Omega

by Susannah Sandlin

  Rick’s face hardened. “So you have fake fangs. You think I don’t see all kinds of shit with these kids who think they want to be soldiers? Or who do things like have fake fangs implanted to pretend they’re vampires? All that proves to me is that you’re a sick freak.”

  Man, what a sweetheart.

  “Dad, it’s true. I wouldn’t have believed it either. But that’s who attacked me in the alley in Kabul. He was a local. He dragged me into a small house, and he turned me into one of them. I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t come home because I was afraid I’d hurt you accidentally. I thought it was kinder to let you think I’d died.”

  Randa stood and walked to her father. “I want you to look at my eyes. They change color when I’m stressed or…or other things. They should look silvery because I was so nervous about coming here tonight.”

  She sat next to him, and after a hard glare at Will, Rick turned to look in his daughter’s eyes. Her face wasn’t visible from Will’s angle, but the colonel saw something he didn’t like. He shoved himself away from the table with enough force that Randa was startled. Her chair toppled, dumping her on the floor, where she sat blinking up at her dad. He stood over her with clenched fists and frightened eyes.

  Will was on his feet without thinking, moving to stand next to Randa. He reached down and helped her to her feet, then stepped within biting distance of the colonel. “Sir, it took a lot of courage for your daughter to come here tonight. I can tell you love her, but you need to accept what she’s telling you. She needs your help—we need your help. But only if you can accept what she is.”

  “Or what?” Rick met Will’s gaze, then looked down.

  “Yeah, my eyes get all funny too. It also happens when we’re angry.” And hungry or sexually aroused, but he wouldn’t add that. “Now sit down and let us tell you a few things about vampires. Nobody’s threatening you, but we’re not here to be threatened, either.”

  The colonel sat hard, took a sip of his beer, looked at the bottle, and then drained it. Will went back to his chair and shoved Robbie’s unfinished beer across the table to him. Randa set her chair upright and gave Will what he hoped was a thank-you look and not an I’m-going-to-chew-you-a-new-one look. He wasn’t sure.

  “Randa.” The colonel reached out a hand, and Randa placed hers in it. His fingers curled around hers. “Is this the God’s honest truth? You swear it?”

  She nodded. “I swear on Rory’s memory.”

  “Then explain it to me.”

  Well, at least nobody had been shot yet. No blood. No broken bones. Randa hadn’t been forced to put on a show of feeding from Will—or worse, feeding from her father. She’d go sunbathing before that happened.

  But now, here they sat, and he was waiting for an explanation. “Vampires are real, but they—we—work hard to keep our identities secret.”

  “Why?”

  She’d forgotten her father’s annoying habits of treating conversations like interrogations. But this might be easier if he asked questions and she answered them. “Will can tell me if I’m wrong because he’s been turned a lot longer than me, but I think the feeling is that humans would feel threatened and try to kill us. That we’d end up in a war. That it would stir up more problems than it would be worth.”

  The colonel’s hard gaze slid to Will, who returned the stare without flinching, his golden-brown eyes calm and steady. Randa had never seen him so fierce as when he stood up to her father, and she realized he was a lot stronger than she’d ever given him credit for.

  “How long have you been a vampire, William?” the colonel asked.

  Randa gave Will an imploring look that she hoped conveyed play along. “I was born in 1947 in New York City,” Will said. “I was turned vampire when I was twenty-two, in 1969.”

  Rick picked up Robbie’s beer bottle and drained it. “You’re telling me that you’re…”

  “In my late sixties, in human years.” Will smiled at him. “Obviously, we don’t age.” He pushed his chair back, walked into the kitchen, and pulled another bottle of beer from the fridge. “Here, you might want this.”

  Rick took it without comment. Great, they were bonding. Or not.

  “Here are the basics, Dad. Hollywood has some things right. We don’t age. We’re extremely strong, we—”

  “How strong?” He was frowning, so that meant he was thinking. That was good. At least, she thought it was good.

  She shrugged and walked into the living room, making sure her dad could see her. She leaned over and picked up his recliner without strain, then lifted it above her head.

  “Jesus H. Christ.”

  Randa set it back down and returned to the table. “As I said, we’re extremely strong.” She refused to meet Will’s gaze, because he’d laugh, and then she’d laugh. Dad would not laugh. “We can’t tolerate sunlight—”

  “You don’t sparkle? Do you burst into flames?”

  Randa bit back the urge to tell him he’d learn more if he’d actually let her finish a sentence. At this rate, it would take them a week just to fill him in on what they could and couldn’t do. And he’d been watching too much cable TV.

  “No sparkles. No flames.” She waited to see if he had another question, but he motioned her to go on. “We are not damned, as far as I know—religious objects don’t affect us. We can be photographed. We can see our reflections in mirrors.”

  “Do you drink blood?”

  Ah, yes. There was that little issue. “Yes, we do. But we don’t kill those we feed from.” Well, a white lie. Some did, although, these days, unvaccinated humans were too valuable to waste. She wouldn’t be sharing any of those details for a while.

  “So you don’t eat or drink, and to stay alive, you could feed from me?” He stuck his arm out. “Show me.”

  OK, Dad was getting a little out of hand. Randa looked at Will, who’d stared off into space. She saw the dimples starting to form. Glad he was having fun.

  Feeding could be positively orgasmic, as she’d recently learned, and she did not intend to share that with her father. Thankfully, she had an excuse. “I can’t, Dad, which sort of leads us to why we’re here.”

  He slid his arm back. “I’m listening.”

  Randa wet her lips and looked at her hands, which rested on the table. “I haven’t come before because I didn’t want to endanger you or put you in a position where you were forced to change how you looked at the world, the way I was forced to.”

  Rick picked up the beer bottle, looked at it, and set it back on the table without drinking. Randa was relieved. He was taking her seriously and realized he needed to be sharp. “But something changed, because you’re here now.”

  “Remember the pandemic a few years ago, the one that killed so many people?”

  Rick nodded. “Right. There was a good vaccine developed. I got it. That was about the time you died—changed.”

  Randa looked at Will. “You might be better at explaining this part.” She’d just gone through her transition when the vaccine crisis began. She’d never known any other situation.

  Will leaned back in his chair. “The pandemic vaccine changed human blood chemistry. Just slightly. Not enough to impact people, but it made the blood of any vaccinated human deadly to vampires. If Randa fed from you—or if I did—it would kill us.”

  Rick began to peel the label from the beer bottle, which was sweating small rivulets of water onto the wooden table. “That vaccine was widely distributed,” he said. “So I’m guessing the vampires have a bit of a food shortage.”

  OK, he’d handled it surprisingly well so far and had seen the dilemma quickly. “We do,” she said. “There’s a lot of panic. Desperation. Power struggles.” In their meeting the night before, they’d agreed to not mention some of the real problems—the human trafficking for unvaccinated humans that was being considered for sanctioning by the Tribunal, the violence that wasn’t tied to Penton. And there was a lot of it, she imagined. They’d been pretty isolated the last few months. />
  “Are you starving?” Rick’s eyes roved over his daughter. “Mr. Hendrix looks healthy enough.”

  Randa shot Will a warning look. He usually followed his raised eyebrow with a smart-ass comment. “No. I was lucky to have met someone, a vampire named Aidan Murphy. Aidan bought up all the land around a little ghost town in Alabama, and we moved there. The vampires who are part of his scathe—it’s kind of like a family—and their human familiars live there together. Familiars are humans that willingly feed us. In exchange, we provide them jobs, health care, friendship, protection. So, no, I’m not starving.”

  Rick pushed the bottle away from him. “Now, what are you not telling me?”

  They’d agreed that Will would talk about the Tribunal. He’d had longer to understand the power structure. “There is a ruling body over all the vampires—each country has its own representative. It’s sort of like a vampire version of the United Nations.”

  Rick Thomas snorted. “Sorry. It’s just hard to imagine a group of vampires sitting around a conference table arguing politics.”

  Randa smiled. “It’s a lot like that, from what I understand.”

  “This group, the Tribunal, makes vampire law—like not letting humans know about our existence, not turning humans and creating new vampires without approval, that kind of thing,” Will said. “They see Aidan’s town—our town—as a threat to their authority. Normally, a vampire is a loner. The fact that Aidan has, or had, more than a hundred living together in peace alongside humans is something they couldn’t tolerate. So they started a war.”

  Her dad had been sitting in a relaxed position—well, relaxed for him—leaning back in his chair. At the W word, he straightened slowly. “The vampires are having a war in this country, under our noses, and we don’t know about it? That’s not acceptable.”

  Here was the crucible upon which their future rested, and Randa was tempted to grab the beer bottle and drink it herself. Unfortunately, she’d have to down about a case to even get a whisper of a buzz.

  “No, it is not acceptable—we agree,” she said. “And that’s why we need your help.”

  For the next three hours, without divulging names or locations, Randa and Will took turns talking about what Penton had endured at the hands of Matthias, how the humans of Penton had been treated, and why they were there.

  Randa hadn’t been surprised that her dad had picked up on Aidan and Mirren’s success in rehabilitating people with drug and alcohol dependency. He didn’t ask, but she knew him well enough to practically see the wheels turning about programs for veterans.

  Will caught Randa’s eye and tapped his watch. She glanced at hers and saw it was almost 2:00 a.m.

  “We are going to have to leave, Dad. We have to be somewhere safe when the sun rises.”

  The disappointment and disbelief struggled on his face before he got it under control and replaced it with the mask. It made her want to cry.

  “There’s no way you could be safe here? Even in the basement? Do you really have to crawl back in some underground hole in order to be safe?”

  Randa hesitated. The basement of her grandparents’ house could easily be made lighttight, but did she trust her dad yet? Would he be tempted to open the basement door, let the sunlight stream in, thinking it better to get this mess away from his home and his remaining family? Would he try to kill Will, thinking he was somehow helping Randa?

  “No, sir, I’m sorry, but the members of our scathe know we’ve come to you, and they will come looking for us if we don’t return to our planned safe space before dawn.” Will’s voice was friendly and respectful, but unyielding. “Randa and I have to go.”

  Rick let out a long breath, but nodded. “I understand. What’s next?”

  “Does that mean you’ll help us?” God, Randa hated the eagerness in her voice. She wasn’t sure if it was the possibility of ending the standoff with the Tribunal somehow or the chance to see her father again, another chance to earn his respect.

  “Yes. I don’t know what form that help can take. I need to think, and I need to talk to these leaders of your…your town. Can that be arranged?”

  It was the question they’d hoped for. Randa slipped a piece of paper from her pocket and slid it across the table to him.

  He opened it, frowned, and cocked his head at her. “You’re living in a Walmart in West Point, Georgia?”

  Randa smiled. “No, but it’s as close an address as I can give you right now. I want you to think about this whole situation hard tonight and tomorrow, and I have to beg you, as your daughter, not to tell anyone. If you help us, think about the ramifications it can have. The dangers for everyone.” She reached out and took his hand. “I’m sorry I didn’t come to you sooner. I thought I was doing the right thing by staying away.”

  He stood up and pulled her into a long, tight hug. He still smelled of the aftershave that threw her back to childhood, when he was still comfortable holding and touching her, before he grew awkward and distant. “I love you,” he whispered. “I thank God for bringing you back to me, however changed. And I’ll do what I can to help.”

  Will cleared his throat. “Ran, we have to go.”

  They paused at the front door. “As Randa said, think about this very hard, sir,” Will said. “About not only how you can help, but how many people you think need to be told of our existence without endangering us or anyone else.”

  Randa still held on to her father’s hand. “Dad, if you change your mind, I won’t blame you, and I promise I won’t disappear. Somehow, we’ll find a way to be in each other’s lives. But if you still want to help, be in the parking lot at that address”—she pointed at the paper he still held in his hand—“at eight tomorrow night.”

  “If you come, come alone,” Will added. “Bring a change of clothes and an open mind.”

  Shelton picked at a scab on his cheek and flicked it at the ground. He itched from the whip marks as they slowly healed, his stomach had practically imploded from hunger, and he was standing in the woods in the fucking rain just after dusk, waiting on a dog.

  Matthias, the vengeful son of a bitch, had not only refused to let him feed again, but also locked Shelton’s favorite plaything in one of those rooms beneath the clinic—tantalizingly close, but out of reach.

  He just sat in that clinic office like a big, ugly spider, daring Shelton to screw up.

  “Where you want us to hunt?” Matthias’s hired dog handler, a thin, sallow-faced human with a name like Bobby Lee or Billy Joe or Tommy Sue, held the leash to a droopy, slobbering bloodhound he called Nosy.

  Shelton eyed them both with distaste and set Cage Reynolds’s backpack on the ground near Nosy’s twitching snout. “He needs to track this scent, fanning out from this spot.”

  “Where’s Mr. Ludlam? He said I was to report only to him. Plus, it’s raining. You know that will weaken the scent. I want to make sure he knows that.”

  Like Shelton cared what he wanted. “You report to me. I’m to stand out here and wait for your findings.” Shelton pointed to his scabbed-over wounds. “It’s part of my punishment.”

  Actually, it wasn’t. He was under orders to make sure the dog did its job, then have his handler report to Matthias at the clinic. Tough shit. Shelton was changing the rules.

  Ever since Matthias had discovered Reynolds was spying for the Penton crew, and that he had the backing of the UK Tribunal delegate, the man had taken paranoia to new heights. He needed to rely on the people who’d always been loyal to him, people like Shelton. Instead, he’d beaten him, starved him, and now had him babysitting a bloodhound-wielding redneck in a fucking monsoon.

  Shelton had always prided himself on being able to identify and back a winning horse, and for years, Matthias had led the pack. But the man had let his obsessions—first with William and now with Aidan Murphy and Mirren Kincaid—blind him to the bigger picture. Shelton thought it might be time to find a new horse. The rules of the race had changed, and he didn’t think Matthias had been paying
attention.

  Shelton knew he’d have to be careful. He was blood-bound to Matthias, so if he moved too blatantly against His Highness, the man would know and Shelton’s immortal life would cease to be immortal at all. His greatest advantage was that Matthias was too preoccupied with what the Tribunal was doing to keep up with his own people too closely.

  The only way he’d ever truly be free would be if Matthias fell from power altogether and the Tribunal forced him to unbond his handful of followers. It might be time. Someone like Edward Simmons or that old cow Meg Lindstrom might be grateful enough to give Shelton a new horse on which to bet.

  Shelton wrapped his jacket more tightly around his itchy torso and wedged himself against a tree with dense branches that gave him a bit of shelter from the rain. The longer he sat, the more pissed off he got.

  Where did Matthias think this was going to end? Even if he destroyed the Penton scathe and got William back under his roof, what then? It wouldn’t make a difference in the endgame.

  The vampire world was on the verge of collapse. They’d be able to survive for a few years by bottom-feeding from disenfranchised humans who hadn’t been vaccinated—the homeless, the insane, the criminals, the addicts. But to truly bottom-feed, one had to live in a city, so all the vampires now combing the rural outposts looking for viable feeders would eventually flock back to the urban areas.

  Shelton had never claimed to be the sharpest vampire in the land of the fanged, but he knew this: wherever too many vampires gathered, problems followed. Territory battles, power struggles, coups and countercoups. Hell, maybe Aidan Murphy had the right idea.

  Nosy nosed nearby, snuffling along the ground. The dog stopped and bayed, bringing his handler into view. “Whatcha found, buddy?”

  The dog scratched in the pile of leaves and mud, whining until the redneck reached in his pocket and pulled out what looked like a miniature cake wrapped in cellophane. “Good boy. Good old Nosy. Ready for a treat? Got your favorite Little Debbies.”