Illumination (The Penton Vampire Legacy Book 5)

by Susannah Sandlin

  Shay followed his gaze to where Cage paced, silent and grim. Mark was right. “I’m really sorry. The self-pity gets to me sometimes.” She wouldn’t blame hormones; she had to own her state of mind. “I don’t know what would’ve happened if I hadn’t gotten out of New Orleans. I’d already decided they wouldn’t take my baby, even if I had to die to stop it.”

  And there would have been more pregnant girls by now. Jonathan was easily replaced. And Krys thought the breeding program would start up again if Frank Greisser’s people won tonight, and would probably spread to other cities. But at least Simon Landry wouldn’t be part of it.

  Shay had heard the rumors whispered around the tables of the training center. Simon had survived but he couldn’t even feed himself. Severe brain trauma was hard for even a vampire to heal properly. She couldn’t find it in her heart to pity him.

  Cage stopped mid-pace, tucked his phone in his pocket, and looked around for a moment before striding briskly out of the training center’s big room and into the hallway that led to the tunnel ladders.

  Mark’s phone buzzed, then Melissa’s in quick succession. Both kept blank expressions, but Melissa leaned toward Shay. “Aidan is on his way up. Everyone will be excited to see him since he’s been out of commission for a while, but he’s a diversion. Once he’s here, Mark and I are going to slip down to the subsuites. We’ll need your help, Shay. I’ll fill you in when we get below.”

  Melissa pasted a smile on her face, leaned to her left, and kissed Mark on the cheek. He got up and stopped to chat with a middle-aged couple at the next table for a few moments before he left the room.

  Shay tried to assume a poker face, but didn’t think she succeeded. Something had happened. Something bad.

  A smattering of applause turned into a roar, and everyone turned to see Aidan walking in the door from the subsuite hatch area. He looked stronger than even four days ago, and had taken the time to don black slacks and a cobalt-blue sweater that played up his eyes. He really was a beautiful man, and charismatic. Shay watched him work the tables, shaking hands, taking time to speak to everyone. They adored him, and she could understand why people trusted and wanted to follow him.

  Those skills in an evil person formed cults and led to mass death when the evil was eventually revealed. In a person with good intent—like Aidan Murphy, apparently—well, those were the world’s visionaries. So different from Frank Greisser.

  Shay thought if Aidan Murphy had Greisser’s platform and reach, the vampire world would find a way to survive.

  Melissa caught Shay’s gaze and nodded. No one would notice them leaving, not with Aidan here.

  Krys wasn’t with Aidan, and Krys was the doctor. That fact wasn’t lost on Shay, and her bad feelings deepened. She waited for Melissa at the bottom of the ladder. She wanted to know what to expect before bursting into the hall of subsuites.

  “Let’s walk,” Melissa said after clearing the ladder. “I’ll fill in what I know. First, they caught Frank Greisser. Will went to wait for Randa. As soon as she gets here, they’re going to lock Greisser inside a silver-lined cell in an isolated tunnel area past the training center.”

  Shay read between the unsaid lines; Mel hadn’t mentioned anyone else. “Who was injured, and how bad is it?”

  Melissa stopped. “We need to get two rooms ready for patients. Krys is getting the clinic organized now.” She took a deep breath. “Mirren and Archer have minor injuries. Robin’s is more serious.” She seemed to run out of words.

  “What about Nik?” Shay whispered.

  “Nik is critical, and we’re going to need your help to save him.”

  A chill stole across Shay’s shoulders and down her arms. Nik had risked his life to save her as well as the other women under Frank’s and Simon’s control. And ever since, they’d had a connection that had redefined itself from their high school days. Definitely a physical attraction, and maybe a friendship. Maybe more.

  The thought of losing him, of being in Penton without him, scared the hell out of her. “What can I do? I’m not a practicing physician but I know the basics.”

  “Let’s see what Krys says.”

  They hurried along the tunnel, which Shay would swear had grown a mile longer, and finally reached the hallway of suites.

  Krys stood outside the exam room. Dark circles under her eyes told the story of a woman still not at full strength and running on fumes. “Come on in. Mirren just got here and I’m going to patch him up real quick, then get things ready for Robin and Nik. They’re still en route and at least a half-hour out, maybe longer. Archer wasn’t hurt badly and will probably heal as soon as I pull the bullet out of his arm.”

  “What happened to Nik and Robin? Were they shot?” Shay thought shifters and vampires could heal anything eventually, but the thought about Simon and his brain damage haunted her.

  “Robin has two gunshot wounds, one an abdominal wound at close range. I think it might take her a while but she will heal. Nik…” Krys paused, seeming to search for words. “It’s complicated, but Nik was injected with vaccinated blood.”

  “So it’s acting like a poison?” Shay asked. “Is there a way to counteract it?”

  “The time delay makes it more complicated, but what has worked in the past is what we call a ‘drain and fill,’ ” Krys said. “We’ll drain Nik’s blood until the point where his heart stops, then begin an IV of pure unvaccinated blood. The blood type doesn’t matter.”

  “I’ll donate.” Mark was already rolling up his sleeve. “And I’ll get Gadget and a couple of other humans who know how to keep their mouths shut. We don’t want people panicking. Do you think shifter blood will work? Archer would donate.”

  “I think shifter blood is a last resort, but once he’s through the worst of it and is able to feed, it’ll help him to feed from Archer.” Krys rubbed her eyes.

  “Need me to get the room ready for Nik?” Mark asked. “I was part of the drain and fill on Mirren and Aidan last year.”

  “Yes, use the room where Nik’s been staying. Greisser is secure, so Will is waiting at the greenhouse entrance to help Archer get Robin and Nik here.”

  Shay had been frozen into silence, but Mark’s words rekindled hope. “So this drain and fill thing has been done before. And both Aidan and Mirren survived it.”

  Krys nodded. “Nik is a tougher case, though. I have to be honest about that. He hasn’t been turned very long, so I don’t know how strong his system is. He also was injected at least twenty minutes before Archer found him—maybe a little longer—plus it’s an almost three-hour drive from that museum back to Penton. With Mirren and Aidan, we were able to do it fast.”

  “You’ll need to help,” Melissa told Shay. “When we did it before, both Krys and I were human so we could take shifts to change out blood during daysleep hours. We can’t do that now.”

  Shay took a deep breath to steady her nerves. She’d spent every summer during her formative years working in places where conditions qualified as just above hopeless. She could do this, especially since she couldn’t donate blood. “Just tell me what you need. I can handle it.”

  Before Krys could answer, footsteps sounded from the ladder at the clinic end of the hallway, followed by Glory and then Mirren.

  Holy cow. That was a minor injury? The big vampire had ditched his sweater, and his body was every bit as ripped as Shay would’ve expected. She hadn’t expected half of his torso to be covered in intricate tattoos…or the amount of magenta blood that coated the untattooed half. His shoulder looked as if it had been mauled by wild animals.

  “That’s nasty.” Krys motioned them into the exam room. “I hope the other guy looks worse.”

  “Greisser took a few bites out of me.” Mirren’s voice didn’t sound any worse for the injury. Still gruff, in other words. “Hope he doesn’t have fucking rabies.”

  Krys smiled. “I don’t think vampires can get rabies. Where is our esteemed visitor?”

  “We dropped Randa and him off wit
h Will,” Glory said. “They’re taking him to the new silver cell. And he looks pretty bad. I kicked him in the head halfway to Penton, until Mirren made me stop. Then I made him float in the air and spin in the back of the van the rest of the way.”

  Shay saw a mixture of admiration and amusement in Mirren’s gray eyes, at least until Krys poured peroxide over his shoulder wound.

  Shay looked Glory up and down, but didn’t see any blood that couldn’t be attributed to Mirren. “You’re okay?”

  Glory nodded. “Randa too. How long until the others get here?”

  “Closer to dawn than I’m comfortable with—about three or three-thirty.” Krys examined Mirren’s wound after it was cleaned out.

  “Does it need anything else?” Shay needed to learn how to treat vampires since they seemed to have a bad habit of getting injured.

  “No, they don’t need it, and there’s no danger of infections either. Could you bandage him up? I want to rest as much as I can before the others get here.”

  Shay had done her share of bandaging wounds during her mission trip tagalongs; it had been the thing her parents felt most comfortable having her do. She’d never tried bandaging someone quite so big. Still, she remembered well enough. She covered the wound with a clean bandage, then wrapped Mirren’s shoulder so that he still had a good range of movement.

  “That should do it—is it too tight?” Shay addressed Krys, but Mirren answered. “Good job. It’ll heal during daysleep tomorrow so you shouldn’t have to rewrap it.”

  “Shay?”

  A soft, childlike voice came from the doorway, causing them all to turn. Nik had talked enough about the child vampire, Hannah, that Shay thought she’d known what to expect. But this had to be her, and Shay had been wrong.

  The child had the dark skin and black hair of her Muscogee Creek blood; in fact, she and Glory could be sisters. But she was so damned young. Her face still held an innocence that it shouldn’t. And she could still cry, because tears dotted her cheeks.

  Shay walked to her and knelt. “You must be Hannah. Nik has told me about you.”

  The girl threw her arms around Shay’s neck. “He is so hurt, and I can’t see what will happen to him. I love him.”

  Shay wrapped Hannah in a tight hug. “He loves you too, and I’ll tell you what is going to happen. We are going to save him.” There was no other option in Shay’s mind. Even if she didn’t stay in Penton once the danger was past—and she couldn’t imagine raising a child here—she didn’t want to live in a world without Nik Dimitrou in it, vampire or not.

  “You love him, too,” Hannah whispered, way too soft for the others to hear, or so Shay hoped. “And he loves you. You are going to help all of us. Ask for what you need.”

  Shay pulled away. “What do you mean?” What did she need, other than the nerves to see Nik through this crisis?

  She wasn’t sure she wanted to know the answer.

  Chapter 32 * Robin

  Robin woke to the scenic view of a sterile brown and tan carpeted van roof. Her head had been cushioned on something hard, and every jostle of the van—every pothole, bump, or turn—deepened the throbbing, bone-deep pain in her belly. The last thing she remembered was being shot and falling from the sky. On the way down, she’d believed it wasn’t serious. This pain, however, said otherwise.

  Someone lay beside her in the back of the van and, with effort, she turned her head to the right. Her breath caught. Nik, so still that he looked like a corpse. What had happened? Who was driving?

  “Archer?” Robin tried to sit up, but couldn’t. All she accomplished was the sight of her own blood-soaked body. Shit.

  “Hey, Robin.” Archer’s voice seemed to float from the front of the van, and Robin realized her grasp on consciousness was not as strong as she’d thought. “Don’t move around back there; you’ve lost a lot of blood. I’m getting us to Penton as fast as I can. Can you take a blood infusion from a human or another breed of shifter?”

  “Never mind me. Is Nik alive?” Why was he not breathing? In theory, Robin knew vampires didn’t have to breathe to be alive. In practice, she’d never seen one not breathe, and the sight of a Nik whose lungs weren’t working scared the hell out of her.

  “He’s alive, but we don’t have much time. And it was my own fucking fault,” Archer said. “I thought Marianne was unconscious and left to get the van while Nik cleaned up the scene and brought you to a rendezvous point. You were unconscious, but turns out she wasn’t. Somehow, she got her hands on a vial of vaccinated blood and injected Nik with it.”

  With effort, Robin rolled her head to the side again so she could look at Nik. The puncture wound just below his left ear had turned an angry red—that bitch had gotten him near the carotid artery. “What can we do for him?”

  “I don’t know. Soon as I got you guys in the van, I texted Aidan and he said get back to Penton immediately. Well, Atlanta traffic doesn’t do immediately. And Cage has been calling me every few minutes. I’ll let him know you’re awake.”

  Robin wished she could mentally communicate with Cage the way the master vampires and their mates could do. They’d done it a little, but not enough, and not so far. He’d be able to tell she was hurt, though, and it would frighten him. He’d been through too much already. “I want to talk to him. Where’s my cell phone?”

  “You don’t need to move, Robin. We’re fifteen minutes out. Just hang on.”

  She raised her voice. “Where’s my fucking cell phone?”

  “I don’t know, and you aren’t getting mine. Settle down. Cage will kill me if you hurt yourself worse. Can you take a blood transfusion from me?”

  “No, only another avian shifter, but it doesn’t have to be an eagle.” Robin took deep breaths to slow her racing heart. “What happened to me, anyway? I didn’t think I’d been hurt this bad.”

  “Nik and I were looking for you when we heard a shot. Marianne had found you and shot you point blank while you were unconscious. I’m just thankful she heard us coming and took a fast shot to the gut instead of the head.”

  Yeah, that made two of them. “That bitch has a lot to answer for.”

  “Can’t argue with that, and she got away.”

  Robin closed her eyes and didn’t realized she’d slept, except that when she opened them again, Nik had disappeared and Cage knelt over her. “Hello, little bird,” he said, his voice soft. “Trying to one-up me on injuries?”

  She smiled up at him, wanting to cry and laugh and kiss him and feel him inside her. She wanted their life back. “I’m not going anywhere,” she whispered.

  “Actually, you are. Archer has taken Nik inside, and our friend Will is here to carry you down to the subsuites. Your mate seems to have misplaced his arm. Inconvenient, that.”

  He grinned at her, and Robin felt her heart expand to the point of bursting from her body. Her Cage was back. If it took her getting hurt and scaring the shit out of him to make him able to joke about his own injury, it was worth every ounce of blood she’d lost.

  “Out of the way, you freak.” Will climbed in the van to take Cage’s place. “You are a mess, woman. You’re gonna get blood all over my pretty new sweater.”

  “Fuck you.” Robin didn’t think she sounded very fierce.

  “No, that’s Randa’s job, not yours. Sorry. You’ll have to make do with the English asshat.” Will slid arms beneath Robin’s shoulders and knees, and lifted her out of the van more smoothly than she would’ve thought possible. “You realize that between Cage and me, we have three good arms and three good legs?”

  Robin tried to think of a comeback, but wit was beyond her. In fact, she thought consciousness might be beyond her.

  Suddenly, Krys was standing above her and she recognized the subsuites. She was on a bed. Krys’s image wavered in and out but finally stayed. Yay for consciousness.

  “How are you feeling?” Krys placed a cool hand on her forehead.

  “I’m feeling…not a damned thing.” Robin raised her head but saw n
othing of her midsection but a mass of bandages. “Just tired.”

  “You’re going to join me in daysleep shortly.” The bed moved beneath her, and Cage settled in. “Krys just gave you enough morphine to put a rhino to sleep. Archer is calling in some favors to see if he can get some avian blood.”

  “I’ll heal….own.” No wonder her head felt stuffed full of cotton. Morphine. “Nik?”

  “They’re getting him set up now for treatment.”

  Cage ran his fingers lightly down her cheek and turned her head toward him. “He’s in a spot of trouble, but Nik is strong. They know what to do for this and he’s lucky Shay is a doctor and can keep his treatment going during daysleep.”

  Robin frowned. “Research’r.”

  Cage smiled. “Yeah, but she can handle an IV. And you should see her face. She is not going to let him die.”

  Robin liked Shay. Nik liked Shay. If Shay liked Nik, that was good.

  And when Robin got well, that evil bitch Marianne was going to pay.

  Chapter 33 * Shay

  Gadget sat on the bed next to Nik, making mindless small talk.

  Shay was glad he was there. She was too scared to make a sound. Nik wasn’t breathing. None of the vampires seemed too worried about that little detail, so she worried enough for everyone. All of the vampires breathed. She had done an informal survey during the long, dull days in her cage and even after arriving in Penton.

  And even though he wasn’t breathing, Will and Mark had tied Nik to the bed in three places.

  “Why tie him down?” she asked. “And can’t he just break the rope?”

  “He’s not going to be a happy vampire when his blood is drained so low that it really starts to hurt.” Will looked at her without a trace of his usual joking demeanor. “He’s going to lash out at anything he can reach, including you. This rope is laced with silver, so it renders his physical strength to that of a human. That’ll piss him off even more.”