Allegiance (The Penton Vampire Legacy) (14 page)

The memory was enough to give her an empty, aching feeling that only a man could fill. Or love.

Oh no, you’re not trotting down that corner of memory lane tonight.
Melissa shoved the negligee back in the drawer and slammed it. In the adjacent drawer were T-shirts, and she picked out a paint-stained dark-green crewneck that had been stretched into shapeless comfort. The only memories associated with that shirt were the long hours of painting community house bedrooms. Just thinking about it made her shoulders ache.

She stuffed the sweatshirt into a small bag with a couple of days’ changes of clothes to keep in the daysleep spaces, and then walked down the hall to the nearest of the three bathrooms they all shared.

Pig-Pen—the dirty guy in the
Peanuts
cartoons who was perpetually surrounded by a cloud of dirt—had nothing on her. She stripped off her mud-spattered clothes and threw them away; washing wouldn’t get out the red-clay stains. Turning on the shower, she let the water pelt her fingers until it was as hot as she could stand it.

She stood under the spray with her face turned up, wishing the rivulets of hot water could wash away not just the iron-red mud but most of the last year.

At least she started out thinking that. But without the last year, Melissa would never have met Krys or Glory—and Aidan and Mirren had found such happiness with them. She wouldn’t wish them the loss of that happiness; plus, she’d made the best friends of her life. She would never have met Cage if he hadn’t come to study Penton for Edward Simmons.

But Hannah would still have her fam-parents, whose deaths at Matthias’s hands had sent her into a tailspin none of them knew how to handle. Without the last year, Will would still be whole. Penton would still be a peaceful place to live. She wouldn’t be a vampire.

She’d still be with Mark.

By the time she climbed out of the shower, dried off, and dressed, she’d taken the circumspect view. No way to change the last year, so she might as well appreciate the good things that had happened and not dwell on the bad.

A low rumble of voices reached her as soon as she opened the bathroom door into the hallway. “Cage, is that you?”

“In the common room,” he called out.

She ran her fingers through her towel-dried hair, all the primping she had time for.

“Mirren said you need to—”

She’d glanced in the kitchen doorway in passing, and now backed up to look in again. A young woman stood in front of the open refrigerator, eating a chicken leg and staring at the shelves.

She wasn’t completely naked. A grimy garment that looked like a man’s shirt was tied around her waist, but her small firm breasts were standing at attention from the chill of the fridge.

“What, you’ve never seen a naked woman before, either? How does that work when you’re in the shower?” The woman reached in and pulled an apple from the crisper, and turned to Melissa, apple in one hand, drumstick held up like a club. “I’m Robin. You must be Melissa. Thanks for helping Niko, in case he didn’t think to say so.”

Robin edged past Melissa and sat on the nearest sofa next to a bare-chested Nik, whose shirt had apparently been donated. She held the apple out to Nik. “Here. Eat. Man can’t live by bourbon alone.”

Cage sat on the opposite sofa, facing them. He’d watched Robin cross the room and seemed to pull his gaze from her—or her perky little mammaries—way too slowly. “Hi, Mel.” Finally, he looked at her, blinked, and smiled. “A shower sounds like a grand idea.”

Well, wasn’t that just . . . impersonal. “Wish I’d known you were coming so soon, I’d have waited to shower with you.”

Cage’s eyes widened to mossy green orbs, and his focus shot over to Robin, chewing on her chicken leg and staring right back at him.

“You’re doing her?” Robin leaned back and gave Melissa a slow head-to-toe visual inspection.

Melissa felt like the tall, fat, and gawky wallflower at the prom. She propped her hands on her hips and waited for Cage’s answer.

He looked from one to the other, and then to Nik, as if his new best buddy could provide an answer. Nik shrugged and bit into his apple.

Cage ran a soot-covered hand through his hair. Melissa didn’t think she’d ever seen him wear it down, but it was a good look for him. Better than the one he wore on his face, which she would describe as deer-in-headlights. “I, ah . . .”

Melissa had never seen her calm British lieutenant this rattled, so she put an extra swivel in her hips as she crossed the room, sat next to him, and slid a hand from his knee to the top of his thigh, where an interesting bulge rested. And stirred. “Cage and I are very good friends,” she told Robin, adding a sugary smile to emphasize just how good.

Nik bit into the apple again, its crisp crunch filling the awkward silence of the room. Melissa stared at Robin with a “you can flaunt your tits all night but he’s leaving with me” look.

Robin just grinned. “Fang-girl’s getting territorial, Cage. And back in the car, you practically promised to introduce me to shifter-vampire sex.”

Nik choked on his apple and collapsed in a fit of coughing.

“I’ll get you some water, mate.” Cage practically leapt off the sofa and propelled himself into the kitchen. When he returned, he handed the glass to Nik but remained standing.

Robin laughed. “You okay, Niko?”

“Go to bed, Robin.” Nik wiped tears from his eyes, and Melissa wasn’t sure if it was from choking or laughing or the aftereffects of the fire.

“You coming with me? I had my heart set on not sleeping alone tonight.”

Nik closed his eyes and seemed to be counting to ten. “Go to bed, Robin.”

Okay, this girl was way over the top. Melissa began to understand Mirren’s amusement by her—except she was a loon, not an eagle. And Cage was acting like a bashful tween boy seeing breasts for the first time since infancy.

“I, uh, think I’ll go and take a shower.” He looked at Melissa, at Robin, at the floor. His voice sounded strained and oh-so-British. “Right, then. Off I go.”

“You’ll need to come with me afterward, to daysleep,” Melissa called after him. “Aidan wants us in the lieutenants’ space from now on.” She looked at Robin. “Both of us.”

Was that a look of irritation flashing across Robin’s face for a split-second? If so, it was replaced soon enough with a smile. “I don’t want him when he’s sleeping. I want him wide awake. So sweet dreams, my fangy friends.”

With that, she finished off the last bite of her chicken leg, tossed it into the kitchen trash, and ran her fingers across Cage’s ass on her way past him down the hallway, where he remained frozen halfway between the common room and the bathroom.

The door to one of the back bedrooms closed with a firm click, which seemed to bring Cage out of his stupor. “Right,” he mumbled, turning to walk down the hallway. “Shower.”

Melissa turned to Nik, who watched her with narrowed eyes such a dark, liquid brown they looked almost as black as his hair.

“What?” she asked him. “You have something to say?”

He studied her a few seconds. “Only that this could get really messy and I don’t want to see Robin get hurt.”

Like that was possible. “I think Robin can take care of herself.” Melissa studied him in return. Were he and that naked little jaybird involved? “You seem possessive of Robin, protective even. But not quite jealous. I can’t quite figure you guys out.”

He wrapped his apple core in a napkin and threw it in the trash. “I could say the same about you and Cage Reynolds.”

  
CHAPTER 14
  

M
atthias slammed the cheap hotel phone receiver back onto its base. Another accident in Penton, but only a partial success. The real target, Cage Reynolds, had survived.

“It was not a total failure,
mein Freund,
” Frank had told him in that oily politician’s voice that got on Matthias’s last nerve. By God, when all this was over, he’d add Frank Greisser to his elimination list. It was a long list.

Not a total failure, no. The little girl Aidan Murphy kept with him like a mascot had been injured, as well as at least one other scathe member. Frank had yet to get more than a cursory report from whomever he had on the inside.

That person wasn’t doing a very good job, if Frank’s only requests of Matthias this time were to explain the relationship between Melissa Calvert and Cage Reynolds and provide background on Mark Calvert.

Why did anybody care who fucked whose wife?

Matthias startled at the loud knock on the door. No one knew he was here except Frank, and the Tribunal director—as he’d so smugly boasted on the phone—was lounging in a posh New York hotel suite, awaiting the Tribunal vote on Aidan Murphy’s nomination in only a week.

The knock sounded again, followed by a rough, deep voice. “Herr Ludlam? It is Wolfgang, the hotel manager. I have something for you, a gift sent by Herr Greisser.”

Matthias considered not answering. He hated to be paranoid, but better paranoid than dead. Still, while Wolfgang did bring a bag of unvaccinated blood for him after each daysleep, however much Frank paid for that service, it was not the same as feeding from a live human. Perhaps this was a human feeder.

Matthias opened the door a crack and then pulled it open wider. Wolfgang was not alone, and the person next to him was definitely human—disappointingly, a man. But Matthias wasn’t in a position to be choosy.

“I hope that is my gift.” Matthias sized up the human: a young man in his mid twenties, with the classic Austrian chiseled features, blond hair, and clear blue eyes. Yes, he would do nicely.

“Herr Greisser wished to reward you for being such a good friend and helping in his business ventures,” Wolfgang said, smiling. “Peter here will be at your disposal for the next half hour, at which time I will come and collect him. Is he satisfactory?”

Matthias wondered if Peter had a sister; then again, he was so anxious for blood that didn’t come in a plastic container, he’d have fed from small, balding Wolfgang himself. “Of course.”

When Wolfgang had gone and the door closed on his footsteps, Matthias gestured Peter to a sofa.

He looked at the chair, then at the bed. “You do not wish me to undress?”

Interesting thought. He was quite a pretty man and Matthias grew hard at the thought of that young, firm flesh under his hand. But a half hour limited his options. He’d rather have a warm vein than a blowjob. “Just your sweater, please.”

Peter nodded and pulled the white wool sweater over his head, giving him a tousled look that became even more tousled as he reclined on the bed.

Matthias’s fangs ached at the thought of sinking into that lovely spot on the inside of the groin, but time had become his enemy. He unbuttoned his own shirt and removed it before climbing on the bed and lowering himself on top of Peter.

The young man’s warm skin was as silky and firm as he’d imagined, and Matthias grew harder still at the idea of flipping him over and taking him. But the bloodsong was too loud, too enticing.

He kissed Peter’s firm lips and then turned the young man’s head to the right and bit.

Peter jerked beneath him, then relaxed with a sigh. Matthias moved with the rhythm of his feed, rocking his hips against Peter with each draw of blood. The young man’s cock was a hard, solid ridge against Matthias’s, and he rocked his hips harder, fed more deeply.

He didn’t feel the needle going into his skin. Only when the pain began searing through his veins did he pull back and look stupidly at his arm, the syringe emptying its yellow liquid into his body. The horrific burn spread from his arm and traveled like liquid fire through his bloodstream.

He was so sated from feeding that his reactions were sluggish. “What was that? What the hell?” He rolled off Peter, no longer aroused but angry, and more than a little frightened. The syringe still hung from his arm; he pulled it out and threw it on the floor. “What did you give me?”

Peter smiled. “I do not get paid to ask questions.” He got off the bed, retrieved his shirt, and headed toward the door. “I get paid to let you feed from me, and to give you the injection.” He looked back on his way into the hallway, where Matthias could see Wolfgang leaning against the opposite wall—waiting, no doubt, in case there had been trouble. “The hard cock, you did not have to pay for.”

He slammed the door behind him, and before Matthias could pull it open, the lock clicked.

He turned the knob, fury rising inside him like a storm surge, red and hot. “Let me out!” Surely Frank Greisser had not ordered this done. Hadn’t Matthias given him every last bit of information he’d requested?

No answer came from the hall, and Matthias learned quickly that the door had some type of reinforced steel or other fortification. He couldn’t break it. Couldn’t pull it from its frame. He charged to the window and found a fine grid of silver bars across it. Added during his daysleep, no doubt.

Fury turned to panic as Matthias paced the room, his gaze finally landing on the syringe that lay in the floor. The burn that had followed the injection had calmed; he was aware of it if he tried to sense it, but it was no longer painful.

What was Frank up to? And what the hell was in that injection?