Will shook his head. “Not yet.” They remained quiet a few moments as Cage tried to figure out how to broach the subject of Matthias.
“I need to ask you something.” Cage stared at the floor. He didn’t think he could ask permission to chase down a friend’s father and look his friend in the eye while doing so.
“When you find him, kill him,” Will said. “Aidan is my family. Randa. You. Mirren. He gave up that right a long time ago.”
“You’re sure?”
“No.”
Cage and Will looked at each other, then at the bed where Aidan lay, his one visible eye open and almost pure white. “No?” Cage wasn’t sure if the man knew what he was responding to.
“You find him, hold him. But don’t kill him. He’s mine.”
EPILOGUE
Two Months Later, Outside Lexington, Virginia
Movement from above. Unfamiliar voices. His dreams always began this way. A different time, a different man, the same dream.
A shaft of light would pierce the darkness from above. Heavy boots would descend the steps. The gleam of a sharpened sword would rivet his attention until his gaze rose to the face of the man who bore it. The Slayer, Mirren Kincaid. The man who’d come to kill him.
In this new version of the dream, Matthias Ludlam begged Kincaid to kill him quickly, to end the damnable hunger that was eating him alive from the inside out. To end the need to feed on what disgusted and sickened him.
To erase the memories of his final humiliation, when Cage Reynolds—him, always him—had tracked him down in suburban Atlanta and brought him back here, to his own house, to sit. Awaiting what, he didn’t know. He would’ve sworn the cocky Brit was as dead as the Irish farmer whose boots he licked, but somehow, he’d survived.
Frank Greisser wouldn’t help Matthias now. He’d disavowed any knowledge of Matthias or his whereabouts, Reynolds had gloated. Frank had heard Matthias was performing unspeakable experiments on other vampires; in fact, the newly reformed Tribunal would welcome news on the whereabouts of the despicable Herr Ludlam.
Matthias hadn’t counted the days of his imprisonment this time. It could be November or January or June. It didn’t matter. All of time centered now on the door at the top of the stairs, where a turn of the knob sent down that shaft of light. A hand flipped the switch and the resulting glow illuminated the dark shadows of his cell.
Matthias stood and squinted at the boots descending. They belonged, as in his dream, to Mirren Kincaid. The man seemed even more massive now, looking through the bars of the cell where he himself had once been locked up.
“You’re looking pretty sad, Matthias.” Kincaid quirked one side of his mouth. “What happened to your hair?”
Matthias flinched. It had fallen out except for a few white tufts. He’d never known what type of shifter DNA he’d been injected with, for which he hoped Frank Greisser rotted in hell with his perverted plan of finding a way for vampires to drink vaccinated blood.
Hope flickered to life. He’d wondered why they kept him alive, why Reynolds and his human Army friends hadn’t just taken him out when they found him. Maybe there was time for a deal.
“I can give you Frank Greisser.” Matthias realized he still had a card to play, and it was a big one. “I can tell you whatever you want to know about what he’s been up to.”
“Can you now?” Kincaid, the insolent lout, walked to the staircase and called to whoever was above. “I think Matthias wants to talk business.”
Who was up there? Reynolds, probably. He, like Kincaid, was a mercenary at heart. They’d both be willing to bargain.
And sure enough, Reynolds came down the steps, as haughty and arrogant as ever.
“I told Kincaid, I can give you Greisser.” Matthias hated the pleading sound in his voice but couldn’t control it. “He’s the one with the power, and the only way you’re going to change the way the Tribunal is handling things is to get rid of him.”
Reynolds grinned. “You’re talking to the wrong guys, Matthias. Mirren and I don’t make the rules where Penton is concerned.”
Then who? “William?” He didn’t know whether to be elated or frightened. His son was a mystery to him, always had been.
“No, Will wanted to be here, but he’s having surgery on those legs you mangled with your little grenade-tossing stunt,” Reynolds said. “The person we pledge fealty to is the one we’ve always followed.”
“Murphy’s dead.” They were playing games with him now. “So you’d do well to take my offer if you have any hope of getting Frank out of power.”