Redemption (The Penton Vampire Legacy) (29 page)

Two hours before dawn, Aidan slumped in an armchair in Krys’s room, where he’d been parked for the past four hours, cell phone to his ear. Damned thing might as well have been attached.

“No signs of Owen, but Will and I caught a couple of his scathe behind the mill,” Mirren said. “I used some friendly persuasion on them, but they didn’t give up anything we could use.”

Aidan couldn’t imagine his brother earning enough loyalty from his scathe members for them to withstand Mirren’s persuasion. In his days as the Slayer, he’d specialized in slow dismemberment. Or so he’d heard.

He doubted Owen had told his makeshift scathe members that Matthias was behind him—the promise of feeding on Penton’s humans would have been enough to keep them around these days.

So Owen had lost at least four scathe members tonight. How many could he have left?

“How’s Krys?” Mirren asked. “Mel thought we got to her in time.”

Aidan looked at her still form, dark hair spread over the pillow. Still pale, but looking a hell of a lot better than she had four hours ago. “Took more than two pints of blood, but she finally came ’round. She’s sleeping now.” He’d been tempted to erase her memories, fill her head with the suggestion that she’d had an accident. That skill was one of the perks of being a master vampire. But he was pretty sure that she’d rather remember what happened, no matter how ugly, than have him mess with her mind.

Mirren’s voice jarred him back to business. “Tim says the fams want to take action. They’re ready to go all vigilante and do a serious suntime hunt for Owen’s scathe—they’ll comb the whole county. You just need to say the word.”

Fifty vampires, most of whom had joined his scathe precisely because they didn’t want to spend their lives fighting and hunting prey. One hundred and twenty-five humans. The numbers were on his side if the fams hunted in daylight—Krys had been right about that. Owen couldn’t have that many with him and keep them hidden this well, especially after tonight.
If something went wrong, though, none of the scathe would be around to help. But he had to be practical.

“OK, put together a plan for the day after tomorrow. I don’t want them going out half-cocked and unorganized, and it’s too close to dawn to plan tonight. Get the lieutenants together tomorrow after rising. Seven o’clock. My house.”

Krys groaned and moved restlessly under the heavy quilts, riveting Aidan’s attention back to her. He ended the call with Mirren and stuck the phone in his pocket. She’d begun moving an hour ago, which Melissa seemed to think was a good sign.

Melissa had been amazing. After she’d thrown them out of the room, she’d gotten Krys out of her wet clothes and into a sweater and flannel sweatpants before having him take her downstairs. Now Krys’s color had returned, but she still looked so fragile lying there with the thick swathe of bandages on her neck.

He walked around the bed and eased himself down next to her, where he’d spent most of the last two hours. She was less restless when he held her, or at least he told himself so as he carefully stretched an arm across her and pulled her close. He’d done the one thing that he’d vowed never to do again. Make that two things. He’d let himself care too much, and he’d let her get hurt because of him.

He buried his face in her tangle of hair. He could still smell the rain, the blood, even goddamned Owen. But underneath it was Krys, and he would rip apart anyone who came near her again.

“Aidan?” Krys’s voice was no more than a hint of a whisper.

“It’s OK,
grádhág
. You’re OK.”
Beloved.
Where had that come from? He stroked her shoulder, and she turned to look at him through shuttered lids.

She blinked at him sleepily, and her voice sounded as if it had been mixed with gravel. “What happened?” Her eyes grew round as she remembered, and she tried to sit up. “Oh my God. Owen.”

She reached for her throat and ran her hand along the thick layer of bandages.

“It’s OK,” he repeated, rubbing her arm and easing her back onto the pillow. “You’re going to be fine. We found you in time and gave you a transfusion.”

He waited for her to chastise him for not taking her to a hospital, but her mouth quirked. “You gave
me
blood?”

Smiling, he smoothed a curl away from her face as she closed her eyes. She was a freakin’ miracle—making a joke when most people would be hysterical. “Yeah, imagine that.”

He thought she’d gone back to sleep, but she spoke again. “I’m sorry I ran.”

The words pierced him, and he buried his face in her hair again, his hand atop hers. She was apologizing? “I should have warned you about Owen more, made you understand how dangerous it is out there. You’re more vulnerable than our people because you aren’t bonded to any of us.”

“I’m like a free-range chicken.”

He pulled her closer to him and she settled against him with a sigh. How the hell could she joke? She was too good for him, for any of them, and he needed to get her out of here.

“It’s almost dawn,” he said. “I’ll take you out of Penton tomorrow night, I promise. Back to Americus. Wherever you want to go.”

He looked down to see her reaction but she’d fallen asleep. He kissed her cheek and pulled away from her. Could he do it?
Let her go, try to wipe her memories clean of him, and never see her again?

“Don’t do it, Aidan.” Melissa stood in the door—and obviously had been eavesdropping. “I’ve never seen you like this around anyone, and she feels the same way. If you take her back to Georgia, you’re a damned fool.”

“It’s almost dawn. I’m out of here.” Aidan looked at his fam sharply as he brushed past her. “Stay out of this, Mel. It’s none of your business.”

He stomped into the clinic parking lot and came up short. His car was still at the restaurant; he’d ridden here with Mirren. He pulled the phone from his pocket, and then shoved it back in. The walk might do him good; help flatten this screwed-up swirl of feelings.

His anger at Owen had lain dormant a long time. Out of sight, out of mind. Turned out it had just been festering. Seeing his brother with Krys had brought back all the old nightmares: Owen with Abby, her blood on his face, Aidan holding her while she died.

He’d reached the edge of his yard and circled to the greenhouse. Faint light from the street filtered through its retractable glass, illuminating the neat aisles and giving the flowers a luminescent glow.

What a joke. Another place for him to play at being human, when he’d seen the truth tonight. He wasn’t any better than Owen was. He’d wanted to hold Krys in his arms and drain every bit of blood from her. Would he have been able to stop had Mirren not been there? Now she was going to pull through and he wanted to lock her up where no one but him could ever touch her again. The only way he knew to keep her safe was to get her away from Penton, and away from him. If he loved
her—and after tonight, he realized that he did love her, God help him—he’d do that for her.

He ran his hand along the smooth wooden shelves that held the plants, stopping at the night-blooming hibiscus, the deep burgundy throats of the blooms paling to almost white at the edges. Like the eyes of a hungry vampire. He plucked a bloom from the plant and crushed it in his fist, and then toppled the whole shelf with a satisfying crash of broken glass and bent metal shelving.

“Make you feel better, did it?”

Aidan whirled to see Mirren’s bulk shadowed in the greenhouse door.

“Yeah, as a matter of fact. It did.”

He reached for another shelf and sent pots and plants into a heap of blooms and dirt, and reached for another, then another.

The world spun, and he found himself on his belly, one of Mirren’s big boots on the small of his back, a hand the size of a dinner plate clamped on the back of his head, pressing his face into the dirt.

“I don’t like where you’re headed, A. I’m not letting you go there. You hear me?”

Aidan pushed himself up with his hands, only to have Mirren put more weight on the foot and shove him back down.

“Remember where and when you met the famous Slayer?”

Aidan tried to shut him out, but couldn’t help remembering Mirren thinner even than Owen’s skinny wraiths, starving himself, making himself too weak to be the Tribunal’s paid killer after he decided that the people he worked for were bigger monsters than the ones he was being told to kill. Aidan had heard tall tales of a fanged man living in the woods outside Atlanta during the Civil War, daring soldiers to shoot him, occasionally
killing one. He’d managed to track him down, helped him fake his death, and kept him off the Tribunal’s radar. Until now.

The hand on his head pressed harder, and Aidan had to clamp his lips shut to avoid eating dirt.

“Tell me you remember.”

“Mmmph.”

The pressure on his neck and back disappeared, and Aidan sat up, spitting soil. “Not the same, Mirren. I’m not suicidal.”

“The hell you’re not. You’ve built Penton into somewhere we can all have a life, not just an eternity of the same old empty shit. You get your ass killed, that’s fine, my friend. But stop and think what’s going to happen to everybody else who’s here.”

“You could run the town.”

“You’re right, Aidan. I could.” He turned and walked toward the door. “But I won’t.”

K
rys burrowed under the quilts and cracked one eye open. She pulled her wrist in front of her face to check the time but her watch was gone. Had she forgotten to put it on?

She fought off a panic attack as it all came back to her. Taking deep breaths, she reached a tentative hand to her neck and flinched at the shot of pain when she touched the bandages. She hadn’t dreamed it. Aidan’s brother had attacked her. A vampire had attacked her.
And another one saved me.

She vaguely remembered Owen dropping her on the ground, then Aidan lying on the bed next to her before she’d fallen asleep. Everything else was a blur.

The bed creaked as she threw the covers back and sat up, bracing herself with her hands until her head quit spinning. She felt fuzzy and heavy-limbed. How much blood had she lost? A bandage circled her forearm, and she pulled it off to see the needle mark. She vaguely remembered Melissa giving her blood.

Holding onto the furniture for balance, Krys beat a slow path to the bathroom. A digital clock had been placed on the
dresser since the last time she’d been here. Three p.m. Holy cow. She’d been out at least fourteen hours.

She used the bathroom, and then stopped in front of the dressing table mirror. Framed by her dark hair, her face looked almost translucent.
I look more like a vampire than the vampires do.

Splashing her face with warm water helped. Her brain started working better, and she felt as though she’d only had a few beers instead of a case of Irish whiskey.

She took a shower, careful to keep the bandages on her neck dry and still wash her hair—no easy task. Bits of dried blood were caked in her scalp, smeared across her shoulders, even on her hands. She scrubbed so hard her skin burned under the water, but she wanted all traces of Owen gone.

She pulled on a loose sweatshirt and jeans, brushed the tangles from her hair, and went back to wait for Aidan. She started the fire and sank into the sofa, leaning against the back cushions and concentrating on her breathing. No thoughts of Owen—her only focus was on the one decision she’d come to during her periods of waking and sleeping. Aidan wouldn’t like it, but she would insist.

At six, the knock at her door set her heart racing, but her first thought when she opened the door was how exhausted he looked. She wanted to help him but his problems were far beyond her abilities. She’d been naïve to think she could do anything more than be there for him.

His expression brightened as he scanned her face. “You’re looking really good after what you went through last night. You scared me.” He sat beside her on the sofa and pulled the bandage away from her neck, wincing at her hiss of pain. “Sorry. It’s healing fast, though. It’ll heal better without the bandage.”

“Uh, doctor here. Remember?”

He smiled. “Right. You would know that.”

She finished pulling the bandage off and tossed it on the coffee table, running her fingers along the wounds that had begun to scab. “It’s healing a lot faster than it should, actually. Did you do something? Your saliva has a clotting agent in it, right? My memories are fuzzy.”