Mark chuckled. “Well, Mirren forbade it, but there’s not much he could do about it once he went into daysleep. She thinks her skills might be needed to get you guys out. We don’t know how much muscle Landry has behind him, but Mirren thinks it’s a lot. He’s Greisser’s pet right now.”
They firmed up a plan and quickly ended the call. Nik felt worse by the moment. He stuck the phone back in his pocket and curled up on his side, using a tarnished metal box as a pillow. If it contained the remains of some of Le Boeuf, so be it.
He smiled at Shay. “Thank you, and I’m pretty wiped right now but I know I have a lot of explaining to do about…back then. I’ll tell you when we get back to Penton.”
“Wait.” Shay crawled in the back and stuck her face in front of his. “What do you mean when we get back to Penton? Why in the hell would you take me to the place all the bad vampires want to destroy?” She paused. “And why are your eyes glowing?”
Because I’m hungry. Because you piss me off and make me horny. And because it pisses me off that you make me horny. And I’m a baby vampire and need to feed. “We’re going to Penton because it’s the safest place for you right now. Some friends are coming for us—Archer and Glory and Robin. Now I need to sleep and you need to be quiet.”
Shay sat back. “If they’re on their way, they have to be human except for Robin the bird. That’s just stupid. What good are they going to be against vampires? The eagle can’t claw out all of their eyeballs.”
Nik didn’t have the energy to explain that Archer was a jaguar shifter and Glory was a powerful telekinetic. He just closed his eyes and tried to forget that he wanted nothing more than to bury his fangs and a certain other body part inside the bossy blonde who’d just saved his life. That was wrong on so many levels he couldn’t count them.
It was going to be a long, miserable day.
Chapter 19 * Will
Will Ludlam ducked to the left as a lug wrench the size of a tire jack sailed past his head and crashed into the wall of Mirren’s and Glory’s living room. The big guy was in the middle of an old-fashioned Scottish temper tantrum, complete with cursing in a language Will didn’t understand.
He got the gist of it, though. Mirren had awakened from daysleep to find his house empty and a nine-word note from his mate pinned to the pillow next to him: Gone to New Orleans. Get over it. Love you.
Randa had found the crumpled note on the floor when they’d arrived to talk to Mirren about a looming security crisis. They’d decided to let him calm down before stirring him up again.
Mirren disappeared down the hallway toward the bedroom, followed by the sounds of drawers slamming.
“What’s he doing?” Randa tossed Glory’s note on the table. “Think we need to go back there?”
Will shook his head. “Just make sure he doesn’t slip out the back door. We have to talk to him. Plus, there’s no need for him to go to New Orleans. Glory’s been there for hours if she left right after sunrise. It would be stupid.”
A black leather boot that would probably fit a Yeti flew straight into Will’s nose. “Hey, stop that!”
“Who are you calling stupid, Junior?” Mirren loomed over them, holding the other massive boot in one hand and his truck keys in the other.
Will rubbed his throbbing nose, sighed, and climbed to his feet. “That would be you, if you think you’re going to New Orleans to rescue Glory. She has that black jaguar shifter with her—Archer or Arrow or whatever his name is—not to mention Robin and Cage and Nik.”
Mirren’s frown etched so deeply into his face that Will half expected his eyebrows to meet. “Cage is wounded, and we don’t even know if Zorba survived.”
“He did—Mark talked to him,” Randa said. “And we’ve got problems here we need you to handle.”
Mirren retrieved his boot from Will, sat down in the oversized leather armchair at the end of the sofa, and began pulling it on over his thick black socks, which matched his black combat pants and his black sweater. “What kind of problems?”
Will swallowed the urge to throw something at Mirren. “We think Greisser’s people might be planning a direct attack on us.”
Mirren sat back in his chair and rubbed his eyes. “What’s happening?”
Will nodded at Randa, and she spread a detailed, stylized map of Penton on the table. Gadget had created it.
“Here’s downtown.” Will poked the center of the map with his finger. “And here”—he ran his fingers across several sets of red X’s on the fringes of the map—“are the spots where we’ve detected vampires who aren’t members of the Penton scathe.”
An average vampire scathe, or group of bonded vampires, was five or six strong. Aidan’s scathe in Penton had once numbered well over a hundred, which is one reason the Tribunal considered it such a threat. Now, it was more like forty-five, plus about a dozen bonded humans.
“Have any of these non-scathe vamps been caught?”
“No.” Randa ran a hand through her shiny, dark-red hair, and Will tracked the movement with a flash of desire. They hadn’t had a minute’s time alone in what seemed like a month, and his body ached for hers. “We’ve come close a couple of times, but it’s more often we’re catching their scent trails after they’ve moved on.”
“I don’t like that these appearances seem to make a circle around town.” Mirren leaned forward. “Before, we’ve tracked them only on the east and northeast, toward Atlanta. Now they’re south and west as well.”
“I think they’re scouting to see if they can establish a perimeter, or find a weak spot,” Will said. “It’s a sound strategy if they have enough vampires to man it at night and humans during the day.”
Mirren leaned back. “Then all they have to do is keep tightening the noose until we’re trapped in the middle without enough people to fight them. Shit.”
Will let out a sigh of relief. Mirren got it. He’d been afraid the big guy would be so stressed and angry about Glory that he wouldn’t take time to listen, or would think Will was being paranoid over random vampire sightings.
“I need to talk to Aidan if he’s awake,” Mirren said. “When’s the last time you checked on him?”
“Before daysleep yesterday.” Will had stuck his head in but, as always, Aidan and Krys had been unconscious. For them, daysleep was day-and-night sleep. Will hoped they were healing and not dying, but there was no way to tell. “He was still out but he had moved to her bed.”
“Well, I’ll look in on him. In the meantime, mobilize whoever we’ve got left and start getting the word out for everyone to be ready to move into the new training center on a moment’s notice. In fact, they should hang out there during their down time. Make sure it’s stocked with any surplus from the Chow House. Tell anyone who wants to go ahead and set up camp over there that it’s okay.”
Will nodded. He’d already talked to Melissa Calvert about getting the humans to move food and water out of the community dining hall, affectionately called Glory’s Chow House, and into the storage rooms of the new training center. The building had been constructed as a shelter of last resort, as much as he hated to call it that.
“I’ve also got Mark and Melissa doing walk-throughs of the center to make sure we didn’t forget anything.” Will had walked it plenty of times himself. From the outside, it was a huge, red-bricked rectangle. But inside the brick veneer and wooden structure was a building of solid steel with a fireproof roof. A bomb couldn’t put a dent in that building. It was the aboveground version of their old Omega underground shelter of last resort, complete with sophisticated air circulation and waste removal systems.
Mirren stood up and paced the length of the room twice before coming to rest with his back against the wall next to the fireplace, arms crossed over his chest. “Okay, now what’s this business about Mark talking to Nik?”
Will hoped the answer wouldn’t send Mirren back into overprotective mated vampire mode. “Nik called this morning, trying to reach you. You’d been in daysleep maybe ten or
fifteen minutes. Glory and Archer were on their way out, so Mark ended up talking to him. Nik was awake.”
Excited, Will leaned forward and propped his elbows on his knees. “Do you think he can function in daylight?”
Mirren stared at Will, but Will knew the man didn’t see him. He was deep in thought. “Fuck-all if I know,” he finally said. “I mean, Greisser tried to turn shifters into vampires hoping to create a day-walking vampire, and we know what a cluster that was. But Nik wasn’t a true shifter. He was about to be a hybrid created by another hybrid.”
Mirren looked at Will and almost smiled. Almost. “If we have a day-walking vampire on our team, we could actually win this thing.”
Will had been trying to keep his mind from jumping to the possibilities. All Greisser could throw at them during the day was a human contingent to try burning them out, and he’d match his humans against theirs, especially from the training center. But if Penton had a vampire who could fight their humans, to lead their own human fighters, it could be a game-changer, especially with Glory’s telekinetic abilities and a couple of shifters at their disposal.
“Killing whatever Greisser is about to throw at us wouldn’t solve everything,” Randa said. “It would help us win the battle, but the war is going to take finding a solution to the feeding problems.”
“That’s for future discussions,” Will said. “In the meantime, I’m working with Gadget to devise some vampire prosthetics. Cage is going to need a way to rebuild his life.”
“And be able to fight,” Mirren said, picking up his keys from the coffee table. “You wanna come with me to talk to Aidan?”
“No, the faster we can get Cage more mobile, the better.”
Will watched Mirren leave, and kissed Randa goodbye before she, too, left. It was almost time for her to go on patrol.
Locking Mirren’s door behind him, Will headed across the street and up the hill to the training center, where he and Gadget had set up their computer nirvana. What he hadn’t told Mirren—or Randa either—was that they also were working on a prosthetic for his right leg. It had never healed properly after being crushed in an explosion several months ago, and before Gadget arrived Will had resigned himself to always walking with a limp. Always relegated to strategy and technical duties while others carried heavier burdens.
To run again, to have the agility and balance he’d once taken for granted, Will would cut off the damaged leg and take the mechanical replacement.
And then he would fight alongside the people he’d come to consider his family. He’d fight to save his home.
Chapter 20 * Cage
His right arm tingled and itched as if a massive army of tiny ants marched across it. Cage reached over with his left hand to scratch it and…it wasn’t there.
Bloody hell. Robin hadn’t offed him during his daysleep as he’d asked. She’d promised…or had she? He couldn’t remember. His brain must be lying in the corner with his useless arm.
“Hey, you’re awake.” The mattress jostled when she sat on it next to him. She leaned over and gave him a gentle kiss, which he didn’t return. It was a pity kiss, all he’d get from now on. “How are you feeling?”
“I wanted you to end this during daysleep, Robin. I didn’t want to wake up. I can’t live like…”
He stopped when Robin turned away from him to look at something on the other side of the storage area in Nik’s safe house. “I told you,” she said.
Cage struggled to sit up, pushed Robin away when she tried to help him, and finally used his legs to push his body against the wall and into a semi-sitting position. Across the room, lounging on the concrete floor, sat Glory Cummings and that big cat shifter who used to work with Nik and Robin. Archer.
He rose with the grace of the feline he was and walked over to sit on the corner of Cage’s mattress. Glory followed him.
Cage edged as far away from them as possible. “Well isn’t this cozy?”
He felt like a crippled king surrounded by his pitying acolytes. Well, okay, two pitying acolytes and a green-eyed, perfect specimen of manhood that even Robin said she’d considered as a bedmate before deciding being one more notch on his oversized bedpost would make her feel common. Although, to be fair, that was before Robin had become his mate.
Archer Logan was about six-four, broad shouldered, and narrow hipped. He had the face of an angel and the heart of a predator.
He swiped a hand through his mane of black hair, even darker than Nik’s, and leaned forward. “Welcome back to the living, Cage. Are you hungry? Robin said you could feed from me when you woke up.”
“Oh did she now?” Cage cast an annoyed glance at his mate, who was trying to give Archer a zip it motion.
“He’s a really big shifter, and a powerful one.” Robin snuggled next to Cage’s left arm. His right—what was left of it—had begun to throb. That freaking giant of a vampire must have had a sword blade coated in silver so he could heal nice and slow. “Mirren has forbidden anyone from feeding from him, for obvious reasons. But it might help you heal faster than feeding from me. And we need to get Nik.”
Cage raised an eyebrow at the feral look on Archer’s face. When Mirren and Aidan had bonded Robin, which involved a blood exchange, they’d discovered that feeding from a shifter was a lot more powerful than from a regular human. Robin’s blood gave him a rush of adrenaline unlike anything he’d ever known. Archer was a rare black jaguar shifter in his prime. What would that be like?
“Did my generous mate tell you what to expect?”
“Yes, I’ll get the orgasm of a lifetime.” Archer grinned. “Let’s get started.”
He was an alley cat. Cage frowned and looked over at Robin. “What do I not know that it’s such a bloody rush for me to feed? Have you heard from Nik?” He looked at Glory. “And I can’t believe Mirren let you come.”
Glory laughed. “He didn’t. He ordered me not to.”
Despite his best efforts to maintain his well-deserved air of self-pity, Cage had to return her smile. “Well, our return to Penton should be interesting.”
“As for your other question, we did hear from Nik,” Robin said. “He and the woman named Shay have been in a crypt in one of the New Orleans cemeteries since dawn. Simon Landry’s people have been prowling the area. We need to get them out.”
“A crypt? The ironies never cease.” Cage sighed and jerked his head in Archer’s direction. “Come on, then, kitty-cat.”
Archer climbed up the length of the mattress next to Cage and tilted his head to the side, baring his neck.
As if.
“Oh hell no. Give me your arm.” Cage ignored the sniggers from Glory and Robin as Archer grumbled. But the man pushed up the sleeve of his forest-green sweater and held the inside of his forearm in front of Cage’s face.
Cage raised his right hand to steady Archer’s arm…or he tried. There was no hand. He raised his left instead and gripped Archer tighter than necessary. Without prelude, he licked the spot over the vein running up the inner arm and bit.
The blood tasted wilder and richer than Robin’s, so rich that Cage felt a feeding high after only two pulls. The room grew warmer, and he could smell motor oil and Drywall and paint. Night birds sang outside the house and, somewhere nearby, a car backfired.
Beside him, Archer moaned.
“Cage, stop. You’re taking too much.” Robin’s voice assaulted his eardrum; his enhanced hearing made her sound as if she were using a megaphone.
With effort, he pulled away from Archer’s arm. He turned his head to look at the big shifter, and figured the dazed, sated expression on Archer’s face was mirrored in his own. That was so fucking wrong.
“Okay, chop-chop.” Glory stood up and clapped her hands. Cage tried to focus on her but the world moved in slow-motion. “We need to rescue Nik and Shay and get back to Penton. I have a big vampire waiting to fight with me.”
It took Archer three tries to stay upright. Cage stood, but he wasn’t sure if he was swaying on his feet
or if his own vision was swimming. After a moment, though, he felt like a good fuck and a good fight, in either order. If he only had a hand.
“Okay, here’s the plan,” Robin said. “I’m doing flyovers to keep the path clear through the cemetery. Glory will stay near the cemetery entrance and use her telekinesis to toss some trees or cars around if she needs to, but that’s a last resort since it’s an endangered site. Archer, you’re the muscle.”
Cage got a mental punch in the gut that almost drove him to his knees. In a normal operation, he would have been the both the strategist and the muscle. Now, what was he? Useless. The plans had been made before he woke from daysleep. He couldn’t shoot a gun or wield a knife. He couldn’t even sign his own fucking name, at least not legibly.
“I guess I’ll sit in the car and wait.” He wouldn’t meet Robin’s gaze even though it rested on his face with a palpable weight.
“Wrong, Mr. Pity Party,” she said in a brisk tone that held not a trace of empathy, and he said a prayer of thanks for that. “You are not going to sit in that car and wallow, thinking about how fucked up your life is and what you can and can’t do.
“You are going into that cemetery with Archer and bring out Nik and Shay. Nik has a stab wound and hasn’t just guzzled a gallon of shifter blood, unlike someone we know, so he’s probably weak. Nik would starve before he’d feed from a pregnant woman. And that pregnant woman has been trapped in a musty old crypt with a vampire all day. You get them to the car while we run interference. Got it?”
Cage gave her a left-handed salute and finally shifted his gaze down to meet hers. “I’m sorry, little bird.” Sorry he couldn’t see his way out of this black hole he’d fallen into. Sorry he couldn’t be the man she had bonded herself to.
Robin smiled at him—the sweet smile she gave no one else. Her voice turned soft. “We’ll figure this out, vampire. Just don’t give up.”
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