Illumination (The Penton Vampire Legacy Book 5)

by Susannah Sandlin

  “Don’t get too close to him when he’s violent. He won’t have any self-control,” Mark added. “Don’t trust him if he tries to sweet-talk you into untying him.”

  After that, Shay didn’t ask more questions because she didn’t want to hear the answers. As soon as they had Nik secured, Krys brought in an empty IV bag on a stand. Melissa followed with one of those huge coolers on wheels, the ones that held enough beer to get half a frat house through a day of Mardi Gras parade-viewing.

  “This is filled with unvaccinated blood.” Krys motioned Shay over. “I’m going to insert the IV now, and start draining him. When this empty bag is full, set it aside and replace it with a new empty bag.”

  “How long will it take? Won’t you be here?” The unfamiliar thread of fear coursed through her own veins of tainted, vaccinated blood.

  “It’s only an hour until daysleep, and it will take longer than that. Probably about six hours, maybe a little more,” Krys said. “It takes a while to drain five or six liters of blood, even using a large-bore needle like this one. You’ll need to inject an anti-clotting agent if the blood flow gets too slow—the body automatically will try to stop itself from bleeding to death.”

  Krys checked to make sure the arm where she’d taped the IV in place was secure. “If he begins moving this arm at all, put more of that rope around it.” She gestured toward a table, where Shay saw a coil of rope. “You don’t want to have to reinsert the IV when he’s active. This big needle is a bitch.”

  Oh God. This was sounding worse and worse. Shay had spent plenty of time daydreaming about having Nik Dimitrou in bed, but not for at least sixteen years, and never like this.

  She closed her eyes and thought about the places she’d been, the squalor and deprivation she’d seen, the desperation her parents had always met with strength and compassion. She was the daughter of Mike and Wendy Underwood, and she could do this.

  When she opened her eyes, Krys was watching her closely. “You okay? We can wait until after daysleep, but the longer we wait, the lower his chances of survival. I wish we’d gotten to him a lot earlier than this.”

  Shay nodded. “I’m fine. Tell me what to look for and when I need to switch to the untainted blood.”

  Krys smiled. “Okay.” She pointed to the slow snake of pink that had begun draining from Nik’s arm and winding its way through the IV line and into the bag. “Keep an eye on the line. If it starts getting slow or stopping, inject him with an anti-clotting agent.” She pointed to a row of filled syringes on a tray beside the bed. Give it to him in the stomach or side, just under the skin.”

  Shay swallowed hard. “Okay. Then what?”

  “Worse-case scenario? Nik will get violent and try to move around. He might recognize you, or he might not. He could get verbally abusive. If he says something that hurts, remember that he is in agony and doesn’t know what he’s saying.”

  Awesome. “Best-case scenario?”

  “He’s lucid the whole time. Aidan woke up and was aware of what was happening through much of his procedure. Mirren was a beast. With Nik, we don’t know what to expect. He hasn’t been turned long, and he carries that hybrid shifter DNA. So he could be fine or he could turn into a raving monster or he could even try to shift and sprout some fur. Just go with it, know it’s part of the process, and don’t freak out.”

  “Okay, talk fast. Anything else? I know you have to go.” Shay waited until Krys finished a big yawn. “When do I change blood?”

  “Okay, before he drains out he will start breathing again. So your cues are when he starts breathing and then when he stops. As soon as he stops, get that full bag of unvaccinated blood attached to the tube and adjust the pressure from negative to positive so it’ll push it out. Raise the IV stand so gravity will work in his favor. As soon as one gets low, replace it.”

  “And when the last one runs out, we move to the real stuff.” A deep, silky drawl came from behind her, and Shay pivoted to see Archer leaning against the doorway wearing low-slung jeans and a bandage on his right arm. “I promised Robin and Cage I’d stay in here with you today in case you need some heavy lifting. I’ll also feed him as soon as he’s awake enough to want it.”

  “Shifter blood is like crack to a vampire, I’m told,” Krys said, smiling at Archer. “Robin’s lost too much blood to be a donor, so Archer has volunteered. Plus, he’s a lot bigger. His blood will be even more powerful.”

  A few minutes later, with Krys off to join Aidan for daysleep and all the vampires tucked safely in their PJs—well, except for this one, who wore a pair of loose gray running pants with a drawstring at the waist—Shay pulled one of the armchairs closer to the bedside so she could keep a close watch on that IV line.

  “Does that look like it’s stopped?” She turned to Archer, but the sexy kitty was sound asleep on the sofa, snoring softly. Maybe purring. Just as well. Shay didn’t really want to talk.

  She looked back at the IV bag. The blood looked too slow going into it, so she tugged the waistband of Nik’s pants down to expose a few inches of smooth, tanned hip, and plunged the needle into the skin at the side of his waist, as Krys had instructed.

  “Oh, thank you, God,” she whispered as, within a few seconds, the blood began flowing again.

  Five hours later, she’d given him two more anticoagulant injections and was exhausted. Archer had gone to fetch some lunch. It had been the longest morning of Shay’s life, including the first one spent in a cage at Simon’s warehouse. Worrying about someone else was more exhausting than worrying about oneself.

  Archer returned within a half-hour. “Chicken salad and a fish taco? Glory’s back in the kitchen so everything’s fresh.” He held out a plate piled high with food, including pasta salad. Shay hadn’t thought she was hungry, but her stomach rumbled at the sight. “I wasn’t sure what you’d want so I brought both. You’re eating for two, after all.”

  “And I’m starving.” Shay reached for the plate, but Archer held it out of reach.

  “I’ll watch Nik. You settle on the sofa and relax. Eat lunch and put your feet up.” Archer smiled, and Shay found herself returning his smile. The shifter was a nice guy, and he blamed himself for Nik getting hurt.

  “It’s not your fault, you know.” Shay took him up on the offer and stood up, stretching her aching back muscles while Archer took her chair.

  She settled on the sofa and put her feet up, then crammed a bite of the taco in her mouth.

  “Yeah, it is.” Archer turned the chair sideways so he could keep an eye on Nik and look at her as well. “I should have put a zip tie on Marianne so she couldn’t do any more damage. I’m just not used to vampires yet, and what they can and can’t do. Guess they can do a lot.”

  Shay swallowed a giant bite of chicken salad. “Tell me about it. Shifters aren’t too shabby either.”

  Nik stirred for the first time, and took in a big lungful of air.

  Shay set her plate on the low table near the sofa. “He’s breathing!” That was the good news. The bad news? It meant he was almost drained if Krys’s descriptions were right. He was near true death.

  She kept an eye on him while crossing to the cooler.

  “Do I need to do anything? He hasn’t opened his eyes, but he’s really pulling at the ropes.”

  Nik had managed to move his IV arm a little. “Get more of that rope on the table and make sure the arm with the IV is really secure.”

  She opened the cooler and found several IV bags filled with blood. Each one had a name on it. Gadget. Mark. Glory. Several names she didn’t recognized. She’d done the right thing when she got the pandemic vaccine, but she hated that she couldn’t donate to Nik’s recovery.

  She pulled out the bag of blood bearing Gadget’s name; it seemed only right that he receive the first clean blood from his Army buddy.

  “Untie this fucking rope, Archer. Do it now. That’s an order.”

  Shay froze at the fury in Nik’s voice, but Archer didn’t seem concerned. “Sorry, dude. We
’re not on an Omega Force team right now, so it doesn’t mean shit to me that you’re a sergeant. You’re just another needy vampire.”

  Nik bared his fangs, the first time Shay had really seen them except in the dimly lit SUV when he’d fed from Robin. They’d been sexy then, or at least the look on his face had been. Now, not so much. He looked scary and really, really pissed off.

  “Come a little closer, and I’ll show you how needy I am.”

  “Oh, you’ll get to feed from me, my friend. But not yet. Not until Shay gets through with her work.”

  Oh God. Now he was going to get verbally abusive with her. It’s not him. Don’t react to whatever he says.

  She hung the bag of blood next to the one into which a trickle was still draining, and moved to the foot of Nik’s bed. Might as well let him see her.

  “You…” He stopped and blinked. “Shay? What’s going on?”

  The anger seeped out of his voice, and she took the chair again after Archer slipped out of Nik’s line of vision. How much would he understand? “You got injected with unvaccinated blood.” She kept her voice soft and calm. For now, he was breathing and he wasn’t angry.

  He frowned a little. “Marianne. I thought she was unconscious. Turned my back on her.” He closed his eyes, and Shay watched the rapid rise and fall of his chest. His breath grew shallow. “Am I going to die?”

  “No way.” She didn’t need to get too technical. “We’re draining the bad blood out and I’m going to replace it with unvaccinated blood. Starting with some from your buddy Gadget.”

  He opened his eyes again, but his gaze wavered a few seconds before he focused on her. “Robin okay?”

  Shay nodded and lied. “Robin is fine.”

  Nick closed his eyes again. “Sleepy.”

  This was looking like Krys’s best-case scenario. Shay had a rocky relationship with the Almighty, but she said a prayer that he would survive this.

  “It’s okay, Nik. You can sleep now. I’ll be here when you wake up again.” She would be here as long as it took.

  His voice, when he spoke again after a long pause, was soft, but his words clear. “Love you, Shay. Sorry…a jerk back then.”

  And with a shuddering gasp, Nik stopped breathing.

  Shay couldn’t move until Archer shook her shoulder. “Shay. Change out the blood.”

  She propelled herself out of her chair and ran to the IV pole. She unfastened the tube from Nik’s IV and connected the clean one from the bag containing Gadget’s blood, then adjusted the pressure of the bag to positive. Red liquid zoomed through the tube and into Nik’s arm.

  “Now what?” Archer asked through a mouthful of pasta salad. Apparently, the jaguar could eat through anything.

  “Now we wait.” Shay retrieved the rest of her taco before he inhaled that as well. Guess it took a lot of food to fuel a shifter that turned into an animal as huge as Archer’s.

  “So, how many black jaguar shifters are there?” Shay needed to take her mind off panic while watching for Nik to take another breath. “I don’t think I’d even heard of them.”

  “We’re technically melanistic—the opposite of albino. Not an actual breed. I grew up in the mountains in Tennessee,” Archer said. “Most people in the States call us black panthers, but none of our brothers in the wild live here. They’re in Asia or Africa. Here, our wild brothers are in zoos.”

  Shay didn’t understand how shifters were related to their real animal counterparts, and it was more than she could process right now. Vampires. Shifters. What else was out there that humans didn’t know about? “How many kinds of shifters are there?”

  Archer laughed. “I have no idea. Most stay pretty close to home, with their own kind. Robin and I are anomalies. She had family issues and my brother Adam and I liked to wander.” He paused. “Adam got killed in New Orleans last year when we were on a job with Nik and Robin and Gadget.”

  “I’m sorry.” A lame, clichéd response, but what could she say that would make any difference? When her parents had died, Shay hadn’t wanted to talk about them, not for years. A year might seem long, but grief didn’t have a timetable.

  Nik’s arm twitched, and Shay leaned over him. “Nik, can you hear me? It’s Shay.”

  He didn’t wake up, but he did start breathing. Maybe it had helped to use his friend’s blood. Maybe he was young and strong. Maybe her prayers had worked.

  Shay was just thankful he was breathing, no matter the reason.

  She changed the IV bags twice more before Nik coughed and opened his eyes to half-mast. Shay checked her watch; almost five p.m. The vampires would be waking any minute now if they weren’t already up; nightfall came early in the winter. For the first time, it occurred to her that part of Nik remaining out for so long could be attributed to daysleep. If so, that was good. Krys had told her that’s when vampires did their fastest healing.

  “Shay?” Nik’s voice was raspy, but stronger than it had been earlier.

  Earlier, when he’d said he loved her. He was out of it; he won’t even remember. And why did she want it to be true?

  She had dampened a cloth at the sink in the corner earlier and now leaned over to smooth it across his face. “You’re gonna be okay, Nik. Sleep more if you want to.”

  “My throat is dry.”

  His eyes had also turned that more-gold-than-brown color. On cue, Archer stirred behind her and rose from the sofa. “Archer can take care of that,” Shay said.

  “Wish it could be you.” Nik’s gaze held hers. Shay thought her heart would stop this time, and not from vaccinated blood.

  “So do I.”

  “Aw, sweet.” Archer nudged her from her seat. “You can probably take that needle out of his arm now. He’s about to get the real deal.”

  “Nik is going to get well!” Hannah’s singsong voice sounded from the doorway, and the girl climbed on the foot of Nik’s bed. She wore a pink polka-dotted sweater, jeans, and pink boots. Krys followed close behind, along with Aidan.

  Shay shook her head. So much for a quiet, romantic moment.

  Chapter 34 * Nik

  Five daysleeps had passed since he’d been hauled in from Atlanta like a dead vampire, and Nik wanted to claw his way out of his own skin. Krys had told him he could get up and move around last night but that big Scottish thug Mirren had locked him in his room—“for your own good, Zorba.”

  Now another dusk approached, and Nik had already fed—from Archer again. After three days of shifter blood, he could move mountains. He could lift a Mack truck. He could break down that fucking locked door if he weren’t afraid Mirren Kincaid would be standing on the other side.

  At least Robin had visited today, also her first day back on her feet and fully healed once Archer had somehow managed to get his hands on some bird-shifter blood. Gadget had picked it up in Atlanta.

  Now that Frank Greisser was locked deep underground in a silver cell, getting in and out of Penton had been easier. As for Marianne, Robin said Gadget was trying to hack into the Atlanta P.D. records to find out what bodies had and hadn’t been recovered, but they weren’t expecting much. Some vampire would have had the presence of mind to dispose of other vampires before the human police arrived to find a bloodbath and piles of bodies whose species they couldn’t identify.

  Talk about a shit-storm.

  The big talk among the Penton leaders, Robin had said, was what to do with Greisser to de-escalate the war. For the first time in a while, Nik wondered about their other prisoner. Shawn Nicholls had been locked in the old Omega facility for three months. She’d been the cougar hybrid-turned-vampire that had infected Nik. Her accomplice had tortured another vampire so near death they’d been unable to save her. Maybe Shawn should be allowed to infect Frank Greisser.

  The sound of the deadbolt unlocking sent Nik’s sluggish vampire heart to racing. He could knock whoever it was out, make an escape, and at least walk around for two hours before daysleep set in again.

  “Nik? Okay to come in?”

/>   Only he couldn’t knock out Shay, who’d been with him through the worst of it. Who’d saved him, since none of the vampires could stay with him during the day. Nik suddenly had no urge to escape his room. “Of course.”

  This was the first time he’d been alone with her since he’d awakened, but she’d been there among the others who came and went, staying quiet, soaking everything in. On impulse, not knowing how she’d react, he shifted to the side of the bed. “Lie down with me.”

  She paused, biting her lower lip.

  “You used to do that back in high school—bite your lip.” He smiled. “You’d do it when you were trying to decide which answer to give for Mrs. McKenzie’s questions in biology. It’s even sexier now than it was back then.”

  Shay laughed. “I can’t believe you remember that. I’m surprised you remember me at all, really.”

  “Ouch.”

  Still, she climbed onto the bed and settled next to him. “You deserved that.”

  She lay awkwardly on her side, facing him, looking as comfortable as a rattlesnake on a frying pan. He turned toward her. “Yeah, I did. I do. Have I apologized?”

  “Sort of, but Robin told me why you left. At least I understand now. I was really hurt back then, though.”

  He brushed a strand of blond hair away from her face. “I am sorry. I handled things the worst way possible by shutting everyone out. Did I ever tell you I thought you were sexy?”

  Shay grasped his wrist and pulled it away from her face. “Yes, and you also thought I was obnoxious. You told me so.”

  “Well, you were, sort of, but in a sexy way.”

  Shay laughed again. “Yeah, fair enough.”

  He reached out and trailed a finger along her cheek. “I think you’re sexy now too. Does that count?”

  She bit her lip again, and his gaze dropped to take in the action. She’d bit the bottom lip until it bloomed a dark pink, like a rose that needed picking. Leaning forward, he touched his lips to hers, soft at first, then with more heat.