Absolution (39 page)

The clinic explosion had collapsed the building into the basement, and while the subbasement was intact, Mirren had been afraid the ceiling was compromised and the whole thing might rain tons of debris on their heads during his daysleep. So he’d dragged a mattress and blankets into the tunnel, found some bandages for her shoulder and his neck, and was out almost before he’d fully reclined.

Glory wondered what time it was—her watch hadn’t survived the night. She clicked on the battery-operated fluorescent lantern they’d pulled out of one of the suites, but it gave her no clue as to the time of day.

She wondered if Matthias had stayed in Penton, waiting like a patient, mad dog to tear into any of them who showed their faces.

She wondered how they were going to get to Omega since Will hadn’t had the chance to show them where the remote entrance was.

She wondered if they could survive this, if Penton could be rebuilt, or if she and Mirren would spend the rest of their days in hiding. He’d killed Renz, yes. But if her taped testimony against Matthias survived, if she could testify that Renz had kidnapped her as well, she might be able to get Mirren freed—he’d been rescuing his mate. Surely, Aidan’s crime—turning Krys vampire to save her life—could be forgiven, although vampire bureaucrats didn’t seem like a forgiving lot.

First, they had to survive tonight.

Finally, Mirren stirred. She propped up on her good elbow and watched his face slowly come to life in the faint lantern light. His chest, with all that tattooed muscle, rose and fell with the first breaths of the night. By the time his eyes opened, she hovered over his face and pressed her lips to his.

“You can do better than that.” His hand slipped behind her head and pulled her to him more tightly, making her wish for a lot more than a kiss. She pulled back and settled on his chest, keeping her left shoulder as immobile as she could.

“We need a plan.”

He rolled over so that she was on her back, his mouth against her ear. “I have a plan.”

“That’s not the kind of plan I meant.” She laughed and pushed him away. “I don’t think this is the time, plus my shoulder is killing me.”

He smiled, that little heart-tugging lift of his lips that she loved. “I’d like to be inside you right now, but I had something more practical in mind.” He carefully peeled the bandages off her shoulder and studied the wound.

It was too far back on her shoulder for Glory to study closely, but she could see reddened, torn skin that needed stitches.

“You know how vampires can heal the puncture wounds after we feed, using our saliva? I’m going to treat your shoulder the same way, so don’t freak out on me.”

“What do you—oh.” Holy Moses, he was licking her shoulder, and it wasn’t the least bit sexy. “That hurts.” She punched him in the arm. “Stop it.”

He pinned her arms to the mattress and kept working until Glory finally quit fighting and let him swipe her shoulder like it was a lollipop. The image made her giggle, and Mirren raised his head.

“You OK?”

“I…” Glory frowned and twisted her head, trying to see her shoulder. “It doesn’t hurt anymore.”

Mirren kissed her and rolled to his feet. “Told you. I wanted to do that last night, but daysleep was on me before I got the chance. Now, the second part of the plan. You feel up to traveling?”

She raised her head to look at him and sighed. “Are we going to try to find Omega?”

Mirren paced in restless circles. “I’m afraid if we just start wandering around and searching for the wooded entrance, we could lead Matthias right to them. We need to go somewhere else, lay low for a while. But I have to go into town first.”

“What?” She sat up and found most of her shoulder pain had disappeared except for a minor twinge. “Why go back? There’s no one there unless it’s Matthias.” The vampire was not going to leave her alone in this tunnel.

“No, there’s one person still in Penton that nobody’s thought about—Lucy Sinclair.”

Glory reached beside the mattress and grabbed a man’s shirt she’d found in one of the suites below the clinic. Hers had been shredded by Matthias’s bullet and soaked in her own blood.

“Who is Lucy Sinclair?” The name sounded familiar, but she couldn’t place it.

“One of our lieutenants who was tortured by Aidan’s brother. Her mind’s broken. I wanted to put her out of her misery then, but Krys was too softhearted, hoped Lucy might recover. We’ve had her in a cell under the municipal building for the past two months.”

Now Glory remembered. “Are you bringing her with us?” She thought she knew what his answer would be.

“I can’t.” He checked the clip in his gun. “I can’t keep track of her while we’re on the run, and if I let her loose, she’ll end up killing somebody—or a lot of somebodies. But I can’t just leave her there, either.”

Glory was almost dressed. She slid her feet into her boots and pulled the straps tight. “I’m going with you.”

“Glory…” Whatever he was about to say, which was probably to argue and tell her to wait for him here, he thought better of it. “OK, then let’s go.”

CHAPTER 39

W
ill had spent the first half of the previous night burning down the houses of his best friends and tracking the movements of his psychopathic father. He’d been able to track Matthias’s movements until he left the church with a gunshot wound he assumed came at the hands of Mirren, but he’d lost the trail in the soup of blood scent, ash, and smoke that was now downtown Penton.

Two hours before dawn, he’d driven the ’Vette to an auto factory parking lot near West Point, Georgia, parked it among the shift workers’ vehicles, and run by foot the ten miles west across the wooded state line to the Omega entrance.

Before going into his daysleep, he’d gathered with Aidan, Randa, and Hannah—and the newly promoted Cage—and learned that Mirren and Glory had never made it back. Aidan had been trying to contact him mentally but hadn’t succeeded. He’d either left the area, which they thought unlikely, or he was up to his ass in alligators. Will’s money was on the gators.

As soon as he woke for the night, he’d gone back to the small end suite where Aidan and Krys were camped. He knocked and entered without waiting for an answer. Krys was in the bathroom, and if Aidan hadn’t been a master vampire, Will would’ve sworn he’d been crying. “How’s Mark?”

Maybe not crying, but just pissed off. Aidan’s jaw clenched, and the man looked ready to punch something. “Krys says he has a concussion—a pretty serious one. He’s come to, but everyone’s under orders not to tell him about Melissa. Not going to be able to wait much longer, though. He’s already asked for her.”

Will would never forget the callous way his father had just flicked a nod at the baboon next to him and erased that beautiful woman’s life as if it were no more than a minor chess move. Melissa had been Aidan’s fam since before he moved to Penton, and Mark his business manager. He didn’t figure Aidan would be forgetting that sight very soon, either.

But there was another matter that had to take precedence. “I’m going after Mirren.” Will had checked the knives in his pockets and the clip in his .45. God only knew what he’d find out there, but he was ready to face it. And if he got the chance to kill his father, he prayed he had the intestinal fortitude to do it.

Aidan pulled his hair into a ponytail and snapped an elastic band on it. “We’re both going after Mirren.”

Will had been prepared for that and was ready to argue. “Aidan, with Mirren already gone, people are going to freak out if both of us leave. You need to be here with them, and you need to be visible. It’s the only way they’ll stay calm. I can move better alone, and I still don’t think my father will kill me.”

Will wasn’t so sure of that anymore, not after he’d so publicly made himself a pawn last night. The doubtful look on Aidan’s face said he didn’t much believe it, either.

“I don’t like it. Don’t like you going alone, and don’t like having to sit here and do nothing.”

“You are doing something. If the humans—or even the vampires—start a panic down here, we’re all in trouble. The only way Omega works is if we’re in it for the long haul, we think through a strategy, and everybody stays calm.”

“Holy hell.” Aidan sat on the bed with a huff, then nodded at some inner decision. “OK, where’re you going to start looking?”

Good. Aidan had seen reason. “I figure he went to one of the tunnels last night if he was able to find Glory,” Will said. “I left your greenhouse alone when I burned the houses, thinking he might go there. But I’m going to look for him first in town.”

Krys came out of the bathroom, looking as upset as the rest of them. She had definitely been crying; she hadn’t been turned long enough for the tear ducts to stop working. “Why in town?”

“Because we left something behind, and I’m betting if I remembered it, so will Mirren.”

“What?” Krys sat beside Aidan on the bed. “What’s important enough to go back for when Matthias probably has people all over town?”

“Lucy.”

Aidan dropped his head into his hands with a groan. “Shit. You’re right. I can’t believe we forgot her.”

Will looked at Krys, who was focusing on a spot on the rug. “You know we can’t bring her down here, Krys. And we can’t let her go.”

She nodded. “I know.”

“Can you do it?” Aidan eyed Will with more sharp understanding than was comfortable. Will didn’t know the answer to that question. Truth was, he hoped Mirren got there first and killed Lucy himself.

“Sure, no problem.” He avoided Aidan’s gaze and turned toward the door. “You tried to contact Mirren again since you woke?”

“He’s not answering, but it’s probably because of the distance. Ten miles is about as good as the mental stuff gets, and we’re farther than that. But the bonds are still tight. See if you can find him. You want Randa to go with you?”

Will opened the door but looked back over his shoulder. “Hell no.” Truth is, he could probably use her smarts, but she was too annoying. And if he embarrassed himself by not being able to put Lucy out of her misery, he didn’t want Randa to see it.

Will made his way back to the car by eight and decided to help himself to a dark-blue, Korean-made sedan for his return to .Penton. The ’Vette was a beauty, but it wasn’t made for stealth. He drove dark country back roads and parked the car about two miles east of downtown.

Three times, he sensed movement in the woods and scented other vampires. If he scented them, they also scented him, but so far, no one had cared enough to try tracking him. At Aidan’s house, he circled to the backyard, slipped in the greenhouse, and checked the tunnel beneath it.

They’d been here, both of them, and recently. Will scented blood and tracked it to a woman’s shirt. It smelled of Glory and of gunshot residue. A bullet hole had torn through the shoulder, so it wasn’t a killing wound. Since they weren’t here, he had to assume Mirren had been able to treat the injury, which meant he was still healthy himself.

Once he’d checked the suites to make sure they weren’t there, he went back out through the greenhouse and took the wooded trail downtown. Downtown Penton looked like a bomb had been detonated in the middle of Main Street—or several bombs. The superette was still intact, and most of the small stores on either side of the theater. The municipal building had been turned to rubble.

Will made his way toward the back of the building, coming up short when he felt the cold steel of a gun barrel pressed against the back of his neck. “Welcome back, William.”

He scowled. He’d know that slimy drawl anywhere. “Ford. Nice to see you again.”

“Guess the Slayer should’ve killed me when he had the chance.” He pressed his body against Will’s back, his breath hot on his neck next to the gun. “You know what Daddy promised me if I caught you.” He reached around Will and squeezed his crotch. Will gritted his teeth to keep from gasping in pain. “I have a feeling it’s going to take a long time to break you properly too.”

Will would slit his own throat with his own knife before that bastard touched him for real. “Sounds fun, Ford.” He spoke through clenched jaws. “Ready to go? Haven’t been to Miami in a while.”

“Oh, I’m more than ready, but I think you need to get rid of that smart-ass attitude. This might help.”