Illumination (The Penton Vampire Legacy Book 5)

by Susannah Sandlin

  Nik glanced at her. “And now?”

  “Now, this is my baby. I want her very much.” She shrugged. “Frank Greisser said it was a girl. Could he know that?”

  “Yes,” Mirren said from in front of them. “I can tell, too. Heartbeats are different for girls.”

  They walked in silence for a few moments. “There’s an elaborate tunnel system under the town to prevent any of us from getting trapped,” Nik said, and even as she said a silent prayer for her daughter, Shay was relieved he’d changed the subject.

  The tunnel around them appeared to be made of steel. “Mirren figured out where the tunnels needed to go,” Nik said. “Will, another of Penton’s leaders, came up with the designs. You’ll meet him soon.”

  They passed through another steel door and entered a second tunnel—this one more of a hallway. It was warm and dry, with plush carpeting, soft wall lights, and doors on either side. It reminded Shay of the suites hotel where she’d stayed during her ill-destined Labor Day weekend when she’d met Jonathan. Not a good memory.

  “These are guest rooms. A couple of them lock from the outside in case we need to detain someone, but most can be locked from inside.” Nik pointed to a door on the left near the end. “That’s where the new medical exam room is set up. Most of the equipment and supplies are still upstairs in the main clinic, so I guess you’d call this a satellite office.”

  Mirren looked back as he opened the last door on the right before the hallway ended. “Let’s hope it’s the only clinic we’ll need.”

  Was it Shay’s imagination, or did the giant vampire look worried?

  Chapter 25 * Nik

  They ran into Krys in the hallway just past the exam room, and Nik pulled her into a hug. She was almost as tall as he was, with long auburn hair and a heart-shaped face that was still very, very pale. “How are you?”

  She smiled. “Pretty weak in vampire terms, but stronger than a human who’d just awakened from a three-month coma. Come to the exam room after you talk to Aidan and let me look at your back—I heard you met a silver knife.”

  “It’s not bad.” He pulled Shay alongside him and introduced her. “Maybe tomorrow you can check on her as well.”

  Shay grew animated with Krys. “So you’re an internist?”

  “Yep, and I did a rotation in obstetrics, so it’s not all foreign to me. Aidan said you’re a researcher of some kind.” She laughed. “His scientific knowledge is about four centuries out of date.”

  “An epidemiologist,” Shay said. “Tropical medicine.”

  “We’ll have to talk. I haven’t been able to have geeky science conversations with anyone in quite a while, although Will’s pretty good at faking it.”

  “Later,” Mirren said, the soul of impatience. “We need to talk to Aidan.”

  Nik hadn’t seen Aidan since before he’d been turned, so he wasn’t sure what to expect when he stepped through the door at the end of the hall. Nik knew that Aidan had been locked in here with his mate to force them to heal, but he’d been so preoccupied with his own survival—and that of Shay and the other women—he hadn’t asked.

  Aidan sat cross-legged on the bed, poring over a map of the kind Nik had come to associate with Gadget. Nik might be the artist in his old Omega team, but Gadget could create a finely detailed map on his computer.

  Aidan looked up and smiled. “God, Nik, it’s good to see you. You sure haven’t had a chance to get eased into life as a vampire, have you?”

  Penton’s leader moved slowly when he stood, but his gait was steady as he came forward to give Nik a hug. Then he shifted his focus to the woman standing silently at Nik’s side. “And you must be Shay. I’m Aidan Murphy. Welcome to Penton, although I know you didn’t come here by choice or under the best circumstances.”

  Shay shook his hand. “Well, Nik and Cage made it pretty clear I didn’t have much of a choice.”

  “Sit, please.”

  Nik led them to the sofa and chairs arranged near the fireplace. Before the clinic had been bombed earlier in the year, the subsuite fireplaces had burned gas logs, or so Nik had been told. Too dangerous now in the age of vampire warfare.

  Nik sat next to Shay on the sofa. He told himself it was to ease her nerves over talking to Aidan, not to be near her. In reality, he knew Aidan didn’t frighten her. The man had an easy, sincere way about him that engendered trust. He was also honest, which Nik considered a strength when it came to leading Penton and a weakness when it came to fighting Frank Greisser and his type. Nik had seen all kinds of leaders during his military life. Aidan was a peacetime leader, a thinker; in a crisis, Nik wanted Mirren Kincaid in charge, a warrior.

  The warrior in question had closed the door to the hallway and now leaned against it with his muscular arms crossed over his chest. No one would be coming in or out of the door unless Mirren allowed it.

  “Shay, I know it’s a painful subject, but would you tell us what all happened to you in New Orleans? In as much detail as possible?” Aidan leaned forward, piercing her with his arctic blue eyes that could reflect warmth or ice, depending on his mood. Tonight, they were warm and more alert than Nik had seen them in months.

  “Where should I start?” Shay’s voice radiated both calm and confidence, and Nik had to admire her resilience. He tried to see Aidan through her eyes: about Nik’s height of six feet; chestnut brown hair a little shorter than Nik’s—not quite long enough to pull back in a tail; the eyes. Nik had never met a woman, Robin included, who didn’t think the guy was beautiful. That was the word they used: not handsome, but beautiful. His hint of an Irish brogue didn’t hurt, either.

  “Start when you first encountered the vampires or any of their humans.” Aidan smiled and settled back in his chair.

  Shay, on the other hand, fidgeted. On impulse, Nik wrapped his left hand around her right, lacing their fingers together. She looked down at their hands, but didn’t pull away. She simply squared her shoulders and took a deep breath.

  “Well, I guess I gave them a head start by being stupid. I was about to start an important research project at work, so I took Labor Day weekend off and drove to the beach with one of my colleagues. I…” she paused, and Nik felt as much as saw the blush that spread across her cheeks. “I drank too much and ended up spending the weekend with a guy I met at the bar.”

  She looked up at Nik, then at the floor. “I really don’t do that kind of thing. And boy did it turn out to be stupid.”

  “Who was he?” Aidan asked.

  Shay spent the next hour talking about Jonathan Lachey, Simon, the warehouse, the cages, even her escape hatch created with a pair of nail clippers. The longer she talked, the angrier Nik became. He should have killed Simon Landry when he had the chance. After a gunshot wound to the head, he might not heal enough to unscramble his brains but even that was too good for him.

  After the point in Shay’s story where the eagle made her first appearance, Nik picked up the tale and filled Aidan in on Gadget’s research, Robin’s reconnaissance trip, and the details of the fight.

  “The big fighter, Rocky, is dead, but Simon Landry is still alive. His brain function is probably altered. And Marianne…well, we met her at the clinic bombing in Marietta and, last time I saw her, she was lying under a cemetery gate thanks to Glory. As far as I know she’s fine.”

  Aidan nodded. “And you have no idea where the other three women escaped to?”

  “No,” Shay said. “I was trying to get Nik out of there before the sun came up and before any more of Simon’s people got there. I told them to run toward St. Charles—toward where people would be.”

  Aidan looked at Nik. “I think you owe your life to this woman.”

  Nik squeezed Shay’s hand. “I know I do.”

  “And now, Mirren and I need to talk to Nik alone. Would you mind keeping Krys company for a few minutes.”

  Shay rose. “Of course not. I know it isn’t long until you….sleep.”

  Aidan smiled. “We call it daysleep, and yes, we
have only forty-five minutes or so. Visit Krys, and then get some rest yourself; she’ll show you to your room. I’ll have someone bring you something to eat and drink. You deserve some downtime after the last few months.”

  Mirren unlocked and opened the door for Shay, and Nik watched her leave.

  “You have the look of a doomed vampire on your face already, Nik.” Aidan laughed. “Believe me, I know it when I see it.”

  “I just…” Nik didn’t know what he felt. “We dated way back in another life.” Another world. A much simpler world, although he hadn’t thought so at the time. “I was really screwed up and treated her like shit.”

  “Well, that doesn’t mean fuck-all now.” Mirren had his phone out and placed a call; Will appeared in the doorway within seconds. He had to be waiting in the hall.

  “Glad you got your phone back.” Will grinned at Mirren’s scowl. “Bet the guy who took it isn’t glad.”

  “The guy who took it is no longer among the living.”

  “Figured as much.” Will took Shay’s place on the sofa and threw an arm around Nik’s shoulders. “You really spent a whole daysleep in a coffin? Man, what a vampire cliché.”

  Nik shot his best glare, but Will’s glee was infectious, and he had to laugh. “Yeah, yeah. But, in my own defense, I didn’t pick the spot. And it was a four-by-seven-foot crypt, not a coffin.”

  “Which is what we want to talk to you about, Zorba.” Mirren pulled the other armchair alongside Aidan’s so that he was facing Nik. “What’s this about you talking to Mark Calvert during daysleep?”

  Nik blinked. “That’s not normal?” On some level, he knew his daysleep hadn’t been conventional, but he’d chalked it up to his circumstances. “I mean, I wasn’t really outside. It was dark in that crypt.”

  “Was it light-tight?” Aidan asked. “Completely dark? I mean where Shay couldn’t see her hand in front of her face?”

  Nik thought back to the morning, which seemed like a week ago. “It was dark when we first went in there. But I wanted to make sure Shay didn’t suffocate, so I had her leave the slab door to the crypt cracked a little, maybe an eighth of an inch. Not enough for anyone outside to tell the door had been moved but enough for her to get a little air. It was a dark, rainy day, though. There was never any actual sunlight.”

  “Doesn’t matter.” Even Will was frowning now, looking at Nik as if he’d sprouted tusks instead of fangs. “Daytime is daytime.”

  “Only the very oldest vampires can stay awake after dawn.” Aidan leaned forward in his chair and propped his elbows on his knees. “And even they are limited in movement and must stay in totally lightfast spaces. You’ve been vampire, what, a week?”

  For the first time since coming to Penton, Nik felt the old sense of being a freak come back to him, the one he’d lived with most of his life because of his psychometry. Now he wasn’t even a normal vampire?

  “Not counting the time he spent unconscious after his turn, less than a week.” Mirren said. “But he was a turning into a hybrid shifter made by another hybrid. We’re in new territory here. How alert were you?”

  Nik shrugged. “I made the phone call. Glory answered and said you were already in daysleep, but I figured I was a little west of you so that might account for the difference. I talked to Shay for a little while after that. I slept most of the day, but woke up a few times before sundown.”

  “How did you feel?” Aidan’s eyes were narrowed and intense. “Could you have walked?”

  “I don’t know.” There hadn’t been room to stand. “I think so, maybe. I felt as if I were coming down with the flu.”

  Will laughed. “Look at their faces. They don’t know what coming down with the flu feels like. The plague, maybe.”

  Right. Nik kept forgetting both Aidan and Mirren had been around since the 1600s. “My muscles ached. My skin tingled and burned. My head hurt; it might be the worst headache I’ve ever had.” And he’d had some beauts when he’d used his psychometry too much as a human.

  They all sat in silence too long for comfort. Finally, Nik couldn’t stand it any longer.

  “What the hell am I?”

  Will looked over at him, all traces of humor gone from his face. “You, Nik, might be Penton’s greatest weapon.”

  Chapter 26 * Aidan

  Aidan stood, the inquisition over, for now. He didn’t know what to make of Nik’s situation.

  “Have Krys take a look at your back before daysleep.” Nik hadn’t mentioned the injury to his back, but Aidan had noticed his movements were stiff, and he’d been fidgeting a lot. Nik Dimitrou was usually as still as a vampire, even before he became one. Aidan attributed it to military discipline.

  The fact he didn’t argue told Aidan he’d been right about the sore back. He waited for Nik to close the door behind him. “Will, lock the door. We need to talk strategy.”

  Will turned the deadbolt and returned to his seat on the sofa. “Shouldn’t we bring in Hannah?”

  “Tomorrow. We’ll fill in Randa, Mark, Melissa, Nik. All our key people.” He wanted the three of them to talk first, though. They were the key spokes of Penton’s wheel of life. “First, about Nik. Think that daylight behavior was a fluke?”

  Mirren shook his head. “I don’t know, but we need to find out. Let’s give him one of the rooms down here and have either Robin or Mark see if they can wake him here in a safe environment.”

  “Or Shay,” Will said. “Hannah says she has a part to play in our future, and we can all tell Nik’s about to have mating on the brain. He just hasn’t accepted it yet.”

  Aidan shifted in his chair. He’d moved around more today, used his brain more today, than anytime since he and Krys had awakened. Fatigue was taking its toll. “I’d rather not get her too involved in our plans yet. I don’t have faith she won’t take off when she gets a chance.”

  “She’d be dead within twenty-four hours.” Mirren leaned forward. “Do we need to put a guard on her?”

  Aidan thought Shay Underwood and a guard would be a horrible idea. The woman was smart and independent, not used to being tied to anyone. She reminded Aidan of Krys when she’d first come to Penton, kept against her will. Not because they were both doctors—Shay was some kind of researcher—but because they were used to being in charge of their own lives. If Nik was falling for her, he’d have his hands full.

  “Not a guard, but maybe Archer and Gadget can take turns keeping tabs on her during the day when we’re in daysleep. Tomorrow night, Krys needs to take a look at Cage’s arm. I understand the blade that took it was silver, so she’ll need to check it for any complications. Will, I understand you’ve been studying prosthetics?”

  Will pulled some rumpled sheets of paper from his pocket and handed them to Aidan. Each page held odd drawings from different angles.

  “What am I looking at?”

  “It’s pretty cool what they’re doing over at Auburn University creating specialized prosthetics with a 3-D printer. Gadget has been working on some computer designs. We just need one of those printers—if we can get out of town safely and get to Atlanta. I mean, I guess we could steal one from the university.”

  The university was a twenty-five mile drive instead of a hundred to Atlanta, but buying the equipment wouldn’t bring human law enforcement to Penton’s door. “Get Gadget a safe route out of town and give him the money to buy it.”

  They talked briefly about Shay and her baby, and what it would mean if she wanted to stay in Penton with Nik. Other than Hannah, there were no children in Penton—and since more than 150 years had passed since she’d been turned vampire, Hannah hardly counted. Aidan had always forbidden anyone with children from joining his bonded scathe, and he’d asked any humans who decided to have a family to leave—with their memories of Penton wiped clean, of course.

  “I think, for now, we should decide not to decide.” Will folded up his sheets of prosthetics drawings and stuffed them back in his pocket. “I mean, why agonize over something that, first, might
never happen and, second, isn’t really our decision to make.”

  “It’s our town.” Aidan speared him with a sharp look.

  “It’s her baby,” Will countered. “And if she decides to stay with Nik, that baby’s father will be a vampire. So they have to be involved in any decision.”

  “Yeah, let’s talk about baby shit later,” Mirren said, his eyebrows lowering into a scowl when Will started laughing. “What’s so fucking funny?”

  “Baby shit,” Will gasped. “Sorry, I just never thought I’d hear the Slayer talking about baby shit.”

  “Fuck you, Junior. You want to laugh about baby shit or you want to talk about the fact that Frank Greisser is going to be at the Atlanta Marriott on Tuesday night?”

  That ended any laughter. “How do you know?” Aidan didn’t like that Mirren had blocked that information from him mentally. It told him his best friend—and best fighter—didn’t trust him yet.

  “I lost my phone in a fight and—” Mirren pointed a finger at Will, who was making a visible effort not to laugh again. “You make one comment and I’m going to fuck up your good leg.”

  Will raised both hands in surrender. “I’m sure we’ve all lost our phones now and then, especially when we got overly enthusiastic while swinging a sword.”

  Mirren ignored him. “Anyway, I got the damned thing back. Took it off one of Greisser’s hired fangs, a guy named Jason Smith, from Illinois. Found this in his wallet after I took him out.”

  Aidan took the scrap of paper and looked at the phone number. “This is the Atlanta area code. You called it?”

  Mirren nodded. “Got Mr. Frank Greisser himself. He told our friend Jason to bring the Slayer’s cell phone to the meeting at the Marriott Tuesday night and to get there by seven-thirty. We have to make a strike.”

  “Wait a minute.” Will grinned at Mirren. “I want to hear you imitate some hired fang from Illinois. You still sound like you’re trotting around the Highlands in a kilt half the time.”