Allegiance (The Penton Vampire Legacy) (24 page)

  
CHAPTER 26
  

C
age couldn’t wait to get his hands on Fen Patrick. The bloody sonofabitch would wish he’d died back in Nicaragua or that his transition to vampire had been unsuccessful and his maker had left his dead, bloodless body in an alley.

Cage didn’t approve of torture; he’d been on the receiving end of it in Paris, and Fen knew that. He knew it was something Cage could never do, nor would Cage expect it of anyone claiming to be his friend. Fen probably considered Cage’s willingness to give him the benefit of a doubt to be his insurance policy.

Robin watched him from across the living room of Mirren’s community house. She looked worried. He struggled between going to allay her fears and rampaging into the night to find his traitorous, backstabbing acquaintance—but he finally chose peace, for whatever time he could steal it.

When he sat on the floor next to her, she wrapped her arms around his waist and rested her head against his shoulder. His anger didn’t dissipate, but he did take a deep breath and appreciate the comfort she offered. Who’d have thought his fierce little bird would turn out to have such a big heart?

Aidan sat at the end of the sofa, one leg jostling up and down in a nervous twitch. Mirren sat in the adjacent chair, on the phone, filling in Will and Randa about the latest developments.

But first, Robin had told them about her and Nik’s fishing expedition at the tunnel. Cage didn’t know what it meant—the images of the jaguar and of Fen and of that poor woman who had yet to regain consciousness. Guilty or innocent, nobody deserved to be brutalized in that way. Krys, Melissa, and Glory were with her now, trying to figure out how to help.

But he knew this: should it turn out that Fen Patrick had anything to do with what had been going on in Penton, he would kill the man. If it took the rest of his long vampire days, he would see him dead.

“This isn’t your fault—you told them from the beginning that you didn’t really trust him.” Robin’s voice was whisper soft.

“She’s right,” Aidan said, and Cage stifled a small smile at Robin’s surprised expression. From a whisper to a scream, all sound was the same to a vampire. “You had no way of knowing he was up to something. Hell, we still don’t know. We just need some answers.”

Cage shook his head. “I knew that I never trusted him when he was human, mostly because he was cunning and treacherous and good at his job. And I know that becoming a vampire doesn’t make a lamb out of a lion—or a jaguar.”

Aidan shrugged. “All I know is, we—” He turned to Mirren with a frown as the big guy finished his phone call and slammed the phone onto the end table. “What’s wrong? Is it Will?”

Thunderclouds had nothing on Mirren’s expression. “Will’s fine, but seems we haven’t been keeping up with the news.”

Cage rarely watched the news anymore. Over a long life, another war or another feud or another deadlocked American political system seemed like just so much empty drama. “What happened?”

“Ten bombings, scattered around the country in ten cities.” He got up and began pacing. “Only one thing in common—all the buildings housed new blood banks containing unvaccinated donations. The media hasn’t put that piece of it together yet, but they probably will. The colonel figured it out and just briefed Will and Randa.”

Bloody hell. “How many blood banks had been set up?”

“That was it; they took out every goddamned one of them.” Aidan’s voice was hard and as cold as a fierce London winter. “Wiped out all the progress we’d made so far in a matter of seconds.”

Shit. Cage knew it had taken a virtual act of Congress to get those blood banks opened to begin with. The CDC didn’t see the need; not enough people had been allergic to the vaccine; blood supplies could be segregated within existing blood banks with less expense; blah blah blah.

“The likelihood of getting them started again anytime soon is nil.” Cage shifted to put an arm around Robin, who’d fallen asleep. Insomnia, he’d noticed, was not a problem for her. “The only way we can get them going again is to do it through private clinics, if that’s even possible.”

Aidan leaned forward and propped his elbows on his knees. “The only reason we haven’t had the problems the UK is having—the protests and threats to reveal the existence of vampires to the public—is that our people knew those blood banks were about to become operational. We were two weeks away. I don’t know what will happen once word gets out.”

“A shitstorm,” Mirren said. “And you know Frank Greisser will get the word out immediately.”

Aidan stood up and looked at his watch. “I’m going to set up a conference call with Meg Lindstrom and Edward and our other Tribunal allies and try to get the colonel in on it before it gets any later. Where’s Nik?”

Cage didn’t have a clue, but Robin sat up, apparently wide awake. Sneaky little bird.

“He’s with Shawn, doing . . . something. Feeding, maybe.” She shrugged and laughed, but Cage sensed an undercurrent of worry. “I know he wanted to talk to you guys tonight. He can describe the images of Fen better than I was able to.”

“Go and make your call, A. I’ll stay here with Glory and see if Nik shows up. Robin, why don’t you and Cage do some patrols tonight and see if you can locate Mr. Patrick.”

Cage nodded, and Robin was already on her feet and halfway to the door. “Can we kill him if we find him?”

Mirren and Cage exchanged glances. “No idea,” Cage mouthed to him. She could be joking, or she could have a knife with Fen’s name carved into it hiding inside her boot.

“Don’t kill him,” Mirren shouted after her, then pointed a finger at Cage. “Keep her in line.”

Yeah, bloody good luck with that.

They walked the long block to the mill in silence, but as they crossed the street, Robin grabbed his wrist. “Wait.”

She was looking toward the woods visible to the left of the mill, the edge illuminated by the one working parking-lot light.

He kept his voice low. “What did you see?”

“Flash of light color. I think it was the coyote.”

Cage reached inside his jacket and pulled out the small automatic Mirren had given him his first night back in town. It didn’t have the kick of a big Smith & Wesson, but it was a lot more portable. And it was plenty big enough to maim a coyote if he got a good shot. Not kill it, though. This wily coyote, they wanted to have a conversation with.

They walked silently toward the mill, watching the wooded areas without being obvious about it. No point in letting the coyote, if it was still out there, know it had been spotted. For all it knew, they were going back for more sex on the gym mats. If only that were true.

They’d stopped near the front entrance of the mill when Cage heard something. A rustling sound from behind the mill. He and Robin looked at each other, and in a split instant, he had to decide whether or not they were suitable partners. They hadn’t trained together. He didn’t know her skill set, nor did she know his. They should’ve been finding that out instead of fucking.

They’d have to find out on the fly. He pointed to her and to the right side of the mill, then to himself and the left side. She nodded, reached inside her right boot, and pulled out a small pistol—a Ruger, by the looks of it. And she handled it like she knew how to use it. He’d revisit that particular sexy image once this was over. He hoped.

They each set off. Cage looked over his shoulder every few steps to make sure she was okay, but she was moving faster and out of view before he’d cleared half the side of the building.
Focus, dick-for-brains
. He kept the weapon poised and stayed in the shadows until he reached the corner nearest the woods and then crouched to listen.

For a few seconds, there was nothing. Then another crackle, maybe a stick breaking. Another rustle. A low-pitched growl.

He moved faster and reached the back of the building at the same time as Robin. She was focused on the woods, and they walked toward the sounds together, he with his weapon scanning to the left, she to the right.

Another shuffling noise, and then a sound that was most definitely not a coyote, unless they’d grown male voices and learned to say
fuck you
.

“That was Nik,” Robin murmured, taking off at a run. Cage stayed behind her, willing to let her take point. She and Nik were partners, so he’d take his cues from her on how to proceed. Part of being a good tactician, after all, was knowing when to lead and when to fall back.

She held an arm out and Cage stopped. They listened again, and the silence dragged on for what seemed like minutes but was likely only seconds.

Another curse, and more scrambling to their left, so they set off again. Finally, they reached the edge of a clearing and halted. In front of them, a bloody, ragged Nik sat on a bed of thick brown straw, his left arm latched around the neck of a struggling, snapping coyote. In his right hand was his pistol, pointed right at Robin.

“I can’t see worth shit out here, so identify yourselves or you’re fucking dead.”

Before Cage could shove her out of the way, Robin spoke. “It’s me, Niko. Me and Cage. Cage, say something.”

“Right. Uh, it’s Cage.”

At the sound of his voice, the coyote’s struggles increased, and it snapped back with such a lunge it caught Nik’s ear in its teeth. When he tried to pull his head away, the beast locked its jaws. They rolled so that even with his vampire night vision—better than a human’s but probably not as good as a shifter’s—Cage couldn’t get a clear shot.

Finally, the coyote broke loose and raced into the woods, leaving Nik panting on the ground, his neck covered in blood.

“Your ear!” Robin ran to him and knelt, ripping off her shirt and balling it up to press against the wound.

“Call Mirren and stay with Nik. I’m going after the coyote.” Cage didn’t wait for a response, racing into the tree line where the coyote had disappeared. It had enough of Nik’s blood on it—not to mention his earlobe—that tracking it was simple, even in the dark and with it moving at a run.

Moving due west. Cage calculated his own speed and knew he could outrun a coyote, so he angled away until he thought he might be ahead of it. He stopped, crouched, and waited.

Only it wasn’t a coyote that ran out of the woods, headed straight for him, and it wasn’t Fen Patrick.

The naked woman racing through the dense pine forest, covered in blood, was Shawn Nicholls.

  
CHAPTER 27
  

N
ik couldn’t get his Ranger training out of his head.
Don’t be a hero
, their unit leader would tell them before a mission.
Don’t be a martyr. Don’t be a Lone Ranger. Don’t be a cowboy. Don’t go in without backup.

He’d broken every one of those
don’ts
in the last few hours, and he was paying for it. Only his stubborn male pride kept him from giving in to Robin’s pleas to let her carry him back to Mirren’s. He’d be damned if he went before the biggest alpha male on God’s green earth in the arms of a ninety-eight-pound woman, no matter what she could or couldn’t turn into.

“Just let me c—”

“Robin, I’m not giving on this, so shut it.”

“Stupid boy.” They hobbled the longest block in the world, from the mill to Mirren’s house, with his left arm over her shoulder and her right arm around his waist. “Are you sure it was her? How do you know? And what happened back at the restaurant?”

Her
being Shawn. “Let’s get to Mirren’s first. I can’t go through it twice, and hello—I’m bleeding like a sieve.”

She stayed blissfully silent the rest of the walk and didn’t even laugh at him when she had to mostly drag him up the steps; both feet left the ground simultaneously at least twice. At that point, Mirren spotted them and took over. He just picked Nik up without asking.

Another embarrassing moment in the life of Rangers versus Others. “Down,” he said. “I can walk.”

“Shut the fuck up, Dimitrou.”

Couldn’t argue with that. By the time Mirren got him to his bedroom, Glory had spread out a white sheet over the bed and had water running in the bathroom. She rolled up her sleeves and worked with Robin to get his shirt off and his cuts and bites cleaned and bandaged. Finally, Krys bustled in wielding a rolling suitcase and a big needle. Better and better.

“Gotta stitch up the ear.” She numbed the area and worked quickly. Either that or Nik had fallen asleep or fainted like a girl. At any rate, she was there, and then she was done, and then she was gone. Only Robin remained, stretched out next to him, watching him with sharp eyes, her eyebrows drawn together.

“Hey.” Why did everyone who’d been injured sound like a four-pack-a-day chain smoker?

She smiled and patted his shoulder, one of the few body parts that didn’t hurt. “Hey, you stupid boy. I gotta go and get Mirren. He wanted to know as soon as you woke up. You know he still calls you Zorba behind your back?”

“What? Wait.” He tried to sit up. Once, twice, third time was the charm. “Well, Zorba doesn’t want to talk to him flat on my back. Help me get into the living room.”

Robin narrowed her eyes—her usual precursor to arguing—but finally nodded. Maybe Cage was having a good influence, bringing out her kinder, gentler side. Nik and the vampire were probably the only ones who’d ever seen it. “Heard from Cage?”

She hovered nearby until she was sure he could stand on his own. “Not yet. I’m worried.”

“He can take care of himself. You’ll see.” Except he was up against something for which none of them had prepared. Something none of them could understand, because it shouldn’t exist.

They made their way to the living room. Mirren was in his usual chair, with Glory on his lap getting a little PDA time. As soon as she saw them, she jumped up and cleared a spot on the sofa nearest Mirren.

Only when he was settled did Nik take a full breath. He’d been focusing all of his energy on staying upright.

“Talk.”

A man of few words, Mirren. “Bottom line or from the start?”

“Both.”

“Shawn Nicholls is our coyote.” Nik held his hands up and winced as a cut threatened to reopen. “I know, I know, not possible. I don’t know how, but it’s true. Cage is after her now.”

“Holy fuck.” Mirren sat back, his frown etched so deeply into his face that it might never come out. Glory, wide eyed on the floor next to him, didn’t even seem to notice his use of the F-word. If any situation called for an F-word, this was it.

“You gonna call Aidan? I’m not sure Niko can go through this twice.” Robin, the guardian angel his friend Kell called “Razorblade Robin,” held up her smartphone.

“He’s on his way to Atlanta, to deal with the fallout of these blood-bank bombings,” Mirren said. “I’ll fill him in before daysleep. Maybe he can check around while he’s there and see if anyone else has heard of something like this. It’s the damnedest thing I’ve heard in a while. Now, let’s start at the beginning.”

Nik took a deep breath and began to talk, picking up the story from his and Robin’s trip to talk to Mark at the Chow House. “Shawn was flirting, you know, wanting to feed from me.” She wanted to fuck him, too, but no point in adding that since it didn’t happen. “She put her hand on mine, and I got a flash of memory from her. Nothing to do with our sabotage at that point, just a flash of her in a restaurant from before she was turned.”

“But you don’t get images from vampires.” Robin sat next to him and was fiddling with the edge of an afghan. “Or you haven’t before.”

“Exactly. That’s what made me think something was off about her. So I agreed to let her feed and went back to her place, hoping to get more images. I didn’t want to bring her in here, where Glory might be, in case things went south.”

Up to that point, his plan had worked like a charm—although he wouldn’t mention how her feeding had aroused him or the fact that he was so hard and aching that he let her jack him off while she finished. “I was getting ready to leave when she hugged me, and that’s when I saw a flash of a coyote and a fire. I knew then she either witnessed it, or she set it.

“I followed her but lost her when she passed the tree line into the woods behind the mill. By the time I found her, she’d shifted, and I ended up wrestling the coyote.” He looked down at his bites and scratches and bruises. “I think she won.”

Mirren had been doodling on a notebook while Nik talked, but now he looked up. “Did you actually see her shift?”

Nik shook his head. “No, but she was there, and then the coyote was there. It didn’t run away, like a real coyote would. She turned and attacked. That plus the images . . . it’s right. I feel it.”

He thought of all the lore Robin had shared about shifters. Only two shifters of the same species could produce healthy shifter children. Shifters couldn’t have kids with shifters of other species or with humans.

The only way to get a hybrid was for a shifter to bite a human multiple times—usually three—and the results were usually freakish. Some shifter had made his own Shawn Frankenstein. “I know it sounds crazy, but I swear my gut tells me it’s true. What I don’t understand is why.”

“I think we’re about to get some answers,” Mirren said, propelling himself from his chair and striding toward the door.

Robin was on her feet as well, and Nik and Glory exchanged exasperated glances. “I don’t hear anything,” Robin muttered.

Neither did Nik, but a few seconds after Mirren opened the front door, Cage strode in hauling Shawn behind him on a leash—in her human form. She was wearing his shirt, or so Nik assumed since she wore a man’s shirt that came almost to her knees and Cage was bare chested. Her arms had been bound behind her with duct tape, and Cage appeared to have fashioned a leash and collar out of the heavy tape as well. He tossed the handle of the leash—the cardboard roll of tape—at Mirren.

“She’s all yours, mate. I’m done.” He collapsed on the other side of Robin. “What a nightmare. She’s a woman, then she’s a bloody jackal, then she’s a woman again. And she fucking bites.”

Yeah, well, Nik knew a thing or two about that. She’d eaten his earlobe.

With no pretense at kindness, Mirren dragged Shawn into the middle of the living room and dropped the makeshift leash. The tape roll swung gently in front of her legs.

The silence was long and uncomfortable. Mirren asked no questions, just sat back down in his chair and stared at her. When he first released her, she’d looked from one of them to the other, a stubborn, defiant gleam in her eye. The longer the silence lasted, the more that gleam died until she finally seemed to realize her position and dropped to her knees.

Nik almost felt sorry for her. Almost.

“Please don’t kill me.” She repeated it, rocking back and forth, looking mostly at the floor but up at Mirren occasionally. Back and forth. Back and forth. And only begging Mirren; the rest of them had ceased to exist. Even the younger vampires had heard stories of the Slayer, Nik supposed. He’d been quite the terror in his day.

Next to him, Cage wrapped his arms around Robin, and she relaxed against him, her hand looking impossibly small resting on his thigh. She looked worried but also content in the moment.

He wanted that for her. Now, if he could just find it for himself. Although at the rate he was going, he might not live long enough to worry about it.

Shawn continued to rock on her knees, but Mirren finally had enough. “I won’t kill you.” His voice was low, and if “deadly” had a sound, Mirren had captured it. “That’ll be Aidan’s decision. He usually takes my advice.”

No more rocking. Shawn had frozen in place, her gaze fixed on Mirren.

“What I will advise him to do depends on the next few minutes. You can tell me exactly what the fuck is going on. If I believe you, I’ll recommend he wipe your memories and send you somewhere way the hell away from Penton.”

Nik didn’t believe that for a second, but it sounded good. It sounded like a lifeline thrown to a drowning coyote.

“Or,” Mirren said with exaggerated slowness, which made his faint Scottish accent more pronounced. “Or you can tell me lies, and if I know they’re lies, I’ll recommend that you be killed. Your final choice is to say nothing, in which case I’ll recommend you be killed so fucking slow you’ll beg me to finish you off. Maybe you’d like to go the way your friend Britta suffered.”

Finally, Shawn reacted. “Britta’s missing. Do you know where she is?”

Mirren studied her with such intensity even Nik wanted to squirm, but Shawn didn’t so much as twitch. Nik thought she was telling the truth, which meant if she was indeed both vampire and shifter, Fen Patrick was very likely their jaguar.

“Britta is alive, for now.” Mirren still had that blank, cold expression on his face that had probably put the fear of the sword into many opponents over his long lifetime. Nik hoped he’d never see it directed his way. “She was brutalized—crucified with silver, her guts laid open—at the hands of your accomplice.”

Shawn had been standing on her knees, but at the word
accomplice
, she crumpled. “There’s another one? Oh my God, who is it?”

“Another what?” Mirren asked. Such an agreeable, calm voice.
Deadly
. “Say the words, and remember the options I gave for your future.”

“Another abomination.” She hung her head. “It’s what I am.”

“You are both vampire and shape-shifter. How is that possible?”

Nik knew the instant Shawn decided to talk. Her shoulders drooped inside the billowy fabric of Cage’s shirt. Her fingers, clutched into such tight fists the knuckles had whitened, relaxed at her sides. Sitting back on her heels at Mirren’s feet, with her head down, she looked like exactly what she was: a supplicant, making confession to the high priest who would decide her fate, whether penance and forgiveness or death.

She began talking without another prompt. Now that her decision was made, the words seemed to come easily, and Nik listened with horrified fascination at a glimpse into a world so corrupt he found it hard to imagine it existed in tandem with his own.

She never knew her contact’s name, only that he’d found out she was a shifter who’d racked up enough gambling debt to be vulnerable. He made her an offer, and she took it.

“Coyotes are loners; we don’t travel in packs or even keep in touch with our families, so I didn’t have anyone to go to. And he did a great sales job.” She shook her head. “I was so stupid. God. All I could see was the picture he painted. I’d be immortal, and I’d be rich. I’d be able to walk in sunlight like a shifter but have the strength and longevity of a vampire. In return, all I had to do was come here, take orders.” She took a deep breath. “It didn’t quite work that way.”