“Go ahead, knock yourself out.” Cage stepped back and pretended to examine the blackened remains of a hibiscus.
Mirren grumbled a few names in his direction and climbed down the ladder, his glaring gray eyes the last thing Cage saw.
“Come down here.” The voice might as well have come from hell itself, but the tone brooked no argument. Cage took a deep breath and lowered himself into the bowels of the earth. Somehow the daysleep spaces never felt underground, so it was easy to psych himself out.
Once he reached the bottom, he realized it wasn’t so bad. Inside the steel-lined room at the bottom of the ladder, he could still look up and see stars and open sky. The narrow, low-ceilinged tunnel might be another story.
His breath grew labored the second he stepped into the entry room and his view of the open trapdoor was obscured. He would not hyperventilate in front of the Slayer, by God, if he had to stick his fangs into his own lip to distract himself.
Not necessary, as it turned out. The blood scent hit him the instant he got two feet from the tunnel entrance. “What the hell is it?”
“Dunno, but it’s the blood of a vampire. I thought we better go in together.” Mirren’s uncharacteristic caution was in itself worthy of panic.
Mirren grasped the wheel that opened the steel door into the tunnel. Whoever had been behind that door had bled. A lot. Recently.
He looked back. “You ready?”
Cage nodded. “Sure.” Hell no, he wasn’t ready.
Mirren wrenched open the door to the tunnel, and the blood stench hit them like a physical blast. Cage lost his balance and had to lean propped against the wall a few heartbeats to make sure he could stay upright. Even Mirren had to pause and catch his breath.
“Okay, let’s see what we’re dealing with.”
Cage followed him through the door and for several long seconds they stood side by side, silent, trying to understand what lay before them.
Two long wooden beams, probably taken from the collapsed tunnel beyond them, had been erected in an X shape and nailed to the wall.
Pinned to the St. Andrew’s cross with long silver knives that had been used to pierce her hands, shoulders, thighs, and ankles as if she were a butterfly being attached to a board, was a woman. Those wounds had bled, but most of the blood appeared to have come from her chest, which had been splayed open. The front of her clothing was drenched with blood, and it had formed large dark pools on the concrete floor.
Her head hung forward, dark hair obscuring her face.
“Holy fuck.” Mirren looked at Cage as if asking permission to touch her. Cage nodded. They had to see, God forbid, if she was anyone they knew.
Mirren stepped beside her, placed two fingers beneath her chin, and raised her head. He flinched. “Fuck me. She’s still alive.”
They still hadn’t gotten a good look at her. Holding his flashlight with his left hand and directing the beam at her face, Cage reached out with his right and brushed her hair aside.
Fear shot from his scalp to his boots. “Britta?”
CHAPTER 23
What’s eating you? Or should I say who?”
Nik grabbed Robin’s hand on their way out of the mill and tucked it into the crook of his elbow as if they were prom dates. He hated seeing her unhappy, so whatever Cage had done, the vampire better undo.
“Where’d Cage and Mirren go again?” Robin pulled out her cell phone and checked the time. “It’s almost two a.m. Let’s see if they’re still there.”
So completely not what he had in mind. “You heard Mirren. We need to be on shifter watch during daylight hours—so, you know, sleep?” He was so tired he could probably zonk out standing barefoot on the cracked and broken pavement of the mill’s parking lot.
“I’ll sleep when I’m dead.” They’d almost reached the steps to Mirren and Glory’s comm-house, but Robin stopped and pulled him back toward the street, where his SUV sat beneath the streetlamp. “C’mon. At least drive me by there, wherever it is. Then we’ll sleep. It’ll be relaxing.”
“What are we, in junior high? You want me to drive you past your boyfriend’s house and see if he’s home?”
Nik did know where they’d gone, though. Mark had given him the grand tour of the Penton-That-Was on their errand-filled afternoon, one of the highlights of which was the street where Aidan, Mark, and Melissa used to live, and the greenhouse where Aidan grew night-blooming plants to keep him connected to the soil and to life.
Oh, what the hell. She’d brought up the subject, and now his curiosity was aroused. It wouldn’t hurt to drive by there. If Mirren shot them for intruding, at least then he’d get some rest. Unless he died.
“They’ve been gone for two hours, so chances are we’ll have missed them,” Nik pointed out, climbing into the SUV. “You had to have a snack. Then you had to play with the punching bags.”
“Blah blah blah. Just drive.”
He headed north, hoping he’d recognize the location of the turnoff in the dark. The juice had been cut off to everything north of the clinic. “So, what was it like? Did Cage do it?”
Robin stared at him, a slow grin lighting up her face like one of those dimmer switches being turned up to illuminate a room. “You want sex details? Why Niko, I’m shocked.”
He’d taken a sip of water from a bottle he’d swiped out of the mill gym’s mini fridge; he choked on it when he realized what she thought he’d asked. By the time he got the coughing under control, Robin had spilled out everywhere she and Reynolds had done it. “Damn, Robin. Shut the hell up. I’ll never be able to touch one of those gym mats again without a can of Lysol. Shit.”
“Hey, you asked.” She laughed, and the sound was so infectious he couldn’t help chuckling himself.
“I meant feeding. I wondered if he fed from you after Mirren said not to. Holy Mother of God, I didn’t want to hear the rest of that. Glory’s sofa? If Mirren finds out you and Reynolds fucked on his sofa, you are both going to be roadkill.”
“He won’t know unless you tell him.” Robin smiled. “I like Cage.”
He glanced over at her. “Like like? Or love like?”
She didn’t answer, and at first he thought she’d fallen asleep. In which case he was turning this rig around and going to bed.
“It’s not that simple with shifters, you know.”
Nik had always wondered about Robin’s family and what her life had been like before she’d moved to New Orleans. It was as if she’d sprung fully grown and fully formed into her lower French Quarter third-story flat, not far from his family home. He was curious but respected her enough to avoid being nosy.
“You know if you ever want to talk about your life before, I’m here, right? No pressure. Just if you ever want to.”
Her voice was soft. “I know.”
The case in Houston they’d just finished had involved a wolf shifter who’d basically been sold by her parents into an arranged marriage. Robin had been even more infuriated by it than the rest of the team, and she was impatient with the woman for not going against her family sooner. It had made Nik wonder what the eagle-shifter culture was like. He’d done some research into the wild raptors, the golden eagles. They mated for life. They spent most of their lives in a fairly small area. They were expert trackers and hunters.
Yet here was little Robin, an expert tracker, but one who was ready to hit the road and go wherever it took her, keeping people at arm’s length. So who knew? She’d tell him when she wanted, and not a second before. He had to respect that.
“Where are we going again? A greenhouse? Why would a vampire have a greenhouse?”
“It was Aidan’s. The way I heard it, he was a farmer back in Ireland, and this was a way he could still work the land. And greenhouses hold sunlight, so I think it helped him stay in touch with who he was before he was turned.”
He drove slowly on
ce they’d passed the clinic, and he made a right onto Mill Trace Lane. “It should be up here on the right. I think we missed Cage, though. The whole street looks dark and empty.” In fact, if he hadn’t known the greenhouse was there, they wouldn’t have found it. This far in the country, dark meant really dark.
“You got a flashlight? Let’s look around as long as we’re here.”
Nik’s inner voice, which he usually heard in the form of his grandfather Costa, told him this was probably a bad idea, but he pulled over and killed the truck. “I have flashlights in the hatch, in the toolbox.”
“Always prepared.” Robin hopped out, and by the time he got to the hatch, she was holding out the largest flashlight and had the other tucked under her arm. “Okay, where is this greenhouse?” She looked around and zeroed in on what looked to Nik like a big black blank. “Never mind. I see it.”
“You see it? I don’t see it.” He squinted into the night, but if not for the flashlight he wouldn’t have been able to see an inch in front of his nose.
“I’m a raptor shifter, remember? We’re night hunters.”
Great, something else about which to feel inferior. Nik followed her through the overgrown side yard, scanning the ground for debris so he wouldn’t trip over it and add that embarrassment to a collection that had begun when Robin had doubled his bench-press maximum in her first Ranger School workout.
“Wait.” He knelt and traced the flashlight beam over the area he’d just passed. “There’s a wet trail here.”
Robin squatted next to it, reached out, and scrubbed a fingertip over the grass. She lifted it into the beam of his flashlight. “Blood, and it’s fresh.” She lifted it to her nose. “It’s vampire, not human.”
“How can you tell?”
While they talked, they’d been following the path of blood drops and ended up at the greenhouse. “It doesn’t have that iron scent like human blood; it’s richer, or meatier or something. I don’t know—I just had that one little freakout sip from Mirren. I just know it smelled different.”
“The scent seems stronger in here.” Nik led the way into the greenhouse, which before the Penton siege had probably been a beautiful place. Most of the plants were long dead.
“And strongest back here.” Robin knelt and dragged aside a turf mat that had been pulled over a trapdoor of some kind.
“I think we should wait—”
She’d already pulled open the hatch, so no point in finishing that sentence. All he could do was follow her into the bowels of the earth and try to ignore Pop Costa’s dire warnings.
By the time he reached the bottom of the ladder, she’d disappeared into a doorway that branched off to the side through a heavy steel air-lock-type door. Damn it, Robin. He stepped through the blood-spattered doorway and swung the arc of his flashlight up and onto something that surely to God was a torture rack straight out of one of Dante’s inner circles of hell.
“Look.” Robin had knelt again, and he followed her gaze with the flashlight beam. A silver knife lay on the floor. “I’m not touching it. I think it’s silver and not steel.”
Shifters could touch silver without danger, but a silver-inflicted wound, unless superficial, would kill them. Even if Nik did feel physically inferior sometimes, being human was much simpler.
“Leave it there, Robin. We’ll let Mirren and Cage come back for it if they need to see it.” Then again, damn it, he liked these Penton people. Didn’t he have an obligation to help them if he could? “No, on second thought, I want to use the Touch on that knife.”
“No.” Robin took her shoe and shoved the knife away from him. “You’ve had two nosebleeds today, and I know that means you’re overdoing it. You don’t know what the long-term effects are, Niko. I’ll wrap it in something, and you can do it tomorrow if you feel like it.”
He knew better than to argue with that tone, but it didn’t mean he had to do what she said. “Sure, okay. Maybe there’s something over there in that rubble to wrap it in. Fabric, or plastic sheeting.”
“I’ll look.” She walked over to the head of the collapsed tunnel. “This thing led all the way into the clinic subsuites, didn’t it? It must have taken them forever to build all this.”
While she dug in the debris and chattered about the brilliance of the Penton infrastructure, he took a deep breath and walked to where the knife lay. As soon as he wrapped his hand around it, the burning pain hit him. Like when he’d held the glass, only stronger. Such rage, and such pain.
He dropped to his knees and held the knife with both hands, willing not just the emotions to come, but the images. Finally, they filled his mind, vivid images in bright, nightmare-inducing color.
Britta, pinned to the St. Anthony’s cross by knives.
A jaguar, lapping up the blood at her feet.
Fen Patrick, with blood on his chin.
Then it was all gone, and Robin was holding his head in her lap and talking in a nonstop, soft drone. “Nik, you idiot. You beautiful, sweet idiot.”
He tried twice before choking out the words. “Get me out of here, Robin. Help me. It’s bad this time.” He’d never reached out for the images before; he’d always let them come to him. Good to know he could summon them if he tried; bad to know it could kill him.
She tried to pull him to his feet, but he couldn’t stay upright. Finally, she pulled his right arm around her slim shoulders and lifted his weight. “You’re gonna have to climb out. I can’t carry you up the ladder, but I can push you from behind. Think you can hang on?”
“Or die trying.” He’d try to climb to the stars if it would give him one fresh breath of air, away from the smell of death and the vision of Britta Eriksen hanging on that cross.
Each rung of the metal drop ladder was harder to heft himself onto than the one before it, but when his head finally cleared the opening of the hatch, he gulped enough fresh air to give him the energy to finish the climb. He collapsed on the floor of the greenhouse and waited while Robin closed up the hatch and replaced the turf mat.
“I’ve gotta see Aidan now.” He tried to get up but couldn’t. “Gimme a minute.” He closed his eyes and waited. His equilibrium would come back. It just took a while, and Robin was right. He’d overdone it.
He was moving and realized Robin was mostly carrying him toward the SUV.
Then he was in the passenger seat, the truck was bumping along the road, and Robin was talking as if from a long distance.
Then he awoke, and the sun was out, and he was naked, and Robin was curled up beside him.
Everything was a blur except for the most important things: Fen Patrick. The jaguar. Britta.
He sat up, waiting for the dizziness to pass, and was pleased that it did. He scrambled on the nightstand for his watch. Shit. It was almost noon, and there was no way to reach Aidan or Mirren until dusk. The only good part? Fen Patrick couldn’t be creating havoc during daysleep.
“You okay?” Robin sat up, her hair stuck in about forty directions, her mouth stretched wide in a yawn.
“Thanks for taking care of me last night.” He leaned over and kissed her cheek. “Think you can help me do some sleuthing today, before the vampires wake up?”
“Coffee, shower, coffee, more coffee, then sleuthing.” She crawled off the bed and shuffled toward the door. Nik stood, monitored his balance, and walked to the mirror to check out his face. He’d been covered in blood, that much he did remember. Another nosebleed, plus he’d grasped that knife pretty hard. He held out his hands; shallow cuts made horizontal swaths across both palms where he’d held onto the blade. Nothing serious, but Robin must’ve had a big cleanup job.
Could Britta have lived? Was Fen the source of the rage and the hunger? Who was the coyote, and was Fen working with him?
All he’d done was get more questions and no answers. But at least they had a place to start, and Cage needed to tell Aidan ev
erything he could about Fen Patrick.
CHAPTER 24
Matthias had always prided himself on his appearance. He’d enjoyed the finest things his wealth had afforded him since graduating from being a human attorney serving the privileged class, to one of the vampire elite, heavily involved in the Tribunal’s investments and well-compensated for it, both in what they paid him and what he took.
Tailored suits, silk ties, and Italian leather filled his closets. His salt-and-pepper hair had always been stylishly cut—whatever the style du jour happened to be.
Now, he looked in the mirror at a stranger whose hair fell out in clumps when he tried to comb it. Who found clothing itchy and hot, as if ants crawled across his skin wherever it touched him.
Who was always so very, very hungry.
Wolfgang no longer came to his room but sent a silent guard not unlike the one who’d tended his cell in Virginia. He always brought a bag of blood and a plate of food. Beautifully prepared food. Always a succulent roasted meat with potatoes and vegetables and bread. A dessert—the Austrians knew how to make pastries to make a grown man weep.
Especially a man who was starving but whose body rejected any food he ate.
A man who had to drink blood to stay alive but whose body found it nauseating.
So when the doorknob jangled, the lock turned, and he looked up to see Frank Greisser striding in with his fine jacket and polished shoes and healthy good looks, Matthias knew there was someone on this earth he now hated as much as the Penton Five. And he knew if he got a chance, and if he were as patient and cunning as his captor, he would kill Herr Greisser.
After making sure Matthias had seen the armed guards in the hallway, Frank closed the door and came to a stop before the chair in which Matthias sat, looking him over. “You appear unwell, my friend. But I have news that will make you feel better.”
“If you told me the entire town of Penton and everyone in it were dead, their blood running in the streets and their heads on pikes around the town square, it would not make me feel better.” Matthias rose and was glad to see Frank take a step back. “What the fuck have you been giving me in those injections?”
Allegiance (The Penton Vampire Legacy) Page 21
