Allegiance (The Penton Vampire Legacy) (16 page)

Finally, he took a deep breath, let it out, and opened his eyes. His smile was sweet and sad, and she wrapped her arms around him. Robin didn’t have many friends, and Nik was special. The gentle warrior who didn’t judge what he didn’t understand. She thought she might be willing to die for him. She knew she’d be willing to kill for him.

He hugged her back and gave her a kiss on the cheek. “Okay, eaglet. What do I need to know?”

She pulled her arms from around him and twisted to look back into the grimy ruins. “Begin at the center bedroom on the right. I think that’s the origination point.”

Nik frowned and followed her gaze with his own. “Cage’s room? You think he was the target?”

“Dunno. Maybe he was the main target and killing the others would be gravy. I didn’t catch any scents that would make me think there was an electrical problem. I also didn’t scent an accelerant, but anything that was there would be camouflaged by fire scents.” Scent and sight were her gifts; now, it was time for Nik to use his.

He stood up and flipped his sketch pad open to a blank sheet. Two of his drawing pens were clipped to the top.

“You want me to go in with you, hold the pad?”

He shook his head. “Run interference and keep anybody out who happens to come by. And wish me luck.”

“Always,” she said softly, watching him pick his way through the rubble toward the central hallway.

For fifteen minutes, she entertained herself by considering the issue of Cage Reynolds and Melissa Calvert, and why after watching them as much as she could the night before without being obvious, she didn’t think they were involved. Or at least they weren’t screwing like bunnies at every opportunity.

For one thing, Cage was too damned uptight; he was like a coiled spring in a tight casing. Having a fuckfest with a married woman, especially a married woman who’d been Aidan’s familiar and was married to the city’s business manager? She couldn’t see it.

Yet Melissa had been jealous last night, annoyed at how
verklempt
Cage had been around Robin. The woman had been amused, yes, but also jealous. Robin got the impression she’d staged all that “showering together” trash talk just to make Cage more uncomfortable and punish him for paying attention to Robin.

Still, however they started out, Robin thought Cage and his curvy companion were probably just friends now. Maybe friends who cared a lot about each other, but not in love, or love as Robin thought of it, the capital-L kind that meant forever and exclusive.

She’d never experienced it, but she knew how it should go. Racing hearts, violent passion, blinding love so fierce it was on the borderline of insanity. People who couldn’t live without each other. Consuming.

That’s how it should be, anyway. It was too late for Robin; when she’d killed a man and gone on the run, she’d ruined any hope of settling down for a lifetime with a capital-L Love, even if she’d been suited to it personalitywise.

But her parents had come close to having it. Before the whole mess with Robin and Wren and that sonofabitch husband of hers, Robin’s parents had still cuddled on the sofa and kissed in front of their eye-rolling grown children. They used stupid pet names and held hands in public. Part of Robin thought she was unsuited for that kind of relationship; another part of her was almost desperate to find it.

No way Cage and Melissa had it, which meant he was fair game. Capital-L Love might be out of Robin’s reach now, but a really consuming case of capital-L Lust would do, and she thought Cage Reynolds would be quite lusty once she knocked that stuffy Brit reserve out of him—maybe literally.

“Need any help?”

Deep in her plot to overthrow the tower of stodginess that surrounded the Vampire Reynolds, Robin startled at the voice and then the man it belonged to. She didn’t know who the hell he was, and she’d let him slip up on her like she was still a nested chick.
Stupid.

“No thanks. Who are you?”

The man was medium height and almost pretty, with tousled blond hair and bright eyes the color of cobalt. He wore running pants and a T-shirt, but what gave him away was the cane. As in, he was leaning on one.

“Never mind, I know who you are. Mark Calvert, right? You got hurt at the job site.”

“Yep, that’s me.” He walked with some effort to the steps, and Robin moved over to make room for him. When he finally sat down, the pain lines on his face smoothed out. “Gonna tell me who you are?”

She stuck a hand out to shake. “Robin Ashton. I’m one of the Omega Force team members from Texas.”

He nodded. “You the Army Ranger or the shape-shifter? I heard there was one of each.” Leaning back slightly, he took in her oversized sweater and rolled-up jeans. “I’m guessing shape-shifter. You’re too short for Army. Nice fashion sense, by the way.”

“A man wearing dark-green track pants and a gray T-shirt shouldn’t be casting fashion stones.”

He placed a hand over his heart. “I’m wounded.” Then he grinned. “Seriously, I’m wounded. You’re lucky I have on pants at all. You ever tried to get dressed with a back injury?”

She laughed, then cut it off. She didn’t want to like Mark Calvert. If he’d kept his wife sufficiently occupied, she wouldn’t be hanging around being friends with Cage Reynolds.

“I met your wife last night. She’s”—annoying, suspicious, and distracting the guy I want to play with—“nice.”

“Yeah, well, we’re getting a divorce, so don’t feel you have to talk her up.” Mark fidgeted on the step. “Damn it, I can’t get comfortable.”

Robin was only half listening. She’d spotted a jagged row of scars on the inside of Mark’s left arm. “What are those from?”

Mark glanced down, then back up at her. “You don’t mind asking questions, do you?”

Robin shrugged. “I’m told I have no brain-to-mouth filter, so you’ll have to get used to it. They look like—”

“Track marks.” He held out both arms, scored with a crisscross of scars. “I was one of Aidan’s first rehab successes. Been his business manager for almost six years since he scraped me off the highway to heroin.”

Interesting. “So you were with him before he bought up Penton?”

Mark laughed. “Who do you think carried out all the transactions? Aidan and daytime business meetings? Not happening.”

“Right.” Fangaroos. They were too high-maintenance. Cage might have to be a one-night stand. Nothing wrong with that. It would be a really good night.

A crash sounded from behind them, followed by an “I’m okay” from the back of the house. “Nik Dimitrou, the Ranger half of Penton’s new dynamic duo,” Robin explained. “He’s got some experience in fire dynamics and accelerants.”

She had no idea what the hell that meant, but it sounded good. Cage had needed to know about the Touch so Nik could find out if he could read vampires. Nik could tell Mark Calvert about the Touch if he wanted; that was his secret to tell.

“Good—I hope he can find something,” Mark said. “Probably the same jackass that sabotaged the job site.”

“Or maybe a different jackass.” Nik came out the front door, shoved the notebook at Robin, and introduced himself to Mark. “I’m driving to the Chow House to get a late lunch. Want to go with me?”

“‘Driving’ is the magic word.” Mark struggled to his feet. “Can you make a stop by the power station down the hill from the old Baptist church? I want to make sure the power’s been cut to this building and the one adjacent. I was planning to walk, but that was”—he held up the cane—“insanely ambitious.”

“Let’s go, then. Robin, I would invite you, but I know you have a book you’re anxious to dig into.” Nik looked pointedly at the sketch pad.

Got it. Look at sketch pad. Don’t tell Mark.
“Yep, a great new romance novel. It has a whole platoon of lusty Army Rangers in it.”

Nik laughed. “Whatever it says, it’s all true. Mark, hang out here and I’ll pick you up.”

They watched Nik walk down the block to the white SUV parked in front of Mirren’s comm-house. “Ah, so that’s how you met Mel last night; you guys are staying with Glory and Mirren. I’m across the street with Aidan and Krys.”

As Robin recalled from the dossiers, he was the feeder for both of them and another vampire—but not for his wife. And asking for a divorce. Curiouser and curiouser.

Only Nik’s untimely arrival prevented her from asking Mark outright why Melissa didn’t feed from him instead of from Glory. But as she said her goodbyes and watched them drive off, she put that on her growing list of Rude Questions to Ask. Amazing what info people would give up if one just had the balls to ask.

In the meantime, she had pictures to look at. There were lots of smoky gray scenes. One of Cage standing outside the kitchen door, pointing through the inferno, Fen just ahead of him. Several sketches of a young dark-haired girl that must be Hannah, holding onto a plug-ugly bloodhound. Barnabas is a bloodhound? Good Lord. A vampire with a bloodhound. Oh well, probably no more bizarre than eagle-shifters named Wren and Robin.

A couple of drawings showed a pretty blonde Robin didn’t know, but from Nik’s description of running toward the fire, it must be the vampire named Shawn something-or-other.

Robin stopped at the next drawing, confused. She’d been waiting for an image of a person who didn’t belong in the house, or of the black jaguar Nik had seen from Touching the job site. This drawing wasn’t of a feline, but of a canine of some sort. Not quite big enough for a wolf, but the shape of its head didn’t quite look like a dog. Could be an ugly mixed-breed, though.

In its mouth, it carried a bottle of liquid.

It was the accelerant. Had to be. The fire would break the glass, the accelerant would feed the fire and help it spread, and the broken glass would look like any other fire debris.

But the dog. What had Nik said? Maybe another person had set the fire. Could the dog be another shifter?

She stashed the drawings under the edge of a piece of Sheetrock laying on the porch and walked back into the house, picking her way to the room that had been Cage’s—not that he’d spent more than a few hours there at the most.

The floor had burned through, and she could see metal about a foot beneath the subflooring. Kneeling, she tapped on it; it sounded solid. It hadn’t occurred to her that the underground vampire nap rooms were steel-lined, but that had to be what this was. Which explained why the floor didn’t collapse; it got as far as the top of the oversized fireproof vampire coffins and had nowhere to go.

Robin shuddered. She’d last about an hour in one of those before going berserk.

For the next hour she crawled the floor, inch by sooty inch, using her sharp vision to examine every solid thing that remained in the ash. Rough splinters of wood pierced her fingers, but she ignored the welling up of blood. No fangs around to take notice, and her shifter DNA would heal her quickly.

Anything she couldn’t immediately disqualify as important, she shoved in the pockets of her oversized jeans. Then she took her haul back to Mirren’s house, to her room, where she could study them without interruption.

Spreading everything out on the soft quilt that covered the heavy oak bed, she sat cross-legged against the headboard and picked up each piece, using what was left of Nik’s borrowed, soot-blackened shirt to gently wipe it clean. A brass buckle and a few frayed strips of a leather strap like one might find on a trunk. The sole of a boot—Cage’s? She set it aside in case Nik wanted to Touch it.

Finally, she wiped off an irregular, sharp thing the size of a quarter. Glass. Blue glass. Impossible to tell if the bottle being carried by the dog was blue in Nik’s black-and-white drawing, but it looked about the right thickness. She set it aside as well and, by the time she finished, had found two more pieces and an intact ring of the glass—the rim of a bottle.

Robin felt her headache returning. She needed food, a nap, and some flight time, in that order. When Nik returned, they could talk it out.

A few hours and a nap later, Robin shifted. The sun had just slipped behind the tree line. She’d tucked her clothes underneath a bush at the edge of the woods behind the community house, spread her wings wide to test the temperature of the air and velocity of the currents, and then she flew.

She might not be as physically menacing as the jaguar shifters she’d gone through military training with, but by all that was holy, she could fly. Away from the dirt and decay and death of the earth, she saw things more clearly, healed both body and spirit, solved problems, and hunted.

Her Omega Force team leader in Houston used to tease her by saying she hunted rats and ate them. She hunted rats, all right, but she didn’t kill or eat her prey. She gave them a chance to do penance.

Police reports gave her the kind of rats she hunted. Fine things, police reports, part of the public record. She’d find the accounts of abusers and bullies online at a local library, make note of the address, stake out the place, and catch her target.

Then the guy would suffer a visit from something he didn’t know existed: a vengeful woman who could turn into a ruthless bird of prey. After all, who would believe him if he told?

A frightened bully responded well to threats, she’d learned—meaning she’d never had to kill any of them. But she would if she had to.

She’d done it before, killed a rat, and it had cost her the life she knew. And she’d do it again.

The higher she soared into the pine-rich air, the cooler it grew and the swifter the currents. She let herself coast, catching the gusts under her wings to lift her higher, and then letting herself plummet until she was forced to right her course.

There was a rat somewhere in Penton, and Robin was ready to hunt.

  
CHAPTER 16
  

W
ith twilight’s approach came Cage’s gradual awakening. For most vampires it was sudden, that magical moment when the sun dropped below the horizon and awareness dawned. It was a gentle nudge to awaken you from a deep sleep, and you’d blink, groggy and disoriented for only a split second before sentience returned. That’s how it had been with Cage at first. But after he’d been turned about two decades, he’d begun awakening more gradually, and he considered it a gift. Edward had told him his powers were growing and he might one day reach that master vampire strength. A real mixed bag, that. Responsibility was a burden as well as a gift, and if one had the powers that came with master status, one had an obligation to use them.

Still, it was a deliciously human experience, burrowing under one’s duvet for the odd half hour to enjoy the peace and quiet while other vampires slept on.

When one wasn’t alone, the sensation was especially nice. Not that he’d enjoyed company in his daysleep for quite a few years. Well, decades. And never consistently.

The thought of waking next to a woman made him think of sex, a subject his cock found of extreme interest.

The thought of sex made him think of Robin Ashton. What a bad idea sex with his little bird would be. The woman was insane. And dangerous. His cock thought that was even more interesting.

The thought of not having sex with Robin made him think of Melissa, which woke him fully, persuaded his cock that no further encouragement would be forthcoming, and ruined the enjoyment of even solitary duvet burrowing.

They had to talk. Tonight. Now. Well, as soon as she woke. Wouldn’t do much good to let her down gently if she wasn’t conscious, although it would be considerably less stressful for him.

Cage sat up and threw off the thick, soft cover, his limbs still heavy with the last dregs of daysleep. They should’ve talked last night, but by the time he and Melissa had gotten her car, and she’d shared Mirren’s theories about the order in which Matthias probably wanted them to die—with both of them near the top of the list—they’d had to hoof it to get settled before sunrise.

Once they’d maneuvered the locks, the subbasement spaces beneath the abandoned Quik Mart weren’t so different from the ones Will had designed under the old clinic. Big rooms, thick walls, and luxury furnishings Aidan must’ve had brought in by the truckload.

Mirren had left them an envelope taped to the hallway wall, with keys inside to adjacent rooms. They’d each taken a key and stood in the corridor like bloody idiots for a good thirty seconds, dithering. He didn’t know whether to shake her hand or kiss her. If he shook her hand, it might feel like a brush-off. He might not see a future for them as lovers, but he did want her as a friend. Last thing he wanted to do was hurt her.

If he kissed her good night, or good morning in this instance, it sent a signal he couldn’t follow up on. Not and live with himself.

Awkward as hell, the whole thing. First with Melissa and Robin squawking at each other like hens at the communal house, and then arriving here.

So they’d each paused between the respective doors whose keys they’d claimed, finally ending the indecisive stalemate in an awkward hug.

“We need to talk at dusk,” he’d said.

Ominously, she’d answered, “Yes, we certainly do.”

Fortunately, albeit for all the wrong reasons, his head had been abuzz with so many details he hadn’t been able to dwell on the pending conversation before daysleep claimed him. The job site sabotage. Matthias’s escape. The fire. Unidentified shifters mucking about.

Robin.

The annoying, fascinating little shifter was a complication Cage hadn’t expected. A complication he sure as hell hadn’t gone looking for, nor did he want. Now that she wasn’t nearby, filling his head with her colorful, unpredictable bluntness or searing his retinas with the sight of her breasts, forcing him to think about how they were the perfectly sized fruits, ripe for plucking or nibbling on. Well, now that they weren’t right in front of him, he could think.

He’d come to Penton with the notion of settling down, finding a home, and not following every adventurous road that beckoned him. Robin Ashton was an adventurous road, and he needed to remain on the off-ramp.

Cage walked across the room and held up the clothes he’d been forced to wear last night, after exiting the shower and suddenly realizing all his belongings had been incinerated. Mirren’s clothing was the right style—one could never go wrong with black—but he wasn’t comfortable stealing any of them, plus they’d make him feel rather like a child playing dress up.

Nik had rescued him with a pair of jeans that were a couple of inches too short and a button-front shirt that stretched too tight across his shoulders and wouldn’t button. Not a look he’d ever try to achieve intentionally. Robin would wind him up mercilessly.

And since when did you dress for any woman, Reynolds? Take a reality pill.

The sound of the adjacent door opening, then softly closing, preceded the knock by a few seconds, long enough for Cage’s heart to speed up. Fuck, but he hated dealing with feelings. Analyzing everyone else’s made a great hobby, but putting his own into words?

It wasn’t akin to being back in Paris—the standard by which he judged horrific experiences—but it was bad enough.

Time to man up, as the Americans liked to say.

Melissa had ditched the paint-spattered T-shirt from last night and wore a pale-green sweater that gave her hazel eyes an extra shot of sage. They were dark and serious when she nodded at him from the doorway. “I’m sorry this is so awkward; I wish we’d had a chance to talk the night you flew in.”

He stepped aside, closing the door behind her. She sat on the sofa and he wavered. Sofa or armchair? Too intimate or not? Why did every damn decision have to carry so much weight?

Melissa laughed. “You look like your dog just died and you might be blamed for it. Come and sit in the chair. That way you won’t be too close in case I decide to bite you.”

He smiled and relaxed his posture. This is Melissa. Whatever else she was or wasn’t,
friend
applied. “Sorry, I seem to be better at listening to others’ problems than discussing my own.”

“Well, duh.” She patted the arm of the chair next to the end of the sofa where she sat and waited for him to get settled. “Whatever you might have done in your human occupation, you’re a guy first. We women don’t expect you to talk about feelings without hemorrhaging.”

“Right.” Cage crossed his legs. Uncrossed them. Cleared his throat in order to launch into why things wouldn’t work between them. “Speaking of dogs, do you know if they ever found Barnabas?”

So sue him, he was a right bloody chicken as well as the bastard who’d originally planned to screw Melissa Calvert but never had plans to love her.

Melissa bunched her brows together in a look of disbelief and answered in the tone people reserved for addressing the slow-witted. “The dog is fine. Britta found him hiding under a bush two doors down, scared but not hurt, and took him to Hannah. Changing the subject much?”

“Right.” He seemed to be saying that a lot lately. “Okay, I’ll just jump in here.” Talk, don’t think. “The way we left things in June, you know, I wasn’t sure. And then you were sure and I was . . .” Bloody hell, he should have rehearsed. Why hadn’t he rehearsed?

She held up a hand. “You aren’t very good at this, so why don’t I start?” She took a deep breath. “You were right. About me, in June.”

Cage settled against the chair back and pursed his lips, trying to look intelligent but with no clue what she meant. He decided he couldn’t fake it. “Well, I do enjoy being right, but what was I right about, precisely?”

“That I was using you . . . oh, Cage, I’m so sorry. I was scared, and you made me feel safe. I put you in a horrible position.”

Fucking hellfire and brimstone, she was going to cry.

“You’re wrong.” He leaned forward and grabbed her hand, clarity finally slapping him in the face. They’d been so awkward together because each was trying to keep from hurting the other. “I knew you didn’t love me, that you’d find your way back to Mark eventually. But I was a bastard to let you get close, knowing I didn’t . . . to make you think . . .” He ran out of steam, his verbal locomotive chugging to a halt under a dearth of power.

Melissa looked at the floor, and Cage steeled himself for the tears, but when she looked up, she was laughing. “We were gonna tell each other the same thing, weren’t we?”

He smiled, and all of a sudden his body felt almost weightless. The unsettled questions between them had weighed on him more than he’d realized—whether or not she’d hate him, or blame him, and knowing he deserved it. “I do love you, you know.

She looked him square in the eye, with a touch of the old playfulness he hadn’t seen since his early days in Penton. “I love you, too, Cage Reynolds. I think we’re going to be great friends—already are. I’m just not ‘in love’ with you.” She formed little quote marks with her fingers. “Just like you’re not ‘in love’ with me. Truth?”

Cage looked at the ceiling, examining a pattern of rough paintbrush marks that crisscrossed one corner of the rectangular space. He was so out of his element.

“I don’t think I’ve ever been in love.” What a pathetic thing to admit—but, hell, loving was hard enough without the “in love” part, if it even existed. “Never stayed anywhere long enough, I guess. But, really, at the heart of it, is there a difference? Isn’t ‘in love’ just love mixed with infatuation? And when the infatuation cools, isn’t love what’s left over?”

Melissa laughed and shook her head. “You really are such a guy. Yes, there’s a difference between loving and being in love. There really is.”

Her words brought a grudging smile. “I haven’t heard you laugh like that in . . . maybe ever.” Things hadn’t exactly been cheery since he’d come to Penton.

She tucked her feet underneath her on the sofa and propped on the upholstered arm. “I realized something last night when Mirren told me about Matthias being alive. If I let myself get lost because of what he did to me, he wins. That’s true for all of us. If we let Matthias, or the fear of Matthias, tear us apart, he wins, and Penton dies. We deserve better than that.”

Cage smiled. “You’re a wise woman. Penton is one of the reasons I came back.” He took a deep breath. “You were the other. To set things right between us.”

She reached over and squeezed his knee. “I don’t know if I have a future with Mark. In the long run, I don’t think he’ll want me. But here’s something I realized while you were gone. You don’t love me, Cage, except as a friend. What you love is Penton, and you’ll always have a home here.”

Thank God he’d been turned so many years that he couldn’t cry anymore, or he might sob like an infant. Instead, he kept his eyes on one particular loose thread of carpet and said, “I want that.”

And if he was to have it, to have Penton the way he wanted it, he had to fight for it. They all had to fight. They’d given Matthias Ludlam and the Tribunal too much power. Everyone who loved Penton so much, including himself, was so afraid of losing it that they were destroying it with their own fear. Doing Matthias and Frank’s work for them.

A stirring in the hallway was followed by a soft knock at the suite door. Cage and Melissa exchanged a smile before he got up to answer.

Aidan stood in the corridor, dressed in black combat pants and a long-sleeved T-shirt—Cage didn’t think he’d ever seen him quite so casual. He looked at Cage, looked past him at Melissa, then back at Cage. “Anything I need to know?”

Cage glanced back at Melissa, who shrugged and nodded. “Right. We were just setting to rest the mad rumor that we were destined to be Penton’s next vampire super-couple. Sad to say you’ll have to look elsewhere.”

Aidan grinned, which lifted about two centuries of stress off his face. “Mirren’s rounding up everyone in the old mill to start training at nine, so you have a couple of hours. I want everyone fed before training. One of you feeds from Nik and one from Mark. You pick.”

He set off down the hall, where Cage saw Krys waiting. Aidan turned back. “We’re about the same size, Cage—come by the house and get some clothes. You show up looking like that and Mirren will make your life a misery.”