Absolution

by Susannah Sandlin

  She had to get to the woods.

  CHAPTER 38

  Mirren shoved a heavy planter out of his path, then ducked behind a car just as another shot few past. When Glory had said she could create a diversion, she hadn’t been kidding.

  But he had lost sight of Matthias, and Will had disappeared as soon as the chaos began. If he was following orders, Will would be setting fire to every house belonging to one of the lieutenants, including his own, as well as city hall. Matthias had already taken care of the clinic.

  Aidan had taken an injured Krys to Omega, and by now, Hannah and Glory should be safely in the shelter as well. Mirren’s job was finding Matthias.

  He poked his head out from behind the planter, and nothing happened. Good thing about Matthias being backed by mercenaries rather than scathe members or anyone else who had pledged fealty to him was they ran like rabbits when it no longer looked like a win so they could live to fight another day for another payoff. Mirren should know; he’d been one of them once.

  When no one shot at him this time, he slowly rose to his feet, senses on alert for attacks. A movement from his left caught his eye, and he saw a figure in the door of the church. Dark pants, white shirt. Matthias. A gunshot sounded from that direction, and Mirren staggered as pain knifed through his left shoulder. His bond to Glory twinged like a rubber band popping against the inside of his rib cage. She wasn’t in Omega. She was in the freaking church with Matthias, and he’d hurt her.

  Damn it. When she didn’t argue with him about going into the shelter without him, he should have known she had no intention of doing it. Mirren checked the ammo in his own gun and raced toward the church. He paused outside the door as a crash sounded from within and nudged the door open a few inches wider using his foot.

  “Stupid bitch. I might have to regroup before tracking down Murphy and Kincaid, but I will kill that girl today.” Matthias grunted as he shoved a heavy wooden pulpit off him and rolled to his feet, muttering to himself.

  Mirren stepped into the church, taking aim. “Don’t think so, old man.” He fired as Matthias whirled, catching him in the shoulder, but underestimated how fast the guy could move. Instead of running away, he few at Mirren, fangs bared, and sank them into Mirren’s neck, ripping away flesh that had barely healed from the silver bullet that had torn into him in New Orleans. They hit the floor, but before Mirren could get a firm grasp on him, Matthias was gone, his shadow following him out the front door.

  Shit. Mirren wanted to chase Matthias down, but he needed to find Glory. Exiting the back of the church, he focused on the woods—probably where she’d run—and then glanced up at the sky. The moon’s position told him he had only two hours left before dawn, maybe a few minutes more. His neck hurt like a mother, but it would heal during daysleep. Glory’s injury wouldn’t.

  Taking cover behind the first tree line, Mirren ripped off his long-sleeved T-shirt and tied it around his neck to soak up the blood, then he settled back on his heels. Glory?

  No answer. He wished he’d had the chance to ask Aidan about how to find her using the mating bond, but he’d been too damned freaked out about being mated.

  Glory!

  She either wasn’t conscious or wasn’t listening.

  Damn it. Mirren flinched as another explosion sounded from west of town. Toward his house. He hoped to God it was Will destroying the place; the last thing they needed was Matthias or one of his flunkies finding the entrance to Mirren’s quarters and uncovering Omega blueprints. The papers didn’t have the location of the property, but it would tell someone an underground shelter was being built. If they ever got a chance to regroup and rebuild—if any of them lived through this shitstorm—they would be leaving no paper trails.

  Would Glory head back there? She didn’t know that many places in Penton yet, and very few of the tunnels. Or would she take shelter nearby, hoping to find him?

  For the next hour, Mirren searched around every building in Penton, trying to reach Glory mentally, without success. He checked the superette, including the stockroom where she’d spent so much time practicing her telekinesis. The theater. The café. Even the old ruins of Clyde’s restaurant. Scented the air around the mill, but she hadn’t come that way.

  Finally, he went back through the church, grabbed one of the fluorescent lanterns, and ran into the woods behind the building. If she’d fed this way, he might be able to find a clue where she’d gone. To the east was Aidan’s house, to the west, his own. He walked slowly westward, searching for a scent or a footprint—something that would tell him she’d been here.

  He fought giving in to the foreign, hot fear that threatened to consume him. It burned his gut and brought everything he saw into sharp detail. What was the use of having the skills of a master vampire—the mental communication, the heightened senses—if they couldn’t help you protect one little human?

  He circled back and tried the eastern route, toward Aidan’s. After ten minutes, he stopped. Only an hour till dawn and he didn’t have a fucking clue what to do.

  Then he smelled it. Blood. Glory’s blood. Squatting with the lantern held in front of him, he scanned the ground several seconds before he saw it. A patch of wet fabric that looked black to him in the lantern light. But his nose knew what his eyes couldn’t tell him—it was red with blood, and it was Glory’s. She was going to Aidan’s.

  Mirren ran the third of a mile toward Mill Trace, the quiet cul-de-sac where Aidan lived in a big old turn-of-the-century Southern mansion. The Calverts had lived next door, but Mirren shut off that line of thought. He couldn’t dwell on Melissa and Mark.

  Aidan’s house was a smoking outline. Small fres still burned in places, and two of the outer walls had collapsed.

  Glory! Mirren ran toward the house. He wasn’t a praying man as a rule, but he did now, in case somebody was listening. Praying she could hear him, could answer him. But in his head dwelt only silence and the growing buzz of fear that he’d have to find a place for his daysleep before he found his mate.

  Already, he could feel his muscles growing heavy, but he pushed through the parts of the house he could get to, looking for another sign or scent. After ten minutes of smelling nothing but ashes and burned wiring, he hung his head. He had to find shelter for the day. If he let himself be fried by the sun, he’d never find her. She was still out there. Their bond wasn’t broken.

  Mirren thought about trying to get through the burned ruins of Aidan’s house into the safe space or running into the woods and trying to find the tunnel they’d used earlier. Only a few hours ago, but it seemed like a century since the lieutenants had heard the first explosion and rushed toward town.

  Aching with predawn fatigue, Mirren walked around the littered, half-burned grass of Aidan’s side yard and circled to the back. The man’s greenhouse was still intact—guess Matthias’s men hadn’t thought to burn that down, but it would be handy. There was a tunnel straight from the greenhouse to the clinic, and even though the clinic had burned, the tunnel should be lighttight enough for daysleep.

  Mirren stopped at the greenhouse door, glancing down the aisles to make sure they were empty. All clear. He stepped inside and walked along a row of some kind of fancy night-blooming flower that Aidan liked to grow. The man—

  Oof. Something few at Mirren’s head and clocked the ear above his ravaged neck before he could duck. A terra-cotta pot filled with dirt and flowers crashed to the floor at his feet, and he ducked as another pot few at him.

  “Glory!” He yelled it this time, not bothering with the mental crap she wasn’t listening to. “It’s me.” A third pot few at him, but hovered midair in front of him, then crashed to the ground.

  “Mirren?” Her voice was muffed, but it was her. He followed the sound until he found her, curled up in a corner of the greenhouse, beneath a potting table. She stared up at him with wild eyes that darted from his face to the space behind him and back.

  Relief flooded his veins like a good whiskey used to do when he was still h
uman. She was safe. Hurt and traumatized, but safe.

  He reached out to her, but stayed his hand when she cringed from him. “It’s me, Glory. Can you climb out? We need to get below. It’s almost dawn.”

  “Mirren?” Shaking, she tried to scoot from the corner toward him but cried out when her injured arm hit the ground.

  “Damn it.” He grasped the edge of the table and upended it with a crash, scooping her into his arms and using his elbow to hit the tiny panel in the back of the greenhouse that opened the tunnel hatch.

  It slid back with a creak. “Think you can get down? It’s steps, not a ladder, so you won’t need your bad arm.”

  She nodded, and he set her down, keeping his hands on her waist until he was sure she was steady enough to make it by herself. She stumbled a little on the first step, but caught herself on the rail and went down. Mirren glanced around before following her. Should he set fire to the greenhouse?

  Will had left it unburned, so maybe he had a reason. Shrugging, Mirren descended the stairs and pushed the button to slide the door shut above them.

  He pulled Glory into his arms, careful not to jostle her shoulder. Even with a layer of ash and mud and blood, she still smelled like Glory, and he sent up a second prayer, this one of thanks.

  Glory woke to utter darkness and panic, her breakneck heart rate only slowing when she felt Mirren’s body next to her. The tunnel. They were in the tunnel. Mirren had found her, and they were safe, at least for now.

  At least this tunnel was concrete and tile, not dirt. In those frantic few minutes before dawn, Mirren had used his combat knife to dig the bullet out of her shoulder while she screamed. She’d tried to be strong and clench her jaws, but God, it had hurt. Still did. Such a painful throb, she was surprised she’d been able to sleep.

  The clinic explosion had collapsed the building into the basement, and while the subbasement was intact, Mirren had been afraid the ceiling was compromised and the whole thing might rain tons of debris on their heads during his daysleep. So he’d dragged a mattress and blankets into the tunnel, found some bandages for her shoulder and his neck, and was out almost before he’d fully reclined.

  Glory wondered what time it was—her watch hadn’t survived the night. She clicked on the battery-operated fluorescent lantern they’d pulled out of one of the suites, but it gave her no clue as to the time of day.

  She wondered if Matthias had stayed in Penton, waiting like a patient, mad dog to tear into any of them who showed their faces.

  She wondered how they were going to get to Omega since Will hadn’t had the chance to show them where the remote entrance was.

  She wondered if they could survive this, if Penton could be rebuilt, or if she and Mirren would spend the rest of their days in hiding. He’d killed Renz, yes. But if her taped testimony against Matthias survived, if she could testify that Renz had kidnapped her as well, she might be able to get Mirren freed—he’d been rescuing his mate. Surely, Aidan’s crime—turning Krys vampire to save her life—could be forgiven, although vampire bureaucrats didn’t seem like a forgiving lot.

  First, they had to survive tonight.

  Finally, Mirren stirred. She propped up on her good elbow and watched his face slowly come to life in the faint lantern light. His chest, with all that tattooed muscle, rose and fell with the first breaths of the night. By the time his eyes opened, she hovered over his face and pressed her lips to his.

  “You can do better than that.” His hand slipped behind her head and pulled her to him more tightly, making her wish for a lot more than a kiss. She pulled back and settled on his chest, keeping her left shoulder as immobile as she could.

  “We need a plan.”

  He rolled over so that she was on her back, his mouth against her ear. “I have a plan.”

  “That’s not the kind of plan I meant.” She laughed and pushed him away. “I don’t think this is the time, plus my shoulder is killing me.”

  He smiled, that little heart-tugging lift of his lips that she loved. “I’d like to be inside you right now, but I had something more practical in mind.” He carefully peeled the bandages off her shoulder and studied the wound.

  It was too far back on her shoulder for Glory to study closely, but she could see reddened, torn skin that needed stitches.

  “You know how vampires can heal the puncture wounds after we feed, using our saliva? I’m going to treat your shoulder the same way, so don’t freak out on me.”

  “What do you—oh.” Holy Moses, he was licking her shoulder, and it wasn’t the least bit sexy. “That hurts.” She punched him in the arm. “Stop it.”

  He pinned her arms to the mattress and kept working until Glory finally quit fighting and let him swipe her shoulder like it was a lollipop. The image made her giggle, and Mirren raised his head.

  “You OK?”

  “I…” Glory frowned and twisted her head, trying to see her shoulder. “It doesn’t hurt anymore.”

  Mirren kissed her and rolled to his feet. “Told you. I wanted to do that last night, but daysleep was on me before I got the chance. Now, the second part of the plan. You feel up to traveling?”

  She raised her head to look at him and sighed. “Are we going to try to find Omega?”

  Mirren paced in restless circles. “I’m afraid if we just start wandering around and searching for the wooded entrance, we could lead Matthias right to them. We need to go somewhere else, lay low for a while. But I have to go into town first.”

  “What?” She sat up and found most of her shoulder pain had disappeared except for a minor twinge. “Why go back? There’s no one there unless it’s Matthias.” The vampire was not going to leave her alone in this tunnel.

  “No, there’s one person still in Penton that nobody’s thought about—Lucy Sinclair.”

  Glory reached beside the mattress and grabbed a man’s shirt she’d found in one of the suites below the clinic. Hers had been shredded by Matthias’s bullet and soaked in her own blood.

  “Who is Lucy Sinclair?” The name sounded familiar, but she couldn’t place it.

  “One of our lieutenants who was tortured by Aidan’s brother. Her mind’s broken. I wanted to put her out of her misery then, but Krys was too softhearted, hoped Lucy might recover. We’ve had her in a cell under the municipal building for the past two months.”

  Now Glory remembered. “Are you bringing her with us?” She thought she knew what his answer would be.

  “I can’t.” He checked the clip in his gun. “I can’t keep track of her while we’re on the run, and if I let her loose, she’ll end up killing somebody—or a lot of somebodies. But I can’t just leave her there, either.”

  Glory was almost dressed. She slid her feet into her boots and pulled the straps tight. “I’m going with you.”

  “Glory…” Whatever he was about to say, which was probably to argue and tell her to wait for him here, he thought better of it. “OK, then let’s go.”

  CHAPTER 39

  Will had spent the first half of the previous night burning down the houses of his best friends and tracking the movements of his psychopathic father. He’d been able to track Matthias’s movements until he left the church with a gunshot wound he assumed came at the hands of Mirren, but he’d lost the trail in the soup of blood scent, ash, and smoke that was now downtown Penton.

  Two hours before dawn, he’d driven the ’Vette to an auto factory parking lot near West Point, Georgia, parked it among the shift workers’ vehicles, and run by foot the ten miles west across the wooded state line to the Omega entrance.

  Before going into his daysleep, he’d gathered with Aidan, Randa, and Hannah—and the newly promoted Cage—and learned that Mirren and Glory had never made it back. Aidan had been trying to contact him mentally but hadn’t succeeded. He’d either left the area, which they thought unlikely, or he was up to his ass in alligators. Will’s money was on the gators.

  As soon as he woke for the night, he’d gone back to the small end suite where Ai
dan and Krys were camped. He knocked and entered without waiting for an answer. Krys was in the bathroom, and if Aidan hadn’t been a master vampire, Will would’ve sworn he’d been crying. “How’s Mark?”

  Maybe not crying, but just pissed off. Aidan’s jaw clenched, and the man looked ready to punch something. “Krys says he has a concussion—a pretty serious one. He’s come to, but everyone’s under orders not to tell him about Melissa. Not going to be able to wait much longer, though. He’s already asked for her.”

  Will would never forget the callous way his father had just flicked a nod at the baboon next to him and erased that beautiful woman’s life as if it were no more than a minor chess move. Melissa had been Aidan’s fam since before he moved to Penton, and Mark his business manager. He didn’t figure Aidan would be forgetting that sight very soon, either.

  But there was another matter that had to take precedence. “I’m going after Mirren.” Will had checked the knives in his pockets and the clip in his .45. God only knew what he’d find out there, but he was ready to face it. And if he got the chance to kill his father, he prayed he had the intestinal fortitude to do it.

  Aidan pulled his hair into a ponytail and snapped an elastic band on it. “We’re both going after Mirren.”

  Will had been prepared for that and was ready to argue. “Aidan, with Mirren already gone, people are going to freak out if both of us leave. You need to be here with them, and you need to be visible. It’s the only way they’ll stay calm. I can move better alone, and I still don’t think my father will kill me.”

  Will wasn’t so sure of that anymore, not after he’d so publicly made himself a pawn last night. The doubtful look on Aidan’s face said he didn’t much believe it, either.

  “I don’t like it. Don’t like you going alone, and don’t like having to sit here and do nothing.”

  “You are doing something. If the humans—or even the vampires—start a panic down here, we’re all in trouble. The only way Omega works is if we’re in it for the long haul, we think through a strategy, and everybody stays calm.”