Omega (20 page)

Plus, he wasn’t sure it was true.

D
amn, but it felt good to stand upright. Will had spent the first two hours after daysleep walking back and forth across the length of Omega, taking occasional breaks to stop and chat with the small groups that had settled into chairs or wandered aimlessly around the facility. The evil Dr. Slayer had ordered him to stay on his feet awhile before going on shopping patrol, to make sure the leg would hold his weight. So far, so good.

The people of Omega were bored, and Will couldn’t blame them. Mirren was working with Glory, hoping she could use her telekinesis to clear a new exit, but there was nowhere for her to move the dirt. Will had little hope for that project. Aidan, Krys, and Cage were sequestered with Mark and Melissa—whose arrival had spread around Omega like a brush fire and cheered everyone up, at least temporarily. People smiled more and argued less.

But they were all restless and unsettled. Before he’d escorted Mark back to the medical ward, Aidan had asked Hannah and Randa to sit down and develop work schedules in different parts
of Omega to keep everyone busy and to come up with ways for the humans, especially, to entertain themselves during the vampires’ daysleep. Those plans would determine part of his shopping trip.

So far, as he’d passed them on his Omega walkabouts, he’d heard discussions about a karaoke night, a puzzle contest, and art classes.

“I have an idea.” He smiled at Randa as he sat next to Hannah and slipped an arm around her thin shoulders. “We could talk to Mirren about drawing lessons. You know, turn the meeting room into an art studio and let him teach.”

Hannah giggled. “He could wear a beret and hold a palette.”

Randa was grinning now too. “He could
model
for people. Whoever draws the best likeness wins a prize.”

“Maybe a—”

“A what, junior? Finish that fucking sentence.” A ham-sized hand landed on Will’s shoulder, hard enough to knock him off balance.

It was worth Mirren’s wrath to see Hannah laughing again. “You really shouldn’t curse around women and children, big guy.”

“Shut it.” Mirren upended Will’s chair on his way out of the room, causing him to do some fancy balancing maneuvers to keep his ass off the floor.

Might be a good time to leave. “Like I was saying, gotta run some errands. Tell me what you guys need besides art supplies.”

“Can I talk to you a minute before you go?” Randa stood and pointed toward the hallway toward their room.

“You bet.” Will leaned over and kissed Hannah on the cheek. “You need anything, sweetie? A new cat purse?”

Her dark eyes turned solemn, and she shook her head. Will gave her a squeeze before following Randa into the room.

Things had been a little awkward between them when they woke from daysleep, half-dressed, their limbs tangled together. He didn’t plan to let the awkwardness move them backward, so he closed the door behind him and pulled her into a kiss before she could start telling him all the reasons why it was a bad idea.

To his surprise, she didn’t fight him. Instead, she met him with an aggressive assault of lips and tongue that slowed and softened as he figured out she wasn’t running from him and vice versa.

He smoothed a curl behind her ear. “I was afraid you wanted to tell me last night couldn’t happen again.”

“Oh, last night’s not going to happen again.” Randa arched a brow at him. “Next time, you’re going to be a more active participant, minus the morphine buzz. Got that, soldier?”

Oh yeah, he definitely got that. “I might have to come back from Opelika a little early.” Cage hadn’t mentioned moving back into their room, and Randa hadn’t mentioned throwing him out of hers. Which meant he had his pick of sleeping spots. Not that he planned to sleep.

Randa turned away from him and walked to the bookshelf that functioned as dressing table, nightstand, and storage for the small room. She pulled down a backpack and drew a sheet of paper from it.

“Think you can find a Wi-Fi hot spot in Opelika?”

He took the paper. “Sure. I can take my laptop with me. What am I looking for?”

“Read it.”

He unfolded the sheet, which had been printed off a website, and sounded out the words. “Rory’s Ramblings? It’s a blog?”

“Notice anything familiar about the guy?”

He looked at the grainy ink-jet print job, at a smiling soldier in uniform, with red hair cut military short, a straight nose, eyes that crinkled just like…

“He’s your brother?”

“My twin brother, Rory. We were the youngest of the five kids—I’m the only girl—and when our mom died, Rory and I shared everything. It tore him up when I…when I died.” She wouldn’t meet his eye, but seemed to be examining her shoes. “He blogged about it.”

“What’s wrong, Ran?” Will led her to the bed, and they sat side by side. “You want to try and make contact with him?” He wasn’t sure how he felt about that. He’d heard of very few vampires who’d been able to form any kind of relationship with human family members. For one thing, families aged and vampires didn’t. Plus, it was dicey with the Tribunal, who, for all their dithering and hypocrisy, had been consistent in advising vampires to be very careful in letting humans know of their existence. Aidan had the Penton fams bonded or erased memories to prevent people from talking, for their own protection as well as the vampires’.

“I’ve been keeping up with the family through Rory’s blog since I got back to the States after being turned. He stuck with it until last month, when he suddenly stopped. Until then, he’d posted a blog at least three or four times a week.” She looked down at their intertwined fingers and squeezed Will’s hand. “I have a feeling something bad has happened.”

“You want me to see what I can find out?”

Randa nodded and finally looked up at him. “I hear you can hack into anything.”

Her eyes were haunted, maybe even a little frightened, and Will wanted nothing more than to protect her. “If there’s anything to be found, I’ll find it.”

He’d found it all right, and he wasn’t sure how he was going to break the news to Randa.

Will struggled to keep his mind on the road as he drove back from Opelika. He’d blown through a Dollar Tree and a Walmart, grabbing only the essentials he could carry.

After Cage’s report on how close Matthias was to finding them, Aidan had decided Will could take only three people out at a time and only bring back what he and Mirren could take by hand. It was too risky for the other scathe members to be going in and out of the only Omega exit, too risky to use the Gator for bigger hauls, and too risky to take more people out at a time.

What Aidan hadn’t said, and Will didn’t want to think too hard about, was how the ratio of vampires to humans was dropping. Their numbers were down to forty vampires and fifteen humans. From now on, they’d be asking vampires to leave with their fams.

Will parked in a dark spot of the automotive-plant lot and sat in the pickup a few minutes, both watching for activity in the woods and deciding how much to tell Randa of what he’d learned.

Will was tired, and it wasn’t just that his left leg had started throbbing; three more hours and he’d have another daysleep to finish healing. The stress of the last few months, after evading Matthias for years, had exhausted him. He wanted more than anything to spend a few weeks with nothing more pressing than
taking nighttime swims and making love to a beautiful woman. Correction: making love to Randa Thomas, whose heart he was about to break.

Will exited the truck and gathered the bags of supplies, walking toward the tree line. He was within twenty yards of the Omega hatch when he scented another vampire nearby. Not just another vampire. Shelton.

And right on cue, his old friends returned: the panic, the shakes, and the rage. His usual reaction to Shelton, in other words. He fought back the onslaught of memories, of being restrained while Shelton taunted and touched. The pain, physical and mental, of being violated. Humiliation that Matthias knew and not only let it happen but put him there, in that cage at the Virginia estate where he’d rescued Mirren.

Shit
. This was no time for a stroll through happy valley. Will returned to the truck and unloaded all but the most essential of his purchases—medicines and food that would fit into a backpack. The rest he covered in the bed of the pickup. Aidan had wanted to avoid it, but Will thought they were going to have to start sending one or two of the most reliable humans out to retrieve this stuff. Nighttime was getting too dangerous.

Ignoring the ache that had set up in his left calf, Will ran into the woods far west of the Omega entrance and made a big loop. When he approached the hatch again, Shelton had moved on.

Until he was securely inside the exit room with the hatch closed and locked behind him, Will didn’t relax and let the tension drain out of his muscles.

“See anything?” Cage sat near the exit room opening into the tunnel, smoking a small cigar, a makeshift crutch and a shotgun propped against the wall next to him and a book open
in his lap. The single fluorescent lantern barely gave off enough light to read. “We’re a fine pair of gimps, aren’t we?”

Will shed the backpack and flexed his left calf. “That’s the truth. As for seeing anything, no. I scented Shelton close to the hatch, though, so I laid a false scent trail before coming back. They’re getting too close. I had to leave most of the supplies in the truck.”

“Maybe Mark can slip out during the day and retrieve them.” Cage pinched the end of his cigar to kill the flame and stuck it in his pocket. “Can’t waste these.”

“Can you fill Aidan in on Shelton? I need to talk to Randa before daysleep.” Will wanted to stay and ask about Mark and Melissa, but that would have to come later.

“I’ll tell him. Everything OK?”

“No problem.”
Liar, liar, calf on fire.

Will knocked on Randa’s door, and she must have been sitting right by it—she had it open before he’d lowered his hand.

Wide green eyes betrayed her fear—that and the nervous way she clenched her hands together. “Did you find anything?”

“I did. Let’s sit down.”

He closed the door behind him and led her to the bed, but she balked.

“I don’t want to sit down. Will, people only tell you to sit down when it’s bad news. What’s going on with Rory?”

He pushed aside memories of his sister Cathy’s wasted body and took Randa’s hands in his. “He died a week ago, Ran. Cancer.”

R
anda did sit, after all. Her legs gave way, and she found herself on the bed, sitting with Will at her side, looking as if he expected her to scream and go hysterical on him.

On some level, she’d known. When Rory quit posting, she’d known something was wrong. Maybe it was a twin thing. If part of her had realized he was gone, did he still feel her presence after she’d been turned? She’d never know the answer to that. “Are you absolutely sure?”

Will retrieved his backpack, which he’d thrown to the floor when her legs had folded like an accordion, and took out a folded sheaf of papers. “Your older brother…His name’s Rob?”

She nodded. Robbie was next in age to Rory and her, three years older. Classic middle child: loud, bossy, a risk-taker, always looking for attention so he wouldn’t get lost in the shuffle of Colonel Thomas’s kids, whose names all started with
R
. She’d always hated her name, Randalynn, her grandmother’s name.