But some long-lost buddy, suddenly turned vampire, shows up in town at the same time Cage happens to be returning? Rotten fish weren’t the only thing that smelled like shit.
Cage turned and spoke to Fen, who shrugged his shoulders, flashed his smarmy grin, and went back inside. Mirren got the sense that Cage didn’t trust the man, either, which made Mirren think more of the shrink, even if he was an Englishman. Aidan wanted Fen under surveillance, though, which was easier to do if they let him stay in town, under their noses.
“What’s up?” Cage slid into the backseat and gave Krys a hug. “The air smells like open house at the blood bank.”
Aidan filled him in on what he knew. “It might not be serious, but any bad news at this point can shake people’s confidence. Everyone’s nervous.”
“I think people are wondering if we should’ve come back and tried to rebuild this soon,” Krys said. “If we lose any more feeders or familiars, we’ll have to start recruiting again. We probably shouldn’t have let Shawn and Britta come in, although I like both of them. And now, Cage is back, and Fen.”
Cage nodded. “Yeah, two more sets of fangs to feed. Pity I couldn’t have brought a feeder or two with me from London, but Edward wouldn’t allow it. Things are worse there than here. Who are Shawn and Britta?”
Mirren hadn’t formed an opinion on the Penton scathe’s two newest members. They’d come together, both newish vampires who’d tracked Aidan down at the Atlanta community clinic where he volunteered and scouted for fams.
“Both of them moved to Atlanta from Mobile, thinking it would be easier to find feeders there, but it wasn’t,” Aidan said. “They seem okay. Still too early to tell.”
The two new women were under surveillance, too, although they’d relaxed it in the last week or two. There wasn’t enough manpower to watch everybody.
As badly as he wanted Penton to be the way it had been before the siege, Mirren had wondered if they should even try to rebuild before the whole pandemic vaccine crisis was resolved. No one trusted the Tribunal members to keep the vampire population calm and at peace in exchange for the humans setting up the blood bank and keeping their mouths shut.
Colonel Rick Thomas didn’t trust the Tribunal members who weren’t Penton allies, either, or he wouldn’t have parked this many of his Ranger operatives in town. Rob and Max, and the two new guys due in tonight, were now full-time Pentonites, whether they liked it or not.
Aidan filled Cage in on the rebuilding status, and Mirren had to admit he was glad to have the man back in Penton—as long as he kept his psychoanalysis bullshit to himself. They needed every experienced fighter they could get, and Cage had a cool head under pressure. They might not be at war since they’d defeated Matthias and forced the Tribunal bullies to back down by bringing in the Rangers, but he wouldn’t exactly call it peacetime, either.
“Aw, fuck.” Mirren spotted the construction site at the top of the hill and sped up. The work site was illuminated by three floodlights, and a heap of brick-filled rubble was visible even from a distance. “Looks like the whole east wall came down. They’d almost finished bricking that one.”
He slammed the truck to a halt, slinging white nuggets of loose gravel across the parking lot. Aidan, Krys, and Cage jumped out before he had the key out of the ignition.
Mirren popped the hatch to retrieve Krys’s medical kit, stopping to study the site and the woods behind it. Max stood upright and looked uninjured, judging by the way he waved his arms around as he talked to Aidan. Fucking drama queen. Mark sat off to one side with his head propped on his bent knees.
Pausing beside the Bronco, Mirren scanned the wooded area behind the job site, looking for anything out of place. It had become habit to suspect Matthias of being behind anything bad that happened here, but Penton had other enemies on the Tribunal—not the least of whom was Director Frank Greisser. He wanted both Aidan and Mirren dead. They’d challenged his ability to lead and had “fomented rebellion” by advocating a partnership with bonded humans as a way to survive the pandemic crisis. After Aidan’s power play of bringing human military personnel into vampire affairs, Greisser had been forced to throw Matthias to the wolves and pretend an alliance with the Penton scathe. But things weren’t over. Mirren could feel it.
He sensed no unbonded vampires lurking around, however, so he walked up to the site where Aidan, Krys, and Cage knelt next to the pile of collapsed brick.
Aw, fuck.
From the parking lot, the heap of bricks had camouflaged the body lying underneath. Rob Thomas looked like he’d been at ground zero when the wall collapsed, and Mirren could tell by one look at the guy that he was dead or dying. That much weight didn’t land on your head without breaking something unfixable.
He skirted around where Krys knelt next to Rob, trying to talk to him, and approached Max and Mark. “Mark, you okay?”
“Just had the wind knocked out of me. Give me a minute and I’m good.” His blond hair was caked with blood around his right temple, but it had already dried. “Rob’s in bad shape, though.”
“Yeah, he is. Start talking, Max.”
Max looked back to where Cage and Aidan were trying to talk to Rob while Krys ripped away clothing to assess the wounds. If Mirren knew he was dying, Krys knew it, too. He guessed that as a doctor she had to at least go through the motions.
Max and Rob had been best buddies since college and throughout their Army tours, so he would cut the guy some slack—as long as he didn’t revert to smartassery. “What happened?”
“Hell, I don’t know.” Max stuck shaky hands in his pockets. “Mark was having trouble with one of the last bricks, so I went over to get a new one off the stack that came in yesterday. When I turned around, the whole wall was coming down on them.” He looked down, but not before Mirren saw tears.
Aw, fuck me. He was not the Mother Teresa of vampirehood, by a long shot. He didn’t know what to say to a guy watching his best friend die. “Focus,” he said. “The anchors holding the wall to the frame must have come loose.”
As soon as he said the words, Mirren realized how ridiculous that scenario was. One anchor could come loose. Two? Not outside the realm of possibility, although unlikely. But not all of them. “You sure all the anchors on the construction plans got put in? No shortcuts?”
“No way.” Max took a deep breath and turned back to Mirren. “We even checked them before we left the site last night, Rob and me both, ’cause we knew we’d be adding that last section today. They were solid. No way fifteen anchors came loose.” He looked around again. Aidan and Cage were talking to Krys, who held her hands to her face. Max’s voice softened to a whisper. “No fucking way.”
Which meant sabotage—and Mirren didn’t have a clue who the saboteur might be, although his first thought went to Fen Patrick. Everyone else, even Britta and Shawn, had gone through one of Will’s background checks. They’d all turned up clean. He should’ve locked Fen up himself. Although he couldn’t imagine Cage would have left the newcomer unguarded long enough to be able to come to the job site and screw with the anchors. How could Fen even have known about the construction project when Cage didn’t know himself?
Mirren helped Mark to his feet, and once he was sure the man wasn’t going to tumble over, he walked back to the others. “He’s gone, isn’t he?”
Aidan rose and wiped his blood-covered hands on a shop towel lying nearby. Krys had walked several yards away, where she stood next to a portion of the wall that was still intact.
“Yes.” Aidan picked up a brick and threw it as hard as he could down the hill, then hung his head. When he spoke again, his voice was subdued but under control. Aidan could suck down anger and grief better than any vampire Mirren had known in his long years—himself included. “How’s Mark?”
“Head wound, but he’s lucid.” Mirren looked at where Mark had been sitting in relation to the broken ladder. “I
think he was on the ladder and got thrown free of the wall. Probably the only thing that saved him.”
Krys rejoined them, her face white as chalk in the harsh floodlight, her cheeks wet with tears. Her transition to vampire had been so smooth, Mirren tended to forget she’d been turned less than a year. She could still cry.
“I’m going to take Mark to the house instead of the clinic. I want him close tonight in case anything goes wrong. Maybe Max can stay with him during daysleep.” Krys rubbed her hands up and down her arms and looked at Rob. “I hate that the blood gets to me this way. I feel like some kind of monster—it’s obscene.”
Yeah, the blood scent was strong enough to make Mirren lightheaded, and he had about four hundred years’ more vampire experience than Krys. He grabbed a tarp from atop a pile of lumber and spread it over the body. Poor guy deserved at least that much dignity.
Krys’s eyes widened. “Oh my God. I just realized—we have to tell the colonel. And Randa’s going to blame herself for bringing Robbie into this.”
Aidan drew Krys into his arms, but he turned his gaze to Mirren. His light-blue eyes had gone winter white, and Mirren figured his own were an equally frigid shade of gray. Fury tended to have that effect.
“It was somebody’s fault, all right,” Mirren said. “But not Randa’s.”
“What do you mean?” Krys turned to look at Mirren, rubbing her eyes. Behind her, Aidan gave a slight shake of his head.
“Nothing, darlin’. All of this can be laid right at the feet of Matthias Ludlam, may he rot in hell by this time tomorrow.” Mirren dug his keys from the pocket of his black combat pants and held them out to Krys. “Take Max home with you; he doesn’t need to be here right now. Keep him busy. Hell, give them both something that’ll knock them out.”
“What about . . .” Krys took a deep breath. “Do we call an ambulance for Rob?”
“No. We’ll take care of it.” What a bad, bad idea: three vampires, sitting around waiting for human EMTs to show up and take away a body from a town that, by design, barely registered on human maps. Plus, the nearest emergency room was in Opelika, thirty miles away, which meant the Chambers County sheriff would have to get involved.
If Rob had still been alive, Mirren would’ve taken the risk. Calling them now wouldn’t help him, though, and probably would bring more trouble to their doorstep. They already had plenty.
Aidan kissed Krys before she got in Mirren’s Bronco. Max helped Mark into the backseat and then climbed in the passenger seat. He gave them a halfhearted wave as they drove away, and Mirren thought he’d never seen a more brokenhearted man.
Cage joined them, giving wide berth to Rob’s body. “I was looking at the structure from the back side. At least half of the anchors between the brick wall and the frame are missing.”
Not loose. Missing.
“Damn it. See anything else out of place? Don’t guess our visitor left a calling card.” Mirren led the others around to examine the building frame, which remained sturdy and solid. Even illuminated only by the floodlights, the holes in the wood were visible. He scraped a finger across one and turned his finger toward the light. “Mortar dust. Max insists the anchors were there when he and Rob checked the site last night; now, they’re gone.”
Cage squatted and felt around on the concrete foundation. “Wish we had a better light to see whether they’re still here or our saboteur took them.”
“Will this help?”
Mirren turned to see a man walking up the hill toward them, apparently leaving his recent-model white SUV on the shoulder of the road near the turnoff to the construction site. The newcomer was about six feet tall, human, and a stranger. Black shaggy hair, dark eyes, olive complexion, very white teeth, no fangs. Probably one of the new Rangers, but Mirren was making no assumptions.
“Who the hell are you?”
“A man with a light.” The man held up a key chain with a small flashlight hanging from it. “It’s not very big, but brighter than you might think. Depends on what you’re looking for.”
Mirren stared a second at the proffered hand before taking the key chain and tossing it to Cage. “Can’t hurt. If you’re one of our new Rangers, welcome to fuckin’ paradise. If you aren’t, you’re lost.”
The guy smiled. “You must be Mirren Kincaid. You’ll be pleased to know Colonel Thomas described you as a grizzly bear, only bigger. I’m Sergeant Nikolas Dimitrou—Nik—from the Texas Omega Force team. I’m supposed to check in with either Rob Thomas or Aidan Murphy.”
“I’m Murphy.” Aidan had been watching the exchange with narrowed eyes, sizing up the new guy. “Unfortunately, Captain Thomas was killed tonight. We were just about to discuss whether or not to call an ambulance. What do you think?”
Mirren didn’t know if Zorba the Greek realized he was getting his first test in vampire politics, but he crossed his arms and waited for the newcomer’s response. If he said that, of course, they needed an ambulance because the law required it, then he wasn’t ready to work with vampires. And if he thought Aidan sounded cold and dispassionate, he was a poor judge of character.
Nik introduced himself to Cage and shook hands with Aidan. “Normally you’d call an ambulance, but this isn’t a normal situation, is it?” He gave Aidan a steady, unflinching look and then shifted the same intense gaze over to Mirren. “Your eyes tell me how upset you are about this—both of you. The colonel put us through vampire basic training, you might call it.
“But this is Colonel Thomas’s son.” He looked down at the tarp. “I’d say if you have a place in town where the body can be preserved, it should be the colonel’s call on how to handle it. His sister lives here, too—Randa, right? The family should make the final decision. I can’t imagine the colonel would do anything to jeopardize Penton.”
The guy had balls, Mirren would give him that much. If he was uncomfortable standing around with three vampires who could all tell with a single sniff that he was unvaccinated, he didn’t show it. And he’d clearly done his homework on his new fellow citizens.
Mirren had been trying to place Zorba’s accent, which was sort of Southern but with an odd turn to it. Finally, it hit him. “You from New Orleans?”
Nik grinned. “First generation Yat. Grew up in Broadmoor. And now, I guess I live in Penton.”
Aidan’s smile was slight, but genuine. “Welcome to town, Nik—wish the circumstances were better. I’m guessing the colonel will need to reassess things here before deciding your chain of command. One other Ranger is here—Max Jeffries—although he and Rob were tight. I don’t know how he’s going to react. Another guy from your unit is due in tonight. Mirren’s in charge of training unless we hear differently, and we’ll wait to see if the colonel has a mission for you.”
“Penton is our mission for now, as I understand it.” Nik cocked his head and looked at Aidan with a bemused smile. “So my Omega team member isn’t here yet?”
“Guy named Ashton,” Mirren said. “The dickhead’s already late.”
“No he isn’t. His timing is perfect.”
Mirren swiveled at the voice coming from somewhere behind him and scowled as a girl approached them from the woods behind the construction site. No, not a girl, but a woman. A tiny woman who couldn’t be a hair over five feet. She was slender, with short spiky hair that glinted auburn in the floodlights, big dark eyes, jeans, and a tight T-shirt that revealed an inch of tanned skin and the glint of a navel ring.
What the hell was a human woman doing out here, in the woods?
He looked back at Dimitrou, who stood next to Cage, their arms crossed over their chests and smiles on their faces. Aidan, at least, looked properly concerned, unlike Tweedle-dee and Zorba.
Sometimes a little fright therapy was a valid psychiatric treatment, as he was sure the shrink would know if he hadn’t been standing there like a fucktard.
“Who the hell are you?” Mirre
n took a step toward the woman. “You need a ride back to the sorority house?”
She grinned and walked to within a foot of him; he had an inexplicable urge to take a step back. He’d be damned if that was going to happen.
He pinned her with his Slayer expression, which alone had driven many lesser men to their knees, including vampires. She frowned at him and didn’t answer.
Mirren took another step toward her. “I’ll talk slower so you can understand, lady. Who. The. Hell. Are. You?”
The woman’s chin didn’t even reach Mirren’s sternum, so from her close vantage point she had to crane her neck to look him squarely in the eye—which she did.
“I’m Ashton, a.k.a. the dickhead,” she said in a drawl that had “smartass” written all over it. “And I am your worst fucking nightmare.”
CHAPTER 5
Cage coughed in an unsuccessful attempt to camouflage the laugh that started deep in his gut and bubbled out before he could stop it. Mirren’s expression morphed in quick succession from intimidation to disbelief to outrage. Bloody priceless.
The laughter faded fast, however, when Krys returned with the Bronco, backing it up to the edge of the job site. It was a sobering reminder of why they were standing there, and what—or who—lay under that blue tarp. Cage was surprised at his own reaction. He hadn’t known Rob well, but he’d been a genuinely good man. The people of Penton were good people, whether human or vampire. None of them deserved this.
If Cage could find the saboteur, he’d kill him. If it turned out to be his old “friend” Fen Patrick, he’d kill him slowly. While Fen had given him no cause to be suspicious, the man had been a very good operative as a human soldier of fortune. Good enough for Cage to have shared his own identity with Fen all those years ago instead of killing him, so he could keep him as a partner. And good enough for Cage to not quite trust him now.
Allegiance (The Penton Vampire Legacy) Page 5
