Allegiance (The Penton Vampire Legacy)

by Susannah Sandlin

  What was this man’s game? Finding unvaccinated humans, or finding someone driving Aidan Murphy’s car? Cage might not be a master vampire, but his senses were keen and he recognized another vampire when he saw one.

  Especially this one.

  CHAPTER 2

  Melissa had expected Cage to shoot the skinny guy who’d jumped in front of the car and almost given her heart failure. Well, not that she could actually have heart failure. Probably. Another thing to add to her endless list of vampire questions for Aidan’s mate, Krys, who had the patience of a saint.

  Not a quality Melissa possessed. Never had. And instead of shooting the guy or running him off, Cage stood there talking to him. She’d forgotten how much Cage talked. Well, how much Cage asked questions without ever saying much about himself—a trait Melissa had always attributed to his human occupation as a psychiatrist. That comment about Paris had slipped out unintentionally; she’d seen it on Cage’s face.

  If Cage and the vampabond planned on having a set-to, as her grampa used to call it, here at exit 42 next to I-85, she might as well join them.

  Melissa opened the door and took a deep, appreciative breath of night air. Her favorite season was imminent, with cooler days, longer nights, and the leaves turning brilliant colors in the soft autumn sunlight. Not that she’d see them unless she set up a spotlight under a tree. Living in darkness, plus the weirdness of feeding, were the worst parts of becoming vampire.

  Forget autumn. Winter would be her new favorite season; it had the longest nights of the year.

  She walked up behind Cage, appreciating his slim hips in their tight jeans and his broad shoulders filling out the black sweater. A few months ago, he’d intentionally starved himself to infiltrate Matthias’s camp and pass himself off as a stray, but he’d obviously been feeding steadily in London and again had the muscled, hard-planed body admired by most of the women in Penton when he’d first arrived in town last spring. He’d been unofficially voted as having the best ass in Penton, something she doubted he’d ever know and would be mortified by if he did.

  Cage turned and smiled, beckoning her alongside him. “Mel, this is Fen Patrick. Fen, Melissa Calvert.”

  “It’s Fenton Patrick, technically, but everyone calls me Fen—unless they call me something that can’t be repeated in front of a lady.” Fen Patrick’s accent was a bit like Aidan’s, only much heavier. Irish, then, maybe. And despite the nylon jacket and Atlanta Braves baseball cap that screamed rural Georgia, he was a vampire.

  Make that a hungry vampire with a smarmy gift of gab. The lights of the sedan created blue glints on his short, dark hair as he leaned forward to shake her hand. “And always trust Cage to have the prettiest ladies with him, vampire or not.”

  “You two already know each other, then?” Melissa thought Fenton Patrick had a hungry, desperate look that fit a starving vampabond, but he also had a glimmer of arrogance that set off her fraud radar. Plus, what were the odds of someone Cage knew appearing on the road just as they were passing? “That’s quite a coincidence—or is it?”

  Fen paused a moment, a smile playing on his lips in an expression she couldn’t decipher. Or maybe she’d imagined it, because it was gone in a heartbeat.

  “It’s a tremendous coincidence, perhaps an act of God Himself, if He still hears the prayers of those who live in the dark.” Fen’s accent grew more florid as he talked. “Of course, I’d heard my old mate Cage was in Penton, so I hoped he might put in a word for me with Aidan Murphy—a fellow Irishman, I understand.”

  If Fen thought an acquaintance with Cage and an Irish accent would get him in good stead with Aidan, he might be surprised. Melissa knew Aidan probably better than anyone in Penton besides his mate and Mirren, and he was tougher than most gave him credit for.

  “Fen wasn’t a vampire when I knew him.” Cage’s frown had deepened the longer Fen talked—or had Melissa imagined that, too? “We did a lot of missions together in the ’80s and ’90s, mostly in Central America. He was the only human who’d voluntarily sign up for the hazardous night jobs. He knew what I was and kept his word that he wouldn’t tell anyone. As far as I know, he kept his promise.”

  “Always.” Fen grinned. “Hell, I even let you feed from me, and I don’t ever want to get that feeling from another man again. Nothing personal.”

  An eighteen-wheeler rumbled past them and then slowed with a flash of brake lights.

  “Damn it, go on.” Cage stepped onto the edge of the pavement and watched the truck slow further, its brakes high-pitched and loud in the still night air. “He’s stopping. Probably thinks we need help. Let me send him on his way.”

  He strode toward the truck, which had finally come to a stop a couple hundred yards down, near where the exit lane ended at a state highway running east-west. The truck driver, a heavyset guy wearing a baseball cap, climbed down from the cab, stretching his back with his hands on his hips before walking to meet Cage.

  Fen blocked Melissa’s view of Cage, forcing her to look at him. “The two of you been together long?” he asked her. “Perhaps you can give me some insight into Aidan Murphy; I’m rather desperate to stay in Penton and get away from all the Tribunal politics and starving vampires in Atlanta. Any tips on how to win him over?”

  She didn’t like him, but she tried to shake off the dislike. He’d done nothing suspicious other than simply being there, and there was no way Fen could have known his former colleague would be in Aidan’s car heading for Penton at what had to be almost 3:00 a.m.

  Plus, at least some of her dislike stemmed from the fact that she’d hoped to spend this time alone with Cage, figuring out how they felt about each other. These months away from him had given her some perspective. She suspected that her love for him had been born out of fear, insecurity, and gratitude, but she needed some time around him to be sure—and to see how he felt about her. The last thing she wanted to do was hurt him.

  She did some quick mental calculations. “I’ve known Cage for about six or seven months.” Penton had been a real, whole place then instead of a burned-out shell they were trying to rebuild.

  “Practically newlyweds then. Or mates, as the vampires call wedded bliss.” Fen cocked his head, glancing at her left hand. “Or perhaps you’re just friends, I might hope?”

  Seriously? “Look, I don’t mean to be rude, but we don’t know each other well enough to be having this conversation. What’s taking Cage so long?”

  Melissa frowned and glanced around Fen’s shoulder, relieved to see the trucker climbing back into his cab and Cage heading their way.

  “Sorry, no offense meant.” Fen held up his hands in surrender, turning to Cage when he finally reached them. “Feisty mate you have here.”

  Cage raised an eyebrow, and Melissa shrugged. He could trust this guy all he wanted. Didn’t mean she had to. And she’d ignore the “mate” assumption. What she and Cage were, or weren’t, could in no way be considered his business. “I was just about to ask Fen how long he’d been turned.”

  “I’d like to know that as well, but we need to get back in the car, get our petrol, and move along toward Penton.” Cage glanced down the exit ramp where the truck driver was pulling his rig onto the road, heading away from the lights of the convenience store. Two other eighteen-wheelers had passed by on the interstate, and there were more oncoming in the distance. “Otherwise, we’ll get more well-meaning freight drivers stopping to help.”

  Cage walked toward the sedan with Fen on his heels.

  “You’re going to take him to Penton?” Melissa didn’t want to hear Mirren’s tirade when Cage arrived with a stranger an hour before daysleep. “We could drop him off in Opelika and let Aidan talk to him tomorrow night when there’s more time.”

  Cage stopped and turned, looking from her to Fen and back. “I’m pretty sure Aidan got rid of all our safe spaces in Opelika and Auburn after the dustup with the Tribunal. He
thought they’d all been compromised.”

  What? Where would Cage get such a stupid idea, unless . . . Melissa gave herself a mental slap on the head. Cage didn’t trust Fen, either. He wanted him close at hand until they found out whether he was trustworthy.

  “Right.” Melissa shook her head. “Sorry I’m such a ditz tonight. Driving in Atlanta traffic always shorts out my brain.”

  “Understandable, although it’s not half as bad as any large city in Europe,” Fen said, hesitating when Cage opened the front passenger-side door and motioned him in. “Dublin is a nightmare. I sincerely believe Irishmen weren’t meant to operate automobiles.”

  Damn it. It was bad enough this guy had interrupted what might be her only chance to talk to Cage alone. Now, he was going to sit next to her the rest of the way into Penton while Cage sat in back?

  She shot Cage a look to convey her annoyance over the whole Fen Patrick situation and got behind the wheel again. Cage sat in the backseat behind her, where he could keep an eye on Fen. Good sense from a security standpoint; bad timing from a sorry-but-we’ll-always-have-Omega relationship standpoint.

  As soon as they got to Penton she’d lose him to Mirren and the Army guys, and no telling how long she might be left wondering how he felt about her—and examining her own feelings for him.

  Cage leaned forward and put a hand on her shoulder. “Wait a second, Mel. I need to make something clear to Fen before we take him to Penton. My apologies, mate, but the only advantage our old acquaintance will get you is a foot in the door. Aidan Murphy will make the call as to whether or not you can stay. Our security chief, Mirren Kincaid, will have a say in it as well.”

  Melissa looked for any glimmer of irritation to cross Fen’s face, but she found none. He turned a wide smile toward Cage. “No problem. Can’t be too careful these days given what all happened in Penton, from what I’ve heard. And would that be the Mirren Kincaid, the Slayer? I’d heard he was around, but one never knows which rumors are true and which ones are sheer fabrications.”

  Cage relaxed against the seat back. “The one and the same Kincaid. Only I wouldn’t call him ‘Slayer’ to his face. He can be a bit surly.”

  Melissa had to smile. Surly was the Mirren Kincaid version of jovial.

  Once they’d bought gas and gotten back on the interstate, the final forty minutes of the drive into Penton told Melissa more about Cage’s life than she’d ever heard. Not so much from what he said—he was as unforthcoming as ever—but from Fen’s easy reminiscences that shone a small bit of light on Cage’s shadowy pre-Penton days.

  She knew he’d spent a lot of time in military duty; she had wondered how he’d managed that as a vampire. He couldn’t exactly operate in the normal armed forces and be unaccounted for during daylight hours. A willingness to take night duty would only carry a soldier so far.

  Fen kept mentioning night raids and forays into foreign villages, however, all of which had apparently been filled with free-flowing alcohol and available women. Finally, Melissa couldn’t stand it any longer. “Exactly whose army were you in?”

  Of course, it was Fen, not Cage, who answered: “Our own army, darlin’. Cage and I were what you’d call soldiers of fortune. We had dozens of names, dozens of passports, and for a price you could hire us to do the dirty work you didn’t want to be associated with. Guess I’d still be at it if regular meals weren’t so scarce.”

  Mercenaries, then. Melissa raised her gaze to the rearview mirror and caught Cage giving Fen a narrow-eyed look through green eyes that shone silver with annoyance.

  “Sounds like perfect work for an adrenaline junkie like Cage.” She smiled into the mirror, hoping it told him that his past didn’t matter. People changed. Mirren was proof of that. Good grief, she herself was proof of that. A year ago, with Mark at her side and as Aidan’s familiar, she couldn’t have imagined being a vampire herself. After she’d been turned she became afraid of hurting Mark, rejecting him because she knew he’d ultimately reject her. “Well, an adrenaline junkie psychiatrist.”

  Fen laughed. “Well, I think he gave up head-shrinking after the POW camp, right, Cage? Something about learning what evil lurks in the hearts of men, or some rubbish as that?”

  Cage had been in a POW camp? Melissa glanced in the rearview mirror again and found Cage looking out the window, his face set into rigid lines, the occasional lights of an oncoming vehicle flashing across a countenance both grim and haunted.

  Fen seemed to realize he’d crossed a line and changed the subject to the weather, and then to how living in the States—first Wilmington, North Carolina, and then Savannah and Atlanta—had compared to Dublin. He chattered so much Melissa wanted to scream. On the other hand, he required little response and had filled up that horrible silence following his gaffe.

  Melissa had always thought of Cage as compassionate but invincible. But the man she’d glimpsed in the mirror just now had been set upon by ghosts, and they weren’t friendly ones.

  While her thoughts wandered, Fen had moved on to babbling about a raid into a jungle encampment in Nicaragua, during which Cage had been stabbed and had, apparently, ripped out several rebels’ throats with his fangs—thus the necessity of explaining his true identity to Fen. Cage contributed a few details to embellish the tale, but Melissa thought his facial expressions were revealing: amused at first, but when Fen got to the throat-ripping part, annoyed again.

  Maybe Fen would be fun to keep around Penton after all. It might be the only way she’d ever learn about the man Cage had been before arriving in town with his worn old traveling trunk plus box after box of his favorite small cigars. Even if, as she suspected, they didn’t have a future as a couple, she really, really wanted him as a friend.

  All conversation ceased when the few working streetlights of Penton came into view. She tried to imagine how it must look to a stranger. Burned-out shells of buildings, heaps of construction rubble, and, overseeing it all like a dying god of industry, the hulk of the long-closed cotton mill.

  Melissa stopped the car in front of the new communal house where Aidan and Mirren were supposed to be waiting. She’d resigned herself to the loss of any remaining chance to talk to Cage alone before dawn.

  She popped the trunk and Cage got his luggage out. Mirren’s bulk filled the doorway, waiting on them. The hostility practically rolled off him in visible waves when Fen bustled over to introduce himself. Mirren and Aidan had wanted to bring Cage up to date on Omega Force before daysleep, but not in front of a stranger.

  Before joining them, Cage leaned in the car window. “I’m sorry we didn’t get the chance to talk, Mel. We need to . . .”

  His voice trailed off, but she knew what the rest of that sentence should be. We need to settle things between us. “I know. Tomorrow night, maybe.” She looked back at Mirren and Fen. “I don’t know why, but I have a bad feeling about that guy. I’m not sure we should trust him.”

  Cage looked past her at his old acquaintance, whose nonstop prattle was likely putting Mirren in a homicidal mood. “Don’t worry, love. I never fully trusted my old pal Fen when he was human. I surely don’t trust him now.”

  CHAPTER 3

  Rob Thomas scratched his head, causing the bright late-afternoon sunlight and shadows to create the effect of a golden halo above his red hair. “What’s this say? Who taught Mirren Kincaid how to write, anyway?”

  “Probably somebody who died about four centuries ago and didn’t speak any version of a language we’d recognize.” Mark Calvert took the notebook from Rob and blew out a frustrated breath. He bought and sold stocks, calculated investment risks, and monitored trending start-ups. He didn’t build military training facilities. Well, not in normal times.

  Penton had blown way past normal almost a year ago.

  The chicken scratches on the notebook made no sense whatsoever. How Mirren could be such a talented artist and yet write in gibberish, he didn
’t know.

  But Mirren Kincaid and the rest of the vampires were snoring happily away in daysleep while the Penton business manager stood in the broiling sun, trying to wrangle enough warm bodies to build the new Omega Force training center to Slayer standards.

  Mark shoved the notebook back at Rob. “Damned if I know. Call Glory at the Chow House, and see if she can decipher it for us.”

  Rob stuck the clipboard under his arm. “I’ll just go down there and ask her in person. Maybe you and Max can finish putting up that wall while I grab something to eat before she packs it all away for the day.”

  Mark nodded. “When are Will and Randa coming home?”

  “In a week if everything goes as planned. Never thought I’d say this, but I’m ready for Will to take over this project, big mouth and all.” Rob was the human brother of Penton lieutenant Randa Thomas. Randa’s mate, Will Ludlam, thrived on this type of planning-and-construction project, leaving the humans who toiled through daylight hours with neat printed instructions, diagrams, and explanations.

  “So he’s definitely having the surgery?” Mark asked. Will’s left leg had been mangled in one of his father’s attacks on Penton and had healed badly. Using a little admittedly unethical enthrallment, Aidan had managed to get an Atlanta orthopedic surgeon to take a look at Will after-hours.

  “If the doctor thinks he’s a good candidate,” said Rob. “All they’re doing tonight is shooting X-rays and hoping the doctor doesn’t see anything weird. You know, like fangs.

  “Randa says Will is being one pain in the ass because he can’t start training with us.” Rob laughed. “Wait. Will is always a pain in the ass, so let me rephrase that: he’s being a bigger pain in the ass than usual.”

  Mark smiled. “Yeah, but he’s a lot better than Mirren at this construction stuff. Not that I’ll be sharing that opinion with the big guy.”

  “No shit. He won’t hear it from me, either. The man’s like a bad attitude with feet.”