The work was hot and slow, but mindlessly relaxing. By the time they reached the midpoint of the wall, he found he could release that knot of gnawing pain in his chest that had resulted from too much thought about Melissa and too much talk about Cage.
Finally, Mark placed the next-to-last brick in place. One more in the middle section, and he’d have to move the ladder to do the south end. “Wait, I think something’s gotten mixed in the concrete; this one’s not squaring up.” Something about the brick hadn’t set right. He looked down at Max and Rob. “Did you notice any irregularities in the last bunch of bricks we picked up?”
Rob shook his head. “We checked them when they came in.”
“Pull that one off,” Max said, “and I’ll hand you one from the new shipment stacked on the other side.” He disappeared around the corner.
Mark removed the brick and set it back on the scaffolding. “Pull the platform back down, and see if you can tell what’s wrong with that one. If one’s bad, there’s probably more.”
“Got it.” Rob grasped the rope and untied it from its mooring, lowering the scaffolding platform.
A wave of dizziness almost made Mark lose his balance. Too much heat, physical work, and being up on the ladder. Everything swayed.
“Move! You gotta move! It’s coming down!” Max’s voice seemed to come from far away, and Mark had only a fleeting moment to think the whole fucking wall is collapsing before he was thrown off the ladder, watching his world literally turn upside down before going black.
CHAPTER 4
Something wasn’t right. Just past dusk, the air around Penton should smell of warm pine clinging to the last rays of sunlight, nocturnal animals creeping from beneath rocks and brush, pungent night-blooming plants opening their petals to welcome the cooling air.
Mirren Kincaid paused outside the communal house he shared with his mate, Glory, and Melissa Calvert. The air was soaked with unease, as if something bad were about to happen. Everyone should have been celebrating, after the news spread that Matthias Ludlam would finally be going to meet his maker. Yet the streets lay quiet and deserted.
Whatever had happened, he needed to deal with it instead of babysitting the new Omega team members due to arrive within the hour. Mirren had a bad feeling about them, too. The colonel had been cagey about Ashton and Dimitrou, only saying that Mirren and Aidan should keep an open mind and let themselves be pleasantly surprised.
Mirren hated fucking surprises. In his experience, they were rarely pleasant.
He had a feeling what he scented in the night air wouldn’t yield any pleasant surprises, either. Mortar. Dust. Blood. Nothing pleasant about it.
“Something’s wrong at the job site.” Aidan Murphy took two steps at a time as he descended the staircase of the communal house across the street. Krys trailed behind him, pulling the large rolling suitcase that had served as her medical kit while they’d been stuck in the underground bunker Omega during the siege.
She’d been a human doctor before being turned earlier this year; unfortunately, her skills had been needed to treat a lot of vampires, too, including Aidan.
Aidan nodded toward Mirren’s old Bronco. “Better take that. All I got from Mark’s thought patterns was that something went down at the construction site. Mostly, it’s a muddle. There’s blood scent on the air, though.”
“That there is.” Mirren looked at the sky and wouldn’t have been surprised to see a scroll roll back and the Four Horsemen come riding through, spreading pestilence and death before them like floodwaters.
Penton couldn’t get a fucking break—and they were supposed to be the good guys. Though Mirren hadn’t grown used to thinking of himself as a good guy; he’d spent too many years wallowing in self-recrimination and guilt. He’d reached peace with his past, though. Glory had made him understand that his history could only haunt him if he let it.
But damn, Penton needed a stretch of heaven, not more apocalypse.
They all climbed in the Bronco, and Mirren drove up Cotton Street past the half-burned husk of the old textile mill. Mark’s blood bond to Aidan had given them a heads-up to disaster before, reinforcing their policy of bonding all residents to one of the master vampires. It was damned helpful. “You got a zing from Mark, but what about Rob and Max the Asshole? Aren’t they with him?”
“They’re both bonded to Will, and he’s out of range, so I don’t know.” Aidan ran his hands through his hair—an old habit that didn’t work quite as well since he’d cut it shorter, to better fit in with the puffed-up bureaucrats on the Vampire Tribunal. Meg Lindstrom, the US vampire rep, planned to step down and had nominated Aidan to take her place.