Allegiance (The Penton Vampire Legacy) (2 page)

  
CHAPTER 1
 

C
age Reynolds sighed in relief when the 727 began its descent to Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport. Vampires and long red-eye flights made bad companions, even if the vampire in question wasn’t claustrophobic. An unexpected delay that trapped a plane on a runway after sunrise would lead to a very public frying.

Frying publicly in the midst of a planeload of humans would truly suck.

Now that he’d arrived on American soil, Cage let his thoughts travel to Penton, Alabama, his ultimate destination. He’d gone there six months ago to gauge if master vampire Aidan Murphy’s idea of a scathe community that could weather the current “vampire apocalypse” could work in Cage’s native London.

He’d fled like a coward three months later with way more baggage than he’d bargained for, including friends—a scarce commodity for a nomad—and a woman who’d awakened in him a compassion so alien he thought he’d lost it a century earlier.

Penton had gotten complicated.

If Cage had learned anything in his seventy-five years as a vampire, it was this: keep things simple. Caring hurt. Loving killed. The fight—that was what filled the empty spaces of a life that stretched on too long. The adrenaline rush of besting an enemy, of taking down a despot, of feeling a power so strong it filled those voids in his deadened heart.

Now? Melissa Calvert, a human turned vampire barely three months ago, held his future in her small, fragile palm.

When Aidan had called and asked him to return and help shore up security before the upcoming Tribunal elections, Cage had leapt at the chance, even though the idea of facing Melissa again set his heart thumping—whether out of fear or guilt, he wasn’t sure.

All he knew was that he’d found her being held captive, had saved her, had let her transfer all of her gratitude to him, had let her call it love. He’d planned to fuck her and flee; that was his MO, after all.

He’d fled, all right, his reawakened conscience bristling after having done no more than kiss her. Somehow she’d reached inside and touched him. Appealed to the part of him that had been a psychiatrist in his human life. Burrowed past the thick outer shell of the soldier of fortune he’d become since being turned. Brushed gentle fingers against the nerve endings still raw after Paris.

He wouldn’t think about Paris.

So here he was again, moving toward Penton—only this time he hoped to stay. To finally make a home for himself. If Melissa could forgive him. If she accepted his admission that he’d fucked up by letting her care for him, for allowing her to think they had a future. He loved her, but not in that stay-with-me-forever kind of bond that vampires instinctively formed when they met their intended mate.

Cage Reynolds was not a bond-mate type of vampire. And Melissa Calvert was not a casual fuck-buddy kind of woman.

If she accepted the truth and didn’t poison the rest of the town against him, then maybe Cage the Wandering Boy could finally stop roaming. God knew there was enough drama in the vampire world these days to keep even the most jaded adrenaline junkie happy. Starvation. Civil unrest. Political intrigue. Penton was a veritable oasis in that desert of chaos, now that Matthias Ludlam was out of the picture; once Aidan took a seat on the Tribunal, maybe other places could follow Penton’s example.

Then again, the people of Penton might only see Cage as the selfish bastard who ruined Mark and Melissa Calvert’s perfect marriage.

The lights of Atlanta fanned out below him, growing from twinkles to dots to streetlights as the plane lowered its landing gear and approached the runway.

The pilot welcomed them to the United States and advised them on Customs requirements, prompting Cage to dig in the interior pocket of his leather jacket for his brilliantly faked passport. It identified him as Cage Reynolds, age thirty-two, resident of London, citizen of the UK. The face in the passport photo was the same one he’d had since 1942, after Paris. After the pit.

Everything had changed since then, and yet nothing had changed. His hair was longer, sweeping his shoulders when it wasn’t pulled back, but it was the same light caramel brown. He had fangs rather than canines and lived on the ultimate low-carb diet, but he’d never eaten his veggies like a good boy even as a human. His eyes lightened to a silvery green when he was hungry, or angry, or aroused, or stressed out—which seemed about 90 percent of the time. The rest of the time, they were the same mossy color they’d always been. The face that looked back at him from the passport had a cocky, self-sure expression that didn’t show the arsewipe who lived inside the shell.

A chickenshit arsewipe as well, or he’d have told Melissa Calvert before he left that he didn’t return her feelings, not in the way she wanted. Or he should’ve fucked her as planned, scratched that itch, and at least not left both horny and guilty.

Cage dallied toward the back of the Customs line, and then dawdled in gift shops on his way to baggage claim. Aidan had said whoever picked Cage up would probably be a bit late. Cage hoped it would be Aidan himself, so he could get the rundown on the situation in Penton. Last time he was there the town had lain in ruins, more than half of its citizens dead or gone, and he was leaving to inform Matthias Ludlam, who’d started the whole mess, of his pending execution.

Tomorrow, the date Matthias was due to meet whatever was the opposite of a heavenly reward, would be a lovely day to celebrate.

Of course, if he were picked up by Aidan’s massive second-in-command, Mirren Kincaid, Cage also would get a report, only it would be much less pleasant and filled with many more expletives.

No such luck. It was Melissa Calvert’s face he zeroed in on as soon as he rounded the last corner into the baggage-claim area. His breath caught at the rush of memories and feelings, some good, some bad. Most a perplexing cocktail of both.

Stop overthinking, Reynolds.
He hadn’t practiced psychiatry in more than seven decades, but overanalyzing was a hard habit to break.

Melissa gave him a shy wave, and he felt an annoying blossom of warmth open in his chest. He ignored the spinning carousel of luggage, elbowed his way among a dozen tourists chattering in German, and pulled her into a hug. The pressure of her arms around his waist, her sweet cinnamon smell, and the warm stroke of her fingers on his back grounded him more than the wheel of the plane thumping onto the runway had done. Now, he was home.

He just hoped he could talk Aidan and the rest of the good people of Penton into letting him stay after he hurt this woman who was so intrinsically one of them.

Cage might have spent most of his human and vampire years in London, but Penton was where he fit. Where he felt whole again—something he’d thought was out of his reach.

Melissa’s curly, strawberry-blonde hair brushed across Cage’s cheek like floral-scented whispers as he stepped back and held her at arm’s length. She’d grown thinner, her rounded face taking on the paler, more honed look of a vampire, but her hazel eyes sparkled. New vampires often had a hard transition, and hers had been traumatic. She’d publicly had her throat slashed and then been spirited away and secretly turned vampire just before the point of death. Matthias Ludlam couldn’t die too soon. Cage’s only regret was that Ludlam’s executioners would probably be humane.

“You look lovely, Mel. I . . .” He frowned at her suddenly pained expression, her mouth thinned, brows scrunched together. “What’s wrong?”

She spoke through lips compressed so tightly they’d turned white. “I’m trying not to grin at you. Aidan says if I can’t stop showing my fangs, he’s going to lock me in the old clinic subbasement again and tie me down with silver-laced rope.”

Cage laughed before he could stop himself. He’d forgotten the singsong lilt of her Southern accent and her penchant for saying exactly what she thought. “See. Watch my technique.” He grinned at her. “Push your lower lip up on the sides.”

She tried a lopsided grin that made her look like a grimacing Halloween monster before she gave up and collapsed against his chest in laughter. When the giggles faded, she wrapped her arms around him again, tighter this time. “I missed you, Cage.”

“Me too, love.” And he had. He’d forgotten how easy they were together, and in this time of turmoil, comfort was a rare commodity. When was the last time he’d laughed?

It certainly hadn’t been in London. The city’s starving vampire community had split into radical fringe groups, some even supporting the idea of revealing their existence to the unwitting human population. They believed vampires could rely on human mercy to save them.

Cage didn’t agree. He’d seen genocide and unspeakable behavior both in his human life and afterward. Mercy was a gift, not a given.

Starving vampires didn’t respond well to political rhetoric, however, so his Tribunal leader, Edward Simmons, had a boatload of work ahead to prevent his desperate people from committing the vampire version of seppuku. Things were slightly better in the States, he’d heard, but only because the vampire population was waiting to see how the blood banks would work.

“You got a lot of luggage?” Melissa pulled away from him and looked at the thinning crowd around the edges of the baggage carousel. “Aidan wanted to come himself, but he just got back from Washington and had a conference call with Colonel Thomas.” The human Army colonel, whose daughter was a member of the Penton scathe, had helped them put the old sadist Matthias away.

In exchange, the US vampires had agreed to stay hidden while banks of unvaccinated blood were set up. Starting with the Penton scathe, they’d also be providing vampire operatives to work side by side with human Army Rangers on national security cases. They’d taken the name Omega Force, after the underground bunker the Pentonites had lived in while their town was under siege.

Cage wanted to ask how the Omega Force units were doing, but Melissa wasn’t the right person. She’d not likely be privy to Tribunal or security issues.

For now, they’d keep the subject easy. “I travel light—one bag. Pull the car around, and I’ll meet you outside.”

Cage watched her leave, her navy sweater disappearing from view as she blended with the travelers piling in and out of taxis and shuttle buses. He quelled his instinctive rise of worry. She’d survived—maybe even thrived—away from him for the past three months. It would be too easy to fall back into protective mode, and they’d be right back where they were before, with her needing something he wasn’t capable of giving.

He turned back to the carousel and waited for his heavy trunk to roll round again; it was all he had to show from his life in London. He’d cleared out the flat he’d leased for the past five years. Longer than that in one place and the neighbors might wonder why the bloke down the corridor hadn’t aged. Not that he was there much. Soldiers of fortune went where they were hired and fought for whoever offered the most payoff in adrenaline and cash.

That life had grown old, however, and he had grown tired. Living in Penton and feeling part of a community had shown him how tired.

He’d donated most of his meager belongings to a local shelter, packed up the rest, and mailed the flat’s owner two months’ rent and the key. He’d broken the news to Edward Simmons—the UK Tribunal representative and his scathe master—that he wouldn’t be returning.

He just wanted Penton.

He rolled his trunk outside. The midnight-blue BMW idling in front of the baggage-claim exit belonged to Aidan—another reminder that it was not Cage’s job to be Melissa’s protector. Aidan took care of his people. He didn’t need Cage Reynolds to do it for him.

Melissa popped the trunk for him but got out and walked around, helping move some of Aidan’s papers aside to make room. His shoulder brushed hers, whisper light, but neither of them moved away. An accident or a test?

This time, when she turned and looked up at him, the lights from the taxis and other vehicles seemed to move like a carousel around their still little world, where nothing could touch them. Her lips parted slightly, but her expression was troubled, not aroused.

They spoke at the same time.

“We need to—”