“I don’t know what he did,” she said, frowning. “But I won’t let you blindfold me, either.”
Hannah nodded and unlocked the door, slipping the key back into her pocket. Her right pants pocket, Krys noted.
“This way.” The girl headed down the hallway to the left. Deep brown carpet absorbed the sounds of their footsteps, and doors similar to hers were spaced at even intervals. It looked like the corridor of an expensive hotel. Wallpaper with a subtle brown-and-gold pattern was illuminated every few feet by wall sconces that bounced soft arcs of shadow on the floor.
At the end of the hall, Hannah opened a door to a stairwell and motioned for Krys to go ahead. She counted the narrow steps—more like a ladder than stairs—trying to commit each movement to memory and ignore the dark walls that felt like they were pressing in from both sides. If she were ever to escape, it might be important. There were twenty-two steps straight up to what looked like a trapdoor.
At Hannah’s urging, Krys pushed open the hatch at the top and climbed into what looked like a large storage area. A concrete floor, support beams, no windows. A basement, maybe, yet it was above the area where she’d been imprisoned. Boxes and crates towered more than head high in all directions, and Krys stopped, not sure which way to go.
“This way,” Hannah said, stepping around her and weaving through a maze of crates.
“What is all this?”
“Supplies, in case we have to move underground for a long time,” Hannah said, weaving her way deftly in what seemed an indecipherable pattern.
Krys opened her mouth to ask why they would have to move underground, but closed it again. It was more important to remember their curving path.
In a few seconds they came to a cleared section of floor, and Krys tried to pinpoint where they’d come from while Hannah maneuvered a crate beneath another hatch door and climbed atop it to release the folding ladder.
This time the climb through the dark, vertical tunnel ended in a locked hatch that, when opened, released a stream of light.
Hannah clambered up with nimble feet and disappeared from view. Krys followed, finally poking her head through the opening to see a familiar room—the clinic office. She’d been underneath the clinic all along. Way underneath it.
She climbed the rest of the way out and watched as Hannah closed the trapdoor, locked it, and slid several pieces of wood flooring over it in a locking system that looked like one of the elaborate wooden puzzle boxes she’d seen in gift shops. Finally, the girl pulled an area rug over the whole thing. Unless someone knew the door was there and had the patience of a saint, it would be impossible to find—or to open even if you found it.
Krys looked at her watch again. A quarter to four. She still didn’t understand why this child wasn’t in bed, but that was someone else’s problem—she was leaving.
While Hannah watched silently from a perch near the office desk, Krys strode to the hallway door, praying it would be unlocked. The knob turned smoothly, and the cool fluorescent lights of the clinic corridor shone harsh and bright in her eyes, which had grown accustomed to the soft indoor lighting of her suite. Her heart pounded. Just a few more feet and she would be out.
She glanced back at Hannah, but the child made no attempt to stop her. She simply smiled.
“Thank you,” Krys whispered, and stepped into the hallway. The exit was directly to her right at the end of the corridor, and her pace increased as she got closer.
Damn. A brunette with a painted-on red dress and ridiculous heels glided in the door just before she reached it.
“Good, you’re here. I knew Hannah would have perfect timing.” She moved Krys aside with one arm and held the door open. “I’m Lucy, by the way.”
“Sorry, I was just on my way...” Out, Krys was going to say, but the glass doorway was suddenly filled by the massive bulk of Mirren Kincaid. He was pale as death itself, his eyes were half closed, and he leaned heavily on Aidan. A blanket was twined around his shoulders, and Krys thought it looked like the one from his Bronco.
Aidan caught her eye as they passed, and jerked his head toward the hallway on the right, opposite the hall where Mark’s room was located. She had an annoying urge to do an about-face and follow him like a panting puppy. Not happening. It was time to get her life back. She caught the door as it was closing and took a step toward freedom.
“Oh, no you don’t. You’ve got work to do.” Lucy was suddenly beside her, even though Krys could have sworn she’d just been standing several feet away. The shorter woman placed a hand around her wrist and led her down the hall, resisting Krys’s attempts to jerk out of her grasp. Everybody in Penton, even Hannah, was ridiculously strong—what did they put in their Wheaties?
“I’m not sure you’re ready for this, Dr. Harris, but welcome to our world.” Lucy propelled Krys into the first room off the hallway, where Mirren had collapsed face-first onto an exam table—or at least part of him had. The man was way too tall and almost too broad, and bits and pieces of him hung off all four sides.
Krys stared back at the door, but Lucy blocked her escape route. What if she refused to treat Mirren? Would they let her go, or lock her up again, or decide she had outlived her usefulness?
She glared at Aidan, who was hovering next to his friend and talking too softly for her to hear his words. Mirren wasn’t responding.
Krys sighed. As long as she was here, she might as well take a look at him. It just wasn’t in her to let someone suffer if she could do something to help. That do-gooder attitude was what had gotten her into this mess in the first place. If she’d sped past Aidan Murphy to begin with, she might be at home, asleep in her own bed.
“If you want me to look at him, step back and give me some space,” she told Aidan. Bedside manner be damned.
Lucy retreated to the hallway, but Aidan ignored her. He walked around the table, eased the blanket off Mirren’s shoulders, pulled a wicked, curved knife from a sheath on his belt, and began cutting off the remains of the big man’s mangled sweater. Aidan was also wearing a shoulder holster with an enormous pistol in it—Krys doubted she could even lift the thing—and, below that, his navy sweater had been torn. No, cut. And the cut was stiff around the edges, as if it had been soaked in blood.
“You’ve been stabbed.” She rounded the table and reached for him, but he stopped her with a big hand on each shoulder. “I’m OK—it’s minor. Mirren needs you.”
Krys turned to study the big man’s exposed back. The intricate tattoos of animals and figures and abstract symbols that she’d seen on Mirren’s neck extended down the left side of his back—maybe his chest, too, but she couldn’t tell. There also were a dozen or so small wounds that were hard to see amid all the ink on his left side but stood out like blisters on the pale skin of his right side.
“His blood’s all wrong. The color’s too light,” she muttered, pulling on a pair of gloves and leaning over to study the damage. “Tell me what happened.”
These were fresh injuries, and they should have been vivid red in the middle, darker red around the edges. Instead, the peppering of wounds had a silvery-black cast and the blood was more cranberry than crimson.
“Buckshot, coated in poison,” Aidan said, edging closer to the table. “You have to get it out fast.”
She moved to the right in order to get a better look at the wounds, and brushed into Aidan. “Step aside and let me work.”
He moved a half inch, maximum. Shaking her head, she touched an antiseptic wipe to the edge of one of the small lesions, and Mirren grunted. More of a growl.
“Shhh. It’s OK,” she said on instinct. David comforting Goliath.
“What was on those pellets can kill him, quickly.” Aidan stood in the vicinity of her elbow.
She twisted to shoot him a sharp look. “I told you to stand back.”
“Take out as many as you can, as fast as you can. Cut them out, or I’ll do it myself. You have thirty-five minutes, max.” Aidan gritted his teeth. “Please.”
Thirty-five minutes. Biting back the temptation to ask who’d made him God’s official timekeeper, Krys turned back to Mirren. Aidan began plundering the exam room cabinets.
“If poison has already gotten into your bloodstream, I won’t be able to tell that,” she said to Mirren, leaning over the wounds to get a better look. “You’ll have to take an antibiotic, and you’ll need to tell me what the poison is, if you know, so I can call the state poison control center and see if there’s an antidote.”
Mirren mumbled, and Krys leaned over him. “What?”
“Cut the goddamned things out now.” His eyes were closed, but his mouth worked well enough.
“Let me give you something for pain before—”
“Now, Krys.” Aidan reached across the exam table and grabbed her wrist. “No painkillers. Just do it. Dig them out.”
Looking into Aidan’s eyes made her dizzy for a second, and Krys took a step back as he released her and shoved a pair of tweezers at her.
“These aren’t sterile. I can’t—”
“Now!” She wasn’t imagining it. Aidan’s eyes had lightened to the shade of an arctic iceberg. It was as if the more his emotions roiled, the lighter his eyes became.
Krys took a deep breath, and then another. How many times had her father shouted at her in anger, berated her, locked her up? She clenched her jaw, grabbed the tweezers, and bent over the wounds. She’d always lost herself in her work, whether it was schoolwork or housework or busywork. This is no different, Krys. Just concentrate. Block him out.
“That’s weird. I swear these holes are closing up.” She jumped, startled, as Aidan thrust a small knife at her, handle first. She bit her tongue to keep from pointing out that it wasn’t sterile and grabbed it, slicing a satisfying cut into his hand. She didn’t look for his response, just bent over Mirren again and began cutting to expose one of the pellets. She hoped Aidan’s hand hurt like hell, though, and maybe got just a tad infected.
“I don’t like this. The blood’s all wrong,” she mumbled under her breath. Throwing the knife on the cart beside the exam table, she picked up the tweezers and began gently moving aside skin and tissue.
“Bingo.” She picked the pellet out, clinking it on the table. She reached a quick rhythm, cutting with the knife, exposing the pellet, pulling it out with the tweezers, throwing it on the table. Mirren flinched with each cut but didn’t make a sound. He just lay there with his eyes closed. If he hadn’t flinched, she’d have thought he was dead.
“I don’t see any more. Now I need to disinfect these. Maybe a couple of stitches on the worst ones.” She turned aside, opening the drawers and cabinets that stretched along the exam room wall, looking for a suture kit.
“No need,” Aidan said, and when Krys turned to protest, he’d already helped Mirren to a sitting position, revealing the tattoos that indeed did cover the left side of his muscular chest. The big man’s eyes remained closed but he wasn’t wobbling. He still needed stitches, though.
“You can’t move him before I...” Krys’s voice trailed off as she marched around to look at Mirren’s back. The first cuts she’d made had almost closed. She could swear his back was healing in front of her.
Frowning, she circled the exam table again and reached up to feel Mirren’s face. Cool and dry. He shouldn’t be in such good shape.
He leaned his head into her hand, opening his eyes to look at her.
Her breath stopped. His dark gray eyes had turned silver, and as he leaned into her hand, he curled back his upper lip to reveal the tips of sharp, delicately curved fangs where his canines should have been.
He grasped her wrist before she could pull her hand away and kissed it. She couldn’t stop the whimpering noises coming from her throat as she remembered the image of him licking blood off his hand that first night. What the hell was he?
“Mirren, stop.” Aidan’s voice was low but forceful, and after a few tense seconds, Mirren released her arm.
“Sorry.” He closed his eyes and shivered.
Aidan squeezed Mirren’s shoulder. “Lucy will take you home now. Will called your fams to meet you there so you can feed. Twenty minutes until sunrise.”
Krys barely registered the fact that Mirren had slipped off the table and spoken quietly to Aidan before leaving the room. What had just happened? She’d seen Aidan’s hand where she’d sliced him with the knife—it had already healed. And Mirren... She couldn’t form whole thoughts, only flashing images of silver eyes, fangs, cuts that disappeared.
She tried to back away as Aidan approached her. “I’m sorry I don’t have time to explain tonight,” he said softly, framing her face with his hands and forcing her gaze to his. She felt the dizzy, falling sensation again, and then nothing.
“Of all the idiotic, screwed-up shit, this has to rank near the top.” Aidan gathered Krys in his arms after Will lowered her, unconscious, down the stairwell into the subbasement. He carried her to the suite, laying her gently on the bed and watching in dismay as she groaned and rolled onto her side.
Will came to stand beside him. “Bloody hell, how’s she coming out of it already? She should be out for hours.”
He didn’t know the half of it—Aidan hadn’t been sure he could enthrall her again after her resistance last time. “Go home. I’ll stay here with her a few more minutes and crash in one of the sub-suites.”
Staying nearby was just more expedient, given how rapidly dawn was approaching. It had nothing to do with staying near Krys as long as he could. Right.
“Whatever, man. I’m gone.” Will headed for the door. “You think Mirren will be OK?”
Aidan rubbed his eyes as the predawn lethargy began to steal over him. “Hope so. We’ll see how he is at nightfall.”
As soon as the door closed behind Will, Aidan sat on the bed next to Krys. He shouldn’t have brought her into this mess tonight. Had he really thought she could help, or did he just want an excuse to tell her what he was; to drive away any chance that she might accept him and kill the screwed-up mating call that had kept her in his mind all day?
He brushed his fingertips across her cheek, flushed with warmth and life, and thought about Abby. She’d loved him when he was human, then rejected him as a vampire. Maybe he would have won her back eventually, but Owen had taken that chance away. Besides, anyone with the misfortune to love someone like him didn’t live too long, did she?
“You look so sad.”
Aidan had been staring into the past, unaware that Krys had awakened and was watching him. She obviously didn’t remember what had happened with Mirren—not yet anyway—and he found that he didn’t want to try erasing her memories. This might be the last chance he had to sit with her, the only chance he had to see her face holding concern for him rather than fear or contempt. Too bad she was still half-buzzed from the enthrallment. He lifted a dark curl away from her face, memorizing her features.
She fingered the tear in his sweater where Anders’s knife had gone in. “Are you OK? What happened?”
He slipped his hand around hers and lifted it to his lips, placing a soft kiss on her fingertips. “I’m OK. Just wanted to check on you before I have to leave.”
“If you’re going to keep me locked up, you should have to stay with me.” She laughed softly. “That sounds really warped, doesn’t it?”
He smiled at the thought. “I’ll be back as soon as I can.” His energy was waning with each minute that the clock ticked closer to dawn, and he heaved himself to his feet. He looked down at Krys to say good-bye, but she’d drifted to sleep, her breathing steady and even, her heartbeat a soothing echo in his own chest. He predicted that she wouldn’t be nearly as calm the next time he saw her.
A half hour after dusk, Mirren pulled the Bronco into a parking spot a block from the mill and killed the engine. He flexed his shoulders, the rough wool of his sweater aggravating the sore spots on his back. The wounds had healed but the skin remained tender. Last night had been a shit storm from start to finish, but at le
ast Owen had one fewer fighter. Mirren only wished he’d been the one to make the kill.
He slipped from behind the wheel and walked toward the mill, sliding from shadow to shadow so Lucy wouldn’t know he was following her. Following them. Lucy and the stupid kid who’d shot him last night.
Sherry. He’d heard Owen call the girl Sherry. Her human age couldn’t be more than twelve or thirteen. A freakin’ humiliation, that’s what it was. After three quiet years in Penton, maybe he was getting soft.
He stopped at the corner and risked a quick look around the building. Lucy and the girl stood outside the mill entrance and Sherry was pointing down Cotton Street toward the village.
Lucy would know if Mirren opened his mental connection to her, so he closed his eyes to block his other senses and focused on listening.
“You have to wait here,” the girl was saying. God, she even sounded like a kid. Probably wasn’t much older than Hannah. One more reason to feed Owen Murphy his own balls.
“Just show me where Owen’s living. He’ll be glad to see me.” Mirren recognized the purr in Lucy’s voice, guaranteed to break down the willpower of any human she encountered—or a male of any species.
“Right, then,” Sherry said, her accent straight out of Dublin. “But if he’s mad, don’t you go tellin’ him I showed you. He’ll be all in my face if he found out you caught me near the mill.”
What the hell was Lucy up to? She’d always been a nut job, but since Doc died she’d been as stable as a two-legged table. And Aidan knew it, or he wouldn’t have assigned some of the junior scathe members to look for Owen’s scathe hideouts while Mirren wasted time on this little spying mission.
Once Lucy and the girl headed down Cotton Street, Mirren followed at a distance, sticking close to the houses.
They stopped just before the dead end. Had Owen been staying in the mill village, right under their noses? Mirren needed to set up a house-to-house search.
After a brief conversation, Sherry turned and headed back toward the mill, but Lucy climbed the stairs to the front porch of the last house on the block and knocked. She waited a few seconds before going inside. Mirren heard the door close behind her.
Redemption (The Penton Vampire Legacy) Page 10
