Allegiance(28)
Nice was a good, utilitarian, all-purpose word. It could mean nice like a sister, which was an accurate description of his relationship with Britta. Or it could mean nice like a man and a woman engaging in a meaningful bit of blood-fueled foreplay.
“Nice.” Melissa frowned harder, and Mark’s inner demon-child danced again. She might not admit it, but she was jealous. “What do you know about that woman?”
Quite a lot, actually. Britta had been in Penton only a month, and he’d been her feeder from the outset. “I know she’s got a great sense of humor and can make me laugh. She likes movies. And she’s sexy.”
“That hair’s dyed, I can tell.” Melissa stood up and pushed the chair back against the wall next to the closet door, looking around the room. Her gaze paused on each piece of furniture as if it might reveal secrets about what went on here when he and Britta were alone. If his dresser could talk, the tales it’d tell would be boring as hell.
She turned back to him, the flash of anger gone now, her features relaxed into the face he’d loved, only maybe a sadder version. “Guess I’ll go back to Mirren’s and see if there’s any update on Rob. Aidan was going to call the colonel and break the news to him.”
“Send word if you hear anything.” Suddenly, Mark’s games seemed childish to him. Their friend lay in the clinic morgue, and because of Penton’s fucked-up politics, they probably wouldn’t even be able to give him a proper funeral with military honors and folded American flags. “It should have been me, not him. He deserved better.”
“I’m sorry about Robbie. But I’m glad it wasn’t you.” Melissa paused at the door and looked back. “And for the record, I’m not with Cage.”
CHAPTER 8
Robin Ashton couldn’t remember when she’d had quite as much fun as in her first few hours in Penton. Who’d guess a bunch of old vampire dudes in Alabama could prove so entertaining?
Mirren Kincaid was a big, ancient, grumpy—and did she mention big?—piece of work. She couldn’t wait to yank his dick a little more. Maybe a lot more.
Knocking alpha males off their pedestals made for delicious fun. It was tiring, though, especially after a six-hour flight . . . without an airplane. Thankfully, Nik had arrived early and stashed some clothes for her in the woods. Mirren really would have freaked out if she’d emerged from the piney backwoods naked. She had the distinct impression that in the dictionary of life, Mirren Kincaid’s photo would not illustrate the entry for “enlightened male.”
Curling up in the backseat of Nik’s SUV, Robin left Nik and Cage to get acquainted while she pretended to nap. Through her shuttered eyelids, she looked out the window at the few details she could see of Penton, illuminated either by moonlight or from one of the infrequent bursts of working streetlights. She saw lots of rubble, charred support beams, skeletons of buildings with bits of wood and masonry stretching into the dark sky like clutching fingers.
That Matthias guy had done a number on Penton; there wasn’t much left. It hadn’t occurred to her that she wouldn’t be able to buy clothes here. Until she could get to a shopping center, maybe she could borrow something from the little vampire girl Hannah, whose psychic abilities Cage had been discussing with Nik when they left the construction site.
And if she ever ran into him, she’d string up the nutjob who’d thought it appropriate to turn a little girl into a vampire, psychic skills notwithstanding. She wouldn’t just string him up; she’d hang him by his nuts from a tall building and leave him to dangle in a stiff breeze until something fell off. Even bloodsuckers should have some standards.
She’d already known about Hannah, of course. The colonel had given both Nik and her dossiers on the major players in Penton. Nik had been cautiously excited—only Nik could be both cautious and excited at the same time—about meeting another person with psychic powers, even a young vampire girl.
Thanks to the dossiers, Robin also knew that humans and vampires alike had been brought here by Aidan Murphy, who’d begun buying up the property in this little half-horse abandoned mill town even before the pandemic vaccine had made the blood of vaccinated humans deadly to him and his followers. Aidan had amassed too many acolytes, their reports said, giving the Vampire Tribunal—a bunch of predatory old farts, from the sound of it—an excuse to hunt him down. There was also some kind of personal vendetta involving one of Aidan’s senior people and the guy’s father, who happened to be on the Tribunal. Will Ludlam, son of Matthias the Lunatic.