“He’s been putting some things in motion that—”
“Excuse me, but I have an update for you.” Dr. Costanza stood in the doorway, smiling.
Smiling was good. Nik and Mark jostled each other trying to stand at the same time. “How are they?”
“Shay made it through the surgery just fine. She’s weak, but she’s awake and asking for her fiancé.”
Nik grinned, then promptly settled his mouth back into a big smile. He might have flashed some fang. Luckily, the doctor didn’t seem to notice. “And the baby?”
“Your daughter is small, just under a pound and a half, which puts her a little above the normal weight for twenty-four weeks. She’s going to have to fight, but we have a better than sixty-five percent survival rate now for babies at her stage of development.”
A pound and a half. Shit, he’d eaten hamburgers bigger than that. “Can I see her too?” He needed to think of her as a living, breathing baby, and not a couple of Big Macs.
“Let’s go and see the baby first, then you can reassure her anxious mother that she’s tiny, but perfect.”
Mark agreed to wait, and Dr. Costanza left Nik at the door to the NICU, where a nurse made him wash his hands, then don a hairnet, gloves, and a blue hospital gown over his clothes. “We have to be careful about infections when the babies are this small.” She smiled. “Don’t look so scared. She’s a beautiful little girl.”
When Nik first peered inside the closed crib, he only saw the equipment. An IV in a hand the size of his fingernail into which blood dripped from a bag, adhesive heart-monitor patches, monitors that showed the baby’s blood pressure, temperature, and oxygen rate. A ventilator had been taped over her tiny mouth.
Then he looked beyond the stuff keeping his daughter alive—because she was his daughter, and always would be regardless of where he and Shay ended up or whose sperm had helped create her—and saw a perfect little nose peeking from beneath a pink and white toboggan-style hat. Tiny fingers and toes.
“She’s a little big for twenty-four weeks, and I think she has a good chance of making it,” the nurse said, rubbing Nik’s shoulder and handing him a tissue. Damned if he wasn’t crying again. “You can’t touch her yet, but tell her mom that we’ll bring her in here tomorrow, as soon as she can sit up in a wheelchair, and she can start getting to know her daughter. Do you have a name picked out?”
A name? God, Shay had never even mentioned names. There had always seemed to be plenty of time for decisions like that.
“Not yet. We’ll let you know. If she does well, how long could she be here?”
The nurse smiled. “Let’s take it a day at a time, okay?”
What choice did they have? A day at a time. It’s how they’d been living since they’d escaped New Orleans.
Nik wiped his eyes when he left the NICU, pulled off the cap and gown, and followed another nurse to Shay’s room. It was decked out like a bedroom, with a regular bed, drapes, laminate floors, paintings on the wall, an armchair.
Shay’s nose was bruised and she was as pale as the sheets, but she looked beautiful. Her eyes were closed, so he sat in the armchair and watched her.
“Nik?”
“I’m here.” He pulled his chair to her bedside and took her hand.
“Nik, the baby. Did she make it? The nurse said she made it, but they won’t let me see her.”
Damn it, Shay was crying and she had to stop it or he’d start crying again too.
“Hey.” He reached out and made sure she saw him. “Look in my eyes. The baby is okay. I just saw her and she’s beautiful.”
“It’s too soon.”
He had to be honest with her. As upbeat as the NICU nurse had been, he wasn’t going to paint an overly rosy picture. Shay deserved better.
“She’s tiny, Shay. About a pound and a half. But she’s got a better than sixty percent chance of making it, and I’m betting she has her mom’s fighting spirit.”
Shay smiled. “You really saw her?”
Nik grinned. “I did. Her hands are about the size of a quarter, but they’re perfect. I couldn’t see if she had hair because they have one of those little caps on her. They say if you can sit in a wheelchair tomorrow, you can go in and spend some time with her. They won’t even guess at this point how long she’ll need to be here.”
Shay closed her eyes and sighed. “Thank God. I know it’s not a sure thing, but at least she has a chance. Her lungs won’t be developed yet. Do they have her on a ventilator?”
Nik kept forgetting that Shay was a real doctor and not just a lab rat. “Yes, and heart monitors and I think they’re giving her blood transfusions.”
“That’s normal.” Shay sighed again. “I don’t know anything about babies, but Krys filled me in a little. What happened to Frank and…that man?”
Nik didn’t want anyone overhearing much about shooting or collapsing tunnels. “For now, let’s just say the man is no longer a concern, and Glory fed Frank and Marianne some dirt and concrete for dinner.”
“Glory saved me?”
Nik nodded. “We had quite a chain going. I got your mental message as soon as I woke”—he tapped her forehead—“so I sent one to Aidan, who sent one to Mirren, who caught Glory before she left the kitchen. It was like a mental chain letter. Glory grabbed Mark while he was rooting through the fridge and dragged him down the ladder. They did all the work, and the rest of us just showed up and stood with our mouths hanging open.”
Okay, he was embellishing the story, but Shay was laughing. Until she wasn’t. “What about Archer?”
“Krys says he’ll be okay after a few days. He has a twin brother coming down from Tennessee to donate blood.”
Shay raised her eyebrows. “Oh my God. There are two of them? He also had a brother that was killed, right?”
Nik nodded. “His older brother, Adam. But he also has a twin.”
They were silent a few minutes and Nik waited, hoping Shay would get some rest. But her eyes fluttered open again. “We have to make some decisions.”
They certainly did. “I know. Mark wants us to talk to Aidan first, and I have no idea what that’s about. Aidan’s up to something, so let’s wait.” He paused, trying to gauge her reaction and failing. “The baby’s probably going to be in the NICU a while, and there’s a place nearby for me to stay with your brother Mark, by the way, who’s paying the bills. You can stay there too, since you’ll probably be discharged before the baby. We can talk to Aidan first. Then we’ll decide, unless you’ve already decided.”
His heartbeat turned jerky at the idea she might tell him there was no place for him in her life now, that their love had to take a backseat to what she and the baby needed. And she wouldn’t be wrong; that was what hurt. He’d find a way to respect it, though. He wouldn’t make it harder on her.
But she nodded and after a pause said, “We’ll wait and talk to Aidan.”
A wave of relief passed through his system. “There is one decision to make today if you’re ready.”
She cocked her head at him. “What?”
“ ‘Baby Girl Underwood’ needs a name.”
Chapter 44 * Shay
Shay had spent the last six weeks in a blur of trips back and forth from the safe house to the hospital as Lydia Nicole Underwood thrived. That would be Lydia Nicole Dimitrou as soon as Gadget and their colonel got all her paperwork straightened out in New Orleans. A real marriage was a rarity in Penton since most of the vampires were too old to have legitimate identification. Glory and Melissa were beside themselves, making plans.
But whatever she and Nik decided about the future, she wanted Lydia to have his last name as well as the middle name derived from his. Lydia had been the name of Shay’s grandmother, a strong, resilient woman who’d endured her own share of hardships.
In two weeks, with no more complications, Lydia would be able to leave the hospital. They would have to watch her closely the first two years. Learning disabilities were possible. Hearing issues. Vision di
fficulties. But she was alive, breathing on her own, and growing. And she might have no problems at all.
Shay pulled Nik’s new SUV, which he’d finally bought to replace the one lost in Atlanta, into the driveway of the safe house in an old, quiet neighborhood of Opelika. The bustle of the small city was so much less than New Orleans but so much more than Penton that it felt alien to her.
She left her latest bag of baby stuff in the already-crammed backseat and headed inside. Aidan’s midnight-blue sedan was parked in front of the house.
Today was what she and Nik had been calling The Meeting. Aidan had said he had a proposal for them, and Shay wasn’t sure what to expect. Nik said Aidan also had news about the official end of the vampire war. Frank’s heart and brain had both been punctured by the silver-coated bars of his cell, so he was finally and truly gone. Shay suspected Glory had played a little fast and loose with the collapse of the tunnels to make that happen, but nobody was complaining. Marianne had been shown mercy by Aidan and allowed to return to Atlanta after signing the loyalty pledge, only to be killed by a rival scathe master. Nobody complained about that, either. They’d found the body of the hybrid shifter, Shawn Nicholls, in her Omega cell, where Marianne had apparently killed her in a fit of rage after finding she’d been duped by Mirren.
Nik met Shay at the door with a kiss, and Shay hugged Krys and Aidan. They’d both come to visit her a few times since Lydia’s birth. In fact, most of Penton seemed to have shown up at one time or another.
Shay sighed. It was going to be hard to leave that.
“Okay, Aidan, you said you had a proposal for us. Let’s hear it.” Nik took Shay’s hand and they sat on the sofa, leaving the armchairs for Aidan and Krys.
“For the last few months, Mark has been making some real estate transactions for me.” Aidan spread out a map of the eastern half of Alabama. He took out a red marker and outlined a tall square on the Georgia line. “This is Chambers County.” He made a big X near the center and a smaller X a little north of it.
He pointed at the big X. “This is LaFayette, the county seat. It has about three thousand people, and is economically depressed. Real estate is priced to sell—or buy.” He tapped the smaller X. “This, of course, is Penton, about nine miles north.”
He outlined a short, wide rectangle below the taller one. “This is Lee County, where we are now. It’s about twenty miles to LaFayette and less than thirty to Penton. It’s one of the fastest-growing counties in the state and has a major research university.”
Shay knew that; she’d studied the maps when she first arrived, trying to figure out where she was. She hadn’t known about Aidan buying land in LaFayette, though. “How does that impact us?”
“I have a job proposition for you.” Aidan smiled. “You can set up an independent research lab, either in LaFayette or at the research park in Auburn, in Lee County. I’d like you to try finding a permanent anti-vaccine for the vampire population in the long term and, in the short term, work on ways to scale production of the version we have.”
Shay’s head spun. She could easily legitimize the research. The pandemic vaccine that zapped the vampires had made some humans sick, hadn’t worked on others, and obviously had a side effect in the blood no one anticipated. There would eventually be another avian or swine flu, and her work could help develop a more effective vaccine, and do it faster.
“Okay, I’m intrigued. But there are still issues, you know. The baby.”
“That’s the exciting part to me.” Krys leaned forward, her dark-brown eyes sparkling. “We’re going to start repopulating Penton back to its pre-pandemic population of about 300, and rebuild the town. But this time, we’ll allow familiars with children to join the community. The families can live in Penton, or they can live in Aidan’s properties in LaFayette. There are schools in LaFayette. Churches. Doctors.”
Aidan stood up and began pacing. “We’ll have to feel our way through it, of course. Families will have to agree to keep the vampires’ identities a secret, but lots of men work night shifts and aren’t around in the evenings.”
Nik grinned. “I could keep Lydia during the day while you slave away at the lab.”
Shay leaned back on the sofa, thinking of the reasons why it wouldn’t work. “Kids talk. They ask questions. How can you guarantee it won’t get out?”
“I think we can contain it,” Aidan said. “Say a kid tells his friend that his dad’s a vampire or Uncle Nik is a vampire. Who will believe the child? We’ll have to work with the kids so they don’t get bullied and understand why it’s important to keep it a secret, but if it slips out, master vampires can modify memories and do cleanup.”
Modify memories? First time Shay had heard that. She shifted a squinty glimpse at Nik, who shrugged. “I’m barely even a vampire. I’m sure not a master vampire. Don’t worry about me.”
“What do you think?” Krys said. “I wish you’d seen Penton before all this mess started. It was the best little town in the world.”
Shay could believe that, and realized it wasn’t just Nik she’d miss if she took Lydia back to New Orleans or started over somewhere entirely new. She’d made a lot of friends here, from gruff Mirren to feisty little Robin. If she didn’t stay, she’d never know what happened with Cage’s arm or the prosthetics Will was trying to develop for his own damaged leg. She’d miss Glory’s plans to open a restaurant and Krys’s plans to reopen the clinic and find a human doctor to work daytime hours. She’d miss Mirren turning his training center into the thing it had been built for.
She’d miss seeing people she cared about truly happy for the first time, living the way they had envisioned Penton from the beginning.
She wanted Lydia to know them too, and she and Nik would explain vampires to their daughter when they needed to. Until then, she’d compartmentalize.
A silence had fallen over the room and Shay felt the weight of three pairs of glowing eyes boring into her—gold, silvery brown, and icy blue. They couldn’t all be hungry, so she must be stressing them out while waiting for an answer.
Nik took her hand. “What do you say?”
Shay had never felt more certain. “I say yes.”
Epilogue * Mirren
SIX MONTHS LATER—Nik went flying across the width of the training floor, crashing headfirst into the heavily padded wall.
“Hell, Zorba, you were supposed to be stronger as a vampire. You fight like one of your little girls.” Hannah might not have Nik’s legal name or appear on any papers, but she and that plug-ugly dog Barnabas were happy members of Penton’s first official family unit.
“Screw you, Kincaid.” Nik climbed to his feet, rubbing his head. “Can’t help it if the Terminator over there has new special powers, and I don’t just mean the ones he gained by becoming a master vampire.”
Cage flexed the robotic arm he’d had surgically attached two months earlier by a brilliant orthopedic surgeon who, sadly, no longer remembered doing his vampire surgery. The same guy, a hotshot in Birmingham who fixed up athletes from around the world, would be working on Will Ludlam’s leg before long. In the meantime, Will was getting a beat-down from his mate, Randa, near the exit to the tunnels.
In another corner, Robin was taking on Archer and his twin brother, Aaron. Mirren couldn’t tell them apart, but the little eagle shifter was holding her own—until one of the kitties got her in a headlock and decided to spank her.
Aw, shit. She was going to blow a gasket.
By the time Nik and Will pulled them apart, Robin had gotten a knee to Archer’s groin and a fist punch to the Aaron’s gut—or vice-versa.
“They’re all looking pretty good, don’t you think?” Aidan had walked up beside him, arms crossed, watching the sparring. “When do you think Colonel Thomas will be ready to put a team into action?”
“Within another six months at the most, I think. He’ll want to find the right case.” They’d been meeting with the colonel regularly since Aidan had reformed the Tribunal. Aidan had taken the
director’s spot, basing the group in Atlanta, and each member had been hand-picked from around the globe to support the new vampire social arrangements. Every scathe leader in the world had to sign a pledge of peace before receiving a starter supply of the anti-vaccine, along with the formula. The colonel sat in on Tribunal meetings, which had caused some grumbling at first.
The colonel could handle a few grumbling vampires. Randa’s father was the human equivalent of Mirren himself. In fact, Mirren wasn’t sure he’d want to take the man on.
Mirren and Aidan walked outside the training center and sat on the front steps, enjoying the late summer night air. It smelled of pine and flowers—the latter the result of the setup for Nik and Shay’s wedding in a couple of days.
The lights of Gloriana’s Café shone from the rebuilt main street, and a smattering of people walked down the sidewalks toward the theater, which had reopened last weekend with the ever-popular Twilight marathon. The vampires never grew tired of it.
“Remind you of anyplace you’ve been before?” Aidan smiled.
“Yeah.” Mirren returned his smile. “It reminds me of home.”
Acknowledgments
Thanks to all the readers who have waited so patiently for the conclusion to this story arc for the Penton vampires and their familiars (and an occasional shifter or two). As always, a special thanks to developmental editor Dianne Ludlam, who always keeps me on track, and a special shout-out to Isabelle and Roger, who sped through a beta read of the manuscript in record time. You guys rock!
About the Author
Susannah Sandlin writes award-winning paranormal romance, including the popular Penton Legacy series, and romantic suspense, including two series, The Collectors and Wilds of the Bayou. Writing as Suzanne Johnson, she writes the Sentinels of New Orleans urban fantasy series. Susannah grew up in Alabama halfway between the Bear Bryant Museum and Elvis’s birthplace and lived in New Orleans for fifteen years, so she has a highly refined sense of the absurd and an ingrained love of SEC football and fried gator on a stick. After a career in the rarified air of higher education publishing, she currently lives in Auburn, Alabama, about twenty-five miles from Penton, where she is a full-time author and copyeditor.
Illumination (The Penton Vampire Legacy Book 5) Page 30