Allegiance (The Penton Vampire Legacy)

by Susannah Sandlin

  Then again, the people of Penton might only see Cage as the selfish bastard who ruined Mark and Melissa Calvert’s perfect marriage.

  The lights of Atlanta fanned out below him, growing from twinkles to dots to streetlights as the plane lowered its landing gear and approached the runway.

  The pilot welcomed them to the United States and advised them on Customs requirements, prompting Cage to dig in the interior pocket of his leather jacket for his brilliantly faked passport. It identified him as Cage Reynolds, age thirty-two, resident of London, citizen of the UK. The face in the passport photo was the same one he’d had since 1942, after Paris. After the pit.

  Everything had changed since then, and yet nothing had changed. His hair was longer, sweeping his shoulders when it wasn’t pulled back, but it was the same light caramel brown. He had fangs rather than canines and lived on the ultimate low-carb diet, but he’d never eaten his veggies like a good boy even as a human. His eyes lightened to a silvery green when he was hungry, or angry, or aroused, or stressed out—which seemed about 90 percent of the time. The rest of the time, they were the same mossy color they’d always been. The face that looked back at him from the passport had a cocky, self-sure expression that didn’t show the arsewipe who lived inside the shell.

  A chickenshit arsewipe as well, or he’d have told Melissa Calvert before he left that he didn’t return her feelings, not in the way she wanted. Or he should’ve fucked her as planned, scratched that itch, and at least not left both horny and guilty.

  Cage dallied toward the back of the Customs line, and then dawdled in gift shops on his way to baggage claim. Aidan had said whoever picked Cage up would probably be a bit late. Cage hoped it would be Aidan himself, so he could get the rundown on the situation in Penton. Last time he was there the town had lain in ruins, more than half of its citizens dead or gone, and he was leaving to inform Matthias Ludlam, who’d started the whole mess, of his pending execution.

  Tomorrow, the date Matthias was due to meet whatever was the opposite of a heavenly reward, would be a lovely day to celebrate.

  Of course, if he were picked up by Aidan’s massive second-in-command, Mirren Kincaid, Cage also would get a report, only it would be much less pleasant and filled with many more expletives.

  No such luck. It was Melissa Calvert’s face he zeroed in on as soon as he rounded the last corner into the baggage-claim area. His breath caught at the rush of memories and feelings, some good, some bad. Most a perplexing cocktail of both.

  Stop overthinking, Reynolds. He hadn’t practiced psychiatry in more than seven decades, but overanalyzing was a hard habit to break.

  Melissa gave him a shy wave, and he felt an annoying blossom of warmth open in his chest. He ignored the spinning carousel of luggage, elbowed his way among a dozen tourists chattering in German, and pulled her into a hug. The pressure of her arms around his waist, her sweet cinnamon smell, and the warm stroke of her fingers on his back grounded him more than the wheel of the plane thumping onto the runway had done. Now, he was home.

  He just hoped he could talk Aidan and the rest of the good people of Penton into letting him stay after he hurt this woman who was so intrinsically one of them.

  Cage might have spent most of his human and vampire years in London, but Penton was where he fit. Where he felt whole again—something he’d thought was out of his reach.

  Melissa’s curly, strawberry-blonde hair brushed across Cage’s cheek like floral-scented whispers as he stepped back and held her at arm’s length. She’d grown thinner, her rounded face taking on the paler, more honed look of a vampire, but her hazel eyes sparkled. New vampires often had a hard transition, and hers had been traumatic. She’d publicly had her throat slashed and then been spirited away and secretly turned vampire just before the point of death. Matthias Ludlam couldn’t die too soon. Cage’s only regret was that Ludlam’s executioners would probably be humane.

  “You look lovely, Mel. I . . .” He frowned at her suddenly pained expression, her mouth thinned, brows scrunched together. “What’s wrong?”

  She spoke through lips compressed so tightly they’d turned white. “I’m trying not to grin at you. Aidan says if I can’t stop showing my fangs, he’s going to lock me in the old clinic subbasement again and tie me down with silver-laced rope.”

  Cage laughed before he could stop himself. He’d forgotten the singsong lilt of her Southern accent and her penchant for saying exactly what she thought. “See. Watch my technique.” He grinned at her. “Push your lower lip up on the sides.”

  She tried a lopsided grin that made her look like a grimacing Halloween monster before she gave up and collapsed against his chest in laughter. When the giggles faded, she wrapped her arms around him again, tighter this time. “I missed you, Cage.”

  “Me too, love.” And he had. He’d forgotten how easy they were together, and in this time of turmoil, comfort was a rare commodity. When was the last time he’d laughed?

  It certainly hadn’t been in London. The city’s starving vampire community had split into radical fringe groups, some even supporting the idea of revealing their existence to the unwitting human population. They believed vampires could rely on human mercy to save them.

  Cage didn’t agree. He’d seen genocide and unspeakable behavior both in his human life and afterward. Mercy was a gift, not a given.

  Starving vampires didn’t respond well to political rhetoric, however, so his Tribunal leader, Edward Simmons, had a boatload of work ahead to prevent his desperate people from committing the vampire version of seppuku. Things were slightly better in the States, he’d heard, but only because the vampire population was waiting to see how the blood banks would work.

  “You got a lot of luggage?” Melissa pulled away from him and looked at the thinning crowd around the edges of the baggage carousel. “Aidan wanted to come himself, but he just got back from Washington and had a conference call with Colonel Thomas.” The human Army colonel, whose daughter was a member of the Penton scathe, had helped them put the old sadist Matthias away.

  In exchange, the US vampires had agreed to stay hidden while banks of unvaccinated blood were set up. Starting with the Penton scathe, they’d also be providing vampire operatives to work side by side with human Army Rangers on national security cases. They’d taken the name Omega Force, after the underground bunker the Pentonites had lived in while their town was under siege.

  Cage wanted to ask how the Omega Force units were doing, but Melissa wasn’t the right person. She’d not likely be privy to Tribunal or security issues.

  For now, they’d keep the subject easy. “I travel light—one bag. Pull the car around, and I’ll meet you outside.”

  Cage watched her leave, her navy sweater disappearing from view as she blended with the travelers piling in and out of taxis and shuttle buses. He quelled his instinctive rise of worry. She’d survived—maybe even thrived—away from him for the past three months. It would be too easy to fall back into protective mode, and they’d be right back where they were before, with her needing something he wasn’t capable of giving.

  He turned back to the carousel and waited for his heavy trunk to roll round again; it was all he had to show from his life in London. He’d cleared out the flat he’d leased for the past five years. Longer than that in one place and the neighbors might wonder why the bloke down the corridor hadn’t aged. Not that he was there much. Soldiers of fortune went where they were hired and fought for whoever offered the most payoff in adrenaline and cash.

  That life had grown old, however, and he had grown tired. Living in Penton and feeling part of a community had shown him how tired.

  He’d donated most of his meager belongings to a local shelter, packed up the rest, and mailed the flat’s owner two months’ rent and the key. He’d broken the news to Edward Simmons—the UK Tribunal representative and his scathe master—that he wouldn’t be returning.


  He just wanted Penton.

  He rolled his trunk outside. The midnight-blue BMW idling in front of the baggage-claim exit belonged to Aidan—another reminder that it was not Cage’s job to be Melissa’s protector. Aidan took care of his people. He didn’t need Cage Reynolds to do it for him.

  Melissa popped the trunk for him but got out and walked around, helping move some of Aidan’s papers aside to make room. His shoulder brushed hers, whisper light, but neither of them moved away. An accident or a test?

  This time, when she turned and looked up at him, the lights from the taxis and other vehicles seemed to move like a carousel around their still little world, where nothing could touch them. Her lips parted slightly, but her expression was troubled, not aroused.

  They spoke at the same time.

  “We need to—”

  “Now’s not the time, but—”

  They smiled, and Melissa slammed the trunk. “You want to drive?”

  Oh, hell no. “Love, the last thing I drove was a 1941 Peugeot, in Paris. You do not want me behind the wheel.”

  She cocked her head. “I never knew you lived in Paris. Or were you visiting? This was before you were turned?”

  “Before, yes.” He had no more to say on that subject. “Not a happy subject with me, though.”

  Understatement. He hoped she’d let it go, and after studying him a second, she nodded and climbed behind the wheel. He strapped himself into the passenger seat.

  They remained silent while she pulled the car away from the loading area and circled the terminal via the byzantine airport roadways. Well, this was damned awkward. Time to turn on the Reynolds charm. It wouldn’t do to get into relationship matters before they reached Penton. For one thing, he didn’t want her turning him out on the highway.

  “How did the fam situation sort itself out?” Cage kept his voice casual, but he saw Melissa’s fingers tense around the leather steering wheel. Not a good sign. She didn’t answer until she’d gotten the car out of the airport traffic glut and reached the freeway feeder road.

  “We’re short on fams.” Melissa had been Aidan’s familiar—a bonded human feeder and also a close friend—before being turned by Matthias and his lackeys, who’d hoped to use her against Aidan.

  “When you say you’re short, how short? Has Aidan begun recruiting in Atlanta again?” Their Irish-born master vampire had a clever system, taking unvaccinated addicts or abuse cases and rehabbing them with enthrallment and counseling. Once they were clean and sober, they could move to Penton as a familiar, or he’d alter their memories and help fund a new start for them wherever they wanted. “How many of the fams left?”

  “It wasn’t just fams; scathe members left, too.” Melissa took the exit for I-85 South and settled back as they left Atlanta traffic behind and cruised through the suburbs toward Penton, about eighty miles to the southwest and just across the Georgia-Alabama line. “We’re down to about twenty-five scathe members and ten humans, so fams are doing double and triple duty.”

  She glanced over at him. “I think there are some new people coming tomorrow night who can be feeders, but until then you’ve been assigned to Max. He was the only one in the town’s inner circle without three to feed.”

  “Bloody hell.” Max Jeffries was one of Penton’s resident Army Rangers. He’d joined the Penton Omega Force team and had butted heads with Cage from the day he arrived until the night Cage left. “Does he still think he can best a vampire in a fistfight?” Because Cage might have to refresh Max on a few facts of life.

  Melissa laughed. “Judging by the cuts and bruises he’s always covered with, I’d say he’s still trying. Mirren will have to fill you in on that. He’s going to help with the training.”

  They’d moved out of suburban traffic, and the interstate highway stretched before them like a gray ribbon illuminated by the sedan’s headlights. The dark outlines of pine forests buffeted each side of the highway, deserted at 2:30 a.m. except for the occasional big-rig truck hightailing it toward Montgomery and points west.

  The headlights’ high beams caught a flash of white in the woods to their right, and then a second flash.

  Cage leaned forward. “What the hell was that?”

  Mel hit a switch on the driver’s-side door, and all the locks clicked shut. “Open the glove box. Mirren sent you a present.”

  Cage opened the compartment cautiously—the big Scotsman distrusted Cage on a number of levels. One, Mirren had been a Scottish gallowglass warrior living in Ireland when he was turned vampire four centuries earlier, and he considered Englishmen high on the satanic scale. Two, Cage had been the newest, and thus least trusted, of Aidan’s lieutenants in Penton. And three, Cage had been, in Mirren’s colorful phraseology, a “fucking brain-shrinker.” Never mind that he hadn’t shrunk a brain professionally in decades.

  On the other hand, Mirren Kincaid would be any psychiatrist’s dream study—except Cage figured there was a high probability at any given moment that the oversized oaf would wield his circa-1600 sword and start lopping off heads, starting with the brain-shrinker’s.

  So he stuck his fingers in the compartment with a delicate touch lest something cut, latch onto, or bite them. Instead, they brushed across the cold, polished steel of a shape he recognized: a Colt .45 semiautomatic, both Mirren’s and Aidan’s weapon of choice. He approved; the gun was big and heavy, and it fit well in a man’s hand.

  Not comforting that he needed a weapon for a ninety-minute automobile ride, however. “So, what exactly did I see in the woods out there?”

  “We call them vampabonds. Vampire vagabonds. The numbers have really picked up in the last month.” She gave a halfhearted laugh. “It’s gotten worse since some yahoo in Montgomery got the bright idea of offering one-dollar bus fare from Atlanta. Now, they blend in with all the humans on the late bus and can get here cheap, with air conditioning and Wi-Fi along the way.”

  Cage confirmed that the gun had a full cartridge and scanned the woods and fields they sped past. “These vampabonds—are they looking for food or for Penton?”

  “Both. Some are heading for Penton, hoping Aidan will take them in and let them stay, thinking it’s an easy way to get unvaccinated blood. Some are just moving farther into the rural areas, hoping to find humans they can feed from.”

  Neither of those would necessitate a gun. After all, someone wanting to move to Penton would want to cooperate, and the ones looking for humans would avoid other vampires so they could keep unvaccinated feeders to themselves.

  There had to be more. “What part are you not telling me?”

  “The vampabonds are increasing,” Melissa said, disgust clear in her tone. “Word travels, and they know there are unvaccinated people in Penton. We’ve had a few coming into town thinking if they get lucky and kill Aidan or Mirren or Will, some of those humans would be free for the taking.”

  Every vampire and human in Penton had to be bonded to one of the three master vampires: Aidan, Mirren, or Will Ludlam, Matthias’s much-abused son. No one outside the scathe could feed from a bonded human—unless the master vampire who held their bond got killed.

  “That’s inconvenient.” Cage had hoped his fellow vamps would see Penton as an idea to emulate, not a feeding buffet. “We shouldn’t be surprised, I suppose. Some humans are bad people. When they become vampires, they don’t suddenly develop morals.” Like he was any judge of morality.

  He stared out the window as they whizzed past the black shadows of pine forest. “Any chance some of our old enemies from the Tribunal are behind this influx, and how many are we talking about?”

  “There’s been nothing to make us think it’s Tribunal related.” Melissa shook her head. “Numbers . . . I don’t know, maybe six or seven coming into Penton every week or two? Enough that Mirren’s got the patrols going around town again.”

  So much for easing back into Penton life a
nd training leisurely for whatever the Army Rangers had in mind for the special unit. Cage fought back a smile, his blood moving faster. He might be looking for a place to settle down, but he still got off on the rush.

  The one good piece of news was that Matthias Ludlam was about to be truly and finally dead. “How’s Will doing? I mean, Matthias is his father, as well as being a right evil bastard.”

  Melissa shrugged. “Randa says he’s either ignoring talk about Matthias or making wisecracks. Typical Will, in other words—bottling everything up inside.” She flipped on the turn signal as they approached an exit where the lights of a convenience mart shone through the trees. “I need to get some gas.”

  “What about his—”

  “Damn!” Melissa stomped on the brake at the flash of movement in front of the car, holding the vehicle steady while its back end decided whether to shimmy left or right. Cage braced his boots hard against the floor and was glad he had buckled his seat belt.

  They lurched to a stop less than ten yards from a gaunt man who’d careened onto the pavement of the feeder road in front of them, arms waving.

  “Good reflexes, love. Pull off the roadway and stay in the car.”

  Once the sedan was safely off the pavement, Cage studied the man for a couple of seconds and then slowly opened his door and slid out. He held the Colt in his left hand, hidden at a slight angle behind his back.

  “Oh God,” the man said, “so sorry. I thought you were somebody else.” The man’s dark hair was cut short on the sides, longer on top—a modern, fit-in-with-the-humans style that complemented his high cheekbones, square jaw, and the ball cap he wore. “Hope the car’s okay.”