Redemption (The Penton Vampire Legacy)

by Susannah Sandlin

  Krys gasped, and her breathing grew rapid and shallow. She quit breathing for a few seconds entirely before gasping again and falling still.

  “It’s time,” Hannah said quietly. “I will feed her. You are still too weak.”

  Mirren rolled away and fell heavily to the floor, his face flushed and eyes hooded as he leaned against the side of the bed.

  Hannah moved to take his place, but Aidan stopped her. “No. Stay away from her.”

  She clenched her little fists and stared at him, openmouthed.

  Mirren staggered to his feet, blood-drunk. “Listen, A—”

  “No,” Aidan repeated, his voice low. “Nobody feeds her but me. Nobody else touches her.”

  He climbed onto the bed beside her, ignoring his fatigue. He heard Mirren on the phone, probably calling Will to find feeders for a new vampire while they were in their daysleep. At least he hoped it would work out that way.

  The last time he’d lain beside her, they’d just made love. She’d been so careful of his injuries, had taken care of him in every way. Giving. Always giving. Now it was his turn.

  “Knife,” he said, his voice hoarse. He held out his wrist. Mirren grasped his arm, and the pain of the knife’s edge drawing across his skin helped clear his mind. He trailed a finger across the cut and stuck the finger in her mouth, leaving the blood on her tongue. Repeated the action until he felt her tongue move, seeking more. It seemed to be taking hours. He was vaguely aware of Mirren and Will talking, coming, going, but someone always there to keep his cut open.

  “It’s working,” Hannah finally whispered.

  Aidan dropped his wrist to Krys’s mouth, and she didn’t respond at first. “Come on, drink, damn it.” He worked his wrist between her lips so his blood would reach her. Finally he felt her tongue probing at the cut, then a soft pull.

  She moaned and tried to curl into a ball as the blood hit her stomach and her still-human system tried to reject it. He remembered the horrible cramps that had lasted for days as the vampire blood kept the body alive while transforming the physical systems.

  Then, if she survived, the real hunger would start.

  Life had dwindled to states of half waking and pain, with long periods of blackness between. Krys remembered the fight with Owen, but not how it had ended.

  Everything hurt. Whenever her mind brought her to the surface, Aidan would be there, holding her, talking to her softly in his native Gaelic as if he knew she needed to hear his voice even if she couldn’t understand the words.

  Sometimes he’d be in his daysleep but Mark or Melissa would be nearby and would talk to her in words that didn’t make any more sense. She must be dying, and wished she’d go ahead and be done with it—for all their sakes.

  The last few times she’d stayed awake longer and had been able to lie quietly with her eyes closed and float away from the pain for short periods. She heard snippets of conversation. Aidan talking to Mark and Melissa about feeding schedules. Another time, Mirren talking about a trip. Something about Will’s father.

  Finally she woke without pain, and its absence made her almost euphoric. She couldn’t open her eyes yet, but lay still and thought for the first time that she might live, might want to live.

  Voices broke through: Will shouting and Aidan shushing him. She tried to open her eyes, to speak, but she couldn’t bring herself out of the physical paralysis.

  “It’s better for all of you if I leave,” Will said. “My father knows I’m here and he won’t give up just because Owen failed. He’ll kill everyone here to get to me.”

  What was the deal with Will’s father? Krys couldn’t remember. Aidan’s voice was soft, yet she seemed to be able to hear everything with sharp clarity. Will’s shouting had been almost painful. She’d had a concussion—she remembered that much. Maybe it had made her hearing hypersensitive.

  Aidan was arguing. “Matthias is going to come after us anyway—using Owen was just the opening round. We’re already short a lieutenant with Lucy. I need you here. Plus, if we have to fight Matthias, who knows him better than you?”

  The voices faded as she drifted again, until Hannah arrived and she heard flashes of frantic talk about Mirren. He was missing? How could someone that big be missing?

  Thinking of Mirren and hearing Hannah’s high, clear voice evoked odd snippets of memory. Of the child lying beside her on a bed. Of Mirren coming in to help turn her...oh my God, had they backed out? Had she lived, after all? Or had they done it?

  Krys fought her way to consciousness, concentrating on opening her eyes, squinting against the light, moving a hand, a foot. She finally focused, dazzled by the brightness, the sharp images, the colors and textures. That must have been some concussion.

  Aidan, Will, and Hannah were standing near the foot of the bed, and she caught Will’s eye.

  He smiled at her and gestured to get Aidan’s attention. “I believe someone’s awake.”

  The bed dipped as Aidan stretched out next to her. She tried to reach for him, to brush away that stubborn strand of hair that always fell over one eye, but she couldn’t move her arm more than a couple of inches. Either arm. Concentrating, she raised her head a fraction and saw silver chain wrapped around her wrists and ankles. What was going on?

  “Hey, shhh...shhh.” Aidan turned her face to his, and she was struck again by how different everything looked. Colors shone brighter, contrasts were sharper. She shifted her gaze to the paintings on the walls, to the woodwork, then the sofa, and recognized it as her old room in the sub-suites. Why was she chained to the bed?

  “Krys. Look at me.” Again Aidan turned her face to his. “Keep your eyes on me. Can you understand me?”

  He looked beautiful, but exhausted. Had he fought Owen? It took a couple of tries, but she finally got her tongue to work. Her mouth felt as if it had been glued shut. “What happened?”

  “What’s the last thing you remember?”

  She frowned, sorting through a clutter of images. “Owen hit me?” Talking was easier this time.

  Aidan nodded. “And you were badly hurt. Very badly, mo rún.”

  She stared at him. Could she have been turned? Wouldn’t she know? How would she know? Finally she whispered, “Am I changed?”

  He smiled and smoothed a hand across her cheek. “You made it. How do you feel?”

  She felt as if—well, as if she were more alive every minute. “Are you sure?” She explored her mouth with her tongue and flinched as she cut it on a sharp canine that extended below her upper teeth. She had freakin’ fangs.

  Aidan chuckled. “That’s going to happen a lot till you get used to them, but you’ll adjust quicker than you think. Are you sure you feel the same?”

  She did a mental inventory. “The pain is gone. My vision is sharper. I...well, I feel good. But hungry. I shouldn’t feel hungry, should I?” She wasn’t sure what she was hungry for, but the more she thought about it, the hungrier she was—almost painfully so.

  “New vampires sometimes crave food for a while. Varies from person to person.” He slid off the bed and walked to a tray that sat on the dresser. “See what you think of this.”

  She was aware of Will and Hannah leaving the room as Aidan came back with a small plate containing a sandwich and a piece of fruit. He broke off an edge of the bread crust and held it out to her. At the smell, her stomach reacted with dry heaves, and she cut her lip again on a stupid fang. Tears started to build as her own blood ran down her chin. She was going to be the worst vampire ever.

  Aidan laughed. He leaned over and swiped a tongue across her chin, then kissed her. “No problem. Guess you’re past people food. Time for a real meal.”

  “How long have I been like this?” She’d lost all sense of time. It could have been a month since she’d been taken to the mill, or a year. “Where’s Jerry? Did Owen escape?”

  “Owen’s dead. Jerry’s dead. All you have to worry about is getting through your transition, and you’re almost there.”

  “Mirren�
�s gone?” Now that she knew the fangs were there, it felt as if she had too many teeth. Not only was she going to walk around bleeding on herself, she was going to lisp.

  Anxiety tightened the skin around Aidan’s eyes, and his smile disappeared. “Mirren went to South Carolina, to take Jennifer back to her family. She didn’t want to stay after Tim died. He was late getting back and he doesn’t answer my mental signals. Our bonds are still there, so I know he’s alive. He’s just off radar for some reason.”

  “You need to go after him?” She didn’t want him to leave her. She didn’t know how to be a freakin’ vampire without him.

  “Not yet. He’s probably just taking some R and R.”

  Right. Mirren was so not a rest-and-relaxation kind of guy. She shifted uncomfortably on the bed. “Why am I chained?”

  She started as a voice came from the other side of the room. “It’s for my benefit.”

  Mark rose from a chair in the far corner, smiling. “Welcome back.”

  Had he been here all along? Why would the chains be for his benefit unless...oh God, another chance to be a vampire failure.

  As Mark approached the bed, the scent of him hit her like a tire iron, straight in the gut. She sensed his pulse quickening, could almost feel the rush of blood through his body, and her hunger deepened. She was so hungry, and her new fangs ached. His scent was a perfect blend of aftershave and clean skin and man. Warmth and life.

  She wanted to taste him, and the thought excited her and shamed her at the same time. She struggled against the chains, not sure if she wanted to grab Mark or run from him. Maybe both. And she couldn’t do this in front of Aidan.

  “Mark would like to be your fam,” Aidan said, stroking her shoulder to calm her. It didn’t work. “Mel will stay with me. That OK with you?”

  No, it wasn’t OK. God, no. “I don’t want to do this. I can’t—”

  Mark lay beside her, sandwiching her between himself and Aidan, and the scent drove all thought from her. She tried to lunge toward him before she could stop herself, but the chains stopped her. Mortified, she felt the tears start. She hadn’t expected to feel like such an animal.

  Aidan’s voice was little more than a murmur. “Use the knife. She’s not ready to bite.”

  She started to look at Aidan, but her attention was riveted—her mind emptied—by Mark’s arm in front of her face. He’d cut across his forearm and was holding it toward her. A drop of his blood hit her mouth, and she instinctively touched her tongue to it and a groan escaped her. A voice that sounded like a ragged, frantic version of hers said, “More.”

  “Lick your tongue across the cut first so you don’t hurt him,” Aidan said, his voice soft in her ear.

  Mark dropped his forearm to her mouth, and she licked across it, then sucked on the wound, and finally bit. He sighed and rested his head next to hers, keeping his arm pressed firmly to her mouth, till Aidan brushed her hair off her forehead and kissed it.

  “Stop now, Krys.”

  She didn’t want to. She could’ve gone on forever, but she remembered Owen’s bloodlust and savagery, how the pleasure had turned to agony. She’d never do that to anyone.

  Aidan set the showerhead to pulse and let the hot water beat into his back and shoulders as he poured a few squirts of shampoo into his palm and worked it into his hair.

  Krys had made it through the third day of feeding. In fact, she’d taken to the whole vampire shit a helluva lot better than he had. She was going to be fine, Mark and Melissa were working perfectly as fams, and Owen was gone.

  But he wasn’t exactly basking in Happyland. Mirren had disappeared, and Aidan had a bad feeling about it. It wasn’t like the big guy to go off radar for a day, much less a week. Will was ping-ponging among self-pity and anger and hyperactivity, which meant that Omega’s progress was slowing down. He and Will were going to have a serious sit-down, and then he was going to have to find Mirren. And get someone to help develop Hannah’s skills as a witch, to see if she could create a secure magical border around Penton. And find a couple of new lieutenants.

  Aidan switched the water setting to rain and stuck his head under the spray. Those weren’t the immediate problems. The damned elephant in the room was Krys, and where they stood. He had wondered if whatever drove his vampire mating instinct would still consider her his mate once she was turned. No problem there. He’d gotten such a raging hard-on watching her feed he’d had to leave the room and put his right hand to work.

  What he hadn’t considered was that she’d have her own new vampire mating mojo. He didn’t know where he stood in that department. What if she wanted Mark? Or Mirren? Even the idea of that made him crazy.

  Gutless wonder that he was, he hadn’t had the nerve to bring up the subject with Krys, and he’d been afraid to push her toward sex. How long had it been, after he’d been turned, before he’d had any interest in women? A long time, but the situations were different. He’d been all tied in knots about Abby and pissed off about his situation.

  He sensed Krys in the room before she spoke.

  “Aidan?”

  He turned, and damned if she didn’t take his breath away. He hadn’t thought she could get any more beautiful, but he’d been wrong. Her cheeks were still flushed from a recent feed, her nipples peaked beneath the sweatshirt that looked a helluva lot better on her than on him, and her mile-long legs were crossed at the ankle as she leaned against the door to the step-in shower.

  He grew hard at the sight of her, and she grinned as her eyes dipped to take him in. “And here I’ve been so worried, thinking you didn’t want me anymore. Or do you greet every female vampire who walks into your shower this way?”

  He grinned. “Well, you might find this hard to believe, doctor, but I don’t let just any stray female vampire wander into my shower.”

  Her husky laugh almost brought a groan from him as she raised her eyes to meet his.

  Damn. Her dark-chocolate eyes had turned silvery and pale. She needed to feed again. But at least they’d made it back to the playful-banter stage of their relationship. “Want me to call Mark back? Remember, you have our eyes now. I can tell when you’re hungry.”

  She shucked the sweatshirt over her head and stepped into the shower. “There are all kinds of hunger, Aidan.”

  Thanks to agent Marlene Stringer, for being my number-one advocate; editor Eleni Caminis and the rest of the team at Montlake Romance, for all your faith and hard work; editor Melody Guy, for smoothing the rough edges; Dianne, alpha reader extraordinaire (see, the Ludlams are vampires, not aliens); chief brainstormer Susan; super-critters Kat and Amber; and the patient members of the Auburn Writers Circle, who don’t always see the allure of fangs but listen anyway: Larry, Pete, Jennifer, Delaine, Matt, Shawn, Mike, and Julia.

  Susannah Sandlin is a native of Winfield, Alabama, and has worked as a writer and editor in educational publishing in Alabama, Illinois, Texas, California, and Louisiana. She currently lives in Auburn, Alabama, with two rescue dogs named after professional wrestlers (it was a phase). She has a secret passion for quilting, reality TV, and all things paranormal.