Omega (8 page)

And if Randa wasn’t in there, maybe Liv was. His feeder was another problem he needed to handle. He’d never led her on, never made her think there was a chance for them being mated, but he knew she wanted it. And he’d been a real asshole lately. Time to suck it up and be honest with her.

Truth was, this whole business with his father had dealt him all he could handle, and Liv would never be more than a casual feeder. She was an enthusiastic lover, but she bored him outside the sheets. Lately, even under the sheets. Maybe it was time for them to have “the talk,” the one where he gave her the
we’ll-always-have-Penton
speech.

He pushed the door open wider, but Liv and Randa were nowhere in sight, only a brunette with one of those short, choppy haircuts, sitting at a small table with her back to the door. A pretty brunette staring into a mirror with a horrified look on her face. Will had thought he knew all the Penton residents at least by sight, especially the ones who’d gone into Omega. This one, he didn’t know.

“Oh!” The woman spotted him in the mirror and turned a wide-eyed face to his.

Holy shit.
“Randa?”

R
anda’s new haircut had been nothing more than an impulsive whack of scissors. The dye job had been courtesy of Liv, whose natural hair color turned out to be a mousy light brown, and she’d had the foresight, or vanity, to move a box of hair dye into Omega with her clothing.

It was a girly kind of fun Randa had seen others have but had never enjoyed herself. Her mom died when she was a kid, and with a military dad and four brothers,
girly
didn’t play well in the Thomas household. She and Liv had made a mess and giggled, and it had been a big release of stress and pressure.

Until Liv went off in search of dinner and Randa looked at herself in the mirror and realized what she’d done. She’d lost herself. When she was turned vampire, she’d lost her humanity. All that had been left of the old Randa Thomas was her hair, and now that was gone. After the laughter died, only the hurt and directionless feeling remained.

And now she had to endure the humiliation of Will standing in the door with his mouth hanging open.

She looked at the floor. “Go ahead, laugh. Everybody else is going to.”

He cleared his throat. “Actually, it’s pretty.” When she looked up, he smiled, and it was such a sweet expression she almost smiled back. Almost. This was Will, after all. It wouldn’t last.

“Why’d you do it?” He walked around her, taking in all sides. “It makes your eyes look greener.”

She hazarded another look at his face, but saw no sign of the jester.

She swiveled to study her image in the mirror again. Her hazel eyes did look a deeper green beside the dark hair, and her skin, always fair, more porcelain. “I did it on impulse, because of something Aidan said last night, about Matthias recognizing me by my hair if I got caught while I was on patrol.”

Will sat on the edge of the bed. “Maybe. But if he got close enough, Matthias would scent Mirren’s bond on you no matter what your hair looked like.” Aidan required all his scathe members to be blood-bonded to either Mirren or himself, partly so they could use their mental connection to find anyone who was in trouble. But Randa knew a big part of the reason also was so that they’d know if anyone tried to defect or betray them. Since they’d been sold out by a former human in January—a big screwup that ended up with Krys getting turned to save her life—they’d also required all humans to be blood-bonded to a master vampire whether they were fams or not.

She sighed. “Well, it’s done. And, uh, why are you turning green?”

He held up his paint-covered right hand. “It’s a fashion statement. Like it?”

“About as much as I like my hair. What’s planned for tonight—more patrols? Or are you taking some people to Opelika?”

Will told her what happened in the exit room, including how he got his hand covered in green paint, and all thoughts of silly things like hair fled. Dogs were bad, bad news. Randa didn’t know how canine noses compared with those of master vampires, but she’d put money on the dogs. Guess it was time for her new look to make its debut.

“We need to convince Mirren to fill in that space.” And she’d smelled enough food scents wafting from the kitchen area to know exactly where he was. Glory had taken charge of the kitchen. She also ate about an hour before Mirren woke from daysleep and wanted to feed so her blood would carry traces of whatever she’d consumed. Randa thought it was kind of gross, but it seemed to work for them.

She followed Will into the hall, and they walked side by side toward the kitchen wing. He kept turning to look at her.

“What? If you’re going to laugh at me, go ahead and do it.”

He held up his hands in self-defense. “I didn’t say a word.” But he grinned so broadly his fangs showed. Damned vampire. She’d known the kinder, gentler Will would be a short-lived thing. He’d shown amazing self-restraint so far.

Sure enough, Mirren was sitting at one of the tables in the community dining room outside the kitchen, with Glory on his lap. God, what would it feel like to have a man look at her the way Mirren looked at his mate? He was the biggest badass Randa had met—and she’d met a lot of them on military bases—but his features grew almost soft when he looked at Glory. And the way he was looking at her now, they’d have
been off doing something more intimate if Will and Randa had arrived any later.

Will coughed, a bit too loud and obvious to be natural, and Randa could’ve sworn Mirren growled at him. Then the big man’s gaze landed on Randa and his annoyed frown gave way to a surprised frown. “What the fuck did you do to your hair?”

Glory thumped Mirren on the head, slid off his lap, and stood with her hands on her hips, studying Randa and ignoring her mate’s grumbling. “I like it. Turn around.”

The couple dozen people sitting in the big dining room swiveled to look as well.

Terrific.
She turned slowly, letting everyone get an eyeful.

“I think it was a good move.” Glory picked some dishes off the table next to Mirren and took them to the sink. “I mean, your red hair is gorgeous, but it’s such an unusual color it drew attention to you, even when you stuck it under a cap. You can blend in better now, and once all this crap is over, you can always strip the dye out and grow it back out. Or you might decide you want to keep it this way so you can—”

Mirren interrupted. “Glory, st—”

“Yeah, yeah, vampire. ‘Stop,’ he always tells me. He thinks I talk too much.”

Mirren raised an eyebrow, but he looked more amused than angry. “You guys patrolling downtown tonight, or you want the Opelika run?”

“We need to talk first.” Will put an arm around Glory and hugged her. Randa had seen them together a couple of times before Matthias’s attack had driven everyone underground, and they seemed close. Not close enough for Mirren to get jealous—even Will wasn’t that much of a playboy. He just had an easy way with people, except her.

Had that been her fault? Maybe so. But he’d done his part too.

Cage and Hannah were already in the conference room—Hannah had known they needed to meet. Aidan was talking to Mark, she said in her solemn, adult-child way, and would be there soon.

“Mark thinks he wants to leave, but he will die if he does.” Hannah fiddled with a tassle on her pink boots, still a little girl in so many ways. “He will use drugs again, like he did before he met Aidan. He has to stay here even though his future…” She stopped and shook her head, a frown wrinkling her smooth forehead.

Cage leaned toward Hannah. “What do you see in his future?”

“I don’t know.” Her voice rose on the last word, and she threw her Hello Kitty purse across the room. It hit the concrete wall and spilled little girl purse things on the floor: a tube of lip gloss, a pen, a notebook, a mirror. Randa slipped out of her chair and began gathering the items and putting them back in the bag. Will leaned over and handed her a pink cell phone that had skidded near his foot. Not that they could get signals down here, but they all still carried phones. She and Will exchanged uneasy glances.

Cage spoke softly to Hannah. Her adult familiars, who’d acted as her parents for the past three years, had reluctantly left her behind to return to Atlanta. She was using a substitute feeder she shared with Cage, and Randa wondered how much of her frustration was not being able to control her psychic abilities and how much was losing the fams she’d come to think of as more family than familiar. Maybe Cage could help her.

Being a vampire might give you immortality—as long as no one chopped off your head, scrambled your brains, tore out
your heart, or threw you into a sunlit field—but it exacted a terrible toll on family. For a few moments, Randa let her mind go to a dangerous place, to her twin brother, Rory. Until last month, she’d been able to keep up with her dad and brothers by following Rory’s blog. She knew their next-oldest brother, Robbie, was engaged and that the eldest had his first baby on the way. Rory was unsettled after his army discharge, playing in a band and trying to find himself.

They all thought Randa had died, and life inevitably had gone on.

A month ago, Rory had stopped blogging for no reason she could discern. Before Matthias had invaded Penton, Randa had hoped to take some time off, drive to Tennessee where he was living, and try to spot him. Just to make sure he was OK. Now that wasn’t going to happen, not for a while.

The Penton scathe was her family now, and she wouldn’t leave them.

She shook off the worry and returned to her seat, sliding the Hello Kitty bag across the table to Hannah. The girl was staring at the clasped hands resting in her lap and seemed still and closed off. Cage looked at Randa and shook his head.

“What’s up?” Aidan came into the room but stood in the doorway instead of sitting. Things with Mark must have been bad. His injury during the attack on Penton had at least spared him the sight of watching Melissa die. Things were grim for Penton, and she wasn’t sure Aidan could convince Mark that living here was worth slogging through.

Like quite a few of Penton’s humans, Mark had struggled with drug addiction before meeting Aidan. The scathe leader took hard cases from the Atlanta shelters, many of whom were unvaccinated, and helped them through withdrawal with a
combination of enthrallment and counseling. They were clean by the time he told them what he was and gave them the option of coming to Penton or trying to forge their old lives back together on their own. There was a no-relapse policy, though. Anyone who slipped got their memories wiped and a trip back to Atlanta.

Randa was pretty sure Aidan wouldn’t let Mark return to that life, even if he didn’t believe in keeping people in Penton against their will. If he had doubts, Hannah’s insight into Mark’s future would convince him.

After a quick update on Mark, Aidan turned his attention to Will. “Tell me what’s going on.” Will gave a concise account of the dogs and what he’d tried to do to mask the scents, but Aidan was frowning by the time he finished.

“Closing up that exit has to be first priority. Mirren, I know you don’t like leaving us with a single exit, so get to work figuring out how to get the manpower to create a new one.”

Mirren leaned against the wall with his arms crossed over his chest. “I’m on it. Until we do fill that exit in, we need to keep armed guards there night and day. I’ll round up human guards for tomorrow’s day shift.”

Randa saw the opening she’d wanted. “I’ll take tonight’s watch.”

Aidan nodded. “You and Will both guard the church exit, I’ll take the back hatch. Cage, you ready to meet Matthias? The sooner we can get info on what he knows and what he has planned, the better. We’ll have to break your bonds to me so Matthias won’t scent you as mine.”

Cage was laser focused, and Randa wondered if she’d ever see him again. Even the least suspicion that he was a plant and Matthias would kill him.

He gave a grim nod. “Ready and steady.”

C
age slung his hastily stuffed backpack over his shoulder, took a deep breath, and walked into downtown Penton. He’d approached from the east side, as if hiking all the way in from Atlanta with nothing to hide.