“Shay? It’s Jonathan Lachey—we met a couple of months ago in Orange Beach. You remember?” The door squeaked as it opened, and the voice grew louder. “Are you in here?”
The dark-haired guy from the Flora-Bama stepped into view, although Shay only recognized him because he’d identified himself. Jon Lachey—“rhymes with achy,” he’d told her. She remembered that now. The lank, dark hair and hazel eyes were still unremarkable. Nothing about him stood out, except now she remembered the scars on his neck. He’d said he’d gotten them in a car wreck. She couldn’t see them because of the collar of his blue button-down shirt, but she remembered them.
She flinched when Jon jerked back the shower curtain on its curved rod. “There you are.”
“How did you find me? What do you want?” Shay had probably been drunk enough to give him her real last name, but not an address. Or had she? Face it, idiot. You might have given him your life history and access to your bank account, for all you remember about that weekend.
“I know stuff about people. Don’t you remember me telling you that?” Jon—if that was his real name—turned and picked up the strip from the pregnancy test. He looked down at it a second and looked back up with a smile. “This is exactly what I came to find out, and just the results I wanted to see. Looks like we’re going to be parents.”
Shay had no comeback for that, and she always had a comeback. She’d always joked that it was one of her two life goals—to cure disease and always have a snarky comeback. “What do you mean—this is what you came to find out?”
Yeah, snark had taken the last exit, along with rationality. This made no sense.
“I’ve been keeping an eye on you. Knew you’d bought a pregnancy test.” Jon smiled, and it sent a snake of fear slithering down Shay’s back. “I know a lot of people who’ll be excited to hear our good news. You could be the mother of a whole new generation that will save an entire species. That’s what doctors do, right? Save people?”
“I’m a researcher.” Around the pounding heart and the confusion, a swell of protectiveness took over Shay’s body, surrounding her baby. “As far as I’m concerned, you’re just a sperm donor. Please leave now.”
Jon shook his head in a parody of sadness. “Oh no, that’s not the way this is going to work, Shay. There are big plans for this baby and, for better or worse, you’re part of the deal.”
It was as if Jon had planned to get her pregnant and use the baby in some way. But why? How? Shay slid her right hand behind her and wrapped her fingers around the first thing they reached—a huge bottle of shower soap with a flip top. “I don’t know how you found me, but you need to leave. If you want to meet later in a public place, write your phone number down on your way out and I’ll call you.” When hell froze over.
Jon leaned against the pedestal sink and crossed his arms. “Now, is that any way to talk to the father of your child? Come on; time’s wasting. We need to get you settled in your new home. You’ll find all the comforts there, although you can take your own pillows if you want.”
Pillows? Home? What had this dude been smoking? Had he been this delusional over that ill-fated Labor Day weekend?
“Get. The. Hell. Out.” Shay hated the shakiness that had crept into her voice.
“If you want to play it that way, it’s your choice.” Jon reached into the pocket of his jeans, pulled out a syringe, and made a big show of flicking off the cap. The staccato sound of the plastic hitting the tile skittered along Shay’s nerves.
She’d have one shot at him with her cocoa butter weapon, and she’d have to let him get close in order to make the most of it. If she threw it at him, he could just bat it away. She needed to bean him. Hard.
Despite every instinct to run or cower, Shay stood still as Jon approached her with the syringe. “This won’t hurt you or the baby. It’ll just make relocation easier,” he said, holding up the needle.
“Easier for who?” Shay slipped her right hand to her side and waited until he was within reach, then whipped the bottle up, squirting sweet-smelling foam in his eyes, then whacking him over the head with the thirty-two ounce body wash bottle. Good thing it had been full.
He covered both eyes and turned away with a howl. The syringe hit the floor with an audible bounce. “You fucking bitch! You’ll—”
She shoved him out of the way and raced into the living room. Behind her, she heard his head or shoulder hit the edge of the pedestal sink with a satisfying thud. That sink was made of cast iron; she hoped it left him with a concussion.
Shay grabbed her purse and car keys off the coffee table, jerked open the door to the hallway, and stopped.
A man stood against the wall opposite her doorway. Not a big man. Maybe five-ten, slender, with shoulder-length black hair and eyes that shone a silvery blue. Eyes that almost glowed.
Shay seemed unable to move away from the gaze of those eyes, even as he walked across the hallway toward her. “Sorry I’m forced to make your acquaintance this way, Miss Underwood.”
“Who are you?” As much as Shay tried to will herself to run past him, all she seemed capable of was standing still, waiting for him to reach her. Part of her wanted to feel his touch. She longed for it. When he stood before her and reached out to tuck a strand of hair behind her ear, she smiled at the pleasure of that simple gesture. Whatever he wanted, she would give him.
“You can call me Simon,” he said, flicking a glance over her shoulder at the sound of Jon making his way out of the bathroom.
“Sir, I’m sorry.” Jon’s voice shook with pain—or maybe fright. Good. If that jackass had made Simon unhappy, he deserved to be punished. Shay thought she’d been angry at Jon too, but couldn’t remember why.
“Get to the car, Jonathan.” Simon’s voice hardened. “I should’ve known better than to leave such an important task to an idiot. Thank whatever god you worship that you have a high sperm count. That and your untainted blood are your only value.”
Without Simon’s gaze on her, Shay’s tension level rose, followed by its most faithful companion, fear. And her memory returned: baby.
“Who are you people?” She backed away, but froze at Simon’s touch on her arm. The feeling of calm and happiness washed over her again when she looked at him. Even when he smiled at her and she caught a glimpse of something odd.
“Are those fangs?” Her voice sounded as if it were coming from ten miles away. “Are they real?”
His smile was the last thing she remembered before the world swirled around her and went black.
Chapter 3 * Nik
The Smith and Wesson .45 lay on the small wooden dining table next to Nik’s new best friend, a bottle of Crown Royal. Well, Crown was an old friend he’d left behind, but they’d recently renewed their acquaintance in a major way.
Nik had been staring at the pistol for almost an hour. Twice, he had reached for it. Twice, his hand had veered toward the whiskey instead.
He was still stone-cold sober. Apparently, it took a lot of even the finest whiskey to make blowing your brains out seem like an okay idea, even if there was a family precedent. His father had chosen the same exit route, leaving his body for sixteen-year-old Nik to find.
A car horn sounded outside, jerking Nik away from the image of his father, a horror-show of blood and bone and brain matter spread across the office of the fine old house Stavros Dimitrou had bought in New Orleans’ Broadmoor neighborhood with the first big profits from his shipping company.
Stavros had passed his psychic gift, or curse, to his son before he decided he’d rather be dead than deal with it anymore. Nik had been left to find his own way of coping with the assault of images whenever he touched things or, worse, people. A sheaf of papers on the chair next to Nik held the fruits of that gift—drawings he’d made from the images he’d gotten off the guy in Atlanta.
Deciding the car horn had nothing to do with him, Nik settled back into his chair and took another sip of Crown. Nik didn’t have a son to find his body, but there would
be repercussions. Robin, the eagle shifter who’d become his best friend, would never forgive him if he committed suicide. God knows she’d talked him off the proverbial ledge often enough with her unique brand of tough love, and it had been Robin who’d brought him to Penton. She’d thought he wouldn’t be able to read the past off the touch of a vampire, and she had been right.
But that was before things had changed. Before Nik had begun to change. Robin might even help him die now. She’d told him often enough: true shape-shifters were born, not made. Three bites from a shifter created a hybrid monster that usually ended up being put down like a mad dog.
Not long after arriving in Penton three months ago, Nik had taken three bites from a hybrid coyote shifter in the clusterfuck that had ended with Fen Patrick’s escape, Krys’s coma, and Aidan’s injuries. He had gone so long before developing symptoms that Robin believed he’d gotten away with it. That maybe his psychometric abilities had protected him from being infected.
She had been wrong. The psychometry hadn’t protected him; it had just slowed down the process. Plus, the damned shifter had bitten off half of his right earlobe.
A couple of weeks ago, Nik’s blood began to feel as if it were laced with battery acid, burning as it ran through his veins. It happened only a few minutes every couple of days at first, but since had become more frequent. Last night, after returning from Atlanta, the symptoms had lasted more than forty-five minutes. Long enough that Nik finally had to pull his head out of the Crown Royal-laced sand and admit the obvious.
His body was trying to shift. It wouldn’t simply keep happening; it would get worse until he partially shifted and stayed that way, a miserable freak. Unless he put a stop to it first.
Nik poured another highball glass of whiskey from the half-empty bottle. He took a sip and looked around him at this place he’d come to love. He’d harbored dreams that Penton would be the perfect place for him to live out his days, peaceful among vampires whose touch told him nothing about the horrors they’d committed or endured during their long lives. A quiet life in the rural environs of eastern nowhere, Alabama. More quickly than he would’ve believed, Penton had become home.
He shared this communal house in Penton with Robin, her vampire mate, Cage Reynolds, and Hannah, the young Muscogee Creek girl who’d been turned vampire and frozen in time at age 11. Nik truly hated to leave Hannah, who’d come to look at him as an older brother or surrogate father, bound together by gifts they couldn’t control. Where Nik read the past, Hannah got random visions of the future. She’d lost the couple who had been her familiars—both feeders and parents—in the first attack on Penton. The bond with Nik had begun to revive her. She would survive without him, though. She wouldn’t want him to endure the future he faced as a hybrid shifter freak, always in pain, never in control.
Another noise from outside jerked Nik back to attention. A car door. Hannah had taken her dog Barnabas for a walk and a trip to visit Krys. It was too soon for them to be back. Robin had taken flight in her eagle shifter form, communing with nature and working off nervous energy. Cage was on patrol duty. Aidan kept a full perimeter guard around Penton now, twenty-four/seven.
Yet Nik heard heavy footfalls climb the front steps and cross the porch, followed by a knock and the last voice Nik wanted to hear: Mirren Kincaid.
“Dimitrou, open the door. You have thirty seconds.”
Or what? These doors were solid and had a steel core, double dead bolts, and the jambs were lined with silver, which burned the skin of vampires and reduced their physical power.
Let Mirren do his worse. Nik took a sip of whiskey and kept his mouth shut.
The door didn’t break against the mass of muscle that was Mirren Kincaid. Nik couldn’t say the same for the entire door facing, however. One second he was staring at paneled wood polished with an oak stain to bring out its grain; the next, he was staring at about three hundred pounds of pissed-off Scottish vampire, dressed in black from sweater to boots. His dark hair was cut short and his goatee did nothing to hide his scowl.
Maybe Mirren would kill him and save Nik the trouble of offing himself, although it promised to be a lot more painful. Nik held up his glass. “Want a drink?”
Mirren propped ham-sized hands on his hips and took in the scene, his eyes the color of thunderclouds rather than silver, which told Nik the big vampire wasn’t as angry as his posture might indicate. Mirren stared at the half-empty bottle. At the gun. At Nik.
“Never had you figured for a coward, Zorba.”
Mirren liked nicknames, except the ones others used on him. Nik looked every bit of his Greek heritage, so to Mirren he’d been Zorba from the day he set foot in Penton.
“Guess you figured wrong.” Nik took another sip of whiskey. “And don’t judge what you know nothing about.”
“I know those three coyote bites are catching up with you. I know you’re in pain.”
Nik set down his glass hard enough for amber liquid to splash over the sides. “How?” There were only two ways. Aidan could have picked up his distress through their blood bond, but Aidan wasn’t that sharp these days. Which left option two.
Nik’s stomach sank into his boots. “Hannah told you.”
She’d probably had a vision of her buddy Nik and his bottle and his gun.
“The kid’s on her way, but I was closer. Lucky me.” Mirren’s gaze landed on the papers. “These the images you got off the guy in Atlanta?”
Nik nodded. “I roughed them out on Starbucks napkins while the scenes were fresh, then redid them when I got home.”
Home. Penton.
Mirren snagged the .45 on his way past and settled on the sofa with the drawings. Nik wrapped protective hands around his glass and bottle. “Fucking oaf.”
There was still a chance that if he pissed the big guy off he could commit suicide by vampire. After all, Mirren’s nickname in the vampire world—the one no one in Penton dared use to his face—was Slayer.
The vampire ignored him. He held up a pen and ink drawing of the warehouse with the cages, and one of a blond woman with dark-rimmed glasses. “Any idea what these mean?”
“I’d swear some of the images I got looked like New Orleans.” His original home sweet home. Or at least the place Nik had grown up. The woman even looked vaguely familiar. “Keep going. You’ll recognize someone.” Mirren had been so preoccupied with Aidan when he’d picked them up last night, Nik had decided to wait about telling him the news of their favorite traitor.
He knew when Mirren had reached the sketch of two vampires feeding from the human man who called himself Terry Brach.
“Aw, fuck me. Fen Patrick? You think Patrick is in New Orleans? Did you tell Aidan?” Mirren tossed the drawings on the table and paced around the living room a couple of times before leaning against the wall next to what was left of the front door area, arms crossed. It was his favorite thinking stance.
“Aidan was in no shape to hear anything. You know that.” Nik raised his glass for a sip of whiskey, but his self-pity wallow had been spoiled. He set it back on the table. “I know Aidan wants to keep recruiting Penton citizens and familiars in Atlanta, but he’s not being smart about it. He’s making bad decisions.”
Nik paused, waiting for Mirren to interrupt him and jump to Aidan’s defense. He didn’t, which told Nik a lot. “Look, this is Aidan’s town and he’s our leader,” he told Mirren. “He’s my friend as well as yours. But he went back to a site he’d used before. He didn’t find a room with multiple exits. He didn’t pick up on the explosives.”
Mirren held up one finger and Nik shut up. “We’ll talk about this later. First, we talk about you.”
“There’s nothing you can do for me.” Other than use that ancient sword of his, Faolain, to put Nik out of his misery.
“You’re wrong.” The high, sing-song voice of a little girl preceded Hannah through the smashed door frame. Meeting Hannah had broken Nik’s heart, and it also had hardened it. She had the slender build of an eleven-
year-old girl, complete with knobby knees and a penchant for pink and purple—such as the pink jacket and purple cords she wore now. Even Barnabas, who wasn’t with her, had a pink leash with rhinestones on it.
Hannah also was a reminder of the cruelty and arrogance of the breed of vampires against which Penton was fighting. The predators. The real monsters.
She ran across the room and wrapped her arms around Nik’s neck, and he hugged her back on instinct. He loved this kid, even if she was a couple of centuries older than him and could lift the corner of his SUV with one hand—make that his former SUV, now abandoned on the streets of Atlanta.
The girl pulled away and looked at him with solemn black eyes, long enough to make Nik squirm. Aidan had told Nik her father was a powerful Muscogee shaman, and the vampire who’d turned her had hoped to use her powers to his benefit. It hadn’t quite worked out that way; Aidan had found the guy and killed him for turning a child. Even in the vampire world, children were off-limits, at least before the pandemic crisis. Now, who knew?
“There’s still time.” She turned to Mirren, who’d been watching the child with a combination of respect and, yeah, maybe a little fear. Mirren Kincaid liked what he could see and understand, and distrusted what he couldn’t.
“Time for what?” Robin stepped through the doorway. “What happened to the door?”
“Forget the bloody door.” Her mate, Cage Reynolds, was behind her. “What happened to the whole front of the house?”
Nik groaned and banged his head on the table. Couldn’t a guy commit suicide in peace? Obviously not.
“Your friend Zorba has gotten wasted on a perfectly good bottle of whiskey and was thinking about blowing out his brains with a perfectly good bullet from a Smith and Wesson,” Mirren said. Nik could always count on Mirren for bluntness. “He’s starting up with that shifter shit.”
“Shut up about shifter shit.” Robin stalked toward Nik, slowing down long enough to aim a kick at Mirren’s shin. He slapped at her, but missed. “What’s going on with you that…”
Illumination (The Penton Vampire Legacy Book 5) Page 3