Illumination (The Penton Vampire Legacy Book 5)

by Susannah Sandlin

  “Don’t do this, Mirren. If I’m inactive, my body will try to heal and I could kill her. Think how you’d feel if it was Glory in that bed.”

  Those words hurt, and Mirren looked at the floor a few seconds. “Aidan, you’re the strongest master vampire I’ve ever met, and if we don’t do something, she’s eventually going to die anyway or go into such a deep space she can’t wake up. She’s not strong enough to overpower your inborn will to live, even though you’ll kill yourself trying to avoid it.”

  Aidan gave him a stony look but didn’t respond, so Mirren pressed on. “Look at you. If we hadn’t shown up tonight, you’d have been blindsided by that half-assed rogue vampire. The bombing in Atlanta was sloppy work. Nik is sharp; otherwise, you’d be dead from going into a limited-exit space.”

  “You’re saying I can’t lead Penton?” Aidan’s voice had almost returned to its normal tone. “Do I need to remind you who built this town? Who it is these people follow?”

  Mirren stood up and pushed the chair back into the corner. “You don’t have to remind me of a damned thing. But you’re going to lose those people unless you can come back at full strength.”

  “And in the meantime, who will lead? I never saw you volunteer for that responsibility.”

  Aidan had reverted to sarcasm, and that, Mirren could handle. “You’re goddamned right, I’m going to lead. I might lead them all straight to hell.”

  Mirren paused at the door. “And I don’t want the job permanently.”

  Chapter 10 * Nik

  Seventy-five. That was Nik’s best estimate of the number of times Cage Reynolds had opened the newly repaired door of the community house they shared with Robin and Hannah and, now, Gadget. And it had only been dark for an hour.

  “Where the bloody hell is she?” Cage’s British accent grew stronger as he grew more agitated. “Hannah, is anything wrong? Where is Robin? Her flight from New Orleans was due in Atlanta three hours ago.”

  “She is on her way, and she’s happy about her trip.” The child shrugged her thin shoulders, which were encased in a pink princess sweater. “That’s all I know.”

  Hannah sat on a tall stool at the kitchen island, swinging her feet and dropping bits of Gadget’s leftover barbecue pork to Barnabas, her bloodhound. Her legs only reached halfway to the floor, and her boots, too, were pink. Beneath her feet lay a puddle of slobber that Nik would end up cleaning, but he didn’t mind too much. Barnabas had many fine qualities—he was a loyal pet, didn’t shed as long as Hannah kept him groomed, and served as an emotional palliative for this child who was prone to melancholy.

  A tidy eater? Not so much.

  Hannah might be a 200-year-old vampire, but part of her remained an 11-year-old who loved little-girl things and her four-footed best friend. She mourned every loss Penton suffered, whether people or places, and Penton had lost plenty of both.

  Nik had been drawn to her from his first day in Penton because they both were gifted with—and suffered from—their psychic abilities. He’d never expected to have kids, fearful of passing along whatever made him psychometric like his father. Being turned vampire had removed any option of siring a child of his own, but he was coming to consider Hannah as family.

  Gadget sat at the small dining table, his blond head bent over his laptop, fingers tapping furiously, earbuds in place. He’d been monitoring Internet chatter about vampire movement in and around New Orleans. Gadget had learned a lot. After all, vampires had to deal with humans, and humans embraced social media. Plus, although Nik was vague about what the “Dark Web” was, tech-savvy vampires had made their own version of it.

  “Finally!” Cage jerked open the door and pulled his petite mate into a hug before she cleared the porch. A long kiss followed. Eagle shifter Robin had volunteered to take a scouting trip to New Orleans as soon as Nik had gotten the threatening call about Shay last night from a man who only identified himself as a “friend of the Tribunal.” Which meant he was no friend of Penton’s. He’d given Nik forty-eight hours to meet him at an address in the far-west New Orleans suburb of LaPlace.

  Nik finally cleared his throat to remind the lovebirds that they had an audience. Mated vampires were obsessive, so Nik hoped he never met the woman his vampire hormones might choose for him. It could be damned inconvenient. “Robin! Cage! Get a room—after you tell us what you know. There are lives at stake, remember?”

  His words cut through the pheromones. Robin broke the kiss, giving Cage a look that Nik recognized as a promise of what she had planned for her mate later. He recognized the look because he and Robin had been lovers quite a while before she fell for her pretty-boy vampire. She’d given him similar looks, only less heated. A lot less heated.

  She was still Nik’s best friend, but she and Cage belonged together. Nik had no problem with that. He’d never seen her so happy, and being with Cage had softened some of the short-tempered, fiery edges that had earned her the nickname of “Razorblade Robin.”

  “I know where Shay is and she’s not in immediate danger, so keep your panties on.” Robin walked farther into the room and plopped on the sofa, pulling Cage by the hand to sit beside her. “Let’s compare notes with whatever Gadget has found, and then, Nik, you and I will go after her.”

  “Correction. You, Nik and Cage will go after her,” Cage said. “You might be able to get a commercial airline flight or use your own eagle wings, but vampires have to drive and Nik’s not ready to take on a vampire battle by himself.” He looked at Nik. “Nothing personal.”

  Nik shrugged. The man was right. He was still learning how his vampire body functioned. A physical fight wasn’t even on his radar yet.

  Robin ran slim fingers through her spiky auburn hair and gave Cage a sweet smile. “You don’t drive, fang-boy. Nik does. So I guess that makes you a third wheel.”

  Cage gave her an equally sweet smile, with a bit of fang. “Lovely. Nik can drive and I can show you how that third wheel rolls. Maybe in the backseat.”

  Nik frowned. “Maybe I’ll go alone.”

  “You’re all silly,” Hannah announced. “I have patrol duty with Glory. Just remember that you must save Shay.”

  Nik’s frown deepened at the sight of the child checking the ammo in the handgun she’d stashed in her glittery purple princess backpack. That was just fucked. Nik had moved to the armchair nearest the door, and she stopped to hug him on her way out. “I will see you before daysleep. Maybe I will dream of your trip.”

  Nik waited until she was gone before muttering, “God, I hope not.” Hannah’s premonitions tended to focus on pending catastrophes without enough detail to prevent them.

  Gadget joined them in the living room, sitting on the floor in front of the fireplace after chasing off some dust bunnies with his shoe. Housing four males, a tomboy eagle shifter, a child, and a dog, theirs was the messiest and most bare-bones of the community houses.

  “First, where is Shay and are we sure it’s the same person I remember from all those years ago?” Nik looked at Robin. He might not even have followed up on the threats had it not been for the accuracy of Hannah’s partial visions. “And how do you know she isn’t in immediate danger? Is she in LaPlace?”

  “No, in uptown.” Robin leaned over and looked at the map of the New Orleans metro area Gadget had spread on the coffee table. Nik slid his chair closer. Robin wasn’t a native New Orleanian, but she’d lived in the city for several years before joining the Omega Force security team, so she knew it almost as well as he did.

  She pointed at the ribbon of blue winding through the city, its curve giving New Orleans its “Crescent City” moniker. “Nik, you remember all those old brick warehouses that line the river throughout this area?”

  He could picture them easily. “A lot of those buildings are owned by the oil and shipping companies—my family’s company owns several close to the heart of the port.” At least they used to. Hellenas Shipping had been a big enterprise until his father’s suicide. Now, the company was smaller but st
ill profitable, thanks to good management. Last he’d heard, his baby sister, Ana, had taken over a lot of the daily oversight after their mom had run it for years. It was hard to picture. In his mind, Ana was still the ten-year-old warrior of a kid who’d blamed him for their father’s death.

  Robin pointed at one area west of downtown set off from the nearest road by a nest of railroad tracks. “Several of these are empty right now.”

  “Except two were recently purchased.” Gadget smiled like the proverbial canary-eating cat. “Since there’s no development going on in that area, I spent this morning following the money trail.”

  “You probably know more than I do, then, as far as the players.” Robin leaned back against the sofa cushions. “But I can verify that there are four women being kept in cages in this warehouse at the foot of Washington Avenue. And Nik, I’m assuming one of those women is Shay. What does she look like?”

  Nik poured himself a whiskey from the decanter on the end table. Purely habit. He could no longer get drunk—nobody had warned him about that side effect of being turned. “Hell if I know. I haven’t seen her since I was sixteen. Blond hair. She used to wear glasses; might have contacts now.” Shay Underwood. He could still picture her the last time they’d kissed, the night before his world fell apart and he ran, afraid to drag her into it, afraid to face the truth of what he was.

  “I know which one she is then; there’s only one blonde. And look at you! Your eyes are turning gold again.” Robin leaned toward him, squinting. “How cool is that?”

  His voice held warning. “Robin. Are any of the women hurt?”

  “No, they’re not happy but they seem healthy enough. I heard a dark-haired woman—a very, very young woman—talking to the blonde in the next cage, and the blonde wore glasses. Has to be your Shay.”

  “Damn it.” She wasn’t his Shay. Nik set his useless whiskey aside and began to pace the room, a habit he’d picked up from watching Mirren Kincaid. Shay Underwood had been the first girl—hell, the only girl besides Robin—that he’d let himself care about. At first, he just thought she was cool because she’d spent so much time overseas with her do-gooder parents. When he touched her, he got images of poverty and hurt, but also hope and survival. Then Nik had come to like her, although he recalled her being bossy. Before he’d run away and ended up living on the streets, he’d considered opening up to her about his father. But it had all been too fucked up to involve anyone else.

  “I still don’t understand why or how Shay Underwood could get into the Tribunal’s hands. Our history is too far back for her to get targeted as a way of getting to me.”

  “She has other problems, I’m guessing.” Gadget’s voice was soft. “Robin, could you tell if any of the women were pregnant?”

  Robin frowned. “Not really, but it was hard to tell much. I pecked my way through a window that turned out to be almost too small for more than my head and neck to fit through—in eagle form. They’re guarded constantly, so getting inside wasn’t an option. I was mostly focusing on the setup.”

  Cage leaned over to study the map. “Gadget, what have you and Will been able to find out? Why did you ask if the women were pregnant?”

  Gadget stretched toward the table and grabbed a sheaf of papers. “I found a lot of unrelated things that, well, sort of relate. There was some chatter online from Europe about experiments being done in New Orleans to breed a generation of humans to create a clean blood supply. These people were mostly from Scandinavia, which has a real dearth of unvaccinated feeders, and they were excited because if it works, it’s scalable. Supposedly, there’s some Tribunal-funded program in New Orleans breeding both vaccinated and unvaccinated women with unvaccinated human males to see what works. The babies would become both feeders and future breeders.”

  “That’s outrageous.” Robin grabbed Nik’s whiskey glass, and he felt a tinge of envy as she took a big gulp. “Why kidnap women and keep them in cages? Why don’t the vampires use their own damned familiars to breed?”

  They all pondered that question for a few moments, until Nik broke the silence. “My guess is that their fams refused to go along with it. I mean, if the plan is to raise the babies as feeders and breeders, what woman is going to agree to that, even if she is a familiar? The vampires usually have relationships with their fams, so they wouldn’t want to jeopardize those relationships by forcing the issue. And even if the woman is a familiar or feeder herself, she made a choice. Would she want to force her child to grow up being used that way?” He looked at Robin. “Do I sound sexist?”

  She stared at the map and nodded her head. “Yes, it’s sexist, but it’s also probably true. I’d be the worst mother ever, so I don’t mind that I won’t have kids.” She rested a hand on Cage’s knee. “But if I did, I wouldn’t want my child to have his or her future options limited to vampire feeding and reproduction. That’s just sick.”

  “How reliable is that intel?” Cage asked Gadget. “Could it just be rumor?”

  “Absolutely. The things I know as facts are on these sheets.” He shuffled his papers. “That end warehouse at the foot of Washington Avenue was bought by a guy named Jonathan Lachey, and he paid for it in cash. Here is a copy of the transaction with his home or business address listed—if it is his real address. But real estate transactions are usually well regulated.” He handed copies of the paper to each of the others.

  Nik studied the address. “This is in the Marigny area, a long way from the spot in LaPlace my anonymous caller wants me to meet him tomorrow night if I want to see Shay alive.” He’d been ordered to arrive alone, of course. “Am I remembering my geography right, Robin?”

  She nodded. “Did you find out anything more about this Lachey guy?”

  “I haven’t had a chance to dig much, but he’s human since he was present for the transaction and it took place during daylight hours.” Gadget pulled his tangle of hair back into a tail; the rubber band snapped in place with a loud pop. “Here’s the other interesting thing I learned, though, which helps verify those rumors. Guess who’s made two recent visits to New Orleans?”

  Nik frowned. “No time for games, buddy.”

  Gadget flushed, sending a pang of guilt through Nik. He was giving them priceless information so they needed to respect the work he’d put into finding it.

  “Frank Greisser himself.”

  “What?” Cage leaned forward. “Are you sure?”

  “Arrogant son of a bitch traveled from New York to New Orleans using his real name both times,” Gadget said. “And I was able to confirm by hacking into airport security footage that he did arrive. I’ve never seen the guy in person but here’s the best image I could isolate. Any doubts?”

  The grainy shot showed a tall, well-built man in a dark suit. He carried no luggage, just the deceptively cherubic face of a schoolboy. Nik’s hatred of Frank Greisser sparked hotter. He’d been involved in Shay’s kidnapping. He’d probably been the one to order it; certainly was the one paying for this scheme.

  Gadget continued and handed a photo to Cage. “What I don’t know is who he met. I could probably learn if he took a taxi or not. Chances are, a private car picked him up. Also, between visits from Greisser, this person arrived. I also recognize him from some of Nik’s drawings.”

  “Bloody fucking hell.” Cage threw the photo on the table. “Fen Patrick. We’ve been hunting that freak for months. Do we know where he went in New Orleans or who he met?”

  “No, sorry. Same scenario,” Gadget said. “But I’ll check for his whereabouts as well and see if there’s any chatter about him.”

  “Check the taxi and limo services as well as rental places,” Cage told him. “For both Greisser and Fen Patrick. I’ve been wondering how Greisser and whoever he’s working with in New Orleans learned about Nik and his family. My money’s on Fen Patrick and his big piehole.”

  “Good guess. Thanks, Gadget—you’ve told us a lot.” Nik forced a smile that seemed to relax Gadget’s posture a little. “Stay on it an
d let us know if you learn anything else. See what women have been reported missing, especially anything on Shay Underwood.” If that was really her.

  “Already have it.” Gadget handed them a final sheet of paper containing a printout of a story from the New Orleans Times-Picayune. “A Tulane researcher named Shay Underwood went missing over two months ago. She just disappeared. Her apartment door was unlocked, no sign of a struggle. No clues.”

  Nik stared at the clipping, a chill stealing across his shoulder blades. The woman had shoulder-length blond hair and a light sprinkling of freckles across her nose. She’d grown up, but he remembered the direct look in her eyes, and the way they’d soften when he kissed her. “This is her, all right.”

  He wouldn’t mention that he’d been a jackass who treated her like shit. That was sixteen years ago, after all, and he’d hate to be judged by the person he’d been back then.

  “You think her kidnapping is related to you?” Robin asked.

  Nik shook his head. “No way. It has to be a coincidence. I mean, I haven’t seen her in sixteen years.” You will love her, Hannah had said. Not likely, but he’d save her if he could. He set the paper on the table. “Anything else?”

  “That’s it for me.” Gadget leaned back. “Robin, you learn anything else?”

  “Maybe. Nik, see if this can help.” Robin dug in the backpack she’d taken with her to New Orleans and fished out a plastic sandwich bag. She tossed it to Nik.

  He studied the assortment of, well, garbage. “Where’d this come from?”

  “Outside the warehouse entrance, from a trashcan. It must have been emptied recently or else they don’t use it much. Might not even help, but you never know.”

  Nik nodded and unzipped the bag on his way to the dining table. His sketch pad and pencil were sitting there, and he dumped out the contents of the plastic bag without touching anything.

  He hadn’t used his psychometric skills since he’d been turned, at least not more than to experiment by touching Gadget and turning the images on and off. That part of being a vampire, he loved.