Absolution (The Penton Vampire Legacy)

by Susannah Sandlin

  A scathe, as near as she could tell, was kind of like a family—something Sir Matthias sure didn’t seem to have. And Aidan had told her she’d need to be bonded to one of them so no stray vampires who might wander in could feed from her. Apparently, as the vampire starvation threat got more pronounced, hungry vampires wandered around willy-nilly in search of walking blood banks, aka humans. Her words, not Aidan’s. He was very polite, very oozing-with-sincerity. She preferred Mirren’s direct, in-your-face style.

  Aidan had gotten the address of her apartment in Roswell and offered to have someone close it out, get her stuff, pay off her lease, and try to retrieve her car—if it was still at the Circle K. He warned that some of Matthias’s men might be watching it already, however.

  Glory had thought about it, but finally told him not to bother. Her furniture was crap, and her car had probably been stolen or stripped down to parts. It bothered her that her landlord would think she’d skipped out on her lease, because she always paid her way. She’d have to find a means of earning another month’s rent and mail it to him. Although, since her stuff was there, people would assume she’d become one of those women who up and disappeared every once in a while, only to have her skeletal remains found in the woods a year later.

  Glory had to wonder how many of those women had been taken by vampires.

  Where she would live, how she would make money to live on, exactly what this bonding business entailed—Aidan hadn’t told her any of that, and by the time he’d left with his vampire-doctor wife, heading off to wherever vampires spent their days, her head spun. Not from drug withdrawal, but from too many changes, too fast, and from an uncertain future.

  “You ready to go?” Melissa Calvert stood in the doorway. Melissa Calvert, the strawberry-blonde human. Glory vaguely remembered her being around during her first days here, but the last day or two was the first time she’d been coherent enough, out of her drug-induced stupor, to talk. And she liked Melissa. At twenty-seven, Melissa was only two years older than Glory, and she was talkative and friendly.

  Glory stood up and didn’t waste time looking around. She had no material possessions left, not even the raggedy clothes she’d been wearing during her abduction. She hadn’t asked what they’d done with them and didn’t care. “Not much to get ready. If it wasn’t for you loaning me clothes, I’d be running around naked. Not that I know where I’m going.”

  Melissa laughed, a happy sound that Glory realized she hadn’t heard very often in her life, even before she got mixed up with vampires. So far, the fanged set hadn’t struck her as a cheery lot on the whole.

  “Oh, sweetie, we’ve got to have a talk,” Melissa said. “Come on, I’ll give you the introductory lesson in Penton 101.”

  Glory found herself smiling as she followed Melissa down the clinic hallway and out the front door. The air had turned from damp cold to pleasant springtime while she’d been in what she’d begun to think of as her Dark Shadows fugue, and she inhaled deeply of air that smelled like pine and dogwood. A row of brilliant pink azaleas bloomed in front of the small clinic parking lot. And it was so freaking quiet here. No blasting car horns, thumping bass lines, planes overhead. Just birds.

  “How many people live in Penton?” She followed Melissa to a white Honda sedan. Melissa unlocked it and tossed her jacket in the backseat. She squinted her green eyes and shoved a lock of out-of-control curly hair out of her eyes. Glory envied those curls; her hair wouldn’t curl if her life depended on it. “One hundred and seventy-five. No, wait. We lost a few people just after the first of the year, then added a few. Maybe one sixty, something like that. Crazy small, isn’t it?”

  Glory laughed. “I grew up in a little town in Georgia not much bigger, so it feels kind of like home to me.” Well, home without recriminations and feeling like an outcast. No one here had made her feel like a freak, so far. Maybe if you hung out with vampires—or were one—it took more to make someone a freak. Of course, no one knew about her gift, either, except whoever Mirren had told. Aidan, probably. Maybe the blond guy. She couldn’t imagine Mirren had told anyone he didn’t have to; he sure didn’t seem like the gossipy type.

  Melissa cranked the car before Glory got in, and turned down the oldies rock station on the radio so they could talk. “You want to stop for breakfast?”

  Glory slid into the passenger seat and reached out to pull the door closed. Melissa and Dr. Krys had been bringing her standard diner fare for the last couple of days, sandwiches wrapped in wax paper that bled grease into the brown bags they’d been packed in. She liked her new slimmer figure, but she was starving. “Please, I’d love it. Only…” Crap. “I don’t have any money, so I’ll have to owe you. I don’t even have a purse. Maybe you can tell me where I might find a job here?”

  “Don’t worry about it.” Melissa adjusted her rearview mirror. “Mirren’s sponsoring you.”

  Huh? Glory slammed the door on her foot. She barely noted the pain as she wiggled her toes to make sure nothing had broken. “What do you mean, Mirren is sponsoring me?” Did she really want to know the answer to that? “Because nobody pays my way. I want to work. I’ve always worked for what I had, and just because they’re vampires and rich as God, it doesn’t change who I am. And I’ll tell Mirren Kincaid that myself whenever he…wakes up, or whatever it is vampires do.”

  Melissa whooped as she pulled out of the clinic lot and turned left, her laughter filling the small car. “Oh, it’s going to be such fun having you here.”

  Yeah, fun. She still hadn’t said what sponsoring meant.

  Glory was diverted from asking again by their entrance into downtown Penton, a short row of small storefronts lining both sides of the four-lane street. No litter lay on the pavement or sidewalks, and landscaping filled with flowers and greenery prettied most corners. Quite a few people bustled in and out of businesses—a hardware store, a shop that looked like it sold women’s clothes, a small supermarket. On the left, just before they reached what appeared to be Penton’s only traffic light, sat the charred remains of a building with its own small parking lot.

  “What burned down?”

  Melissa glanced at the ruins. “It was the only restaurant we had that was open for dinner—Clyde’s, a barbecue place. We…well, you might as well know about this if you’re going to stay here. A couple of months ago, Aidan’s brother attacked some people, including my husband, Mark. And he blew up the restaurant. Several people died, including the owner of the restaurant. Owen Murphy was absolutely nuts.”

  And this was her safe haven? “Is this psycho still running around loose? Is your husband OK?”

  “Mark’s fine. Aidan killed his brother Owen.” Melissa said it matter-of-factly, as if a man knocking off a sibling was an everyday thing. Maybe life had a different meaning for vampires. Heck, what was she thinking? Of course life had a different value for them. She wasn’t sure how one killed a vampire, but it couldn’t be that easy, or there wouldn’t be so darn many of them. Glory was beginning to think they outnumbered humans.

  Melissa pulled into a curbside parking space in front of a small storefront with a black-and-white-striped awning over the door and the name Penton cafe painted on the window. “This is all we have left right now as far as eating places. I keep telling Aidan he needs to recruit somebody to Penton who wants to open another restaurant. Laurel does a great job with this place, but she isn’t open for dinner.”

  I could do it. Maybe all of this happened for a reason, to bring me here. Glory squelched the thought as soon as it rose like a balloon of hope in her chest. They hadn’t asked her to be part of their community. They were just protecting her from Matthias the Sadistic Madman, probably in hopes she’d figure out a way to use her telekinesis to help them fight their battles. Don’t get too comfortable here.

  They entered the small, crowded diner and were pointed to a back table by a woman with a smiling, apple-cheeked face and hair that looked like Albert Einstein’s—even the same color of stark white.

&
nbsp; “Thanks, Laurel.” Melissa waved at her and led Glory to the table. “Get whatever you want—you must be starving after eating cold takeout for a week on top of the withdrawal.”

  Glory’s eyes burned, and she willed the sudden tears not to spill out while she pretended to be preoccupied with the menu. The heat in her face was bad enough—at least her skin was dark enough to hide all but the faintest blush. They all thought she was an addict, and Glory guessed they were right. Why should they think otherwise?

  A small hand took hold of hers, and she looked up to find Melissa closer to tears than she was. “I’m sorry—I talk without thinking. There’s something else you should probably know. Mark had a problem with drugs—and not like you, where someone forced them on him. Aidan helped him get clean. There are a lot of people who came to Penton that way. Nobody judges here.”

  Glory swallowed hard. “And Mark’s…OK now?”

  Melissa smiled. “He’s Aidan’s business manager, not to mention the hottest guy in Penton. Of course, I’m prejudiced. And just so we’re all open here, I had my own problems. I got mixed up with an abusive jerk, got depressed, and tried to kill myself when I should’ve been trying to kill him instead. Aidan pulled me out of my pit too, and then I met Mark.”

  Jeez Louise, no wonder everyone treated Aidan Murphy like he was God with fangs. “So, uh, what’s this bonding thing about? And exactly what does it mean that Mirren is sponsoring me? I was serious about finding a job.”

  The wild-haired woman—Laurel, the café owner—brought them coffee and took their orders, welcoming Glory to Penton like she was just a normal girl moving to a normal town. Which didn’t quite jibe with the things Melissa was telling her. Nobody lived in Penton unless they were either a vampire bonded to Aidan or Mirren, or a human bonded to one of the vampires. Melissa said they’d gotten stricter about the bonding since an unbonded human had sold them down the river to Aidan’s psychotic brother a couple of months ago.

  “What does bonding mean, exactly?” Glory figured it was some kind of ceremony or ritual.

  “OK, don’t gross out, but it’s a blood exchange. The vampire takes a little of yours, and you take a little of his or hers.” Melissa laughed; Glory couldn’t keep the horror off her face.

  “That is just…gross. I can’t do that.” Forget it. Glory would borrow enough money for a Greyhound ticket to somewhere remote and live vampire-free.

  “It’s not that bad.” Melissa smiled. “Their blood tastes different—kind of sweetish. And you only have to taste it once.”

  Glory processed that while she chewed on her toast. She guessed it couldn’t be worse than chicken livers, the most disgusting food on God’s green earth. “So, who are you bonded to?”

  Melissa smiled. “Aidan—I’m his familiar, or fam. You don’t have to be a regular feeder, but if you don’t become someone’s fam, you’re expected to feed a scathe member as needed. When Mark was hurt a few months ago, Aidan used a substitute for a while so I could take care of my hubby.”

  “Huh.” Glory’s toast was making her kind of queasy with all this blood talk. “If you don’t mind my asking, what do the fams get out of it? Why would anybody do that willingly? It hurts like rip.” Except her vague memories of Mirren feeding from her in the cell hadn’t involved pain—either that or she’d been too stoned to feel it.

  Melissa set her coffee cup down and frowned. “It really doesn’t hurt—just a little sting at the very beginning. Then it’s…” Her face turned a bright pink. “It feels really good.”

  Glory did a surreptitious inspection of Melissa’s throat and didn’t see the ugly tangle of scars that marked her own. She pulled her hair down to make sure it covered her neck.

  Melissa didn’t miss the gesture. “Don’t be self-conscious about that. Mirren was…God, I’ve never seen him so angry as when you first got here and he saw what those animals had done to you. And Will was devastated.”

  Glory tried to process Mirren’s reaction, but couldn’t decide if it was prompted by pity, anger at Matthias, or genuine concern for her. She had no right to hope it was the latter. “Who’s Will?”

  Melissa leaned back in her chair, making way for Laurel to put down their plates and then get out of hearing range.

  “He’s one of Aidan’s lieutenants—one of the Penton leaders. There are four or five of them. Supersmart guy. And, well, he’s Matthias Ludlam’s son. From what I understand, Matthias took Mirren in hopes it would force Will to leave Penton, but Will’s the one who figured out where Mirren was. He was the one who slipped into the compound in Virginia and got both of you out.”

  Glory’s plate of scrambled eggs had lost their appeal. This was one seriously messed-up place, no matter how much like Mayberry it appeared on the surface. But what Melissa told her ft with the sketchier version Mirren had laid out last night.

  She finished her breakfast mostly in silence, only breaking into Melissa’s ongoing chatter to ask an occasional question. She still didn’t know what the sponsoring business was, but she’d never been one to let bad news sit—she wanted to hear it, process it, and move on.

  After Laurel left the check and while Melissa dug in her purse, Glory grabbed the ticket and tallied the amount of her meal. “I owe you five fifty. Write that down somewhere. And tell me what Mirren sponsoring me means. I need to know before I spend any more time here.”

  Melissa grabbed the ticket and made a face. “Don’t worry about it. It was fun to have someone to eat with. Mark’s taking business meetings for Aidan this week. OK, so you know I’m Aidan’s fam, and Mark is Krys’s. When a new person, a human, moves to Penton, one of the vampires sponsors them—the vampire agrees to bond the person, to make sure all their needs are met, to help them ft in. It’s pretty amazing—I realized this morning that you are the first person Mirren has ever sponsored directly.” She raised her eyebrows as if this were a significant thing.

  Glory was stuck back on they agree to bond them. “I have to drink blood? Uh, no.” Uh-uh, no way, étouffée. “I mean Mirren’s one tasty-looking guy, but…” Oh crap. Had she really said that out loud?

  Melissa was still laughing when she left the money on the table, and Glory slunk behind her out of the café. She didn’t know what Melissa had planned next, but she was sure that, if humanly possible, she’d find a way to embarrass herself even more.

  CHAPTER 12

  At first, Mirren thought he was dreaming, but he rarely dreamed anymore—not since the early days after he’d been turned back in Ireland centuries ago. And thank God for that, because the nightmares used to suck.

  No, he definitely smelled something savory, and it was no dream. Beef, cooked with onions and—he sorted through the rich aromas—carrots, something else earthy, maybe potatoes.

  Stew. He smelled freaking stew. And somebody was in his house.

  He rolled out of bed, not bothering to turn on the lamp, and grabbed a pair of his favorite combat pants from the folded pile on the chair. Only when he climbed from the subbasement to the basement level did he see they weren’t black. To him, they were gray, which meant they might be gray, or they might be army green. He hoped to God they weren’t red.

  People thought he wore black to be a hard-ass; he didn’t tell them he was color-blind when it came to greens and reds. The more everyone thought he was dangerous, the more they’d leave him alone. Besides that, he was dangerous. Just because he hadn’t lost control in a long time didn’t mean the potential no longer existed.

  He pulled socks from another pile of stacked clothes—he hadn’t yet put them away after the woman who did his laundry dropped them off a couple of days ago—and finally located hiking boots. He scrounged around for a shirt or sweater, picking a dark T-shirt off the floor and studying it a moment before pulling it over his head. Definitely black.

  Since when did he care if his clothes matched? He paused at the stairwell to the first floor, trying to figure out how to handle the stew-wielding woman whose scent he’d finally recognized.r />
  Glory was in his house. With food.

  He’d thought if he ignored his new charge, somebody—Aidan or Mark or Melissa—would find her a place to live and get her settled. He could bond her to keep her safe from being fed on by anyone else, or Will could do it. He’d make sure she had the money to get what she needed and live on. Fixed and finished.

  Now, he suspected one of his so-called friends had decided it would be funny to leave her on his doorstep. Probably Melissa. Aidan needed to get his fam under control.

  He leaned against the wall of the stairwell and took a deep breath, savoring the aromas.

  Damn, but he missed food. He used to go into old Clyde’s place before Aidan’s psychotic brother blew it up, to drink a glass of bourbon and smell the tang of smoked meats that took him back to his human days growing up in western Donegal. He’d been born in Scotland, and his father and older brothers—gallowglass, all of them—were Highlanders descended from Norsemen. They were big, trained to fight, well equipped, and well fed—mostly by draining the resources of their Irish employers.

  He’d loved a rich, earthy stew better than anything.

  The sound of a gunshot propelled him up the stairs, at the top of which he quickly worked the intricate lock and slid open the floor panel, easing himself silently into the hallway. His shoulders relaxed when he realized the sound had come from a television. Not a television. His television. Damn woman had touched his video system.

  Torn between curiosity over the food and concern for his electronics, he followed the aroma of the stew into his kitchen, where a big steel pot sat on an eye of the stove. He didn’t even know how the thing worked beyond its occasional value in light ing a candle. Electrical appliances had come about long after his human life had ended, and big, ugly kitchen stuff didn’t hold any interest for him. He sure as hell didn’t own a pot.