Illumination (The Penton Vampire Legacy Book 5)

by Susannah Sandlin

  He snatched the fatigues from her, but ended up needing her help to get his feet in the pants legs.

  “Lean on me when you stand up.”

  Robin could hold him up with one hand and they both knew it, but he’d be damned if she had to pull his pants up for him. He slapped his right hand on the edge of the bedside table, leveraged himself to his feet with his right arm, and jerked up the pants with his left. Okay, maybe he wobbled a bit, but he managed the zipper without help.

  “Stupid vampire,” Robin muttered. “Oh, wait. Redundant.”

  Uh-huh. “How is Cage, speaking of which?”

  “Dunno. Unlike you, he can’t walk and talk during daysleep. But when he went down at dawn, he was excited about talking about the prosthetics Will and Gadget had been researching.” Her voice softened. “I hope they work. Otherwise, he’s going to have a hard time accepting what’s happened to him.”

  Nik pulled his friend into a hug. “Cage is strong, mentally as well as physically. He needs time to adjust. And some of those prosthetics are amazing.” They made their way slowly toward the door into the hallway. After the first couple of hesitant steps, Nik no longer had to lean on Robin. “Amazing things can be done with them now. We have so many wounded veterans who are able to do things they never thought they’d do again.”

  They reached the door, and Nik adjusted the sunglasses before stepping into the hallway. They were two floors underground, so he faced no danger of sunlight, but the wall sconces provided plenty of light.

  He lowered them to rest on the end of his nose and blinked a couple of times. The light hurt at first, but lessened as he adjusted to it. “Don’t need the sunglasses, but maybe it’s because it’s so near sundown. Don’t know.”

  He stuck them in the pocket of his pants. “Why didn’t you bring me a shirt?”

  “And deprive Shay of a look at that six pack?”

  Chapter 29 * Mirren

  Tuesday had been a warm, damp day that had given way to a warm, overcast early evening. Too warm for winter.

  Deep underground in his and Glory’s safe space beneath a long-abandoned convenience store on the south side of Penton, Mirren strapped on his heavy leather tunic lined with chain mail. He’d worn it into battle since his first adult gallowglass mercenary training in Scotland four centuries ago. It would be hot as hell in this weather, especially with the lightweight bulletproof vest underneath it, but one couldn’t be too careful.

  Tonight, more than ever. They’d never had a chance to take down Frank Greisser—he’d always been surrounded by sympathic Tribunal members when Aidan or Mirren had met with him in the past.

  This might be their only chance, and Mirren felt a foreign burst of optimism. Greisser never did his own dirty work. That he was in Atlanta, only two hours outside Penton, said he was either worried or feeling smug. Mirren only wished he knew who was expected at this meeting with Greisser other than Jason Smith, who, as it turned out, had a prior commitment in a shallow grave outside Penton. Tonight’s plan needed to run like clockwork.

  Mirren’s phone rang, and he recognized Nik’s code name. “You already in Atlanta?”

  “Archer and I have staked out both ends of the hotel’s two entry levels. Glory is at the skywalk entrance from the adjacent hotel. Plans still intact?”

  “I’m heading your way now. The minute anyone spots Greisser or anyone else familiar, call me. You feeling okay?” Mirren kept the phone to his ear as he walked to the rental van Will had bought for the occasion. For the past three days, Nik had been pushed to learn his boundaries. He could wake during the day; sunglasses helped. He was functional, although not fast. He could think clearly. He could go out in the sun, but it was painful and burned his skin like a pale human in the tropics; human sunblock helped some. Outside, on a rainy day like today, he could move much as he did inside at night.

  So they’d bundled him into another van and he’d gone with Glory and the shifters to set up an early set of posts around the hotel. They couldn’t cover every nook and cranny. The place was too damned big, so if Greisser had a room there, he could easily slip past them into one of the dozen meeting rooms without passing an entrance.

  They were gambling that Greisser wasn’t staying at the hotel. High-rise hotels were hard to convert into light-tight spaces, and hotel staff always could enter the room and find something they shouldn’t. A housekeeper with fresh towels might find more in the hotel bathroom than she bargained for.

  If their gamble proved correct, Greisser would have to enter the hotel through a main entrance and one of the lookouts should be able to spot him. If they could take him before he got to his meeting, they would. Without its head, Aidan believed the snake would wither. Mirren had a few ideas of things to do to the man once they caught him, but that would be Aidan’s call.

  Mirren slowed the vehicle and came to a stop in front of the charred remains of the town’s original café. It took Randa Thomas, Will’s mate, fewer than six seconds to exit the shadowy columns of the building and get in the passenger seat. She wore black from head to toe, including a cap pulled down to hide her distinctive red hair.

  Once inside, she set a shiny pistol on the seat beside her, the bulky .45 Smith & Wesson favored by most of the Penton scathe. In her right hand, she gripped her Army-issue Beretta. Next to Cage and Nik—and, of course, Mirren and Aidan—Randa was Penton’s fiercest warrior. She had been turned vampire while deployed in the Middle East with the Army, but she came from a military family. Self-discipline and training were hard-wired into her DNA.

  Other than a brief greeting, they didn’t talk. Randa knew her job, which was to keep an eye on the wooded sides of Interstate 85 as they took the quickest route to Atlanta. They’d avoided it for a while, and Mirren had argued to stick to backroads tonight. The meeting was early, though, and Mirren needed to get there as fast as possible. Mirren glanced at the dashboard clock: 5:45 P.M.

  The clock had just ticked over to 6:05 P.M. when Randa cursed. “Two figures on the southbound side of the interstate. Couldn’t get a good look at them.”

  Damn it. “No human’s going to be hanging around the interstate in the middle of nowhere without a car in sight. Had to be vampires.”

  Randa twisted to see if she could spot them again. “They’re gone. It’s possible they’re trying to get to Penton and settle. We still get a few every week.”

  “Call Will and alert him. We’d waste too much time going back to look.” Mirren wasn’t slowing down for shit. He pressed the accelerator harder, to eighty MPH. If he had to use his allure to zone out a state police officer, so be it.

  While Randa made the call, Mirren scanned both sides of the highway as much as he could in thickening traffic. The closer they got to Atlanta, the heavier the traffic and the slower the drive.

  An unfamiliar ringtone sounded from the center console, and Mirren frowned. Jason Smith’s phone.

  Time to assume his mild-mannered Midwestern persona. “Yeah. Smith here.”

  The voice on the other end of the call wasn’t Frank Greisser. “Where are you?”

  Did the person on the phone know Jason Smith? Mirren had to gamble that the answer was no. “On my way. Frank wanted me there by 7:30; I have the Slayer’s phone.”

  “Yeah, I heard, but there’s a change of plans. We might have been compromised. Go to Location B, same time.”

  Fuck fuck fuck. He’d called Jason Smith an idiot, but how idiotic was he, really? “Oh, man. I had it written down but forgot. Refresh me on how to get there.”

  There was a long pause before the call disconnected and left Mirren listening to dead air.

  “Damn it.” He threw the phone back in the console and conveyed the other end of the conversation to Randa. “We need to let our people in Atlanta know to stand by, but we were spotted. There’s a new location, but Atlanta’s a damn big city. They could be meeting anywhere.”

  “Let me try something.” Randa grabbed Jason Smith’s phone, then used her own to place a call a
nd put it on speaker. “Will, it’s me again. Listen, we got made and they’ve changed to an alternate location. If I give you a few phone numbers could you or Gadget check to see if there’s a geolocator? Otherwise, we’re gonna have to abort.”

  Will cursed. “That’s beyond my skills but Gadget might know. He’s here with me.” Will’s voice became muffled as he relayed the question to the Ranger computer wizard.

  “Okay, gimme those numbers.” Gadget’s laid-back Mississippi voice took over the call.

  “First, here’s the number Greisser was using,” Randa said, and read off the sheet of paper Mirren handed her. “Next is the number of the guy who just called Jason Smith’s phone and said they were moving to Location B. When Mirren questioned him, he hung up.”

  “Give me Jason Smith’s number too, in case I can access his call log and track it through the back door.”

  Randa raised her eyebrows and shrugged at Mirren, then gave him the number. “You can really do shit like that?”

  Gadget’s voice was wry. “I have a lotta friends in low places.”

  “We’ll keep heading toward downtown on the chance they stay in that general area,” Mirren said. “Get Will to call Nik, Glory, and the shifters and tell them to stand by. If you’re able to get a location, they can move faster, especially Robin.”

  If she took flight, Robin wouldn’t have a problem with Atlanta traffic.

  In the back were plenty of weapons, ammo, zip-ties, and a Styrofoam cooler with unvaccinated blood. They had two vials of vaccinated blood donated by Shay Underwood. That blood was probably the deadliest weapon they had. Each of the shifters, Glory, and Nik had some in a syringe in a pocket or, in Robin’s and Archer’s case, a pack strapped to their leg in case they needed to shift.

  They hit stop-and-go traffic near the airport in the southwestern edge of the city, and Mirren fought to subdue the adrenaline pumping through his veins. He loved the fight, loved the strategy and the execution. He hated the wait, the buildup.

  He hated fucking traffic.

  Randa’s ringtone sounded, and it almost made Mirren jump through the van’s window. There was so damned much at stake.

  “It’s Gadget.” Randa put the phone on speaker. “Got anything for us?”

  “Well, I can tell you where Frank Greisser is now, or at least where his phone is. The other number is headed in that direction but looks to be stuck in traffic.”

  Mirren grasped the steering wheel so hard his knuckled whitened. “Where is the bastard?”

  “Museum of Natural History. It’s east of downtown—lemme give you the street address.” As Gadget read out the street number and name, Randa plugged it into the van’s GPS system, then requested the system to find them the fastest route. Not surprisingly, it took them off the freeway.

  “What can you tell us about the place?” Mirren had never been to a museum. Most weren’t open vampire hours, although he guessed that was an excuse to cover the fact he’d never wanted to visit one. He liked art; he was an amateur artist himself. He liked books of art. Not museums. And what was natural history?

  “The museum’s in a trendy part of town and near Emory University, so the area’s gonna have foot traffic even on a weeknight. They rent the place out for private events, so my guess would be Greisser bought out the whole site and dismissed the museum staff….or has them all tied up somewhere.”

  “What about access points?” Mirren had a feeling he wasn’t going to like Gadget’s answer.

  “Well, first, parking’s gonna be a bitch. Very limited, unless they’ve somehow reserved the small parking area. As for access points, man, you don’t want to know.”

  Fuck. “Tell me anyway.”

  “The thing’s got multiple areas and multiple meeting spaces. It’s built around a freaking old-growth forest that’s about 70 acres.”

  Sounded like a good spot for a man-eating kitty-cat to hide.

  “What else?”

  “There’s a shitload of exhibition areas, but I don’t know if they’re open at night. Stuff like swamps and caves and a dinosaur gallery. There’s also a big atrium full of dinosaurs.”

  Mirren slid his gaze to catch Randa’s and she smiled. “Tell me more about the dinosaurs.”

  Mirren nodded. Since he thought his schemes could save his own species Greisser would like the irony of surrounding himself with an extinct species.

  Chapter 30 * Nik

  Nik met up with Robin, Glory, and Archer at the second-floor bar of the Marriott. Nik had stopped at the concierge desk and picked up some brochures showing the wonders of the Fernbank Museum of Natural History and its forest.

  He spread out one of the brochures on a low table surrounded by fashionably uncomfortable ottomans and pointed at a small map printed on back. “Here’s where we need to go.” He shifted his finger. “Here is the main atrium that Mirren thinks Greisser will use, because the museum rents it out for nighttime events. There’s a lot of glass, which could give us good visibility from the outside.”

  “They also can see out,” Robin said. “I need to get going since Greisser’s already there, or at least his phone is there. We still want to nab him before the event gets started, right?”

  “The earlier the better.” Nik looked up. “You got your own phone?”

  She grinned. “In my leg pouch, along with some poisoned blood, a long t-shirt, and the tiniest little gun you’ve ever seen.”

  “Ditto here, except I have a bigger gun than any of you.” Archer raised his eyebrows. “Wish I could fly.”

  “Glad I’m not a pussycat.” With that, Robin blended into the crowded bar and disappeared.

  Nik refolded the brochure. “Okay, let’s go. We’ll figure out a plan on the way.”

  They waited in silence for the van to be brought around. Nik had already begun testing different strategies in his head, and imagined Archer was doing the same. Glory was their wild card. She didn’t carry a gun, but she had spent the last three days honing her telekinetic skills. She had plenty of experience uprooting trees. and the museum had a forest full of them, although Nik hoped they didn’t need her. Mirren had not been happy about sending his mate on this mission. With Will’s mobility impaired, Cage’s injury, and Aidan’s continued physical weakness, he hadn’t had much choice.

  Glory finally broke the silence. “Think there’s any chance Robin will be able to grab Greisser before we get there?”

  “I hope she doesn’t get a chance,” Nik said. “She’s impulsive and won’t hesitate to try and take him down alone. And Aidan doesn’t want him hurt. Well, hurt is okay, but Aidan doesn’t want him dead.”

  “Why save the asshole?” Archer glanced over from the passenger seat. “If he’s dead, won’t the Tribunal effort fall apart?”

  “For a while.” Nik had been able to talk with Aidan at length about the subject, and he’d finally come to agree with his logic. “But there are regional leaders—Simon Landry’s probably not in charge of New Orleans anymore, but that woman, Marianne, is a strong vampire. I’m sure there are others like her. Someone would eventually fill the void in leadership. The longer we keep Greisser, the more they’ll focus on saving him instead of forming new plans.”

  “But won’t that bring them right to our doorstep?” Glory leaned forward from the backseat. “If they’re trying to rescue ole Frank, we’ll never get rid of them.”

  “One step at a time.” Aidan thought that he and Greisser, given time, could reach an agreement. Nik had his doubts, but it was worth a try. Penton wouldn’t survive another all-out battle. Whoever didn’t die would leave, and Aidan’s grand social experiment of vampires and humans living in symbiotic harmony would fail. Predators and traffickers would rule.

  They wound their way past the Emory campus and turned onto the road that led to the museum. It was a densely populated area, with blocks of businesses and mixed-use areas interspersed with carefully tended green spaces. It was the night after Christmas, but holiday lights still shone everywhere, brighte
ning the streets and casting light into shadows. “We should park after the next intersection,” Archer said, studying the map. “That gives us less than a block to walk.”

  Nik circled the block twice before finding an end space that would enable an easy exit if needed, which was good. The streetlight overhead? Not so good.

  “Glory, can you get rid of that light? We need as much darkness as possible.”

  “Sure, but let’s not be standing underneath it in case I get carried away.”

  Nik held his breath waiting to see if the whole light pole would come down on top of their van, but she stared at it and focused just enough to make the bulb spark and go black. She gave them a triumphant grin, and they started walking.

  Nik called Robin as they headed toward the museum grounds. “Where are you?”

  “Sitting in a tree, freezing my tailfeathers off,” she said. “Greisser is here, and Mirren was right. He’s in the atrium/great hall area with the biggest freaking dinosaur skeletons you’ve ever seen. On the back is a terrace that opens into the room. Lots of soft lights and shadows, but somebody shut off the Christmas lights. Beyond that is nothing but forest. So tell Archer to go round back and shift. Plenty of spots for him to prowl around.”

  “How many people are with Greisser?”

  “Two that I can see. The guy is purely muscle, I’d say. And our old friend Marianne has her nose so far up Greisser’s ass her nostrils have probably turned brown.”

  “Nice image. Anything else?”

  “There are about thirty chairs set up around tables in the dino skeleton area; it’s a big meeting space with a three-story ceiling and tons of glass. The sooner we can hit, the better. There are a lot of places for people to hide—ours and theirs.”

  “Sounds good. I’ll update Mirren and see where he and Randa are. Once we get things started, you’ll know it. Don’t be a cowgirl and try to do it alone.”

  She hung up on him.