, scanning the area for movement.
“Let’s go.” Aidan exited the car and eased the doors closed, Mirren behind him. They stayed in shadows, moving in silence toward the mill.
The rectangular two-story building rose like a tombstone of Southern industry—Aidan’s first purchase in his systematic acquisition of Penton. His plan had been simple: buy all the land, period. Nobody outside the scathe could move in because he controlled the real estate. But he hadn’t done more than a cursory walk-through of the mill. He should’ve been paying more attention.
He visualized the interior as nearly as he could remember it: large, cavernous factory floor where the remnants of a few behemoths lay scattered: roller combs with needle-sharp steel teeth, spinning machines, and, along one end, the remains of a weaving room containing the skeletons of a couple of massive early-twentieth-century machines.
Offices and smaller rooms were upstairs and in poor repair, thanks to a crumbling, leaky roof. Aidan doubted they’d improved since his walk-through. The partial basement had collapsed around the stairway.
They circled the building and approached the rear entry. Aidan shut down his mental bonds to Will and Hannah, and mentally told Mirren to do the same. If they both went down, Will would take charge. Damn...they really could have used Lucy.
They stood outside the entry and listened. Humans inside, Aidan said. No vampires. Secure any humans unless you find Tim’s shooter; do what you want to him. I’ll flush Owen out, but I’ll need to cut our bond temporarily to lure him.
Mirren nodded and moved away, dark, fast, lethal.
Aidan leaned against the brick wall, turning his mind to his brother. Once, he’d known Owen better than anyone, could have predicted his moves. Maybe he still could. Time had passed, but he doubted Owen had changed any more than Aidan had. Vampires didn’t do personality changes—they kept whatever shitload of baggage they’d had when they were turned.
A leopard might change its spots, but even if it put on a zebra suit, it would still be a leopard. And Owen would still be charismatic and funny and able to charm the horns off a devil. He’d also still be an arrogant bastard, a show-off, and, at heart, a coward.
Aidan walked into the center of the mill’s empty rear parking lot and stood beneath the light, his back to the tall wooden pole still crowded with staples from handbills advertising garage sales and bake-offs and fairs long past. He waited.
Occasionally his senses alerted him to vampires in the vicinity, and even to a couple of humans. Gunshots rang from the front of the mill, tingeing the cold air with the acrid odor of spent bullets and human blood. Whatever it was, Mirren could handle it.
It took an hour for Owen to get close enough for Aidan to sense him, approaching from behind. He slowed, no doubt wondering where the cavalry was hidden. Aidan didn’t move.
Finally boot heels clicked on the pavement behind him. “Áodhán. You’ve come to turn over the keys to your fair city?” Owen walked around to face his brother. He’d just fed; his skin was flushed and his blue eyes darker than usual. Aidan wondered if the human donor had survived. Owen didn’t have any weapons visible but for a knife strapped to one thigh and a long silver blade—a sword—strapped across his back, hilt-up for an easy cross-draw.
He searched Owen’s face for the boy he’d idolized when he was young, hoping he wouldn’t find a trace of him. It would make killing him harder. But the brothers locked gazes and Owen smiled—the same smile he’d used on their máthair to get out of milking; the one with which he’d charmed the girls while Aidan didn’t have the nerve even to speak to them. It lit up his face, and for a second he was Eógan again.
But memories were a trapdoor through which Aidan couldn’t afford to fall. “You know why I’m here. It’s time this ends.” He slid into the formal tongue. “I declare an impasse broken only by battle.” He didn’t move as Owen prowled around him, but his nerves were sharp, his fingers ready to react.
“By proxy again, is it? I agree.” Owen held up a hand toward the woods behind them. The same young girl he’d used to ambush Mirren emerged from them. “You remember Sherry?”
Aidan looked at the young girl, who licked her lips and fidgeted with the buttons of her coat. Nervous.
Interesting that he’d brought the girl—could she be the only scathe member he had left? “No proxy. You’ve made it clear you don’t honor the accords, Eógan.” Aidan spat his brother’s name in the old language, the sight of the child wiping out the sentimental crap and replacing it with icy rage.
Owen laughed and nodded at Sherry, who circled behind Aidan and out of his view. He could hear the girl’s shoes making soft thuds on the pavement before stopping directly behind him.
“You must think I’m a fool, Brother. I know the way you bond your people and how big your scathe is. You think I’m stupid enough to go against you one-on-one?”
“I know you aren’t stupid.” Aidan held his hands out, palms up. “I have severed the bonds to my lieutenants. It’s just us.”
Owen’s mouth pulled up in a slight smile. “Even you wouldn’t be that big an eejit.” He walked to within a few inches of Aidan and raised his eyes slightly to look at him. “I always forget you grew taller than me, little brother.”
He leaned in, his face next to Aidan’s, and inhaled deeply. “You are that big a fool,” he laughed softly. “Except—” He grabbed Aidan’s shoulders and inhaled deeply again. Aidan stiffened but didn’t push him away.
“Amrae n-amrae,” he exhaled. Wonder of wonders. “I sense one or two bonds remaining, and you have taken a mate. My congratulations to you, Brother. Maybe we can share again.”
Aidan clenched his jaw but kept his expression bland. He hadn’t expected Owen to be able to tell that his bond with Krys was different. Wrong, obviously.
He sensed, rather than heard, movement at his back, and he suddenly dropped to a crouch as Sherry rushed him from behind, knife flashing in his peripheral vision. She was no fighter. He easily grabbed her arm and pulled the knife from her grip, shoving it into her abdomen and angling it upward. She fell to the ground with a whimper. The girl would survive, but Owen wouldn’t be sending her in to fight for a few days.
As Aidan spun to face his brother, a sharp pain shot through his leg. He’d left Owen unwatched too long, and his knife blade sank into the large muscle of Aidan’s right thigh.
“Lucky move. Silver blade, Brother.” Owen pulled the knife free with a wet, sticky sound as Aidan shoved him away. “It won’t kill you but it will hurt like hell.”
The brothers circled slowly, each searching for an advantage. Aidan pushed past the pain, snaking his right index finger behind the Kevlar vest and gripping the Colt. Like most vampires, he’d resisted firearms for a long time. When he killed, he thought it should be for food or revenge. Either way, his victim deserved to look him in the eye. But guns were expedient, and he slipped the pistol next to his leg, holding it flush.
Owen spotted the movement, and lunged as Aidan fired. The bullet opened a hole in Owen’s hip that bloomed dark red under the streetlight, but his forward momentum took them both to the pavement, with Owen on top.
Aidan gathered his strength to push Owen off, and then hissed as a spike of fire went through the heavy muscle below his shoulder. He bared his fangs at Owen, who rolled off him with a laugh.
Aidan glanced down at the long silver blade, which had gone all the way through his deltoid muscle, hard enough to pierce through his back and embed in the asphalt beneath him. He felt the pain—hot at the core, cold radiating outward—as he closed his eyes and tried to find the threads of his bonds with Mirren.
The pain sharpened. Owen had crawled back to him and twisted the blade, digging it farther into the blacktop, increasing the damage. Aidan threw a punch with his right hand and connected enough to send Owen back a couple of feet.
He
had to unpin himself from the pavement before Owen healed enough for the hip to hold his weight. The bond to Mirren hadn’t reconnected, but he found another one open and waiting for him: his connection to Krys. He pulled strength from her, just enough to pitch himself forward, shoulder fighting pavement for the right to see which one tore open first.
Finally the asphalt gave up the blade. Aidan’s momentum threw Owen back, but he took the fall in a roll and hobbled into the woods.
Damn it. Aidan started after him, but fell on his ass before he reached the edge of the parking lot. His thigh was soaked in blood and the long blade still pierced his shoulder. He collapsed on the ground, reset his bond to Mirren and waited for help to arrive.
“Shite, he skewered you like a hog at a luau.” Mirren grasped the end of the knife and jerked it out.
Aidan cursed at the pale blood pulsing from the wound and pulled his keys from his pocket, handing them to Mirren. “Get me back to the clinic. I had to draw power off Krys and I’m not sure how much I took.”
Mirren was still giving him the once-over. “How’s the leg?”
“He used silver, but it’ll heal.” He threw an arm around Mirren’s shoulder and the big man pulled him to his feet, helping him limp toward the car. “Bastard got away again, but the girl who pelted you is on the other side of the lot, wounded. Get Will to pick her up and put her in a secure cell. Then tell me what you ran into.”
Mirren opened the passenger door, and Aidan half sat, half fell inside. Mirren grabbed Aidan’s cell phone off the console.
“You got Mark on speed-dial?”
Aidan held up three fingers, and Mirren punched it in as he climbed into the driver’s side and adjusted the seat.
Mirren’s end of the call wasn’t illuminating: “Yeah. No. How long? Where? On our way. Call Will and get him to pick up some trash in the mill parking lot—secure it next door to Lucy.”
He threw the phone back on the console. “Krys is OK. Mel was with her when you pulled from her, and Mark’s gonna take her to your house. You heard the rest.” He turned away from downtown and headed toward Mill Trace.
“What happened with Owen’s humans?”
“Two are dead.” Mirren paused for a few seconds, staring at the road ahead. “Both of the ones I found fought me, but one had a lot to say before I put him down. They knew we were coming today, knew to have armed fams on guard at the mill. Even knew what time our people would get there. Tim walked right into a trap.”
Aidan gripped the door handle hard enough to dent it. “Shit. One of our people talked, then. Who gave us up?”
“He didn’t know, just that it was a human male. The one who met with our rat died in the fight.”
“You’re sure he wasn’t lying?”
Mirren’s smile was chilling. “Oh yeah, I’m sure.”
This complicated things. Aidan looked at the clock. Three a.m. “We’re going to have to question everybody. Divide the list between the lieutenants.”
“Even Hannah?”
Aidan thought. “Actually, we should talk to Hannah first and see if she can help us narrow it down. Get a list of everyone who went out today.” He paused. “No, get her the full list of male humans. It could be anyone, whether they hunted today or not.”
Damn it, he’d been so careful about screening people to live here. Who had sold them out? He opened his mental bonds to Will and Hannah again, and sent an SOS to Hannah. No need to tell her why.
He heard her clear, high voice in his head: I know. Daddy Ray is taking me to your house. Krys is good.
Relaxing against the leather seat, Aidan closed his eyes and felt his shoulder wound slowly reknitting. He wouldn’t be fight-worthy for at least a day.
He felt the car turn and opened his eyes to see the lights of his porch shining at the foot of the cul-de-sac. Hannah stood at the top of the steps, and standing next to her was Krys. That the light shone around her head like some angelic vision wasn’t lost on him. She’d saved him tonight without even knowing it.
As soon as Aidan’s car turned the corner onto Mill Trace, Krys took the first deep breath in what seemed like hours since she’d had a sudden, sharp image of a sword and then keeled over in a dead faint. Thank God, Melissa had been there, although neither of them knew what had happened until Mark rushed in and told them that Aidan was hurt.
She still wasn’t clear on how the strength-sharing thing worked. One more vampire mystery to add to the thousands of questions she had piling up. Well, 112 questions, to be precise. Now 113. She was literally making a list.
The BMW pulled into the drive, and Krys’s heart sank when she saw Mirren driving. She tried to run down the stairs but lost her balance; only Mark’s quick reflexes kept her from tumbling over. “Stay here.” His voice was sharp. “If you fall and break your neck, Aidan will kill me.”
“I’m not the one hurt.” She tried to pull away but he kept a hand clamped around each shoulder.
“Aidan wasn’t the only one fighting tonight—you just did it without being there.”
She didn’t care about her headache or balance problems or even the nosebleed she’d had when she regained consciousness. All she could see was Aidan needing to lean on Mirren to get out of the car, and the blood soaking his right pant leg and his chest. Good God, she’d thought vampires were invulnerable to just about everything except pandemic vaccines.
She tried to wrestle out of Mark’s grasp without success. Melissa grabbed her hand. “Mirren’s going to bring him inside—let’s get things ready for them.”
She let Melissa pull her into the house and followed her to a small bedroom in the back, off the central hallway. Krys had never seen it before.
“Nobody ever uses this room, but it’ll be too hard to get him down the ladders into his safe space till he’s healed a little. I think there are towels and stuff in the bathroom.”
While Melissa pulled back the bedding, Krys explored the small bathroom, finding a stack of towels with the price tags still on them, along with some washcloths. “Do you know if there are any bandages here?”
“He probably has stuff downstairs but I wouldn’t know where to look,” Melissa said, coming to stand in the doorway. “I’ll run over to the clinic. What else will you need?”
“Just go out to my car.” She pulled the key from her jeans pocket. “There’s a first-aid kit in the trunk. Do they get infections like humans?”
“Don’t think so.”
“The kit should have everything I need for bandaging and suturing, then.” She’d know more once she got a look at the wounds.
Mirren’s rumble preceded him down the hall, and Krys held on to the door facing to steady herself as she pushed past Melissa. Aidan hobbled into the room, mostly under his own steam. His face was the color of snow, but he stopped, looking for Krys, before Mirren could hustle him to the bed.
His eyes were scary pale, and she knew he needed to feed. “Are you OK, mo rún?”
My beloved. He’d told her what it meant after he’d used it on her a few times. It sounded so much like “moron” that she’d had to make sure it wasn’t an insult. “I’m well enough to take care of you.”
He finally let Mirren help him into bed and began barking orders. “Mirren, get Will over here. Mark, get Hannah. We need to figure out what happened today. Krys can take care of me.” Being hurt hadn’t made him less bossy. That was probably a good sign.
By the time they got him settled on the bed, Melissa had returned with the oversize first-aid kit. “You want me to stay or go?” she asked Aidan.
Aidan’s voice was curt. “Go home.”
“Ignore him.” Krys shook her head. “You need to stay a few minutes.”
Melissa laughed. “And let me present Aidan Murphy, giving you his pigheaded Irish farmer look.”
Krys bit back a laugh. He was up on his elbows, glaring at both of them, and she could tell that he was not going to be an easy patient. As much as she’d like to be the be-all and end-all for Aidan, sh
e might faint again if he fed from her.
“Which is the worse injury—the leg or the shoulder?” she asked. In her world, it would be the leg, but who knew what healed fastest in vampires.
He flopped back on the pillow. “Take your pick—silver blade. They’ll both heal but slower than normal.”
She assessed what she could of the two injuries. “Clothes need to come off.”
He propped himself on his elbows again. “Good-bye, Mel.”
Good Lord. “If you’re going to kick her out, feed first,” Krys said. She turned to Melissa. “That OK with you?”
Melissa nodded, and Krys piled up enough pillows to get him in a semi-reclining position, and then elevated his leg. Melissa sat next to him, pushed up the sleeve of her sweater, and held out her arm. He bit fast, and pulled hard on Melissa’s arm, holding it tight enough to pucker her skin. She closed her eyes and clenched her jaw.
Krys stretched out beside him and propped herself on her elbow. With her free hand she swept his hair away from his forehead and stroked his face. “Slow down a little,” she murmured. “You’re hurting her.”
It took a couple of seconds for him to respond, but he gradually loosened his grip on Melissa’s arm, his feeding taking on more of its normal rhythm.
Melissa sighed, and her shoulders relaxed. Krys smiled at her as Aidan finished, licking the wound to heal it and releasing her arm. “Sorry about that,” he said, dropping his head back on the pillow. “You OK?”
“You bet.” Melissa checked the supplies she’d pulled from the first-aid kit and spread atop the small dresser. “You sure you don’t need me?” she asked Krys. “You still dizzy? Nosebleed stopped?”
Jeez, but the woman had a big mouth. “We’re fine. I’ll call if we run into problems,” Krys said before walking her to the door. She then returned to Aidan, who was trying to pull his bloody sweater off without much luck.
“Here.” She helped him shed the sweater and got lightheaded when she saw the bloody mess over his left deltoid muscle. “You sure this will heal?” She wet a cloth with warm water and drew it gently across the wounds in front and back. He watched every move. “You’re making me nervous.”
Redemption (The Penton Vampire Legacy) Page 26