Redemption (The Penton Vampire Legacy) (38 page)

He wrapped his good arm around her, and she settled against him under the sheet. “I hate it that you were hurt. The mating bonds can’t be severed the way I can cut off the lieutenants or the fams.”

She thought about that for a few moments. “I’m glad you can’t cut our bond. If you need to pull energy from me, I want you to be able to do that.”

He pulled her more tightly against him. “We need to practice communicating mentally. It’s something Mirren, Will, Hannah, and I can do, and now that we’re mated, it should work with you. Just takes concentration—”

A knock on the door interrupted him, and Will stuck his head in. “We’re here—you ready to talk?”

“Yeah. Just sit wherever.” Aidan eased himself up till he was propped against the headboard, and Krys stuffed a couple of pillows behind him.

Will took an armchair beside the bed. “Krys, love, maybe you could go downstairs, make sure everything’s ready when Mirren takes Aidan down later.”

She was being dismissed so that the big bad vampires could have their secret meeting? She nodded and tried to get up, but Aidan held her in place. “Stay. You need to be up to speed on whatever we decide to do.” He closed his eyes and waited while Mirren and Hannah came in and found places to perch.

Krys met Will’s eyes. They were golden brown, steady, serious, and doubtful. If Aidan wanted her here, she was staying, and if Will wanted a pissing match, she’d give it to him.

Finally, he nodded. “Sorry. You’re Aidan’s mate—gotta remember that. Just whack me upside the head if I forget again.”

K
rys traced her fingers across Aidan’s face: the contours of his cheekbones, the crease in his left cheek that turned into sexy personified when he smiled, the long lashes for which any woman she knew would kill.

He lay on his back, his legs tangled in the soft white sheets, his upper body bare. She traced her fingers along the smooth, strong chest, then reached over and lifted the bandage off his left shoulder. The skin beneath it was unmarked. He’d said it would heal as soon as he slept, and it had. She’d already checked his thigh, and it was almost healed, only a scabbed-over cut remaining.

Only this wasn’t sleep, really, was it?

She settled back in bed next to him, keeping a hand on the cool skin of his chest. Not cold like a corpse, but not warm like a living human, either. Mirren had helped him down to his safe suite after the lieutenants’ meeting, and when she’d climbed into bed with him, he’d been warm. She grinned. Well, more than warm.

Not that she got tired of looking at him, but she was bored. He’d made her promise to stay in his quarters throughout his daysleep. She loved going to sleep in his arms, but she had to admit that it was beyond weird to wake up next to him while he was...down. Out. Unconscious. Day-tripping. Even he couldn’t tell her where he went during daylight hours.

Wherever it was, he had healed. Krys kissed his shoulder and slid out of bed, grabbing yesterday’s clothes and heading for the bathroom. She looked at her watch, and then did a double take. Past noon already.

She looked back at Aidan, then at her clothes. She needed to move some stuff over here since it seemed she’d be waking up here a lot. Pulling on her jeans and sweater and tugging on her boots, she slipped out of the bedroom and closed the door softly behind her, not that Aidan would hear a bomb detonate during his daysleep.

She would take shower at home and get clean clothes. Then she’d run by the clinic and check on the patients who were still there. She’d be back long before Aidan awoke. Plus, she was hungry.

Krys climbed the ladders into Aidan’s kitchen and replaced the locking mechanism the way he’d shown her. She paused to look out the kitchen window. The day was overcast and looked cold and damp. Bare branches of oak trees along the street rustled in the wind, and tall loblolly pines swayed like giant rubber straws.

She didn’t have her coat with her, so she grabbed Aidan’s leather jacket off the sofa and enveloped herself with his scent. It made her smile as she left his house, locking the door behind her and running next door to her own house. Hers. She’d already begun to think of it that way, although she guessed
that eventually she’d move in with Aidan. Whatever he wanted. Boy, had her tune changed in the last month.

As she went into the tiny foyer of her house and closed the door, she glanced out the sidelight at Mark and Melissa’s. Both cars were gone. Mark was probably trying to follow up on some of the people Hannah hadn’t been able to eliminate from the list of possible traitors, and Melissa was already at the clinic.

Fifteen names. The girl had gone through the entire list, saying each name aloud and closing her eyes, seeing God only knew what. Then she’d either pronounce them faithful or say she couldn’t be sure. There were fifteen “not sures,” four of them fams; the rest, relatives of fams. She’d bet it was one of the relatives—fewer personal connections.

Krys sighed and went through the house to her bedroom, opening the closet and dresser and pulling out clothes. She paused, listening. Had that been the door? She waited a few seconds and then shook her head.
Get a grip, woman. These vampires are making you jumpy.

She took the pile of clothes with her into the hallway and made a left toward the small bathroom, then heard it again. Someone
had
been at the door.

She laughed at her jitters and peeked through the window again. It was Jerry, the guy from the town meeting who’d joked with Aidan and been injured in the mill village fire. Probably wanted to know how the injured guys were doing.

She smiled and pulled the door open.

Jerry took off his baseball cap. “Hi Dr. Krys. Can I come in?” He kept talking as Krys moved aside for him to enter. “I just wanted to thank you for all you did for the guys yesterday, and for Tim. We’re just torn up about what happened to Tim.” He twisted the cap in his meaty hands.

Krys nodded. “It’s OK. I wish I could have done more for him. He seemed like a really nice guy.”

“He was the best.” Jerry took a seat but seemed nervous, fidgety.

“Was there something else you needed?” Krys asked.

“Uh, well.” He straightened out his Braves cap and settled it back on his head. “Aidan’s, uh, asleep?”

Krys frowned at him. “You can talk to him about five, but you know that. What’s up?” She wondered if he had a medical problem that he didn’t want anyone to know about.

“I need you to come with me.” He stood up and faced her, his fists clenching and unclenching.

“What?” Krys smiled. “To the clinic? Is somebody hurt?”

Even as she asked the question, her internal alarms finally rang. She should have been more wary. Jerry was on that list of fifteen don’t-knows, and he was jittery. She began edging toward the front door.

“Gotta take you to the mill,” he said. “He promised he wouldn’t hurt you if you don’t give him trouble. He just wants Aidan.”

A rivulet of sweat ran down Jerry’s forehead as he adjusted his cap again. Krys felt the familiar slide of fear, and took another step toward the door.

“Why would you help him? Isn’t your sister one of the fams here?”

Jerry moved quickly between Krys and the door, his beefy face red and twisting in anger. “She’s brainwashed, like all of you damned fools. You’re a doctor, for God’s sake. You should know better than to drink their Kool-Aid. She had some problems before she came here, but at least she had a life.”

Krys made a run for the door, but Jerry grabbed her arm and jerked her around to face him. She kicked him in the knee—hard—and he let her go. She scrambled away again, heading toward the back door this time. If she could get into the woods, she could get away from him. No way she’d lead him into Aidan’s house.

“You bitch. Think you’re too damned good for a human man, don’t you?” He tackled her around the waist before she cleared the living room door, and she landed on her stomach hard, with Jerry on top of her. As Krys struggled to get away, she felt a hot jolt shoot through her hip, sending pain down her leg and numbing the right side of her body.

It took a few seconds for her brain to reconnect and figure out what was happening. Taser. She felt another zap on her belly, and her arms drew in, the muscles in her shoulders and neck tightening. She couldn’t control them. She couldn’t do anything but lie on the floor and try to remember to breathe. How the hell was she going to get away from him?

A ripping sound drew her attention, and she shifted her eyes to see Jerry pulling a long length of silver duct tape off the roll. She tried to will her legs to move, and they did. Just a little. Just enough to make her muscles burn and itch.

“Yeah, you stupid bitches want your vampire lovers to just suck the life out of you, don’t you? Don’t want a real man. Don’t want a real life.”

While he ranted, Jerry wrapped tape around her ankles several times before pulling a penknife from his pocket and slicing through the end of the tape. Her wrists followed, and a length across her mouth, as if she could utter more than a moan anyway.

“You like damn bloodsuckers so much, I’m gonna take you to a new one. I don’t like Aidan’s brother any more than him, but at least the SOB wants to break up this zoo, and I can get my sister out of here.”

He grunted as he hauled her over his shoulder like a sack of trash, walked out the front door, and threw her in the back of his pickup. She landed hard on her side, and her head thumped on the truck bed hard enough to send shards of bright light behind her eyeballs.

Then she was bouncing through the cold day, watching a wrench slide around in a puddle of damp leaves in front of her face. She tried to look above her for landmarks, till finally the red brick of the old cotton mill’s second story rose above the side of the truck, filling her limited horizon. Jerry had brought her to Owen, and in a few hours he’d be awake.

Krys kept her eyes closed until the sounds around her died down and she thought she was alone. Jerry had hauled her into the main factory space of the mill at first, leaving her on the concrete floor surrounded by dust and cotton lint and the accumulated grime of a century of mill workers and machinery.

With her were two women bound and gagged, dirty and ragged. Probably some of the human fams Aidan’s people hadn’t been able to free. They watched her with dead eyes and weren’t in any position to help her even if they’d wanted to. She tried to relax her muscles to ease the pull of the tape, and focused on her breathing. She had to play this smart, if she got a chance to play at all.

She cracked open an eye at the sound of movement nearby and came eye-to-toe with Jerry Caden’s boots.

“Your new master’ll be up soon, Doc. Gotta get you ready.” He grabbed a handful of her hair in his meaty fist and pulled her to her feet before remembering that her legs were still taped together. Cursing, he hefted her up again, his shoulder slamming into her gut and making her gag.

His breathing grew ragged as he slowly shuffled up a long flight of wide concrete stairs, and Krys hoped he didn’t have a heart attack. If he’d remove the tape on her wrists and ankles, she’d have a better chance of escaping Jerry than any of the vampires. If Owen got her again, he’d hold her as bait for Aidan, and God knew what he could do to her before help arrived.

Jerry finally heaved himself to the top stair and shuffled her across a narrow hallway, dropping her to the floor with a thud that sent sharp pain shooting through her hip and shoulder as she tried to keep her head from bouncing off the concrete. He left her there, closing the door behind him.

Krys struggled to a sitting position and looked around. The floor was concrete, the cinder-block walls painted institutional puke green. Probably some midlevel bean counter’s office during the mill’s glory days. A couple of cracked, grimy windows—the ones that weren’t broken—let in a murky bit of light. Looked like late afternoon, but dark would creep in early, urged by heavy clouds and the threat of more snow.

Pushing with her legs, she propelled herself backward until she was wedged into the corner of the room farthest from the door, her back against the wall. The pain and heat and itch of the Taser had worn off, leaving her with only a dull ache in her muscles and the threat of cramps where the tape had caught her arms and legs in an unyielding, unnatural position for so long.