The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
Text copyright ©2012 by Susannah Sandlin
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
Published by Montlake Romance
P.O. Box 400818
Las Vegas, NV 89140
ISBN-13: 9781612183541
ISBN-10: 1612183549
Dedication
To the people of Chambers County, Alabama, whose beautiful towns and countryside I borrowed for this book.
PROLOGUE
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 19
CHAPTER 20
CHAPTER 21
CHAPTER 22
CHAPTER 23
CHAPTER 24
CHAPTER 25
CHAPTER 26
CHAPTER 27
CHAPTER 28
CHAPTER 29
CHAPTER 30
CHAPTER 31
CHAPTER 32
CHAPTER 33
CHAPTER 34
CHAPTER 35
CHAPTER 36
CHAPTER 37
CHAPTER 38
CHAPTER 39
CHAPTER 40
CHAPTER 41
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
November, New York City
Matthias Ludlam watched the smoke drift toward his study ceiling, fumes from burning photo chemicals stinging his eyes. In an ashtray on the desk, the image of his son William, taken last week, curled into blackened edges as the fire took hold.
Finally, he knew where the boy had gone. Now he had to teach him where he belonged...and to whom.
“Does he know you spotted him?” Matthias rubbed his eyes and focused on the human lounging in the armchair across the desk. Roger Hobb worked for the Vampire Tribunal as a private eye, and his specialty was tracking down vamps whose acts endangered their society. But this wasn’t an official job, and Matthias needed discretion.
“’Course not,” Hobb drawled. “I know my job. It’s why the Tribunal pays me.”
The Tribunal pays you because you’re cheap, expendable, and too stupid to be afraid of your employers. “Then you won’t have any problem going in with an enforcer and extracting my son. Use any means necessary short of staking him. Bring him to me.”
William wouldn’t like it but after a few months without feeding or women, he’d be forced to fall in line. His son liked his luxuries.
Hobb took a sip of Matthias’s best whiskey, then another. “It, uh...it won’t be that easy, Mr. Ludlam. Sir.”
Matthias finished his own glass and leaned forward, elbows on his desk, his gold signet ring making a loud crack as it hit the wood. “Why not? You said William doesn’t know we’ve found him.” He ticked through Hobb’s body language: tightly set shoulders, shaky hands, sweat beaded on his forehead. The man reeked of fear. Bloody hell. What now?
Hobb cleared his throat, straightened his spine, and handed Matthias a manila folder from his briefcase. “Helluva lot more going on in Penton than just a place for William to hide. Thought about takin’ it to the Tribunal but figured since your boy was involved...you’d be, uh, grateful, if you know what I mean.”
“If I’m not grateful, you’ll know it.” Written on the tab: Penton, Alabama. How much could possibly be going on in the middle of bumfuck nowhere? Sighing, Matthias leaned back in his chair and flipped open the folder.
On top was an eight-by-ten close-up of a man he had no trouble recognizing: handsome, dark haired, icy blue eyes brimming with arrogance. “Aidan Murphy? That’s who Will is with?” He’d heard Murphy had moved from Atlanta and settled somewhere in the sticks. What a total waste of a master vampire—strong-willed and fearless, but rejecting every overture the Tribunal had made to get him involved in the vampire power structure. Murphy had never been openly defiant, though. “I still don’t see the problem.”
Hobb stood up and held his hands toward the fireplace, where a low flame crackled. New York winters were cold, and this one had gotten off to a brutal start. “Murphy’s got a big scathe, Mr. Ludlam. And every vampire in Penton, near as I can tell, is blood-bonded to him or one of his lieutenants.” He paused. “Including your son.”
Anger, cold and hard, seeped through Matthias’s bones. Bad enough William had rejected his birthright after he’d turned the boy vampire and groomed him for a future of wealth and power. Now he’d bonded himself to a rogue Irish peasant?
Matthias shoved the photo of Murphy aside and froze when he saw the one underneath it. No mistaking this man. His size, scowl, and tattoos were distinctive, even though the photo had been shot from a distance. “Mirren Kincaid has been dead for years—what does he have to do with this?”
“H—he’s alive. The Slayer’s alive, and he’s bonded to Aidan Murphy too. There’s at least twenty-five of them in that scathe, near as I can tell.” Matthias fixed him with a glare, and Hobb talked faster. “They’re isolated in that little town. Everybody who lives there seems to be either a vampire bonded to Murphy or a human bonded to one of his vampires. At least a hundred, all told. Maybe more. I couldn’t get close enough for a count. Had to spread around a lot of money to find out this much.”
Matthias’s mind raced through the ramifications. “Shut up and let me think. Have another whiskey.”
The sounds of a decanter being unstopped, ice clinking in a crystal glass, liquid pouring. The noises were usually comforting, but with this news, nothing would ease the chill that spread through Matthias as he rose from the desk and stared out the study window at the snowflakes settling on the bare branches and slushy sidewalks illuminated by the streetlights.
The average scathe was four or five vampires strong—and Murphy had bonded more than twenty-five? That wasn’t a scathe; it was an army. With his son and the Tribunal’s most lethal enforcer paying fealty to him, Murphy could be powerful enough to defeat the Tribunal if he wanted to.
And if they had bonded humans with them...
Matthias rubbed his hand over his stomach, flatter now than it had been a year ago when a worldwide pandemic vaccine had resulted in an unexpected change in human blood chemistry. Tens of thousands of humans had died from the virus itself, reducing the vampire food supply. Then came the goddamned vaccine.
The blood of a vaccinated human was lethal to vampires.
Vampires were starving, and they were getting desperate. All of the Tribunal’s attempts to counteract the vaccine’s effects had failed. Even human blood banks were tainted and unreliable. Yet Aidan Murphy had a town full of apparently unvaccinated humans bonded to him so no other vampires could feed from them? Bloody outrageous.
He turned back to Hobb. “You think it’s possible to infiltrate Murphy’s scathe, break it up from within?”
Hobb swallowed so hard that Matthias could hear him across the room. “No, sir. The guy I paid for the info only talked ’cause Murphy wouldn’t let him move to Penton—says he interviews everyone personally and if
he don’t want you, you don’t live there. They’re real organized.”
Murphy had friends on the Tribunal, so taking this to the full council wouldn’t yield quick results: technically, he hadn’t broken vampire law. So far.
Matthias returned to his desk, looking again at the photos. An idea came to him, brilliant in its simplicity. “Murphy’s older brother, Owen. He still alive?”
Hobb’s eyebrows bunched. “He’s supposed to be executed next week.”
Matthias smiled. “Get him here. I’m about to make Owen Murphy the offer of a lifetime.”
Never tick off a starving vampire. Aidan Murphy guided his BMW along the dark-as-midnight country road with his left hand and shook the makeshift bandage—a bar napkin—off his right. The puncture wounds had healed.
What a waste of time. Since the pandemic vaccine had made human blood poisonous to his kind, he’d held dozens of meetings like the one he’d just left, interviewing prospective scathe members for Penton, a tiny ghost town on the edge of nowhere that he’d bought up after life became dangerous for his scathe’s unvaccinated humans. A place where his people and their human familiars could live in peace.
Aidan had founded Penton on the idea that humans were the equals of vampires. Respect them for keeping you alive, he preached. Treat them as family. Don’t act like monsters. But vampires were growing desperate. Hungry predators suddenly considered his quiet Alabama community of vampires and bonded, unvaccinated humans to be the vampire equivalent of a midnight buffet in the Garden of Eden.
And he usually told them the same thing: Sorry, but foxhole converts never keep the faith. One of the SOBs hadn’t liked his answer tonight and took a plug out of his hand. Like that was going to convince him the guy would fit in.
Aidan!
At the shock of the voice echoing through his head, he jammed a foot on the brake, simultaneously trying to control the car and listen to the frantic mental SOS. His tires squealed when he jerked the steering wheel into the skid, sending the car spinning across both lanes of the deserted blacktop. It finally jolted to a stop in a shallow ditch, nose-first.
His forehead cracked against the driver’s-side window hard enough to spiderweb the glass and shoot stars across his vision, but the blood trickling its way down his temple barely registered.
Mark was in trouble.
Shit. What the hell had happened? The mental cry for help faded, taking the images with it: a blood-coated knife, a wet parking lot, a Dumpster, and his brother’s name: Owen. Now he was alone in his head again, alone in his car listening to the tick-tick-tick of the cooling engine, an owl hooting in the thick woods next to the road, and the rustle of pine needles as a cold wind blew away the last of the January rain clouds.
Owen had attacked again, and not just anybody. Mark was his business partner, his friend, and the husband of Aidan’s human familiar. They were his family, more than Owen had been in a long time. And he couldn’t lose another family member.
Unconscious doesn’t mean dead, idiot. Stop the pity party. Resting his head against the smooth leather seat, Aidan closed his eyes and unleashed his mind to search for Mark, sending psychic tendrils along the blood bonds that the humans and vampires of his scathe shared.
Finally, a spark. Mark’s mental signal was no more than a faint pulse, but Aidan was able to get a fix on a location: the abandoned Quikmart outside Penton.
God. Damned. Owen.
Aidan gripped the wheel in frustration, and then pulled his fingers away before it cracked. He needed to tear something apart, to turn his rage at his psychotic brother into broken glass and twisted metal. But it would have to wait. First he had to reach Mark.
He shifted his car into neutral, wrenched the door open, and slid out, his boots sinking sole-deep in rusty clay. The rains had finally stopped after soaking the Southeast for the weeks since New Year’s, and the night air washed over his skin, crisp and clear. A doe ran from the dense woods and paused to stare at him, lifting her nose to scent the breeze before bounding away. There were no other signs of life in rural Chambers County, Alabama, tonight, which was good. The last thing Aidan needed was an audience.
Mud sucked at his feet as he stepped back to view the car’s position: nose in the muck, tail a couple of feet off the pavement. Pulling would be easier than pushing.
Aidan lifted the back end of the car, eased the wheels out of the mire, and dragged it onto the asphalt. Scrounging a couple of shop towels from his trunk, he wiped the blood off his face. The wound had already healed. Then he wiped mud off the headlights before tossing the towel aside.
After stomping the crud off his boots, he slid back into the car and turned the ignition, frowning when the Bimmer rattled and died on the first try.
He growled in frustration. “Start, or I swear to God I will send you back to Germany in pieces.”
Another crank and the engine caught, sputtering and finally humming. He let the car idle a few seconds, slung mud off his tires, and sped south toward Penton.
Mark was OK—he had to be. Aidan couldn’t bear to think about how losing his friend would change things. Between starving vampires wandering into town from urban areas like Birmingham and Atlanta since the pandemic and the attack on the town’s doctor last month, people in Penton were already jumpy. And holy hell, but he couldn’t imagine trying to tell his familiar that her husband had died.
No, Mark had to be alive, which meant Aidan needed to consider his options.
The nearest hospital was almost forty miles from Penton, and a 911 would prompt too many questions. Even if he took Mark in, how would it look: a man with fangs hauling a stabbing victim into a small-city ER? The local deputies would pin every unsolved crime in the last month on him, right before they threw him into Lee County lockup to fry at sunrise.
So a hospital was out, and thanks to Owen’s attack last month, Penton no longer had a doctor. Which left one option, and it went against everything Aidan believed in.
A bitter laugh escaped him, echoing through the car. What the hell is one more thing to feel guilty about?
He snatched his cell phone off the center console and speed-dialed Mirren, his second-in-command. Normally he would contact him mentally, but Mirren also might be behind the wheel, and nobody would profit if both of them landed up to their fangs in a ditch.
Mirren answered on the second ring, his deep voice muffled. “What’s up, A?”
“Mark’s been attacked. He’s by the old Quikmart south of town, and I’m about twenty miles out now. He’s unconscious.” Not dead. Not going there.
“Shite. Want me to get him?” Like Aidan, Mirren had been gone from Ireland for so long that it took stress or shock to evoke the brogue.
“No, I need you to drive up to LaFayette.”
The crunch of boots on gravel crackled over the phone connection, followed by the slam of a truck door, the rumble of an engine, a screech of tires. Mirren’s voice cut through his thoughts. “Know who did it? One of Owen’s scathe?”
“Owen himself. He must’ve scented my bond on Mark.” He kept his voice neutral, not wanting Mirren to know how badly this had rattled him. The big guy knew some of the history between Aidan and his brother, but not all of it. Nobody knew that story, and nobody would.
Aidan had avoided his brother for four centuries, moving across continents and finally settling in one of the smallest, most remote outposts imaginable. Until he’d run into Owen in Atlanta last month. His brother had called it a coincidence, that meeting, but Aidan knew his brother and knew that nothing happened by chance where Owen was concerned. It wasn’t too long after that the town doctor was murdered, his throat slashed, the Gaelic word for “brother” carved into his chest, and his body left in the middle of Main Street.
Mirren muttered a curse, jarring Aidan back to the present. “What d’you need me to do in LaFayette?”
“The woman I hoped to recruit as the new doctor is coming into Penton for an interview tonight.” And getting Krys Harris to agree to a
nighttime job interview had taken some tap-dancing.
“Yeah, so?”
“I’m going to flag her down and get her to help Mark—even enthrall her if I have to. Go to LaFayette and check her out of the hotel, get her luggage, take it to one of the sub-suites beneath the clinic. We can’t let her leave Penton, not with Mark hurt and Owen on the attack. We’ve got to have a doctor.”
Mirren was still on the line, but he hadn’t responded. The car’s tires screeched in protest as Aidan took a curve too fast, and the back end shimmied before the rubber settled onto the pavement. “You got an opinion, just say it.”
“This has the makings of a grade-A cluster. Of all the stupid shit we could do, forcing this woman to stay in our town is capital Stupid.”
Aidan’s chuckle lacked humor; he couldn’t argue with stupid. He hated what he was about to do. “This isn’t a democracy, Mirren. Unless you’re going to challenge me as master of this scathe, do it. Then get to the Quikmart with your truck—we’ll need it for Mark.”
Aidan ended the call and ripped off the headset. He tried to focus on the road, but couldn’t exile the ghosts that rattled around inside him whenever his brother got within spitting distance. Owen had cost him everything that mattered once, and now it looked as if he was trying to destroy Penton. Which bloody well was not going to happen.
Krystal Harris pulled to the shoulder of the two-lane road—highway was too grand a word—and punched the button to turn on the old green Corolla’s dome light. She counted to five before thwacking it with the heel of her palm, and a dim light blinked as if considering her demand. It stayed on—this time. The car was a dinosaur, but it was a paid-for dinosaur.
She dug a folded Alabama road map from beneath her briefcase on the passenger seat, smoothing the creases to make sure she hadn’t driven past Penton, which she suspected was no more than a wide spot on a narrow road. She didn’t want to get lost out here in the boonies.
Yep, County Road 70. The highway to Penton just looked like the express lane to nowhere.
A gust of wind rocked the car, sending icy air around the loose door seals. Maybe the chill of this night was an omen that she should take this job if they offered it, just so she could buy a more respectable form of transportation. Still, doubts nagged at her. What kind of clinic conducted a job interview at nine p.m.? She should never have agreed to it, but the Penton Clinic administrator had waved big bucks in front of her huge college and med school debts, and she’d trotted after them like a donkey after a carrot.
Redemption (The Penton Vampire Legacy) Page 1
