Absolution Read online

  The girl shrugged off her pink hoodie, its cheery hue at such odds with her long black hair and her presence at a midnight vampire confab, and took the chair between Randa and him. “Will and Randa don’t hate each other as much as they pretend to.” She giggled.

  Then again, sometimes her psychic pronouncements were way off base. Will scowled at his new partner and was met with the same. “Sorry, Hannah, but you are seriously mistaken,” he said.

  Hannah was a full-blooded Muscogee Creek, the daughter of a medicine man. Caught forever between childhood and adolescence, she’d been turned vampire two centuries ago when she was only eleven. She’d been with Aidan almost from the beginning of her vampire life, since he’d found her and killed her maker.

  No one had blamed Aidan for that killing. Turning a child vampire was a serious crime in their world, even before the pandemic vaccine made creating new vampires illegal. Most children couldn’t survive the physical transition; only half of adults lived through it. Children weren’t emotionally developed enough to control themselves and their appetites without a strong guiding hand. Plus, turning a kid was just wrong.

  Will hadn’t been a child when his own father turned him, although twenty-two was young enough. But every time he felt like wallowing in self-pity at his own lost young adulthood, he made himself remember this child, who’d maintained her sense of playfulness despite the burdens of her stolen life and psychic abilities. Kind of put things into perspective.

  “Will and Randa can flirt on their own time. We need to talk about Mirren.” Aidan leaned back in his chair, ignoring their sour expressions. “My mental bonds to him are still open, and the scathe members in town who are bonded to him, including Randa, say the same. So he’s alive. We just don’t know where.”

  “And you want me to try to find him again?” Hannah stopped swinging her legs, which dangled off the chair without touching the floor.

  Aidan nodded. “I know you’ve been searching for some mental connection, but I thought maybe if we were all here it might help.”

  “Let’s try it.” Will stretched out his left hand, and Hannah placed her small brown palm against his. He grasped Aidan’s hand with his right, and Aidan and Randa completed their circle. They probably should have done this right after Mirren had gone missing, but the man had been angry and upset over the death of his familiar, and they’d thought he wanted some time alone.

  Each member of the group stilled, and Will focused his mind on Mirren. The idea that anyone had gotten the jump on the man was hard to swallow, but it was the only explanation that made sense. He wouldn’t go off radar this long without telling Aidan, no matter how upset he’d been when Tim was murdered. If he’d been dead, the mental bonds would be broken. Somebody had to have taken him, kept him locked away.

  “It’s Will,” Hannah whispered, and Will’s gaze shot to her.

  “What’s me?”

  “You’re the one who can figure out how to help Mirren. The only one. I can see it.”

  The door to Will’s bedroom snicked shut as Olivia, his current feeder and lover, slipped out a half hour after sundown. He’d sent her away, disappointed that all she got from him tonight was a little feeder’s high. Liv wasn’t drop-dead-and-become-a-vampire gorgeous, but she had that wholesome, pink-cheeked prettiness he’d found so appealing in Southern girls.

  As soon as he was sure she’d gone, he got up, dressed quickly, and went to the central hallway of his mid-twentieth-century redbrick ranch house. It was a redbrick ranch on the outside, at least. Inside, he’d gradually turned it from an outdated set of boring white rectangles to a sleek, modern space that ft his lifestyle and needs. Lots of blond wood and glass, with a heated indoor pool in back and furnishings that combined comfort with clean lines and minimal fuss.

  Will knelt in the hallway and shifted panels on the central square of wooden flooring. He’d designed similar locks to all the safe daysleep spaces in Penton, basing them on traditional wooden puzzle boxes. Anyone not practiced in the solution to the individual puzzle would find it difficult to open, even if they knew the lock was there. A few vampires were stupid enough to let their fams and feeders know where their dayspaces were and how to access them, but not Will.

  He heard the lock below the wooden square click open and pulled it up, revealing a ladder leading downward into a narrow shaft. After climbing down a few rungs, he slid the floor tile in place above his head, then descended first into a basement living area with a pool table, stereo, and emergency supplies. Finally, he lowered himself into another hidden stairwell that led to his real living quarters in a subbasement—the place where he spent his daysleep and where no one else had ever set foot. Most members of Aidan’s vampire community, or scathe, had created private spaces either belowground or in existing houses retrofitted to make them impervious to light.

  Will opened the armoire, which had been crafted of light oak with hand-carved dragons etched into it by an artist he’d met in Tennessee during his stint living in the Smoky Mountains. Reaching into the bottom compartment, he extracted a leather overnight bag. He’d spent the hours after Hannah’s revelation thinking about Mirren and why he might be the one to find his fellow lieutenant. He could’ve kicked himself for not thinking of it earlier.

  It went back to Will’s father, as always. Aidan had suspected Matthias was behind last month’s attacks. Will had even offered to leave Penton, to keep his father away from the town. He didn’t want to endanger the only real friends he’d ever had. But Aidan had convinced him that Matthias, either with or without Tribunal backing, would come after the town anyway, because Penton had grown too strong, the number of vampires pledging fealty to him too large.

  Stupid thing was, Aidan hadn’t amassed the power and the followers because he wanted to overthrow the Tribunal. Everyone in Penton just wanted to be left alone.

  Freakin’ paranoid vampires.

  Will knew how the warped old bastard’s mind worked. If Matthias had managed to take Mirren somehow, he’d have locked him up somewhere, trying to break him. Matthias was arrogant enough to think he could turn Mirren back into the Tribunal killing machine he used to be. He’d see the big guy as too valuable an asset to kill without at least trying to change his loyalties.

  Which led him to the question—if Matthias had Mirren locked up, where would it be? Just before his last daysleep, Will had logged onto his computer, found a map of the US, and noted all of his father’s American properties that he could remember. The New York house would be too exposed; Matthias wouldn’t want to risk the Tribunal knowing he had Mirren. Miami was the wrong direction if Mirren had gone missing from North Carolina. Matthias wouldn’t want to try and move him very far and take a chance on losing him.

  That left only one viable option: the estate in Orange County, Virginia.

  Along with a change of clothes, Will added to his bag a length of rope woven with silver wire, a fixed-blade combat knife, a half-dozen small listening devices, and a small Mapp gas torch ensconced in a case. Two folding combat knives went in the pockets of his black cargo pants.

  He got halfway to the door and stopped. Setting the bag down, he returned to the armoire and extracted a shoulder holster and his Smith&Wesson. Mirren had bought one of the bulky .45s for each of the lieutenants last year. Mirren and Aidan were both fans of the heavy pistol, but not Will. He liked knives. He might need the expediency of a gun tomorrow night, however. He rummaged in the armoire and added a silencer to the bag.

  He couldn’t take a commercial fight with this much hardware, so he’d gassed up his ’54 Corvette, which was all cream-painted steel and hand-shined chrome. It was a beast, but far from subtle. Still, he couldn’t borrow a car without arousing suspicion, and he didn’t want any company on this trip.

  Will climbed up one floor to the basement and paused before taking the staircase to the main level of the house. Some one was here. He scented the air: vampire. Female. Flippin’ Randa. He’d wrap his silver rope around her neck if she’d
broken into his house.

  He avoided the main hatch into the house and used a narrow secondary exit that opened into the floor of his walk-in bedroom closet, which locked from the inside. If she had pranced into his house, he did not want that woman knowing where the access to his dayspace was, even if she couldn’t break the lock code.

  The brass of the thumb latch was cool and smooth against his fingers as he unlocked the bedroom door and stepped out, taking a deep lungful of air. She wasn’t inside, but definitely nearby.

  He threw his bag on the living room sofa and walked to the front door, swinging it open but blocking the view inside. “Verandah, lovely to see you.”

  She stood on the low, broad front porch that spanned half the house, looking out over the dark lawn. “Lovely to see you too, Willy Wonka.” Randa turned and gave him a blatant going-over, her hazel-eyed gaze pausing on the shoulder holster. “Something I need to know about?”

  Like he was sharing anything with this witch? “Nope, just going for a drive. See you later.”

  He began closing the door, but she pushed her way in, honing in immediately on the overnight bag. “I knew it. You’ve figured out where Mirren is and are going after him. I’m going with you.”

  Over his cold, staked body. “Go home and play with your toy soldiers, little girl.” She was a young vampire, so she broadcast her intent before trying to slap him. Aidan had thought her military training

  would make her ready to be a lieutenant, but Will disagreed. In a move honed through plenty of combat training he’d undergone while hiding out with a military unit, he quickly grabbed her wrist and twisted it behind her, then landed a hard chop to the side of her neck, just below her ear and slightly to the front. She crumpled like the bones had been removed from her legs.

  Nice little move. Worked as well on vampires as it did on humans.

  “Sorry, Verandah. I’ve got places to go, big bad vampires to rescue.” He picked up his bag and strode toward the door, but guilt pulled his glance back to the woman lying in a heap on his area rug. “Hell.”

  He set the bag down, picked her up, and deposited her on the sofa. Before he realized what he was doing, he’d stretched out a hand to brush a brilliant red fall of hair away from the creamy skin of her face. She was really beautiful when she was unconscious. Too bad it disappeared when she opened her razor blade of a mouth.

  Will got in the car and drove east toward Georgia. The Penton scathe had a safe house just north of Durham, North Carolina, where he could take his daysleep before driving on to Virginia the following night. As he passed the old Welcome to Penton sign on the east side of town, he took out his cell and called Aidan’s home phone. He’d already begun a terse voice-mail message when Aidan intercepted.

  “What do you mean, you know where Mirren is?”

  Damn. He’d hoped to get out of town without a real conversation—or Aidan’s insistence on him taking his annoying new partner along. “I think if Daddy dearest has him, it’ll be at the estate in Virginia. I spent almost every summer there growing up before I was turned, so I know it well.”

  “I’m going with you.”

  Yep, which was exactly why he didn’t want to talk to the man. “Negative. This is a solo mission—you need to stay in Penton. People will freak out if you leave. They’re already jumpy enough after all the shit with Owen.”

  Aidan growled, and Will heard his mate Krys talking in the background. Smart woman, Krys. She was probably telling him the same thing.

  “Fine.” He didn’t sound happy. “But at least take Randa with you.”

  Will laughed. “Oh yeah, that’s the other thing. Randa’s indisposed and unavailable. In fact, she’s laid out on my sofa—you might want to have someone check on her if she doesn’t show up raising hell in a half hour.”

  During the long moments of silence that followed, Will could picture Aidan shaking his head, probably uttering a few fine Irish curses. “What did you do to her?” he finally asked.

  Will grinned. It had felt good to get one over on his unwanted partner. “She’ll live. I’ll call you from Virginia and let you know if I found our missing vampire.”

  CHAPTER 4

  What was Matthias thinking, throwing a woman in the cell with a vampire who hadn’t fed for over a month?

  Mirren waited on the bench, his back against the wall, his head down. Waited until Matthias climbed the steps, slammed the door, clicked the dead bolt home. Waited until he could get control of the hunger that had begun raging the second the woman stumbled down the stairway. She was unvaccinated, and he wanted nothing more than to take her, blood and body, until there was nothing left.

  If he did that, he’d be no better than the version of Mirren Kincaid he’d tried so hard to leave behind. He’d be the Slayer again. He was weakened, and it would be easy to slide back into old habits, but if he killed this woman, he wasn’t sure he could stop. The cold darkness would come back, and he’d lose himself in its seductive power. His hands could too easily remember the mindless sweep of the sword, the heavy fall of the battle-ax, the controlled back-thrust of a heavy firearm. If the cold darkness ever fell over him again, he feared he’d embrace it.

  “Mister, you awake?”

  Shit. She would have to be a talker. Mirren hated a talky woman. They always expected you to talk back.

  He raised his head slowly and caught his breath. She was young, maybe early twenties, and pretty in a rode-hard kind of way. Reminded him of little Hannah, if Hannah had been born in modern times and lived a long enough human life to reach adulthood. And run with a rough crowd for a year or two.

  A really rough crowd. The girl’s black hair hung matted and tangled to her shoulders, and her dark, dark eyes looked haunted, frightened, and more than just a little unfocused. If Matthias treated his feeders this way, no wonder the man was on the scrawny side. Or maybe she was just a junkie blood whore. God knows he’d encountered more than a few of those over the years—men and women who’d sell their blood and body in exchange for their next fix. And he definitely smelled drugs on her. Heroin. Nasty stuff.

  “Your eyes are silver—I’ve seen enough vampires in the last month to know when your eyes get lighter, it means you’re hungry. But I’ve never seen any like yours. How long has it been since you ate? Umm…make that how long since you drank?”

  If the stupid woman kept walking toward him, he wouldn’t be held responsible. “Stay where you are.” He narrowed his eyes at her, thinking. How could she help him without sending his need so far over the edge he lost control of it?

  She eeked when he shifted on the bench and turned his back toward her. “Untie me.”

  She stumbled a little when she reached the bench and sat hard. The woman was stoned out of her gourd.

  “Your wrists are all torn up. That has to hurt.” She sat on the bench behind him, and Mirren breathed in her scent with his eyes closed. Damn, but he wanted to feed so badly his muscles ached.

  She muttered as she worked, her drug-addled fingers slipping off the rope. “You’re so big that I’m surprised this rope could hold you. I should be able to…Let’s see here, it’s too dark. Man, this is funky rope.”

  “Stop yapping, start untying.” She had that broad, soft Southern accent he found sexy, but she used it way too much.

  “Yeah, yeah, OK.” She tugged harder on the ropes, burning his sensitive wrists with each pull. “Sorry, sorry. Why is it burning your skin like that?”

  Mirren growled and spoke through gritted teeth. “It’s laced with silver, and I’m a freaking vampire. Just untie me.” Damn, he had to get himself under control, or he’d scare the woman to death and she wouldn’t finish freeing his arms or feed him.

  “Almost there…but wait.” The girl paused in her fumbling. “You are a vampire, right? You have those eyes that are about four shades too light, and I’ve been here long enough to know what that means, even if I don’t see any fangs.”

  God help him, he’d show her some fangs. “I said I was a
vampire. Now finish untying me.” Mirren twisted his wrists and felt the rope give way—the girl had gotten it loose enough that he didn’t need her help.

  “But wait, how do I know you—”

  She gasped as Mirren pulled his wrists apart, popped the rope onto the cell floor, and shifted around to face her.

  “Can you…?” She paused and swallowed hard, edging away from him on the bench. Mirren’s gaze dropped to her mouth. “Can you feed without killing me?”

  Mirren nodded slowly. Maybe. Maybe not. He’d never gone so long between feedings before. “Who are you? Why are you with Matthias? He must not take very good care of his blood whores.”

  She flinched and a wash of pink tinted her cheeks. “Don’t call me that. I’m not a whore. I was taken and locked up, just like you were. Except they shot me full of drugs, and they…”

  Oh, bloody hell, she was gonna cry. If there was anything worse than a talky woman, it was a crying woman.

  She sniffed. “And they fed off me, and passed me around like I was nothing, and they…they…”

  Aw, fuck me, she’s crying. Mirren reached out and took her arm, then jerked away. What the hell?

  His hand tingled like he’d wrapped it around a live electrical wire. Only one person had that effect on him—Hannah, with her creepy psychic powers. “You’re a psychic? Or a witch? What are you?”

  Mirren reached for her arm again and pulled it toward him, ignoring the tingle. He pushed up the sleeve of her filthy red sweater. Track marks—some new, some old—trailed up her inner arm. “How often you shoot this shit? How long you been doing it?”

  She looked at her arm and shook her head. “They come a couple of times a day. Three times a day? I don’t know. Sir says it keeps me pliant—no, compliant. I don’t take drugs. I never did before he took me. They made me…” A tear seeped out from the corner of her eye and trailed down her cheek.