Illumination (The Penton Vampire Legacy Book 5)

by Susannah Sandlin

  “What about the other women?” Tina’s whisper was so soft Shay could barely make out the words.

  “We’ll let them out as soon as we know it’s safe.”

  At the moment, Nik had the sword in his hands and the gun tucked in the top of his pants, but the giant had climbed back to his feet and circled the shorter man, cocking his head and guiding his movements by sound. They circled until Nik faced Shay. He was fierce and beautiful, even with hatred hardening his dark eyes and his hands gripped around the hilt of that blood-covered sword.

  Nik timed his moves perfectly. The giant rushed him and all Nik had to do was hold the sword in front of him. It entered the giant’s abdomen with a soft, wet splat, and before the big vampire’s weight took them both down, Nik angled the blade upward. From the angle, Shay knew the blade must have pierced his heart. Is that what it took to kill a vampire? A good thing to know.

  The giant landed face-first, with Nik pinned beneath him. He struggled to push the big man off him, sat up, held his pistol to the vampire’s head and fired. Nik was already the color of a Creole tomato in summer even before blowing the giant’s brains out and getting another shower of blood.

  Nik was climbing to his feet when Shay spotted more movement near the door.

  “Behind you!” Shay shouted at the same time Tina screamed, “Watch out!”

  They were too late. Nik fell heavily to the concrete floor and the blonde, Marianne, reached down and pulled an ornate handled knife from his back. “My silver blade should hold you for a while, you freaky son of a bitch. Pretty, but freaky. We should have killed you in Atlanta.”

  The woman walked farther into the warehouse, glancing back at Nik, then down at the giant, then over at Simon’s body. “What a fucking mess.”

  She glared at Shay and Tina—Shay had gone back in her cage and pulled the door shut, but both her door and Tina’s were unlocked. “If you have half the sense of any human, ladies, you’ll both sit down and keep your mouths shut.” Shay didn’t have to be told twice. She and Tina both moved to their beds and sat. Shay didn’t want to tangle with this one. Plus, the less attention they drew to themselves, the less likely Marianne was to realize they were free.

  Marianne looked at her watch. “Less than an hour to daylight. Who is your morning guard?” she asked in the women’s direction. “And don’t even think about lying to me. I’m not in the mood.”

  What good would it do to lie anyway? “Jon,” Shay said. “He always takes first shift.”

  “Fabulous. Good old dead Jonathan.”

  Jon was dead? Part of Shay was glad; the other part knew someone else could be much worse. At least Jon wasn’t the brightest bulb in the light store and talked a lot.

  Marianne pulled out her mobile phone and scrolled through a contact list. She punched at the screen, then cursed. “Damned voice mail.” She waited a few moments until prompted for a message: “Get your ass to the warehouse as soon as you get this message. I’m taking Simon to a safe day space—he’s injured. Rocky is dead at the warehouse. Jon is dead at his house. Call for damage control on Jon and dispose of Rocky’s body.”

  She turned and looked at Nik. “One of the Penton vampires—the psychic freak, who our Penton friends seem to have recently fitted with a set of fangs—is unconscious on the floor of the warehouse. Just leave him to fry in the daylight, then dump his body in the river. He’s taken a silver blade in the back and won’t wake up before sunrise. And if I come out of daysleep and this isn’t all handled to my satisfaction, make sure you have a last will and testament.”

  She slid the phone back into her pocket and walked over to scowl down at Simon. Shay hadn’t been paying attention to him but his head looked to be turned in a more natural direction. Could vampires heal a broken neck?

  Great. That and the brain injury would probably make Simon crazier than he already had been. With any luck, none of the women would be here to find out.

  Marianne didn’t lift Simon gently into her arms as Robin had with Cage, nor did she cry. She grabbed his feet and dragged him toward the warehouse door, taking a wide path around the pools of blood and letting his ruined head bounce on the concrete. She paused at the door. “All you women pack up your personal belongings. We’ll be moving you at sundown.”

  Shay waited a few seconds until she heard a car, hopefully Marianne’s, crank outside and pull away. She stood up, snagged the keys from Tina, and tossed them to Sarah, in the last cell at the far end of the warehouse. “Unlock your doors and run like hell. I think we’re in one of the warehouses on Tchoupitoulas, so run toward St. Charles Avenue, where there will be people and traffic, even at this hour. This might be our only chance to get out of here. Tina, you run too.”

  She wanted to run as well, but she couldn’t leave Nik. What had Marianne said—he would die at daylight? She had to get him somewhere dark, and she had to do it fast.

  Her priorities were set.

  One, get the hell out of this warehouse.

  Two, figure out how to save an unconscious vampire from watching the sun come up.

  Chapter 16 * Robin

  Robin gripped the steering wheel of the rental so tightly that she felt a shift as the plastic underneath the faux leather cracked. She had never been so frightened.

  Robin Ashton didn’t do frightened. She was an eagle-shifter, damn it. She could track anything. Fight anything. Out-think and out-maneuver anyone.

  But she didn’t know how to be a woman in love with a man who was about to face a crisis she couldn’t fix. And she didn’t know how to lose her closest friend, especially when she’d just left him alone to face a giant vampire and God knew whatever backup had been called in, and less than an hour before sunrise.

  She glanced at the passenger seat, where Cage remained slumped against the door, still unconscious. The magenta-tinged vampire blood had soaked through the bronze-colored sweater she’d dug out of his overnight bag and wrapped over the stump of his arm. She’d bought that sweater for him in a rare trip outside Penton, knowing how it would look with his caramel-colored hair and green eyes.

  The arm itself was wrapped in Nik’s shirt and lay on the console between them. Just in case it could be reattached.

  Robin could care less about the arm; she loved the man. But the man would care about the arm.

  She accelerated as much as she dared, not wanting to be stopped for speeding along the empty pre-dawn streets but needing to get to the safe house in time to get Cage settled and call Mirren. As much as she sparred with the oversized vampire, she trusted no one more with Cage’s care than Mirren Kincaid. He wouldn’t tell her what she wanted to hear. He wouldn’t try to make her feel better.

  He’d tell her the truth, and he’d tell her what to do.

  “Hello, my little bird. Going a bit fast, aren’t you?”

  Robin glanced to her right and stifled a gasp. Cage still slumped against the door but his eyes were more silver than green. He was in pain, and he was frightened. She knew him well enough to understand that. She also knew seeing her fall apart would be the last thing he needed.

  “We’re getting to Nik’s safe house so I can call Mirren.” She gave him a smile that probably looked as fake as it felt. “He’ll know what to do.”

  Cage used his left hand to pick up the lower half of his right arm, blood dripping from the ragged edge onto the front of his sweater. “Not much even Mirren can do about this one, Robin.”

  Robin clenched her jaw. Cage rarely called her by her name. She was always little bird or love or some other endearment.

  “We won’t know until we talk to him, right? First order of business is getting somewhere safe for your daysleep.”

  Cage’s voice was flat. “During which time, the remains of my right arm will heal over quite nicely, or at least will begin healing since that damned sword was probably silver. And I will be unable to wipe my own arse.” He stared out the passenger-side window and fell silent for a few seconds that Robin had no words to fill. “I want yo
u to do something for me, my love.”

  “Of course.” Robin’s response was automatic. She’d do anything for him.

  “I want you to put me out of my misery while I sleep. Cut out my heart. Make sure I don’t come back.”

  Anything but that. She would not kill him.

  “No. First, you don’t have to wipe your ass—you’re a vampire. Cage, I know things look bad right now, but…”

  “Bad?” He raised his voice, then closed his eyes and said, “sorry.”

  “Cage, I can’t kill you. I won’t. I….” Could she say the words she’d never said to anyone else, and only a few times even to him? “I love you and if you aren’t in this world I don’t want to be here either.”

  Robin didn’t realize she was crying until Cage pulled away from the window and reached out a blood-covered hand to run a finger along her wet cheek.

  “I’ve never seen you cry.”

  “I don’t cry.” Damn it. “My fucking eyes are leaking.”

  He chuckled and slumped back against the door. “Don’t leak on my account, love. Nik got out okay? He’s taking the women somewhere?”

  Robin felt the tears threaten again, and the huge lump in her throat almost choked her. Niko. “I had to leave him. He was okay when I—”

  “When you carried me out of that warehouse? You left him there to save me? Bloody hell.”

  Never mind that the giant vamp was still fighting. Never mind that Nik was too inexperienced a vampire to find a light-tight space in a short time unless he lucked out—even if Simon’s people didn’t get there in time to kill him before he could get out.

  “He doesn’t know how to survive alone out there.” Cage’s voice was soft. “You should have taken him and left me.”

  Robin was not having that conversation. She turned the SUV off Carrollton Avenue into one of the narrow streets that crisscrossed Mid-City. “Help me look for house number five-fifteen.”

  Three more blocks and she spotted it, a two-story, narrow structure painted white with dark shutters that looked green when the headlights hit them. She drove as far back in the driveway as possible and, on impulse, continued past the drive onto the grass behind the house. This place should be safe but no point in leaving a telltale rental SUV in view from the street.

  “Can you walk?” She got out, crossed around the back, and opened the passenger door, ready to catch Cage if he fell out of the seat. But he swung his legs out slowly and used his left arm to pull himself out of the vehicle.

  After a few wobbly seconds, he nodded. “I can stand. Now let’s try walking.”

  Once he’d cleared the car, she reached in to retrieve their bags and his detached arm. Cage stared at it a moment but didn’t say anything, just walked to the back stoop and sat. “I can still feel the fucking thing.” His voice was soft and void of emotion. “My brain tells my right hand to move and in my head, it’s moving.”

  Robin had heard ghost sensations were a common thing among amputees. They’d itch, but there was nothing to scratch. Feel sensations in places where nothing was left to feel.

  “Let’s get inside.” She edged around him and fished Nik’s key out of her pocket. It slid into the deadbolt lock and the door opened with a soft click. She reached inside the door to find a light switch, and a soft glow spilled into the dark yard.

  Cage used his left hand and a little push from Robin to go up the concrete steps and through the door. Inside was a modern kitchen with a small bedroom to the right. It had a window, but Robin knew from Nik’s description that the door that led out the other side of the kitchen went into a windowless storage space that took up the rest of the ground floor. The living spaces were all elevated in case the New Orleans levee system decided to collapse again.

  While Cage stumbled ahead of her into the storage area, Robin took a side trip into the bedroom, tugged the mattress off the standard double bed, and dragged it into the front, bedding and all. They didn’t have time to cover the window, so they could sleep in the storage area.

  The storage room wasn’t as cavernous as the riverside warehouse, but it was still a long wide space with concrete floors and nothing in it but a few taped-up boxes and a lawn mower. And, Robin was glad to see, a small sink and toilet in a corner alcove. Jack Kellison hadn’t lived here full-time since the hurricane forced him to create this space, so he had made little use of it.

  Robin dragged the mattress to the far right corner and straightened the bedding. “Voila.” She turned to Cage, who was running his left hand across the exposed brick walls. “Daysleep space.”

  Cage didn’t answer but did walk over to the mattress and collapse on top of it. He closed his eyes, then opened them and raised his head. “Are you going to call Mirren?”

  “One more thing.” Or two, or three. She had to make sure the space was light-tight—and safe. The safe part involved retrieving the spare .45 and a roll of duct tape from the glovebox of the SUV. Then she had to give herself some way to get out of the room during the day without exposing Cage. She found extra quilts and blankets in the bedroom and grabbed them, along with towels from the main bathroom. No food here, but she could get that herself and her veins would provide what Cage needed.

  “Okay.” She re-entered the storage area and closed the door behind her, using duct tape to cover the seams around the door and the towels to stuff underneath it. Thankfully, the front and side door to this area had tight seals, so that should take care of it.

  “What are the duvets for?” Cage frowned at the pile of extra bedding Robin had stacked on the floor beside the bed. “This is New Orleans. It’s isn’t that cold.”

  “It’s to cover you up while I slip out during the day, to protect you from any light.”

  “Too dangerous. I forbid it.”

  Well, there was proof that Cage wasn’t himself. Forbidding her to do anything was tantamount to making sure Robin did it, something he knew very well. “Oh, forbid it, do you? Well, sorry, but I want to keep tabs on what’s happening at that warehouse and see if I can find Nik. If all the women didn’t get out, Greisser’s humans will move them tomorrow. We need to know where they go.”

  “Bloody hell. And I’ll be useless baggage.” Cage closed his eyes again. Vampires rarely could cry once they’d been turned a few years but Robin figured he was as close as he could get, from pain and fear and some well-deserved self-pity.

  “You’d be useless baggage during daysleep anyway, goofy. I’m calling Mirren.”

  She sat beside him on the mattress and speed-dialed her big Scottish bonded lieutenant. If she’d been closer he would have felt that she was in trouble, but that master-vampire skill only extended a few miles. Not across two states and a world of hurt.

  “Where the hell are you?” Mirren never bothered with niceties like hello.

  “In the safe house in New Orleans.” Robin felt the tears threaten yet again. If she was going to turn into a weepy eagle-shifter she might have to end things for herself. “Mirren, things went bad. Really bad.”

  A long silence followed, then, “How bad?”

  “Well…” Where to even start?

  “Give me the phone.” Cage snatched it out of her hands. “Bottom line: we had to leave Nik alone to face a blinded vampire bigger than you plus God knows what else, and to get the women out. That’s how bad.”

  Robin could hear Mirren’s outrage from two feet away. “Why the fuck did you leave him?”

  Cage couldn’t say the words. Robin watched him struggle for a moment and gently took the phone from him. “The big vampire cut off Cage’s right arm just below the elbow. I have it with us but, well, it’s wrapped in Nick’s t-shirt. I had to get him out of there.”

  “Holy shit.” Mirren was silent for a moment. “Is he safe for daysleep?”

  “Yes.” Robin looked around at her mate and wanted to ask about reattaching his arm, but not in front of Cage. She didn’t want him back on the subject of death-by-bondmate. “After he’s in daysleep, I’m going back to the
warehouse and see if I can find Nik.”

  “You know he might not make it, Robin. He’s too new, and he doesn’t know about shit like digging a hole in the ground and covering himself up.”

  Robin cringed. She hadn’t known that either, and it gave her the creeps. “Nik is resourceful and he’s smart. He’ll figure something out.” She wished she felt as sure as she sounded.

  “Is Cage okay? I mean as okay as he can be?”

  “Not really.” And that was all Robin had to say on the subject.

  Mirren sighed. “Got it. Text Mark Calvert the address of the house you’re at, and I’ll have him get someone headed your way asap. That way you’ll have some backup tomorrow night if you need help.”

  “Got it.”

  Robin ended the call, plugged the phone cord into the wall outlet to charge it, and crawled astride Cage.

  His lids popped open. “I’m flattered, love, but don’t think I could possib—”

  “Feed,” she said. “You need the strength, and I need to be close to you. Consider this room service.”

  Robin stretched out on top of him, careful to avoid his right arm, and angled her head so that he had easy reach of her neck.

  He didn’t argue, but anesthetized the spot and bit. The waves of pleasure came on her strong and deep as he pulled at her vein. She ached to feel him inside her while he fed, taking her to that place of utter satisfaction that only he could.

  But not now. Now, Cage needed the strength her shifter blood would give him, and she’d settle for the feeder’s high and the satisfaction of knowing she could provide what her mate needed to stay alive at least one more day.

  Chapter 17 * Shay

  Shay made sure the other women had unlocked their cages and raced out of the warehouse, then looked down at Nik. No way she could pick him up. He was at least six feet tall and covered in long, rangy muscles.