Free Allegiance (The Penton Vampire Legacy) by Susannah Sandlin

thought.
    God knows Robin Ashton wasn’t plain-vanilla anything—though her protectiveness of her “convenient” bedmate Nik was another sign of the sweetness he’d glimpsed earlier. They might not be a couple, but she cared about him. It showed in the softened lines of her face, the worry that darkened her eyes.
    A few more seconds passed before Nik began picking up bricks one at a time, holding each one for a few seconds and then tossing it aside. He still hadn’t spoken.
    Robin knelt next to him and looked over her shoulder. “Help us. He needs to touch as many of the bricks as he can. Don’t talk to him. Anybody got a sheet of paper and a pencil?”
    Cage glanced over at Mirren, who wore that uneasy expression he only got around Hannah. Mirren was all about what he could see and touch and punch the shit out of. Stuff like visions totally freaked him out. If anybody in Penton scared Mirren, it was little Hannah in the midst of a premonition.
    He flinched when Cage touched his arm. “I can help them here. Maybe you could check in with Aidan and Krys. On the off chance the colonel wants to talk security, you probably need to be there.” It was doubtful that Colonel Rick Thomas would want to do anything more tonight than mourn the loss of his son, but the possibility gave Mirren a graceful way out if things were about to get weird with Nik. Make that weirder . “You could probably take Nik’s SUV and we can walk back.”
    Mirren glanced down the hill at the vehicle, no doubt wondering whether he might get psychic germs from driving it. “Good thinking, but I’ll walk to the clinic and take Aidan and Krys home in the Bronco.”
    He didn’t waste time, his long legs eating up the distance down the hill before Cage could respond.
    With Mirren making his way north toward the clinic, Cage walked to the back side of the wall structure. Earlier he’d spotted the clipboard from the job site on the ground near the extra bricks, and, sure enough, there was a pen attached. He flipped the pages to turn blank sides up, clipped them back in, and handed it to Robin.
    “Thanks.” She touched Nik’s arm and held the clipboard in front of him. He nodded and tossed another brick aside.
    They worked another thirty minutes. Robin would hand a brick to Nik; he’d hold it for two seconds, or four, or half a minute, sometimes with his eyes closed. Then he’d hand the brick to Cage, who’d set it aside and wait for the next one while Nik took the clipboard and sketched furiously.
    Finally, Nik stared at the last sketch a few seconds before thrusting the clipboard at Robin, struggling to his feet and lurching behind the building. Where, by the sound of it, he was retching his guts out.
    “You need to help him?” Cage asked Robin. Whatever kind of abilities Nik had, he paid a physical price for them.
    “No, he’ll need to sleep it off. He hasn’t done this in a while.” She scooted next to Cage and held out the clipboard. “You might need more light to study these, but he gets images off things he touches—things that happened in the past. Here’s what he got from your bricks.”
    The top drawing was an amazing likeness of Max Jeffries, laughing. “This is Max,” Cage said, “the other Ranger living in Penton. Rob was his best mate.”
    Several drawings appeared to be from the brick manufacturer. Another one showed Mark, and another showed Rob himself, looking happy and very much alive. There was a scathe member Cage didn’t know well, but the guy was bonded to Mirren.
    He flipped to the last drawing, an image of a wild feline—a mountain lion, maybe, or a jaguar. There was no context, so it was hard to tell how large it was.
    He held it up to Robin. “What does this mean?”
    Before she could answer, Nik stepped back around the corner, looking like death’s last victim. “If you don’t recognize it, I’d say it means Penton has a shape-shifter you don’t know about.”

   CHAPTER 6   
    M elissa sat